The following pages afford a circumstantial and, I believe, a fairly true account of an incident much glossed over by our naval historians. The subject is peculiarly interesting. At Santa Cruz, as at Fontenoy, the Irish, whom harsh measures at home drove for protection to more friendly lands, took ample share in the fighting which defeated England's greatest sailor. Again, the short-sighted policy which sent to the Crimea 20,000 British soldiers to play second instrument in concert with 40,000 Frenchmen, thus lowering us in the eyes of Europe, made Nelson oppose his 960 hands to more than eight times their number. The day may come when the attack shall be repeated. Now that steam has rendered fleets independent of south-west winds, it is to be hoped the assailant will prefer day to night, so that his divisions can communicate; that he will not land in the 'raging surf' of the ebb-tide, and that he will attack the almost defenceless south instead of the well-fortified north of the city.
Already the heroic Island had inflicted partial or total defeat upon three English admirals. [Footnote: Grand Canary also did her duty by beating off, in October 1795, Drake's strong squadron.] In April 1657 the Roundhead 'general at sea,' Admiral Sir Robert Blake, of Bridgewater, attempted to cut out the Spanish galleons freighted with Mexican gold and with the silver of Peru. Of these the principal were the Santo-Cristo, the Jesus-Maria, the Santo Sacramento, La Concepcion, the San Juan, the Virgen de la Solitud, and the Nuestra Señora del Buen Socorro. This 'silver fleet' was moored under the guns of the 'chief castle,' San Cristobal, the mean work at the root of the mole. The English were preparing to board, when the Captain-General, D. Diego de Egues, whom our histories call 'Diagues,' ordered the fleet to be fired, after all the treasure had been housed in the fort. A steady fight lasted three hours, during which the wife of the brave Governor, D. Estevan de la Guerra, distinguished herself. 'I shall not be useless here,' she exclaimed when invited to leave the batteries; and this 'maid of Tenerife' continued to animate the garrison till the end. As was the case with his great successor, Roundhead Blake's failure proved to him far better than a success. For his francesada, or coup de tête, Nelson expected to lose his commission, instead of which some popular freak flung to him honour and honours. So Protector Cromwell sent a valuable diamond ring to his 'general at sea,' in token of esteem on his part and that of his Parliament. Our histories, relying on the fact that a few weak batteries were silenced, claim for the Admiral a positive victory, despite his losses—fifty killed and 500 wounded.
[Footnote: The late Mr. Hepworth Dixon (Life of Blake, p. 346) describes the open roadstead of Santa Cruz as a 'harbour shaped like a horse-shoe, and defended at the north side of the entrance by a regular castle.' In p. 350 we also read of the bay and its entrance. Any hydrographic chart would have set him right.]
In 1706, during the Spanish war of succession, Admiral Jennings sailed into Santa Cruz bay—the old Bay of Anaga or Anago—and lay off San Cristobal
[Footnote: This work still remains. It is a parallelogram with four bastions in star-shape, fronting the sea, and an embrasured wall facing the town. It began as a chapel, set up by De Lugo to N. S. de la Consolacion, and a tower was added in 1493. It was destroyed by the Guanches and rebuilt by Charles Quint: the present building assumed its shape in 1579. The main square, inland of San Cristobal, shows by a marble cross where the conqueror planted with one hand a large affair of wood—hence Santa Cruz. The original is, or was till lately, in the Civil Hospital.]
with twelve ships of the line. The Plaza was commanded, in the absence of the Captain-General, by the Corregidor, D. Antonio de Ayala, who assembled all the nobles in the castle's lower rooms and swore them to loyalty. The English attempted to disembark, and were beaten back; whereupon, as under Nelson, they sent a parliamentary and summoned the island to surrender to the Archduke Charles of Austria. The envoy informed the Governor, who is described by Dampier as sitting in a low, dark, uncarpeted room, adorned only with muskets and pikes, that Philip V. had lost Gibraltar, that Cadiz and Minorca had nearly fallen, and that the American galleons in the port of Vigo had been burnt or captured by the English, whose army, entering Castile, had overrun Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. The brave reply was, 'If Philip, our king, had lost his all in the Peninsula, these islands would still remain faithful to him.' And the castle guns did such damage that the Jennings squadron sailed away on the same evening.
