by Roy Adkins
Mrs Green told a slightly different story: ‘The first shot was from the new battery called the Superior, above the North Lodgment, 900 feet high. It was fired by Captain Lloyd, Royal Artillery. We kept up a very heavy cannonading for an hour. Most of the Garrison got upon the Hill. I never heard such a noise in my life.’20 Several batteries of guns probably opened fire simultaneously, including the ceremony with Mrs Skinner, but Mrs Green gave the honours to the battery high up on the Rock that had recently been renamed Green’s Lodge after her husband.
For weeks, the Spaniards had toiled unmolested, and she now watched them as they retreated, panic-stricken: ‘When the first shot was fired, they were relieving the guards at the Lines, and at the same time large parties were employed bringing down quantities of stores, as usual, in large waggons and carts, drawn by horses and mules. I saw several myself, whose drivers had left the poor horses &c standing, whilst they made off. We know that several mules and horses were killed.’21 Horsbrugh also witnessed the events:
The Spanish Guards had just marched into the Lines for the first time and had not all got to their posts when our batteries opened, which obliged them to take shelter under the nearest cover. The working parties abandoned their work in the greatest hurry, and the Guard of Cavalry broke from their pickets and went off on a full gallop. Our first and second round from the batteries fell rather short, but [after] a few more shots we got the proper distance, and we continued to fire at intervals through the day, particularly when any of their workmen were observed returning to their work.22
Ancell was amused by their reaction: ‘At the first discharge our shot dropped short, so that their advanced guards had time to escape to their lines, and their precipitate retreat almost occasioned a general laugh, to view the Dons tumbling one over another, as they fled from the showers of shot.’23 Because the remaining workmen were hidden by their covered way, Horsbrugh said the gunners tried a different tactic:
It was therefore determined to try a few shells, one of which falling and bursting at the spot we wished, so effectually dispersed the workmen that none of them attempted returning for the remainder of the day. Many of our shells were extremely well directed, and the fire kept up so regularly that the Enemy never once ventured to appear in any number out of cover; an effectual stop was also put to their bringing forward more materials in the carts or wagons, for the drivers unyoked their mules and carried them off in great haste.24
When Ancell came off guard duty, he saw that the inhabitants were terrified: ‘As I came up the street about two hours after, from Waterport (having been the preceding day and night on duty at that post), I could not but remark the timidity and fearful apprehension pictured in the countenances of the inhabitants, as they were held in expectation of as furious return from the enemy. The Jews and Jewesses exhibited the most descriptive amazement, accompanied with significant shrugs, and eyes raised to the skies.’25 Nobody was injured that first day on Gibraltar, but Horsbrugh tried to calculate the Spanish casualties: ‘It was impossible for us to judge of their loss. We saw three Dragoon horses laying dead with their furniture on, others wounded and unable to move off, and it was generally believed we must have killed some men, as our shot went into both the forts, and through the roofs and walls of the guardhouses along the Lines, behind which they had taken shelter.’26
The bombardment from the Rock became a daily occurrence, a new phase in the siege, and quiet days would now be rare. Many more inhabitants fled to safety in the south, leaving their houses unprotected, and Horsbrugh said they ‘began erecting wooden sheds at the southward near Col. Green’s country house’ – a shanty town was beginning to form on the edge of the extensive grounds of The Mount. On 14 September, the General Orders were: ‘Eighty men for fatigue to parade at six o’clock tomorrow morning to be employed by the Quarter Master General. N.B. this party is for plowing up the streets from Waterport to Bethlam Barracks.’27 It was assumed that Spanish retaliation could happen any day, and so Eliott wanted the stone surfacing of the streets removed so as to prevent injuries from the ricochets of shells and shot. The fastest method was to draw an agricultural plough through the streets to rip up the cobblestones and setts, which could be cleared to either side. As Spilsbury noted, ‘The pavements of the streets plowing up, the plow drawn by 80 men.’ By ‘pavement’, he meant the street surface, not a sidewalk. The next day, Captain Price wrote: ‘Ploughing the pavement still continues – Irish Town looks as if it had undergone a siege already.’ Mrs Green mentioned that ‘the streets in the Garrison were began to be plowed up on Tuesday the 14th inst. They began in Irish Town and plowed up the Main Street to the Grand Parade. This day they are in our street [Engineer Lane] and have come within 100 yards of us.’28 A little later, traverses or barriers were erected at intervals across Main Street and the parallel street, known as Irish Town, in order to give additional protection if they came under fire.29
The usual ammunition was cannonballs – solid spheres of cast iron of different weights and diameters for the different sizes of gun – but they were of limited use against groups of people, such as the Spanish working parties. Explosive shells, also referred to as bombs, were more effective. These were hollow iron balls, which the artillerymen filled with gunpowder and a fuse. The flash of the mortar when fired was enough to light a shell’s fuse, and shells were designed to explode just after landing so as to cause fires and injuries to anyone nearby. On the 15th, Price recorded a lucky escape: ‘two thirteen inch shells and an eight inch fired in a very good direction, a third thirteen inch shell burst soon after it left the mortar (owing to a flaw) and had like to have done mischief, a large part falling on the parapet of the Prince’s Lines, and the smaller splinters among some officers, spectators, of whom I was one’.30 The shells continued to be unsatisfactory, exploding before they reached their target or falling short. In Drinkwater’s view, ‘their [working] parties were at too considerable a distance (being near a mile) to be materially annoyed by our shot; and the works being surrounded with sand, the large shells sunk so deep, that the splinters seldom rose to the surface’.31
John Mercier, a captain of the 39th Regiment, thought that if smaller shells were fired from a 24-pounder cannon, and not from a mortar, they might reach their target, but experiments were needed to see if the length of the fuse could be calculated to control the timing of the explosion. A trial using shorter fuses proved very effective, as Captain Paterson of the artillery described: ‘This afternoon some 5½ inch shells fixed to wooden bottoms were fired from a 24 pounder on Greens Lodge at a working party in the Enemy’s Line. They answered very well with 8 lb powder and one degree elevation. The fuzes burnt all well.’ Drinkwater agreed: ‘These small shells ... were dispatched with such precision, and the fuses were calculated to such exactness, that the shell often burst over their heads, and wounded them before they had time to get under cover ... Less powder was used, and the enemy was more seriously molested.’32
Walter Gordon was a Scottish soldier from the 73rd Regiment who would arrive in Gibraltar a few months after these experiments, and he recorded how shells were filled:
It is a large shell of cast iron, having a great vent to receive the fuzee [fuse], which is made of wood; if no defect is found in the globe, its cavity is filled with whole gun powder; a little space of liberty is left, that when a fuzee or wooden tube is driven thro’ the opening, and fastened ... the powder may not be bruised. This tube is filled with a combustible matter, made of two ounces of nitre, one of sulphur, and three of gun powder dust, well rammed. This fuzee set on fire, burns slowly till it reaches the gun powder, which goes off at once, bursting the shell to pieces with incredible violence.33
Adjusting the length of the fuses and firing in a straight line from cannons (rather than in an arc from mortars) using Mercier’s ideas ensured that shells exploded with devastating effect over the heads of the Spanish troops working out in the open or behind protective ramparts. Such techn
iques had never before been tried, and they were to revolutionise artillery warfare. Gordon added: ‘Perhaps the bomb is the most hellish device, that has as yet been made for the destruction of mankind.’34 Worse was to come. Henry Shrapnel was an officer in the Royal Artillery who was at Gibraltar after the siege, and he was able to see how shells had been used. He himself invented a more deadly explosive shell, and consequently the word ‘shrapnel’ instead of ‘splinters’ came into general use to describe lethal metal fragments from explosives.
