John Masters (30 page)

Abraham Hassan (a historical figure: Gamaliel Hassan is not) exchanged his house-and-premises-for-twenty-one-years for another property in perpetuity (but his collateral descendant Sir Joshua Hassan, chief Minister of Gibraltar from 1964 to 1969, has not been able to trace just where it was).

Smuggling began again, full swing. The Spanish seized a Gibraltar boat laden with goods being smuggled into Spain; the governor demanded, and got, the boat's release. Spanish deserters and refugees from an unpopular regime crowded onto the Rock. The situation was again fully normal.

There was now, however, a new factor in the Gibraltar equation. Strategy, commerce, politics were still there. The bitterness at Britain's usurpation was still there among the Spanish governing and aristocratic classes. But now there was also the Gibraltar Legend; for the place name had become synonymous in the hearts of the British people, and in all languages, with
impregnable, defiant, reliable, unconquerable.
After 1783 the cession of Gibraltar would have been regarded by most Britons as a cession of those qualities in themselves, that is, as a collapse of the national character.

Most members of Parliament shared the general view, but a few held exactly to the contrary. In a single debate on Gibraltar one member declared: "Gibraltar ... is the most valuable and important of all the foreign territories belonging to Great Britain," while another claimed that "Gibraltar always hung like a dead weight round the neck of Great Britain."

The siege faded into history. Sir George Eliott became Lord Heathfield and in 1790 died of palsy. Admiral Sir Roger Curtis died in 1816 without adding to his already considerable fame. The three Hanoverian regiments which went through the siege took the battle honor
Gibraltar
and the motto
Mit Eliott Ruhm und Sieg:
and this led to much astonishment in later wars when British soldiers met the descendants of these regiments, by then incorporated in the German Army, in battle and found them wearing
Gibraltar
on their sleeves.

Gibraltar itself was a wreck, few houses standing and the ground so thick in cannonballs that they were still being picked up a century later. But by 1787 the population was back to 3,400, and by 1804 it was over 6,000, with the largest element being Genoese, and after them Jews and Spanish in about equal proportions. The Jews had built another synagogue, the Nefusot Yehudah on Line Wall Road, and some were among the most prominent and influential men in Gibraltar, notably Isaac Cardozo, Judah Benoliel, and Abraham Hassan the Volunteer. Just what Cardozo's business was remains a mystery; yet he was very rich, organized the first Gibraltar police, acted as agent for the governors in negotiating treaties with Moroccan beys and kings, and after the Spanish rose against the French, supplied their armies with money and clothes. Benoliel was known as the King of Gibraltar and was a friend of the priest who later became Pope Pius IX.

If there was boredom, a sense of letdown after the Great Siege, the governors did their best to alleviate it. One, General O'Hara, nicknamed the Cock of the Rock, kept two mistresses in different establishments in a feeble attempt to outdo his father, a previous governor, who had had three, and fourteen illegitimate children by them. O'Hara also believed that if he could stand just a few feet higher on the high point of the Rock he could see into Cadiz Harbor (65 miles to the northwest). Military surveyors assured him he was mistaken, but he built a large tower up there anyway. The surveyors were right, he was wrong, and the tower was called O'Hara's Folly.

Then in 1802 the Rock received its first and only royal governor, the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George III. He had been there once already, when he was banished to Gibraltar at the age of twenty-two for running away from his military training in Germany, to the fury of his father. He soon drove the regiment of which he was colonel, the 7th Fusiliers, to mutiny; but he went with them to Nova Scotia and stayed there nearly nine years, consoling himself for the Arctic exile with a
Mme.
de St. Laurent, who became his great and good friend for the rest of his life. She accompanied him in 1802 when the king appointed him to govern the Rock. They sailed from England in the
HMS Isis,
commanded by Captain Thomas Hardy, who started by grumbling about all the royal hoopla but ended much taken with the duke's charm.