The third expedition, detached by Admiral Sir John Jervis, afterwards Earl St. Vincent, to 'cut out a richly freighted Manilla ship,' also resulted in a tremendous failure. Captain Brenton, to gratify national complacency, grossly exaggerates in his 'Naval History' the difficulty of the enterprise. 'Of all places which ever came under our inspection none, we conceive, is more invulnerable to attack or more easily defended than Teneriffe.' He forgets to mention its principal guard, the valour of the inhabitants. And now to my translation.
'At dawn on July 2, [Footnote: James (Naval History, vol. ii. p. 56) more correctly says July 20. So the Despatches, &c., of Lord Nelson, Sir H. Nicholas, vol. ii. p. 429. The thanksgiving for the victory took place on July 27, the fête of SS. Iago and Cristobal.] 1797, the squadron [Footnote: The squadron was composed as follows:—1. Theseus (74), Captain Ralph Willett Miller, carried the Rear-Admiral's flag; 2. Culloden (74), Commodore and Captain Thos. Troubridge; 3. Zealous (74), Captain Sam. Hood; 4. Leander (50), Captain Thos. Boulden Thomson, which joined on the day before the attack. There were three frigates:—1. Seahorse (38), Captain Thos. Francis Fremantle; 2. Emerald (36), Captain John Waller; and 3. Terpsichore (32), Captain Richard Bowen; also the Fox (cutter), Lieut. Commander John Gibson, and a mortar-boat or a bomb-ketch, probably a ship's launch with a shell-gun.] of Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson, K.B., composed of nine ships, and carrying a total of 393 guns, appeared off Santa Cruz, the port of Tenerife, Canarian archipelago. The enemy at once manned and put off his boats. One division of sixteen occupied our front; the other twenty-three took the direction of the Bufadero valley, a wild gap two or three miles to the north of the harbour.
'An alarm signal was immediately made in the town, when the enemy returned to his ships, and made his troops prepare to disembark. At ten A.M. the three frigates, towed by their boats, cast anchor out of cannon-shot, near the Bufadero; whilst the other vessels plied to windward, [Footnote: At the time the weather was calm in the town, but a violent levante, or east wind, prevented vessels from approaching the bay, where the lee shore is very dangerous.] and disembarked about 1,200 men on the beach of Valle Seco, between the town and the valley. This party occupied the nearest hill before it could be attacked; its movements showed an intention to seize the steep rocky scarp commanding the Paso Alto—the furthest to the north of the town. [Footnote: Nelson's rough sketch, vol. ii. p. 434, shows that it had 26 guns. San Cristobal de Paso Alto commands the large ravine called by the Guanches 'Tahoide' or 'Tejode,' which is now defended by San Miguel. This is a small rockwork carrying six guns in two tiers, the upper en barbette and the lower casemated.] Thus the enemy would have been enabled to land fresh troops during the night; and, after gaining the heights and roads leading to the town, to attack us in flank as well as in front.
'Light troops were detached to annoy the invader, and they soon occupied the passes with praiseworthy celerity and boldness. One party was led by the Capitaine de Frégate Citizen Ponné [Footnote: James calls him Zavier Pommier. He commanded the French brig Mutine (14), of 349 tons, with a crew of 135. As he landed at Santa Cruz with 22 of his men on May 28, 1797, the frigates Lively, Captain Benjamin Hallowell, and the Minerva, Captain George Cockburn, descried the hostile craft. Lieutenant Hardy, of the Minerva, supported by six officers and their respective boats' crews, boarded her as she lay at anchor. Despite the fire of the garrison and of a large ship in the roads, he carried her, after an hour's work, safe out of gunshot. Only 15 men were wounded, including Lieutenant Hardy. This officer was at once put in command of the Mutine, which he had so gallantly won.] and by the Lieutenant de Vaisseau Citizen Faust. Both officers, who had been exchanged and restored at the same port, showed much presence of mind on this occasion, and on July 25 they applied to be posted at a dangerous point of attack—the beach to the south of the town, near Puerto Caballas, beyond where the Lazaretto now lies. When the enemy purposed assaulting a more central post, they came up at the moment of the affair, ending in our victory.