Gibraltar
Page 23
The Jewish merchant Abraham Israel immediately wrote to his brother Moses in London, whose company Moses Israel & Co. he worked for, to acquaint him with their dreadful losses: ‘I do not know how to take the pen to write to you. I neither know what I do or what I shall do, but it is necessary that I acquaint you with everything.’ After describing the arrival of Darby’s convoy and the attack by Spanish gunboats, he said:
after this the Spaniards opened all their land batteries upon the town and at least 50 mortars and began to throw such fire as was incredible for a human person to believe such destruction and confusion. Consider the state we were in, some dying, some wounded. My first care was to get out and abandon all that we had in the houses and warehouses, and carrying only a handkerchief of cakes not to die with hunger. Thank God we saved our lives and we are now here with such miseries and heartache to see ourselves ruined without knowing how to help ourselves.30
By the afternoon, the situation was far worse, and he wrote again to Moses: ‘our houses and warehouses are thrown down, and this is not our only misfortune, but thieves at our warehouses robbed all they could and were shot ... I applied immediately at the risk of my life to see if by dint of money I could save anything ... all my goods, furniture, wearing apparel, provisions and everything, all the wearing apparel of our father and mother, and part of nine chests of clothes of my dear Sarah, nothing can be found.’31 This was his wife Sarah Montefiore, who had died at the start of the siege. Samuel Conquy described the terrible destruction of a private Jewish library: ‘My father’s house was among those they plundered and despoiled. One of his rooms was filled with books, a library of great value containing a precious collection of Talmud, Midrashim, Turin, Mepharshin of all kinds, etc. The soldiers took these books and threw them out into the street.’32 Years later, one book from the library was returned to him. It had been picked up during the bombardment by a young boy looking for food in the devastated streets.
Because Father Messa had woken up worrying about all the sacred and precious items that were at risk, he and his sacristan Moreno had spent Easter Sunday going round the wardens and elders of the church, begging for assistance. With no help forthcoming, Messa tried to save what he could on his own the following day:
I ... found with great difficulty two English soldiers (as others were giving them half of whatever they salvaged). The soldiers, carrying a stretcher ... entered the sacristy and found that all the silver objects that we had taken there on Good Friday, those that had been used especially for the procession of Holy Thursday, such as the cross, processional candlesticks and lanterns, were all broken and buried under the rubble which had fallen from the ceiling. Nevertheless, the soldiers and I removed from under the rubble as many of the pieces and parts of them as we could and placed them on the stretcher and noticing that the tabernacle, or what is termed the monstrance, was still set up on the altar, we lowered it with great difficulty and placed it on the same stretcher.33
Messa managed to enlist a young man with a donkey to help him carry the valuables, but when they all reached the Southport Gate, the guard wanted him to adhere to bureaucratic regulations and obtain written permission from Eliott to remove the silver from the town. Messa persuaded him that this was folly, and they continued out of the town, first of all leaving the monstrance with Maria Raymundo, the mother of the assistant priest, Father Raymundo, who lived in a house and tavern behind the South Barracks.34 His sacristan now helped shift everything else to a tent that some sailors – from Minorca, like Messa – had set up with canvas sails, including one purchased from Lieutenant Skinner.