With practice, the firing of shells from both mortars and cannons became more precise and less wasteful, though Paterson described some problems:
Our batteries have kept up a slow fire at the forts and working parties in the lines since the 12th ... which must have retarded the Enemy’s works considerably. Most of our 13 inch mortar beds broke or gave way near the trunion boxes after a few rounds were fired from them with about seven or eight pounds of powder. Many of the old shells broke in the mortar. The beds were repaired and strengthened ... Continued to fire 5½ inch shells from the 24 pounders on Greens Lodge which were observed to annoy the Enemy’s working parties much.35
A week later, he added: ‘Some 13 inch shells fell into Fort St Phillips and did considerable damage to the buildings’, while on 3 October Lieutenant Holloway noted: ‘Last week the Garrison fired about 150 shots and 300 of the 5½ inch shells from 24 pounders, besides 30 large shells.’36 Three days afterwards, Thomas Cranfield wrote a letter to his father in London: ‘Upwards of 20,000 soldiers are now in camp before us, whom we hourly expect to open upon us ... Every now and then we fire on them, which they have hitherto refused to return. We expect, however, that they will soon storm us; though, unless they starve us out, it is impossible that they can take the garrison.’37 Cranfield was unusual among the rank-and-file soldiers because he could read and write well. Originally from Southwark in London, he had been a wild, careless youth who had absconded from an apprenticeship and enlisted in the 39th Regiment in 1777.
Another soldier was also observing the Spanish activity: ‘They are now employed in throwing up sand banks on the glacis [sloping embankment] of the lines, to cover their men from our upper batteries: they are also making a boyau, or covered way, from the lines towards the camp, and have unroofed and demolished the stone guard-houses within the lines, and pulled down most of the sentry-boxes. From what we can observe, they are preparing platforms at the lines, for their new mortars and cannon batteries.’ He then commented: ‘It is astonishing they have not fired a shot at us, notwithstanding our fire on them.’38
For the time being, the Spanish working parties continued constructing further fortifications, while the garrison fired at them. The constant tension waiting for retaliation was more than some of the soldiers could bear, and one of the 58th was overheard saying that ‘if the Spaniards came, damn him that would not join them’. Once Eliott found out, he declared that the soldier ‘must be mad and ordered his head to be shaved, to be blistered, bled, and sent to the Provost [prison] on bread and water, wear a tight waistcoat, and to be prayed for in church’.39 He could have had the man hanged for treason, but instead treated him as insane, prescribing what were the medical cures of the day. That same night, Horsbrugh related the desertion of another soldier from that regiment: ‘Betwixt one and two o’clock in the morning, a soldier of the 58th Regiment on guard at Middle Hill was reported to be missing, and it being suspected he had not got off, but might still be skulking behind the Hill, a party was ordered round in a boat, who found him dead at the foot of the rock, his head clove almost in two, his body greatly mangled, and one of his legs broke.’40 Mrs Green remarked: ‘this makes 5 that have deserted since the investment, three Hanoverians, one of the 72nd and this of 58th’. On this occasion, the deserter was Private Eustace, who had served nine years in the regiment.41
The inhabitants, who were already uneasy at the prospect of a Spanish bombardment, became more concerned when familiar landmarks were removed on Eliott’s orders: ‘The Tower of the White Convent being a conspicuous mark for the Enemy, was ordered to be taken down, as were also some of the highest mirandas belonging to the inhabitants to prevent their making an improper use of them.’42 Drinkwater explained that modern houses, constructed not long before the siege, generally had tiled roofs, ‘but the flat terraced roofs remained in those erected by the Spaniards, and in some, the mirandas or towers; whence the inhabitants, without removing from home, had a beautiful and extensive prospect of the neighbouring coasts’.43 The reason for removing the mirandas or towers seemed to be Eliott’s attempt to prevent any untrustworthy inhabitants from sending signals, while other landmarks were demolished to stop them being used by the Spaniards for sighting artillery. The White Convent or White Cloister, formerly the Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, was close to the Line Wall in Irish Town and had for many years been used as naval stores. It was also currently the headquarters of Admiral Duff. Another former monastery was the Convent, where Eliott was based, and the belfry belonging to that church (the King’s Chapel) was also dismantled.
