Qualla: Capture of the Bahamas (1783)

Capture of the Bahamas (1783): Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the time Major Andrew Deveaux's flotilla appeared off New Providence on April 13, 1783, the war he was fighting had already ended. Thousands of miles away in Paris, British and Spanish diplomats had agreed to return the Bahamas to Britain in exchange for East Florida. A sloop called the Flor de Mayo had even delivered this news to the island days earlier. But Deveaux did not know that, and the Spanish commander Claraco -- who mistook the approaching ships for smugglers -- was about to learn that ignorance of a peace treaty is no protection against a dawn assault. What followed was one of the last military actions of the American Revolutionary War, a bloodless capture that rendered itself pointless even as it succeeded.

Capture of the Bahamas (1783): The Empire's Revolving Door

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Bahamas had been changing hands with remarkable ease. In May 1782, Spanish forces had taken the islands from the British without firing a shot -- the garrison simply surrendered. Saint Augustine in East Florida, however, remained stubbornly British, the Spanish deeming it too...

Capture of the Bahamas (1783): Seventy Men and Two Brigantines

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two days out of Saint Augustine, Deveaux's tiny force was joined by the Perseverance, a 26-gun privateer brigantine commanded by Thomas Dow, and the Whitby Warrior, a 16-gun brigantine carrying 120 men under Daniel Wheeler. The combined flotilla anchored off Harbour Island and El...

Capture of the Bahamas (1783): Dawn at Fort Montagu

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the flotilla drew near New Providence on April 13, Claraco dismissed it as smugglers -- a miscalculation that cost him the initiative. At dawn the following morning, a heavily armed landing party stormed ashore and seized Fort Montagu, the eastern fortification guarding Nass...

Capture of the Bahamas (1783): A Victory Already Won

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The irony was total. Britain had already secured the Bahamas through diplomacy in the preliminary talks leading to the Treaty of Paris, signed later that year. East Florida, the very place Deveaux had sailed from, was being traded away to Spain in exchange for the islands he had ...