Ancell poured out the anguish he felt for everyone harmed by the bombardment:
It is distressing to humanity to view the situation of the inhabitants, who have fled from the town to seek shelter upon the heights of the rock, with only a thin piece of canvas or sail cloth to screen them from the scorching heat by day, and excessive dews at night and the inexpressible anguish of viewing their houses and property in flames: Many of them, in endeavouring to save part of their effects, have lost their lives, and others maimed. A corporal had his head shot off as he was calling from a window to a man in the street. A soldier was so miserably torn by a shell, that he could not be known – only by his dress. A Genoese youth, endowed with every grace and amiable qualification, on the point of nuptial celebration, was unfortunately killed, to the irremoveable grief of his enamoratto. A shot killed two soldiers, one of which was brushing his shoes for guard.35
At Boyd’s headquarters, sympathies lay with the marauding soldiers, not the merchants:
hundreds of these people begun their time with a single shilling, which in the course of time they amassed to thousands of pounds by avarice, cheat and defraud, I mean petty pedlars that go under the denomination in this place as capitable merchants. Those, when the firing began, whether pricked with a guilty conscience or a cowardly fear I cannot pretend to say, but they fled to the South as a flock of sheep without a shepherd, and left their hoarded up little alls ... such is the vicissitudes of this frail life, one day as a king, the next a beggar.36
While Messa was rescuing church property, the military wives of all ranks and their children were ordered to leave the casemates in town and take refuge in the far south of the promontory, joining those civilians who had fled there. ‘I was again in terrors,’ Mrs Upton confessed,
but was obliged to obey. My husband carried my little Charlotte, while my son Jack ran by my side. We got safe to the navy hospital, but when there, found it so crowded with wounded soldiers, we could not procure a place to lie down in, except an open gallery ... My situation here was painful beyond comparison, from hearing the groans of the wounded, and from the shrieks of others, whose limbs were undergoing the excruciating torture of amputation! If I indulged myself with a little fresh air in the gallery, I was often shocked with seeing the mangled bodies of my slaughtered countrymen brought into the hospital!37
The naval hospital was overflowing, because the army hospitals had just been forced to move there from the town. The surgeons were faced with a mass of severe injuries, for which the only solution in many cases was amputation, such as Surgeon Chisholm who had just undergone an amputation above the knee, which Captain Price said he bore ‘with the firmest composure’.38
Despite the breakdown of law and order, with the looting and drunkenness, hundreds of soldiers did remain at their posts, and so the return of fire from Gibraltar’s guns was as vigorous as the Spanish. Ancell commented that ‘we retaliate with equal warmth upon the foe, who consequently are not exempt from a share in the direful slaughter’.39 Most of Darby’s warships kept well out of the way, because the admiral’s orders were to return to England as rapidly as possible in order to defend Britain and try to intercept French fleets heading west across the Atlantic. For that reason, as soon as he had reached Gibraltar, Darby advised Eliott that he needed to keep the fleet in a state of readiness for whenever the winds shifted to the east. The previous year, during Rodney’s relief convoy, Ross and other officers had enjoyed a round of social visits, but it was very different this time.
Darby also warned Eliott that he could not leave behind any large warships and emphasised the gamble in sending the convoy: ‘You must be very sensible of the situation everyone is in till the return [to England] of this squadron and what a great risk it was, so late in the year of our sailing, even to suffer us to go at all. Of course they must soon every day wish and expect to hear of our arrival. I am at the same time very sensible that the Garrison of Gibraltar is a very grand object or at this season we should not have been sent.’40 Because it was April and the weather was improving, Darby knew that the French and Spanish squadrons would easily be able to leave port and intercept convoys, reinforce America and the West Indies or even move into the Channel and invade England.
In the meantime, Darby told Eliott that he was happy for two of his frigates and two cutters to patrol the bay to d
eter the gunboats while the convoy was unloading and that he would allow the ships’ boats to help all they could. He added: ‘As to those with coals, they can no way be so well unloaded as by bringing them ashore by or within the New Mole where it might be done on stages to the shore. In order to forward this service, I have directed Rear Admiral Sir John L. Ross in a two decked ship to anchor in the Bay.’41 The unloading of thousands of tons of stores was taking place just beyond the reach of the Spanish guns, and was now superintended by Ross, after moving from the Royal George to the smaller 74-gun warship Alexander.42 Ancell was especially impressed with the way Ross treated the men:
[He] has been indefatigable in landing the provision. His attention to the soldiery evinces the goodness of his heart, both as an officer and a man of feeling. He learned that a soldier was confined for taking a biscuit, he liberated the man with a severe admonishing; then called to a cooper, directed him to open a cask of biscuit, and butter, which he distributed among them: ‘My good lads, (said he) steal nothing. Your countenances speak the hardships you have suffered, and whilst I command here you shall have plenty to eat.’ He also caused several baskets of cheese to be opened, which he delivered with a countenance expressive of the satisfaction he felt.43
Many merchant ships had come with the convoy, but its main purpose was to supply the garrison, and little had been brought to help the inhabitants.