In early October, it was the turn of the bell tower of the Catholic – or Spanish – church of St Mary the Crowned, on the site of a former mosque, which Colonel James described two decades earlier:
The Spanish church originally was a Moorish structure, though pulled down to build the present one, which is in the Gothic style; as a proof, the northern entrance is Gothic, and adjoining is the steeple and belfry; now, within this large gateway is a Moorish square (before you enter the church); the centre of the square is open, but round the sides of the area are Moorish pillars and arches ... Round the area are orange and lemon trees.44
Although appreciating the building, he could not help being critical:
The church, were it kept in proper repair and good order, would make a very good appearance ... [and] would be light enough, did they not exclude the sun, by blinding their windows. However, to supply the place of this luminary, many lamps were burnt before the shrines on days of dedication and festivity. A great many amulets hang against the pillars and walls; silver legs, arms, pieces of cables, shirts, and such rubbish and trumpery, as offerings to saints.45
Part of the church had been requisitioned for naval stores by Admiral Duff in early September and was already partitioned off. Francisco Messa, a fifty-one-year-old Minorcan who had been in Gibraltar in charge of the Roman Catholics for the last six years, agreed to Duff’s plans, ‘as we were concerned that they would have taken over the church entirely, for more unbecoming purposes, as happened in the other siege [in 1727], when it was completely taken over as a hospital, as recounted by the older inhabitants, and I was further assured that it would only be for a short period of time’.46 Since then, Father Messa had given permission for the upper part of the bell tower to be demolished, but had heard nothing more. He therefore hoped that it would not be carried out, as the clock and bells were such important elements of everyday life for the inhabitants:
on 6th October, my brother-in-law came to tell me that the order had already been given to dismantle the belfry and to demolish it as quickly as possible. On the morning when I went to the church, I found the engineers already there setting up the scaffolding for this undertaking, so that by the 7th ... the first and sad view that I had was of a soldier removing the first stone, which was the one at the very top. And everything was done so quickly that by the 13th of the month, that part of the tower containing the bells and clock ... had been dismantled.47
While the garrison was trying to make it difficult for the Spanish gunners when they chose to retaliate, they also made constant improvements to their own artillery and fortifications. ‘The great command we had over the enemy’s operations from Green’s lodge,’ Drinkwater commented, ‘induced the engineers to mount still higher, and endeavour to erect a battery on the summit of the northern front. A place therefore was levelled, and a road for wheeled carriages begun at Middle-hi
ll.’48 After a few days, he said that ‘The artillery were too impatient to have a gun mounted on the summit of the rock to wait till the new road was finished. They accordingly determined to drag a twenty four-pounder up the steep craggy face of the rock.’49
The higher the guns were mounted, the greater the advantage they had over the Spaniards, and Horsbrugh expressed his admiration: ‘We began to prepare for carrying a twenty four pounder up to the Midshipman’s look out on the summit of the Rock to the northward, and nearly 1400 feet in perpendicular height from the sea. Such an attempt would a few years ago have been thought impracticable, but our miners and workmen were by constant practice so much masters of their business that no difficulties now obstruct them.’50 Paterson gave details about how they managed to haul this huge gun of about 2½ tons up to Rock Guard – almost the highest point of the Rock: ‘The Artillery employed this morning in getting a 24 pounder up the Rock in a direct line to the top near the Rock Guard. A frame was laid down on which a slay [sleigh] with the gun was fastened upon it run on. Irons were fixed in the Rock at proper distances, and the whole drawn up by pulleys. It was taken up 120 feet the first 3 hours.’51 Solid iron hauling rings fixed into the rock and through which ropes were passed are still visible in the Upper Rock, showing where guns were manhandled in this way.
It took 150 men four days, and on the 9th Paterson said: ‘This evening our Artillery got the 24 pounder up to the top of the Rock, gave three cheers, and drunk the Governor’s health in a quarter cask of wine he presented them with upon the occasion.’52 Ancell found the achievement unbelievable: ‘This day, a twenty-four pounder was dragged up the face of the Rock to Midshipman’s look-out, or Rock-Gun; the labour and danger attending it is not to be conceived, as it was carried over points of rocks to a height of 1357 feet.’53 One long-time resident recounted how the new battery was a blow to Spanish morale:
