Gibraltar

by Henry M. Field

And so the game of war went on for three long years, until it had fixed the gaze of the whole civilized world. The last act was to be inaugurated by a change in the military command, and in the method of attack. Hitherto the siege had been conducted chiefly by the Spaniards, as was fitting, since, if the fortress were taken, to Spain would fall the splendid prize. They had fought bravely, maintaining the reputation which had never been shaken from the days of Alva, when the Spanish infantry was more dreaded than any other on the battle-fields of Europe. During the siege the officers of the garrison, as they looked down from their heights into the hostile camp, could not but admire the way in which both officers and men exposed themselves. It was not to their dishonor if they had failed in attempting the impossible. But having to confess defeat, it was but military prudence to see if another mode of operation might not be more successful. Accordingly, French skill in the art of war was now called in to take part in the tremendous conflict. The Duc de Crillon, who had recently distinguished himself by the capture of Minorca, was put in command of the combined land forces; while a French engineer, the Chevalier d'Arçon, was to prepare an armament more formidable than had ever been known in naval warfare.

The plan had certainly the merit of boldness. There was to be no more long blockade, and no more attempt to take the place by stratagem. Gibraltar was to be taken, if at all, by hard fighting. But the conditions of battle were unequal: for how could wooden ships be matched against stone walls? No ships of the day could stand an hour against guns fired from behind those ramparts. But this engineer was bold enough to believe that vessels could be made so strong that they would withstand even that tremendous fire. He proposed to construct "battering ships" of such enormous strength that they could be moored within short range, when he in turn would open a fire equally tremendous, that should blow Gibraltar into the air! All he asked was that his flotilla might be laid close alongside the enemy, when, gun to gun and man to man, the contest should be decided. Once let him get near enough to make a breach for a storming party to mount the walls, and his French grenadiers would do the rest. It was bravely conceived, and to the day of battle it seemed as if it might be bravely done.

To begin with, ten of the largest ships in the Spanish navy were to be sacrificed: for it seemed like a sacrifice to cut down the huge bulwarks of their towering sides. But show was to be sacrificed to strength. The new constructor would have no more three-deckers, nor two-deckers. All he wanted was one broad deck, reaching the whole length of the ship, from stem to stern, which should be as solid as if it were a part of the mainland, or a floating island, on which he could plant his guns as on the ramparts of a fortress. Having thus dismantled and razeed the great ships, he proceeded to reconstruct them without and within. His method is of interest, as showing how a hundred years ago a naval engineer anticipated the modern construction of ironclads. His battering ships were in outward shape almost exactly what the Merrimac was in our civil war. He did everything except case them with iron, the art of rolling plates of wrought iron, such as are now used in the construction of ships, not being then known. But if they could not be "plated" with iron on the outside, they were "backed" by ribs of oak within. Inside their enormous hulls was a triple thickness of beams, braced against the sides. Next to this was a layer of sand, in which it was supposed a cannon-ball would bury itself as in the earth. To this sand-bank, resting against its oaken backing, there was still an inner lining in a thick wall of cork, which, yielding like india-rubber, would offer the best resistance to the penetration of shot.

Having thus protected the hulls, it was only necessary to protect the crews. For this the decks were roofed with heavy timbers, which were covered with ropes, and next with hides, after the manner of the ancient Romans; so that the men working at the guns were almost as secure from the enemy's fire as if they were inside of the strongest casemates that the art of fortification could construct. Thus shielded above and below—from the deck to the keel—these novel ships-of-war were in truth floating fortresses, and it was hardly presumptuous in their constructor to say that they "could not be burnt, nor sunk, nor taken."

These preparations for attack could not be made without the knowledge of the garrison. From the top of the Rock they had but to turn their glasses across the bay, and they could see distinctly hundreds of workmen swarming over the great hulks, and could almost hear the sound of the hammers that ceased not day nor night. Turning to the camp of the besiegers, they could see "long strings of mules streaming hourly into the trenches laden with shot, shell, and ammunition." Deserters brought in reports of the vast preparations, and the confidence they inspired. The fever of expectation had spread to the capitals of Spain and France. The King of Spain was almost beside himself with eagerness and impatience. Every morning his first question was "Is it taken?" and when answered in the negative he always kept up his courage by saying, "It will soon be ours." His expectations seemed now likely to be realized. All felt that at last the end was nigh, and the Comte d'Artois, the brother of Louis XVI., the King of France, had made the journey all the way from Paris to be present at the grand culmination of the surrender of Gibraltar!

So sure were the allies of victory that they debated among themselves as to "how many hours" the garrison could keep up a resistance. Twenty-four hours was the limit, and when the French commander, less sanguine than the naval constructors and engineers, thought it might be even two weeks before the place fell, he was the subject of general ridicule.

Taking for granted that the fire of the garrison would soon be silenced, precise directions were given about the landing of the storming party. As soon as a break was made, the grenadiers were to mount the walls. It was especially ordered that strong bodies of troops should advance rapidly and cut off the retreat of the garrison, which might otherwise flee to the heights of the Rock, and keep up for a while longer the hopeless resistance. The victory must be complete.

On the other hand, the garrison was roused to greater exertion by the greater danger. Its ardor was excited also by what was passing in other parts of the world. War was still raging in both hemispheres, with the usual vicissitudes of victory and defeat. England had lost America, but her wounded pride was soon relieved, if not entirely removed, by a great victory at sea. Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, in October, 1781, and only six months after, in April, 1782, Admiral Rodney (the same who had relieved Gibraltar only two years before) gained a victory in the West Indies over Count de Grasse, which almost annihilated the French fleet, and assured to England, whatever her losses upon land, the mastery of the seas. The tidings of this great victory reached Gibraltar, and fired the spirit of every Briton. The Governor was now sixty-four years old, and the events of the last three years might well make him feel that he was a hundred. But his youth returned in the great crisis that was upon him. Both Governor and garrison burned to do something worthy the name and fame of Old England. The opportunity soon came.

Though the battering ships were regarded as invincible, yet to make assurance doubly sure the French and Spanish fleets had been quadrupled in force. If any man's heart had been trembling before, it must have failed him on September 12, 1782, when there sailed into the bay thirty-nine ships of the line, raising the naval armament to fifty line-of-battle ships, with innumerable smaller vessels—the largest naval armament since the Spanish Armada—supported on land by an army of forty thousand men, whose batteries, mounted with the heaviest ordnance, stretched along the shore.

Against this mighty array of force by land and sea the English commander, mustering every gun and every man, could oppose only ninety-six pieces of artillery, manned by seven thousand soldiers and sailors.