On Tuesday 17th, still living in his makeshift tent, Father Messa was loaned two wooden barrels, enabling him to protect the church silverware better: ‘I disassembled the larger pieces [of silver] and once dismantled, I packed all that had been salvaged, half in each barrel, and on top I placed the books that my brother-in-law and some soldiers had also been able to save.’44 That morning, Horsbrugh reported, ‘The Enemy began at day break and continued their fire until noon, during which the Spanish Church was fired and some houses on the Grand Parade burnt down ... before midnight the Spanish Church was again set fire to, and with some other houses lower down the Town totally consumed.’45 The fire, Messa recorded,
burnt for three continuous days. The choir and organ were burnt, as well as the benches, a new image of the Virgen del Carmen ... The chests and vestments in the sacristy and also part of the sacristy itself were also burnt, as was one of the confessionals and almost all of that in the nave of the Virgen del Rosario ... It was also during those same days that the beautiful painted monument, depicting the mysteries of the Last Supper and the Holy Passion, caught fire and was burnt.46
Horsbrugh himself was injured when his own house was hit, and the next morning he noted that ‘another shell came into my house, dangerously wounded my servant and did very considerable damage to the furniture’.47 Many other soldiers were wounded or killed in the casemates of the King’s Bastion, and one solution was to stack wooden casks of flour to form temporary traverses. Although intended to protect the soldiers, the men quickly seized the chance to plunder the flour from the lower casks whenever they were hit by shot, as Drinkwater related: ‘The contents were soon scooped out and fried into pancakes, a dish which they were very expert in cooking; and the upper casks, wanting support from below, gave way, and the whole came to the ground.’ Mrs Upton was thankful to hear that the old casks of rotting salt meat had been destroyed, which would mean using the new supplies from the convoy: ‘The provisions which we had in the garrison before the arrival of the fleet were burned, but the army did not esteem this a misfortune; we rather rejoiced at it, for some of them were so bad, there was no bearing to be within the smell of them.’48
The situation was critical, and Eliott was expecting the Spanish troops to storm the garrison at any moment. According to Ancell, nearly all the inhabitants were now displaced:
Our town is almost become a heap of ruins, and what few houses are left standing, the walls are so shattered, that it is not safe to go into them. The inhabitants are constructing temporary shades, some in the gullies between Buena Vista and Europa, others on Windmill-hill, nor is there scarce any part of the Rock out of reach of the enemy’s fire by land, but what is covered over either with marquees, tents, or huts. The regiments whose quarters in town were destroyed are now encamped at the Southward ... Timber is taken from the ruins of the town to answer this necessary business.49
A week after the start of the bombardment, Mrs Upton and her children left the overcrowded hospital to live in a marquee tent in the garden of Captain Peter Delhoste of her husband’s regiment, but the Spanish gunboats were becoming increasingly bold and effective, approaching at night to attack the refugees and soldiers camped in the south. She described her terrifying first night:
A woman, whose tent was a little below mine, was cut in two as she was drawing on her stockings! Our servant ran in, and endeavoured to encourage me. He made me a kind of breast-work of beds, trunks, mattrasses, bolsters, and whatever else he could find, and sat me behind them ... when these formidable visitants had expended their ammunition, they retired. I resolved to sleep no more in that place; yet, where to find one that was safer, I knew not: for these infernal spit-fires can attack any quarter of the garrison they please.50
She was persuaded to stay put, and her situation was made easier by the company of her friend, the wife of Captain Delhoste, who was also nursing a young baby.