The duke discreetly installed
Mme.
de St. Laurent in a farm in the Guadarranque valley below San Roque, for many years known as the Duke of Kent's Farm. He visited her there when he could spare time from his work in causing more mutinies among the soldiery. The trouble was that the duke had a considerable sense of duty but no sense of proportion. His brothers, the heir apparent and the Commander-In-Chief, had told him to restore the shattered discipline of the garrison. He saw at once that the trouble was due to excessive drunkenness—there were ninety wine houses in operation—and took direct action. He closed the wine houses. The soldiers, who had no release but drink and no charming mistresses to keep their minds off the lack of alcohol, mutinied. The duke's deputy, General Barnett, was delighted—this would get the duke dismissed, he thought; and he was right. The duke was recalled "for consultation" but never replaced, so that until his death in 1820 the men actually bearing responsibility in Gibraltar were lieutenant governors. (All the Duke's elder brothers being without legitimate offspring, he was finally compelled to marry and did so in 1818, marrying a depressing German princess called Victoria Mary Louisa, sister of King Leopold I of the Belgians. They had one child: Victoria.)

In these its last few years the eighteenth century's interminable war game was swept away by a genuine conflict, the French Revolution; and that outburst of fervor was soon harnessed to the ambitions of Napoleon Bonaparte. Spain, still tied to France's chariot wheels and without a strong king (Carlos III had died in 1788) was dragged into the wars on France's side, although as usual, it was in her national interest to treat France as an enemy, not a friend.

It is unnecessary to describe here all the maneuverings and countermaneuverings, all the treaties and breaking of treaties, all the combinations and machinations of each side. It is enough to note that the war was fundamentally between England and France; that France at one time or another persuaded, conquered, cajoled, or threatened the whole continent of Europe onto her side; and that with this overwhelming land power, Napoleon only needed to gain control of the Channel for a short time to destroy the one nation that stood between him and world hegemony. The Rock was, as always, in a position to hinder or prevent French and Spanish naval combinations. On this depended England's existence.

It is proper, then, that the outstanding personalities of the period should not be eccentric or royal governors but sailors. Three in particular dominated the sea war and Gibraltar.

First in point of time was Sir John Jervis, "Black Jack" Jervis, later Earl of St. Vincent: disciplinarian, organizer, driver of men and ships. As admiral at Gibraltar he was always up at 2 A.M., made the rounds of every ship, then went to the dockyard to see that the workmen clocked in on time, then checked the supply of fresh water. Jervis won one great sea battle, trained the Mediterranean fleet into an image of himself—iron, tireless, ruthless—and made Gibraltar an efficient naval base.

Second was Sir James Saumarez, who with a small force attacked a French squadron that had taken shelter under the guns of Algeciras. The Rock scorpions had a grandstand view (July 6, 1701) of Sir James getting rather the worst of it, as was to be expected. The French admiral ran his ships aground, and Saumarez took a hammering from the shore batteries, with one ship grounded and taken, another put out of action, and a third, his flagship, severely damaged. Saumarez limped back into Gibraltar and began a frantic refit, as the enemy would obviously try to take advantage of the British setback. Sure enough, the French refloated their ships, and a few days later
HMS Superb
flew in from watch off Cadiz to report that six Spanish ships of the line were on their way. They sailed into the bay soon after and next day sailed out again, escorting the French squadron. They were now also carrying many women and children from Algeciras who had thought this an easy and comfortable way to return to Cadiz.

Saumarez had only four ships partially ready, and with these he set sail in pursuit later that day; but unrepaired battle damage slowed all the ships of his squadron except
Superb.
Saumarez sent her on ahead, alone. She caught up with the enemy in the night off Trafalgar and, unobserved, put three broadsides into the
Real Carlos
at 11 P.M. The
Real Carlos
—where the officers were at dinner with their lady guests and passengers—opened fire in all directions, notably on the
Hermenegildo,
her companion ship. After an hour or two of furious battle with each other both Spanish three-deckers blew up, with a loss of 1,700 lives. Meantime the
Superb
slipped on ahead, captured the
San Antoine,
and took her back to Gibraltar. Quite a night's work...

