Gibraltar
Page 29
It did not take long, after the courtesies and solemnity of the funeral procession, for the Spaniards to resume their customary bombardments, and as soon as the sun came up over the Rock on New Year’s Day, 1 January 1782, an especially fierce attack led to one act of heroism that impressed Captain Price:
Lieutenant [John] Rogers of the Royal Artillery had a very narrow escape at Princess Anne’s Battery, Willis’s. A shell fell close beside him, and he tumbled into the hole which it had made, where he was wedged up by the earth to his middle, while the fuze of the shell continued burning. In this alarming situation, Corporal Martin of the same corps with an uncommon intrepidity and presence of mind came to his assistance, but finding Mr. Rogers hemmed in, in such a manner that he could not disengage him, he called to all mattrosses at some distance. By their joint assistance and the blessing of providence, he was rescued from the very jaws of death, and they had scarce reached a traverse close at hand when the shell exploded. When it is considered that poor Martin had a wife and children depending on him for support, there will be found something even beyond intrepidity to admire in him. The Governor, when he heard the story, ordered both the brave fellows concerned a handsome present [5 guineas] and gave them his particular thanks.7
Although the town was already a scene of devastation, Walter Gordon described the outcome of the continued bombardment: ‘The destruction of the town was now completed. The Spanish Church, which was a beautiful edifice, was entirely destroyed; the few houses which had escaped the former devastation, were now beat to the ground, and not one stone left standing upon another. Gardens were plowed up by the bursting of bombs and the falling of balls, fruit trees tore up by the roots, the bodies of the dead tore up from their graves, and streets filled with the ruins of houses.’8
On 4 January the St Philip’s Castle cutter reached Gibraltar from Leghorn in Italy, having slipped away from Minorca in November. The siege of the citadel had been going on since August 1781, and the news they brought was that the small British garrison was completely outnumbered by the Duc de Crillon’s besieging forces – which would eventually amount to some fifteen thousand men. Fort St Philip (which they also called St Philip’s Castle) was strong, but not well supplied, particularly where food was concerned. The garrison could surrender or attempt to hold off the attackers until a convoy came with supplies and reinforcements. Newspapers in Britain were clamouring for such a convoy, and speculation was rife that one was on its way, but Minorca’s officers knew there was little likelihood of a convoy in the near future. The garrison was strong enough to hold out against most attacks, and so Eliott’s decision not to allow the 73rd Regiment to proceed to Minorca was a blessing, because it would have meant more men to feed.
After invading Minorca in August, the French and Spaniards had embarked on building batteries, which the garrison fired at from Fort St Philip. In September, Lieutenant-General James Murray, the governor, had seen an opportunity for a daring sortie against Crillon’s headquarters, during which one battery was destroyed and a hundred prisoners captured.9 The fort maintained its bombardment of the siegeworks, backed up by more sorties, which led the Comte de Crillon, one of the French army officers, to admit his gloom: ‘I think absolutely like you, my friend, on the impossibility of taking Fort St Philip with the forces that we have. But what can we do – if the King of Spain has got it into his head, it will be necessary to attack it. I don’t believe that we could extend the siegeworks from here in a month ... and I understand less the possibility of remaining all winter under canvas.’10 He also thought that if they did stay there all winter, half the men would be in hospital within four months. Born at Paris in 1748, Félix-François-Dorothée des Balbes de Berton, comte de Crillon, was a younger son of the overall commander, Duc de Crillon. He had formerly served in the Spanish army and later moved to the French army, becoming colonel of the Bretagne Regiment in 1778.
The St Philip’s Castle cutter had brought twenty-two of the prisoners-of-war to Gibraltar, as well as dispatches and many letters written six weeks earlier, which Horsbrugh said ‘are in a style of confidence and cheerfulness which give us reason to hope the Enemy will not find that so easy a conquest as they give out. Some of the letters mention ... that the Duke de Crillon had made an attempt to bribe the Governor General Murray with the offer of a million dollars.’11 Boyd’s journal reported that Murray was outraged and replied that he never expected Crillon to think he could turn traitor to his King and Country, ‘and that he would defend the Garrison against all the powers of France and Spain while he has a man left that was able to fire a gun, and ... he would advise the Duke to take care of himself, for he might be assured that wherever he met him, at the Courts of France or in any other place, that he would cane him like a scoundrel that he was, for he was neither a soldier nor a gentleman by his behaviour.’12
After a few days, on 10 January, the St Philip’s Castle headed back to Port Mahon, but Captain William Wilson, one of Boyd’s aides-de-camp and possibly the author of his journals, was unhappy with Eliott: ‘A certain great Captain (W.— W.—n) here has procured 3 dozen [bottles] of wine to send to a brother in St Philips Castle at Mahon by the above vessel, but once, nay twice, he applied for a permit to put it on board the ship, but was refused by the Governor of so small a favour to a Gentleman.’13 The following week, the Henry and Mercury ordnance ships sailed for England, taking with them more invalids, inhabitants and soldiers’ wives, as well as the prisoners-of-war from Minorca and those captured in the November sortie, including Don Vicente Freire.