Fearing that the fleet would depart any day, Eliott asked for supplies of biscuit and empty casks from the ships, but Darby thought the winds were changing and that he would need to sail without warning. At the end of his reply, Darby wrote: ‘I most sincerely wish you all possible success with a happy release from your troublesome neighbours.’51 The next day, 20 April, the fleet with the vessels from the convoy hurriedly left, taking advantage of the wind turning to the east. It had proved impossible to unload the coal from the colliers, so they remained behind and were scuttled, with only the cutter Speedwell left for protection. Drinkwater was somewhat critical of Darby: ‘The impatience of the British Admiral to disembark the supplies that he might not lose the opportunity of the easterly wind to return from the Mediterranean, had prevented the Garrison from unloading the colliers that had arrived with the fleet: these ships were therefore scuttled in the New mole, to be discharged at leisure. The ordnance transports were also ordered within the boom for the same purpose.’ He added a more surprising aside: ‘Many merchantmen, freighted with merchandise, and articles much wanted in the Garrison, returned with their cargoes; the merchants refusing to take them, on account of the bombardment.’52
The fleet was carrying letters, dispatches and passengers to England, and Abraham Israel took the opportunity to write again to his brother Moses in London:
With tears in my eyes I write this to participate you of the destruction that our enemies have made in all our houses, stock, goods ... our soldiers have possessed themselves of our houses, breaking down all doors and robbing all the inhabitants of all they possessed, which they did to me of all my goods that existed in our warehouses, also my clothes, furniture etc. I beg you will not take it too much to heart, for it is a sentence from heaven and all the world ought to pity us.53
Eliott had ordered some of the convoy vessels to take to England, free of charge, all those inhabitants who wished to leave, and Abraham Israel warned Moses that family members were on their way: ‘Almost all the inhabitants goes away, some to England, others to Mahon. The risk is great and for as much as I find myself obliged to embark my dear father, mother and brother Jacob and my dear Juda [his son] for your place by this ship ... Look after these poor old people as they go at their age upon the seas, and neither of them can move, and to add I always had money enough in cash, and now I wanted it, I have it not.’54 Boyd’s journal was more acerbic: ‘the Fleet sailed to the west and left us to defend ourselves, which was no discouragement to the Military, but much so to the inhabitants, for they flock off, by all vessels that sails from hence, as so many disturbed swarms of bees’.55 As the fleet departed, Price reflected on the terrible
state of the town:
The Enemy’s fire has continued without intermission day and night. The town makes a melancholy appearance. Scarce a house has escaped. The streets are choked with rubbish. The Barracks at Bedlam are completely burnt and the town has been on fire in different quarters by the Enemy’s shells ... The oldest officer here has seen in his course of service nothing equal in warmth and continuance to the fire of the Spaniards. It is calculated that for each 24 hours, they fire at the rate of 4000 shot and shells.56
Darby was almost despairing about Gibraltar’s wretched situation, and on the journey to England on board the Britannia, he wrote to Lord Sandwich:
The town is quite beat down and often set on fire so that it is quite destroyed, many people killed by saving their effects. Sir George Collier [on board the Canada], who left the place last, tells me a very fierce fire was burning in the evening; it will be better for the garrison the sooner it is quite destroyed. The inhabitants are put to great difficulties where to place themselves, and the soldiers that are not in casemates [are] encamped near the barracks, which I apprehend will be plagued with these gun- and bomb-boats, of which they have both.57
On talking about the gunboats, he was quite pessimistic about the fate of Gibraltar:
There is no dealing with the kind of vessels but with those of the same construction. Should the Spanish fleet (which has kept close since our being on the coast) come out and join in the attack towards Europa Point, they would harrass the garrison beyond their strength and put the place in some danger. I likewise understand there is such a tired discontent among the common people that they are all inclined to desert, for fear of which [Eliott] do not dare make a sally.58