When the report of what had been done to get the ships ready after the first battle reached the old perfectionist St. Vincent, by now First Sea Lord at the Admiralty, he wrote: "The astonishing efforts made to refit the crippled ships at Gibraltar Mole surpasses everything of the kind within my experience, and the final success in making so great an impression on the very superior force of the enemy crowns the whole." It was perhaps the most lavish praise Black Jack Jervis ever bestowed in his life.

The third sailor was Horatio Nelson, probably the greatest sea commander of history, a man who combined fantastic courage with a woman's gentleness (to all except Frenchmen or republicans). Nelson was commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet when Napoleon put in motion the vast plan aimed at gathering, in the Channel, sufficient naval strength to force a passage across for his invasion army.

As a first step the French admiral in Toulon, Villeneuve, succeeded in escaping from the Mediterranean. He passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic on April 8, 1805. It was only by chance that his ships were seen at all, and the news passed by frigate to Nelson, who was at the far end of the Mediterranean. Nelson arrived a month later, guessed that Villeneuve's destination was the West Indies, and though considerably smaller in force, sailed after him. Nelson was right, but Napoleon's plan was precisely to lure the British fleets westward while the French and Spanish, having drawn them out, doubled back, concentrated, and forced the Channel crossing before the British could regroup.

Alas for the landsman's calculations—Nelson was there and back before Villeneuve, having started a month later. Villeneuve did indeed combine with the Spanish admiral, Gravina, and bring a British fleet to action off Brest, but the action was a draw. The grandiose plan having fallen to pieces, the combined fleets returned first to Brest, then to Ferrol, and finally to Cadiz, where they holed up, ready to rot, while their imperial master in Paris furiously ordered them to get out and fight.

Before this, on July 18, Nelson stepped ashore at Gibraltar, the first time he had set foot on land for just over two years. He stayed only the inside of a day, then returned on board; but first he gave a gold medal commemorative of the Battle of the Nile to his friend and admirer Aaron Cardozo, patted him on the shoulder and said, "If I survive, Cardozo, you shall no longer remain in this dark corner of the world." Gibraltarians are not quite sure how to take that remark....

Nelson returned to England for a much-needed leave. He had a month, and then on September 14, with rumors of Napoleon planning fresh combinations, he was recalled. He said goodbyes to Lady Hamilton and little Horatia, whom he never directly acknowledged as his own, and took carriage to Portsmouth. There he boarded, as his flagship, the old three-decker
Victory
(Captain Thomas Hardy). She had worn St. Vincent's flag, too, and had first arrived in Gibraltar in Rodney's fleet during the Great Siege. Nelson did not go to Gibraltar but met his fleet at sea off Cadiz, sending a frigate ahead to order that no salutes should be given to him. He was vain but not modest, and he well knew that Villeneuve would think a long time before leaving Cadiz if he knew that Nelson was waiting for him outside.

Villeneuve may have heard from other sources or suspected: but a motive stronger than fear was driving him to sea. As so often before, the spur to fatal action was the news that a replacement was on the way. Napoleon had named Admiral Rosilly to supersede Villeneuve in supreme command. Rosilly reached Madrid on October 18: that day Villeneuve held a council of war in Cadiz, at which all his admirals vehemently disagreed with each other and with him. Villeneuve ordered his combined fleet to sea. It took it nearly thirty-six hours to get out of the harbor and bay, but it was finally clear at 8:30 A.M. on Sunday, October 20. The wind was slight from the east-southeast. Later the wind freshened and veered into the southwest. The huge fleet of thirty-three ships, French and Spanish muddled together, sailed slowly southeastward. Nelson's frigates signaled to him, where he waited over the horizon with twenty-seven ships of the line, that the enemy were out. During the night he moved slowly in. At dawn on Monday, October 21, 1805, the two fleets saw each other.

But let us go back now to the previous year: August 3, 1804, was the one hundredth anniversary of the British seizure of the Rock. It was about to face the most severe test of its history—far worse than Caramanli's raid, or the storm of 1776, or the Great Siege....