By now, the Spaniards felt reinvigorated and were starting to replenish their materials and rebuild their devastated fortifications. By late February the work was well under way, as Corporal Cranfield told his parents in London:
The Spaniards are renewing their advanced works with a ten-gun battery and two mortar batteries; but all in vain; we never were better prepared for them than we are at this time. Our works and fortifications are firm and strong, so that no Spaniard dare face us within musket-shot. They still hold on the siege with great vigour, and have now been firing upon us night and day for eleven months. The like was never known in the memory of man ... I have actually counted, when upon guard, eighty shells in one hour; but the name of an Englishman frightens the stoutest hearts in Spain, in spite of Anthony, their great saint.14
He was right to say that the garrison’s works were strong, because following the sortie, all the defences on the Rock were being improved, and Drinkwater admired the engineers who ‘were indefatigable in repairing the splinter-proofs, magazines, traverses, and communications, along the north front, which were damaged by the Enemy’s fire. The King’s, Queen’s, and Prince’s lines had likewise a share in their attention.’15
As the Spanish siegeworks on the isthmus were extended, many of them could only be targeted from high up on the Rock, and then only by aiming the cannons downwards at a steep angle. In these conditions it was difficult to load the guns, and the violent recoil often destroyed the mountings. This major problem was now overcome when Lieutenant George Koehler of the Royal Artillery devised a mechanism known as the depressing gun carriage. Koehler was born in London in 1758 to an English mother and a German father serving in the Royal Artillery. Soon after his arrival in Gibraltar with Darby’s convoy in April 1781, he was noticed by Eliott, who thought so highly of him that he appointed him his aide-de-camp later that year.
Koehler solved the problem of firing cannons downwards by fixing a gun barrel to a plank that was laid on top of another plank. The underside of the upper plank had a spindle that ran in a groove in the lower plank. The downwards tilt of the gun was achieved by attaching the front end of the lower plank by a hinge to a gun carriage, and the gun was pointed downwards by propping up the other end of the plank. When the gun was fired, the recoil was absorbed by the upper plank sliding over the lower one, rather than wrecking the carriage. This system also allowed the gun barrel to be lowered, swi
velled to one side, cleaned out and reloaded behind the safety of the defences, before being pointed downwards again.
From mid-February, the first of several depressing gun carriages was moved to the highest part of the Rock, overlooking the isthmus, and experiments proved very effective: ‘As to the accuracy of the depressing shot, no farther proof need be adduced, than that out of thirty rounds, twenty-eight shot took place in one traverse in the St. Carlos’s battery, at the distance of near one thousand four hundred yards.’16 Koehler’s invention was the forerunner of later artillery recoil systems.
