Gibraltar : the History of a Fortress

191 Pages·2014·0.83 MB·English

by  Bradford

Gibraltar: The History of a Fortress

Ernle Bradford
Copyright © Ernle Bradford 1971

The right of Ernle Bradford to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.

First published in the United Kingdom in 1971 by Hart-Davies.

This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
To Guy Bloomer, in memory of Gibraltar days *
Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away; Sunset ran, one
glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay: Bluish mid the burning water, full in
face Trafalgar lay; In the dimmest North-east distance, dawned Gibraltar grand
and grey; ‘Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?’ —
say, Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove’s
planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
Robert Browning
*
‘The present state of Gibraltar is contrary to the whole spirit of post-war
Europe.’
General Franco
Table of Contents

Chapter One – Rock and Sea
Chapter Two – The Pillars of Heracles
Chapter Three – Gateway and Stepping Stone
Chapter Four – Embattled Fortress
Chapter Five – Rooke’s Rock
Chapter Six – Free Port
Chapter Seven – A Pawn in Politics
Chapter Eight – Preparations for Defence
Chapter Nine – The Siege Begins
Chapter Ten – Relief, Blockade and Fire
Chapter Eleven – The Second Year
Chapter Twelve – Sortie
Chapter Thirteen – The Great Assault
Chapter Fourteen – ‘As Solid As the Rock...’
Chapter Fifteen – A Station for the Navy
Chapter Sixteen – The Years of Change
Chapter Seventeen – Imperial Gibraltar
Chapter Eighteen – An American on the Rock
Chapter Nineteen – Politics and People
Chapter Twenty – War and Peace
Chapter Twenty-One – Fulfilment
Chapter Twenty-Two – Present and Future
Chapter One – Rock and Sea

The strange and formidable Rock of Gibraltar has long been a symbol of all
that is permanent and enduring. It is, indeed, a ‘Rock of Ages’.
To Mediterranean mariners of antiquity it stood as a warning mark, to tell them
that they were at the close of the known world. Beyond it all civilization ended
— and possibly even the earth itself. Many centuries later, it was seen as the
sally-port into Europe, the bridge across which the Moors stormed into Spain
and the Christian continent out of Moslem Africa. Lastly, after the opening-up of
the oceanic trade routes, it became the point where all of them converged to
enter the Mediterranean. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Rock, and the
whole area surrounding it, became imbued first with myth and legend, and then
with history. Many battles have been fought beneath its shadow.
A four-faced Janus, Gibraltar looks out westward to the Atlantic, southward to
Africa, and eastward into the Mediterranean. To the north it gazes towards Spain
and Europe. This is, indeed, one of the great crossroads of the earth.
Less than three miles long by three quarters of a mile wide, the Rock is one of
those natural phenomena which have acquired an importance out of all
proportion to their actual size. Two accidents of nature account for this: firstly its
geological structure, and secondly its geographical position. This immense
‘rock’, for such it is, rising to a maximum height of 1400 feet, is a jagged mass
of Jurassic limestone which was formed on the bed of an immense ocean, during
that phase of the world’s history which has been called ‘The Age of Reptiles’.
The ocean, which covered a large part of modern Europe and the Mediterranean
basin, was stocked by innumerable turtles, vast icthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, as
well as by countless fish that were beginning to approach to their modern forms.
Crustaceans and long-tailed lobster-like creatures; the catfish; and the ancestors
of the sturgeon; all these formed part of the life of Tethys, as the ocean has been
called after the Greek sea-goddess who was reputed to be the daughter of Earth
and Sky. Molluscs and Cephalopods, sponges and corals, all contributed over the
millennia to form out of their bony skeletons and frames a deep deposit on the
ocean floor.
Looking at the Rock today, it is difficult to imagine that it represents the death
of billions of creatures, all once vivid with life. But the time came when the
earth’s surface shrank, and the Atlas mountains of North Africa and the Sierra
Nevada of Spain were driven towards one another. When this occurred, the
former seabed, at the junction of what is now the straits, was thrust up into the
sunlight. More millennia of sun and rain, wind and ice, tempered this marine
deposit until it became the limestone that is so typical of the Mediterranean
region as man knows it today. Geologically, perhaps, there is nothing especially
remarkable about Gibraltar, but geographically there is — for it is separated
from the main body of Spain and, therefore, of Europe. It is basically an island
— probably indeed it once was — for the sandy isthmus that connects it with the
continent is, in geological terms, an ‘innovation’. In other parts of the
Mediterranean, similar siltings have occurred. Monte Circeo, for instance, a little
north of Naples and now united to the west coast of Italy by alluvial deposits
washed down from the Tiber, was once, too, an offshore island. Its structure is
very similar to Gibraltar’s.
Gibraltar is what is known as a ‘bill’; that is to say, the exact opposite to an
inlet, where an arm of sea thrusts into the land. The bill, or rock of Gibraltar, is
an arm of land thrust out into the sea. If this, and its geological structure, were
all, then there would be nothing more to say about Gibraltar except that it is an
interesting — but not unique — natural phenomenon. The Rock, however, is
situated at the narrow entrance-mouth of the Mediterranean, and has thus
acquired its unusual importance. It runs almost due North and South, terminating
at Europa Point, and facing across the straits that bear its name towards Mount
Ceuta on the Moroccan coast. At this point, less than fourteen miles of sea divide
Europe from Africa.
In classical times Gibraltar was known as Calpe, and Ceuta as Abyla. (Both
names seem to stem from Phoenician roots, the exact meaning of which has long
provided a battlefield for Semitic scholars.) They were the famous Pillars of
Hercules beyond which, as the dramatist Euripides wrote in the fifth century BC,
there ‘lies the end of voyaging and the Ruler of Ocean no longer permits
mariners to travel on the purple sea’.
This was poetic exaggeration, of course (or perhaps no more than geographical
and historical ignorance). The Phoenicians, for certain, had long been
penetrating into the Atlantic beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and possibly even
the Minoans and Myceneans before them. It is likely, though, that it was the
Phoenicians who first named Gibraltar and Ceuta the Pillars of Hercules, or
rather of Melquart. He was their principal male deity and it was the Greeks and
the Romans who later equated him with Heracles, or Hercules. It has been
suggested also that these two great rocks at the mouth of the sea reminded them
of the twin pillars in the temple of Melquart at Tyre. Tyre was the most
important city in the Phoenician world and, since it was the Tyrians who were
among the foremost navigators of antiquity, it is probable that it was a Tyrian
who first, lifting his eyes at dawn as the mist peeled off the strait, cried out ‘The
Pillars of Melquart, Lord of the City!’
The appearance and geography of Gibraltar have been best described in the
Journal of the Geological Society (London 1878):
The extreme length of the Rock from the base of the cliff at the north front to
Europa Point is only a little over and the promontory tapers somewhat gradually
away from a breadth of 1,550 yards between Gibraltar and Catalan Bay to a
width of 550 yards at Europa. The Rock shoots abruptly upwards from the low
flat land at the north front in a fine mural precipice, the basal portion of which
is partly concealed by a sloping curtain of debris and breccia. This precipitous
wall culminates...at the Rock Gun (1,349 ft.) from which point the dividing ridge
or backbone of the promontory extends southward in a sharp jagged arch, the