any basking in Vernon's glory on his part. In the ballad, the ghost of Hosier appears to Vernon as he rests at anchor following his successful engagement, and congratulates him: Unrepining at thy glory Thy successful arms we hail. He then charges him to let Hosier's wrongs prevail when he returns to England, upon which he and his fellow ghosts can finally rest, their reputations restored. The first half of verse 7 is thus: For resistance I could fear none But with twenty ships had done What thou brave and happy Vernon Hast atchiev'd with six alone. Cartagena de Indias In 1741 he commanded a great fleet formed by one hundred and ninety-five ships and around thirty thousand men whose objective was to take the Spanish port of Cartagena de Indias, main port of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, defended by the Spanish admiral Blas de Lezo. The British fleet totaled two thousand cannons arranged in almost one hundred and eighty ships, including three-bridge ships (eight), ships of the line (twenty-eight), frigates (twelve), bombards (two) and transport ships (one hundred and thirty), and around thirty thousand combatants including sailors (fifteen thousand), soldiers (nine thousand regulars and four thousand from the American militias) and black slaves from Jamaica (four thousand). The defenses of Cartagena included three thousand men among regular troops (about one thousand seven hundred and eighty), militiamen (five hundred), six hundred Indians brought from the interior, plus the seamen and landing troops of the six warships that the city had (one hundred and fifty men): the Galicia, which was the captain ship, the San Felipe, the San Carlos, the África, the Dragón and the Conquistador. After taking some of the city's defenses, the British assault on the castle San Felipe de Barajas, the last important bastion defending it, failed on April 20; with a large part of the troops ill, heavy casualties suffered in the fighting and the arrival of the rainy season, the British opted to destroy the defenses within their reach and abandon the siege. British losses were very heavy: some four thousand five hundred dead, six ships lost and between seventeen and twenty badly damaged.4 The latter forced the British Government to concentrate its forces on the defense of the metropolis, the northern Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and to discard new campaigns in the Spanish colonies in America.4 The defeat at Cartagena derailed British plans for