The Sea Road to the East, Gibraltar to Wei-hai-wei / Six Lectures Prepared for the Visual Instruction Committee of the Colonial Office

by A. J. Sargent

The Rock is small: its length three miles from north to south, its greatest breadth not more than three-quarters of a mile. Its area is a little less than two square miles, so that it is quite the smallest in the list of our foreign possessions. A high and narrow ridge, rising over a thousand feet, falls steeply to the land on the north and to the sea on the east; towards the south, where the ridge is lower, it ends in cliffs against which the sea beats always and prevents all access. On part of the west side the lower slopes are more gentle, and on these lies the town with the harbour at the foot.

Let us look now at the approach to Gibraltar from 7 the mainland of Spain. Here we see a corner of the northwest face of the rock, where it overlooks the isthmus. Notice how sheer it rises from the plain, with the flooded moat at its foot. The narrow road, on which we are standing, between the Rock and the sea margin, is the sole entry to the fortress, and we may understand how, in a spot such as this, a small force could easily defy an 8 army. Here is another view of the Causeway, from the hill above, which shows us how narrow is the link connecting the Rock with the mainland. Gibraltar is, in effect, an island; the only real approach is on the west, from the sea.

We will now explore further. All round us are guns and fortifications old and new; soldiers are everywhere; we can see little without special permission, and the authorities are very inquisitive as to our business. The main gates are locked and guarded at night, and we take the time and set our watches by gunfire. We soon learn that we are in no ordinary town, but in a fortress prepared for war. Here we see one of the hot 9 and narrow streets. In the foreground is one of the olive-skinned natives of the Mediterranean. We shall find them everywhere about the harbour; in fact they seem far too many for a small confined town. But in the evening we may meet them streaming away by the north gate, bound for the Spanish town of Linea, which is visible in the distance beyond the neutral ground of the isthmus. There is much work to be done in the harbour, but there is no room for the town to expand, so it is not possible to house the workmen on the spot. It is necessary to limit the number of civilians living in the town, for past experience has proved that they are a danger to health in time of peace, through overcrowding, and a source of weakness to the fighting garrison in time of war. Gibraltar must be governed purely as a fortress; its history is a history of war; in time of peace it has little interest.

Thirteen sieges in five centuries are recorded by historians since its capture from the Moors by Ferdinand of Castile in 1309; a relic of the Moorish occupation 10 still survives in the old castle which we see here; of the sieges the last three alone concern us. In the autumn of 1704, only a few months after a British admiral had hoisted the flag and claimed the Rock in the name of Queen Anne, France and Spain with a great fleet and army attempted its recovery. In the spring of the next year the garrison, without food or powder, reduced by disease and fighting to less than 1,500 effective men, and facing the constant attack of a vastly superior force, could scarcely hope to hold out much longer. But relief at last came from the sea. A British squadron broke through the blockading fleets and brought supplies and reinforcements; and though it sailed away again the real siege was over. On the land side the Rock was impregnable; the guns of that day were useless against its defences; Gibraltar was ours to hold so long as we could command the sea.

At the peace of Utrecht, which ended the war of the Spanish Succession, we retained Gibraltar, and the people of England, impressed by the siege and the splendid defence of the Rock, resolved to keep it. It was only natural that Spain should wish to recover a fortress which was geographically part of her territory and of little value to us at the time. For years her diplomatists tried to persuade us to restore it; and when diplomacy failed, force was attempted once more. In 1728, great preparations were made for another siege; even Cadiz was stripped of its guns to provide a siege train, and an army of 20,000 men fronted the little garrison of 1,500. The Government in England set small value on the place, so that the defences had been utterly neglected. The guns were worn out and the fortifications in decay, but the garrison worked day and night in parties of 500 to repair the damage. A heavy bombardment undid much of their work, but it also ruined the large brass guns of the enemy, while month by month we poured in men and supplies from the sea, until the garrison was raised to over 5,000. The siege proved that Gibraltar, properly manned, had nothing to fear from an assault by land, and the people of England were more than ever convinced that it was quite impregnable. The real danger was to come fifty years later, when we lost for a time the command of the sea.

The last and greatest siege began in 1779, when the fortunes of England were at a low ebb in the war of American Independence, and a French and Spanish fleet had sailed with impunity up the English Channel. In spite of despatches from Governors and discussions in Parliament, the defences of Gibraltar were again in a thoroughly neglected state. It is not to the English Ministers or Parliament that we owe our present possession of it, but to the energy and foresight of General Eliott, the Governor at the time. It is true that at the last moment we hurried out more troops and supplies; but when the attack began in June, 1779, the garrison, with no hope of further relief from the sea, was ill fitted to withstand a long siege by the joint forces of France and Spain.

Let us climb up to one of the great galleries begun 11 during the siege and hewn out of the solid limestone rock, with their rows of gun-ports like windows in the face of the precipice. Let us look out through one of 12 these windows and try to imagine the scene in the days of the siege. Here we have a fine view of the country 13 below. The blank space, without houses, which we see is the neutral ground, and beyond it the besiegers’ lines were drawn right across the isthmus. Across this narrow space the guns fired round shot, the enemy attacked and the garrison made sorties. Further away is the town of Linea, and right under our feet is the goal of the attack, the narrow entrance to the fortress itself. But the scenes on the isthmus can never be repeated; long-range artillery has changed the conditions of warfare; the heavy guns on the landward side of the Rock now keep watch and ward over the distant hills.

This was the view of the besieged on the land side; the sea also was closed to them. Our fleets were engaged elsewhere and supplies were cut off by a swarm of hostile cruisers in the Strait. The troops were on half rations from the first, while at the end of a twelvemonth the people were glad to search the Rock for wild roots and weeds. Gibraltar was never nearer to surrender. At the last moment, Rodney, on his way to the West Indies, defeated the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent and brought in a convoy. But he could not stay, and the siege closed in for a second year. Morocco joined Spain, so that the small supplies which had reached the garrison in spite of the blockade were now cut off. To crown all, the food brought from England was mostly salted, and scurvy broke out. To add to the trials of the defence, the enemy now attacked from the sea with small gunboats rowed in close to the shore under cover of darkness. The town was a fair target which they could hardly miss, while they were small and offered no chance in the darkness to the gunners of the garrison. So for the rest of the siege this nightly bombardment went on unchecked, as to reply was mere waste of powder which could ill be spared.

In the spring of 1781, a powerful English fleet again brought relief, and later in the year a brilliant sortie by the garrison ended in the destruction of the besiegers’ lines and delayed the final attack. But early in 1782 Minorca surrendered to the French, who were thus set free to prepare for a great joint effort. For a time there was a lull in the storm, while ships were collected in the bay and men and stores on the mainland. Rewards were offered for the best plan for capturing the fortress, and people came from all over Europe to watch the final act in the great drama. The preparations ended in a grand assault by land and sea in September, 1782. For four days without ceasing thirty thousand men with nearly three hundred guns attacked from the isthmus. In the Bay were fifty warships with the gunboats and the famous floating batteries. To oppose this huge armament with its five hundred guns or more, the defenders had some eight thousand men and less than a hundred guns. It was enough. How the attack failed is told in every history. It is worth remark that the losses of the garrison in the bombardment were very small, not more than might have been expected in a mere skirmish. The guns of those days were of little use against the natural defences of the Rock. Soon after, Lord Howe, in the teeth of the combined fleets, broke the blockade and brought the third relief; and although the fighting continued for a time, the real siege was over as soon as the English fleet had forced the passage of the Strait.