ABSTRACT
This chapter exposes the relative importance of Minorca since becoming a British possession in 1708. Adam Smith dubbed the island ‘expensive’, nothing more than a diplomatic pawn at Europe’s underside that in no way benefitted trade in the Mediterranean. Ironically, it was Byng’s father George Byng, 1st Viscount Torrington, who moved naval facilities from Lisbon to Minorca earlier in the century. Evidence also indicates that fortifications at Minorca were unprepared and undermanned. Calls for a Mediterranean fleet were enunciated as early as April 1755 by Henry Fox and the Duke of Cumberland. When Admiral John Byng departed for the island from Portsmouth the following year, only Commodore George Edgcumbe’s three frigates protected all of Britain’s trading and diplomatic interests in the Mediterranean. This chapter details the expectations and disappointments among London’s political elites and how determinations of blame were exacted. To make matters worse, news of a ‘Catholick League’ between Austria, France, and Spain involved the parsing of the island of Minorca.
