days later into and remained in the Mediterranean until 1707. With the rest of Shovell's fleet, he returned to England, but was fortunate to escape the disaster that befell Shovell's flagship, at the Isles of Scilly. In November, he joined and in April 1708, took command of the West Indies station. In 1710, he successfully broke up a Spanish squadron off Cartagena. At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1712, he returned to Britain. Peace, promotion and Parliament In March 1715, he was appointed to , in which he served in the Baltic until 1717, when the ship was paid off. After this, he was put on half pay for the next eighteen months. In March 1719, he was appointed to HMS Mary and returned to the Baltic. Vernon was the commodore on the Jamaica Station in 1720. In 1721, he again went on half pay for five years. During this period, he became the Member of Parliament for Penryn, a seat his father had represented, and took a leading part in naval debates. In 1726, he was re-appointed to active service in . This ship served in the Baltic until the winter of 1727, when it was transferred to the fleet at Gibraltar after Spain declared war on Britain. In May 1728, peace was made with Spain, and Vernon returned to Britain and resumed his Parliamentary duties. He took up the case of the Welshman Robert Jenkins, a merchant seaman who claimed to have had his ear cut off after his vessel was boarded by Spanish privateers Coast guards or privateers guardacostas in 1731. War of Jenkins' Ear The accumulation of Spanish-British conflicts led to the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739, in which Vice Admiral Vernon led a fleet along with Major General Thomas Wentworth. Vernon captured Porto Bello, a Spanish colonial possession, as a result of which he was granted the Freedom of the City of London. However, Vernon's next campaign against the Spanish, a large-scale assault on Cartagena de Indias in 1741, ended in disaster. After initial success, the British fleet of 186 ships and around 12,000 infantry was defeated by a garrison of 3,500 men and the sailors disembarked from the six ships of the line commanded by the one-eyed, one-legged and one-armed Spanish admiral Blas de Lezo. As disease spread among the British troops, delaying tactics by the Spaniards and