The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper
wrung from a people unable to hold it. And that, in war, is fair.
Twenty years later Spain again attempted to wring it from us. Mr. Stanhope, then our representative at Madrid, was told by Queen Isabella: “Either relinquish Gibraltar or your trade with the Indies.” We still hold Gibraltar, and our trade with the Indies is generally regarded as a tolerably good one. In December, 1726, peace or war was made the alternative regarding the cession; another bombardment followed. An officer78 present said that it was so severe that “we seemed to live in flames.” Negotiations for peace followed at no great distance of time, and the Spaniards suddenly drew off from the attack. Various offers, never consummated, were made for an exchange. Pitt proposed to cede it in exchange for Minorca, Spain to assist in recovering it from the French. At another time, Oran, a third-class port on the Mediterranean shores of Africa, was offered in exchange; and Mr. Fitzherbert, our diplomatist, was told that the King of Spain was “determined never to put a period to the present war” if we did not agree to the terms; and again, that Oran “ought to be accepted with gratitude.” The tone of Spain altered very considerably a short time afterwards, when the news arrived of the destruction of the floating batteries, and the failure of the grand attack.79 This was at the last—the great siege of history. A few additional details may be permitted before we pass to other subjects.
The actual siege occupied three years and seven months, and for one year and nine months the bombardment went on without cessation. The actual losses on the part of the enemy can hardly be estimated; 1,473 were killed, wounded, or missing on the floating batteries alone. But for brave Curtis, who took a pinnace to the rescue of the poor wretches on the batteries, then in flames, and the ammunition of which was exploding every minute, more than 350 fresh victims must have gone to their last account. His boat was engulfed amid the falling ruins; a large piece of timber fell through its flooring, killing the coxswain and wounding others. The sailors stuffed their jackets into the leak, and succeeded in saving the lives of 357 of their late enemies. For many days consecutively they had been peppering us at the rate of 6,500 shots, and over 2,000 shells each twenty-four hours. With the destruction of the floating batteries “the siege was virtually concluded. The contest was at an end, and the united strength of two ambitious and powerful nations had been humbled by a straitened garrison of 6,000 effective men.”80 Our losses were comparatively small, though thrice the troops were on the verge of famine. At the period of the great siege the Rock mounted only 100 guns; now it has 1,000, many of them of great calibre. In France, victory for the allies was regarded as such a foregone conclusion that “a drama, illustrative of the destruction of Gibraltar by the floating batteries, was acted nightly to applauding thousands!”81 The siege has, we believe, been a favourite subject at the minor English theatres many a time since; but it need not be stated that the views taken of the result were widely different to those popular at that time in Paris.
Gibraltar has had an eventful history even since the great siege. In 1804 a terrible epidemic swept the Rock; 5,733 out of a population of 15,000 died in a few weeks. The climate is warm and pleasant, but it is not considered the most healthy of localities even now. And on the 28th of October, 1805, the Victory, in tow of the Neptune, entered the bay, with the body of Nelson on board. The fatal shot had done its work; only eleven days before he had written to General Fox one of his happy, pleasant letters.
The Rock itself is a compact limestone, a form of grey dense marble varied by beds of red sandstone. It abounds in caves and fissures, and advantage has been taken of these facts to bore galleries, the most celebrated of which are St. Michael’s and Martin’s, the former 1,100 feet above the sea. Tradition makes it a barren rock; but the botanists tell us differently. There are 456 species of indigenous flowering plants, besides many which have been introduced. The advantages of its natural position have been everywhere utilised. It bristles with batteries, many of which can hardly be seen. Captain Sayer tells us that every spot where a gun could be brought to bear on an enemy has one. “Wandering,” says he, “through the geranium-edged paths on the hill-side, or clambering up the rugged cliffs to the eastward, one stumbles unexpectedly upon a gun of the heaviest metal lodged in a secluded nook, with its ammunition, round shot, canister, and case piled around it, ready at any instant. … The shrubs and flowers that grow on the cultivated places, and are preserved from injury with so much solicitude, are often but the masks of guns, which lie crouched beneath the leaves ready for the port-fire.” Everywhere, all stands ready for defence. War and peace are strangely mingled.
Gibraltar has one of the finest colonial libraries in the world, founded by the celebrated Colonel Drinkwater, whose account of the great siege is still the standard authority. The town possesses some advantages; but as 15,000 souls out of a population of about double that number are crowded into one square mile, it is not altogether a healthy place—albeit much improved of late years. Rents are exorbitant; but ordinary living and bad liquors are cheap. It is by no means the best place in the world for “Jack ashore,” for, as Shakespeare tells us, “sailors” are “but men,” and there be “land rats and water rats,” who live on their weaknesses. The town has a very mongrel population, of all shades of colour and character. Alas! the monkeys, who were the first inhabitants of the Rock—tailless Barbary apes—are now becoming scarce. Many a poor Jocko has fallen from the enemy’s shot, killed in battles which he, at least, never provoked.
The scenery of the Straits, which we are now about to enter, is fresh and pleasant, and as we commenced with an extract from one well-known poet, we may be allowed to finish with that of another, which, if more hackneyed, is still expressive and beautiful. Byron’s well-known lines will recur to many of our readers:—
“Through Calpe’s Straits survey the steepy shore;
Europe and Afric on each other gaze!
Lands of the dark-eyed maid and dusky Moor
Alike beheld beneath pale Hecate’s blaze;
How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,
Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown,
Distinct though darkening with her waning phase.”
In the distance gleams Mons Abyla—the Apes’ Hill of sailors—a term which could have been, for a very long time, as appropriately given to Gibraltar. It is the other sentinel of the Straits; while Ceuta, the strong fortress built on its flanks, is held by Spain on Moorish soil, just as we hold the Rock of Rocks on theirs. Its name is probably a corruption of Septem—Seven—from the number of hills on which it is built. It is to-day a military prison, there usually being here two or three thousand convicts, while both convicts and fortress are guarded by a strong garrison of 3,500 soldiers. These in their turn were, only a few years ago, guarded by the jealous Moors, who shot both guards and prisoners if they dared to emerge in the neighbourhood. There is, besides, a town, as at Gibraltar, with over 15,000 inhabitants, and at the present day holiday excursions are commonly made across the Straits in strong little steamers or other craft. The tide runs into the Straits from the Atlantic at the rate of four or more knots per hour, and yet all this water, with that of the innumerable streams and rivers which fall into the Mediterranean, scarcely suffice to raise a perceptible tide! What becomes of all this water? Is there a hole in the earth through which it runs off? Hardly: evaporation is probably the true secret of its disappearance: and that this is the reason is proved by the greater saltness of the Mediterranean as compared with the Atlantic.
In sailor’s parlance, “going aloft” has a number of meanings. He climbs the slippery shrouds to “go aloft;” and when at last, like poor Tom Bowling, he lies a “sheer hulk,” and—
“His body’s under hatches,
His soul has ‘gone aloft.’ ”
“Going-aloft” in the Mediterranean has a very different meaning: it signifies passing upwards and eastwards from the Straits of Gibraltar.82 We are now going aloft to Malta, a British possession hardly second to that of the famed Rock itself.
MALTA.
CHAPTER VII.
Round the