Towards the end of February, a ship successfully ran the blockade, bringing much-needed provisions from Portugal – as well as many distressed passengers. This was the Mercury that had left Gibraltar six weeks earlier, ostensibly for England. The passengers were unaware that Eliott had secretly instructed Captain Heighington to go to Lisbon, load up with wine, oranges and lemons and return to Gibraltar. With Minorca being besieged, Portugal was Gibraltar’s nearest ally, and lemons were desperately needed, since even before the sortie scurvy had once again been affecting every regiment. The numbers of those afflicted had recently dropped, probably because several small vessels had of late brought cargoes to Gibraltar, but at the end of February 162 people were still suffering from scurvy, and 155 of those were in hospital.17 In his latest letter to his brother, Ancell expressed his horror at their plight:
Our garrison are pretty healthy, considering the hardships, dangers, and scarcity of fresh diet, which at present prevails; but of late, they have been very much afflicted with the most inveterate scurvy, which deprived a great many of the use of their limbs, by rendering them stiff and swelled. The flesh of the sufferers, I assure you, was almost black, and you would pity, were you a spectator, to view them limping to their post to partake of a share of their comrades, in opposing the foe.18
Attempts had been made at Lisbon to persuade the passengers of the Mercury to disembark, but they refused, and nobody there was told about the plan, for fear of spies. Drinkwater recorded that ‘to their great mortification, they found, on their entrance into the Straits, the unpleasant shores of Spain and Barbary, instead of the exhilarating coast of Britain’.19
That afternoon, Drinkwater noted that ‘the Enemy fired a grand feu-de-joie in camp, commencing with a salute from the lines. They repeated the fire a fourth time, which led us to imagine they had gained some advantage at Minorca.’20 It was later learned that the feu de joie was indeed in celebration of the surrender of the besieged Fort St Philip a few days earlier. Although a few privateers and supply vessels had managed to evade the French and Spanish ships, it was never enough to sustain the British garrison, especially when the Duc de Crillon tightened the blockade. Nowhere in Fort St Philip could vegetables be grown, and in late December the first cases of scurvy had appeared. Soon they were all suffering. The garrison was also affected by constant disagreements between Murray and his deputy governor, Sir William Draper, who was highly critical of his methods of defence. Draper thought that the bombardment was not sufficiently heavy to hinder the enemy’s siegeworks, a situation made even worse back in October when, one British officer recorded, ‘The Governor by this day’s orders has thought proper to put a stop to all firing whatever without his or the commanding officer of Artillery’s orders.’21
As the winter dragged on, the health of the men in Fort St Philip deteriorated, and while the French and Spanish troops also suffered, they managed to push forward their siegeworks and set up gun batteries. Over Christmas, the same British officer wrote: ‘Very fine weather. The Enemy lucky in having such [weather] to carry on their works, but more so as the Governor being so saving of his powder. The Garrison might fire a great deal more, but no one dare do it without orders’,22 while on 4 January 1782 (when the St Philip’s Castle had reached Gibraltar), he noted: ‘Capt. Squires daughter sent into the fort by the Duc (a child on account of some family disagreement). She says the batteries are to be opened on Sunday. If this intelligence proves true we think it very extraordinary the Duke should let us have such information of his intentions.’23
Two days later, the French and Spanish guns did indeed start firing, as Captain Dixon of the artillery witnessed: ‘A little before seven o’clock this morning they gave three cheers and fired a feu de joie, then all their batteries fired upon us with great fury, which was equally returned by our brave Artillery. Our General declared he had never seen guns and mortars better served than ours were.’ The next day, he commented: ‘such a terrible fire, night and day, from both sides, never has been seen at any siege’, followed by: ‘All last night and this day they never ceased firing, and we as well returned it. You would have thought the elements were in a blaze. It has been observed they fire about 750 shot and shell every hour. Who in the name of God is able to stand it?’24
The bombardment was relentless, day after day, and on the 10th Dixon wrote: ‘The enemy had 36 shells in flight at the same time. God has been with us in preserving our people: they are in high spirits, and behave as Englishmen. Considering our small garrison, they do wonders.’ But by the 20th it was obvious the garrison could not hold out much longer: ‘This night shells meet shells in the air. We have a great many sick and wounded and those that have died of their wounds ... Our sentries have hardly time to call out “A shell!” and “Down!” before others are at their heels.’ Four days later he added: ‘The Artillery have hard duty and are greatly fatigued. The scurvy rages among our men.’25
Between the scurvy and the bombardment, the garrison was whittled away, and Dixon admitted that Fort St Philip was a battered ruin: ‘They fire shot and shell every minute. The poor Castle is in a tattered and rotten condition, as indeed are all the works in general ... The Castle and every battery round it are so filled by the excavations made by the enemy’s shells, that he must be a nimble young man who can go from one battery to another without danger. The Castle, their grand mark, as well as the rest of the works, are in a most shocking plight.’26 A week later, on 4 February 1782, the garrison raised a white flag for a parley and negotiated terms for a surrender.
The fort may have been wrecked, but it was scurvy that had forced the surrender. According to Murray, the garrison surgeon had considered that ‘Three days further obstinacy on my part must have inevitably destroyed the brave remains of this Garrison, as they declare there was no remedy for the men in the hospitals, but vegetables, and that of the six hundred and sixty able to do duty, five hundred and sixty were actually tainted with the scurvy, and, in all likelihood, would be in the hospitals in four days time.’ Generous terms of surrender were negotiated, and the garrison was allowed to leave the fort with their arms and colours, before laying them down, which Murray described: ‘Perhaps a more noble, nor more tragical scene, was never exhibited than that of the march of the Garrison of St. Philip’s through the Spanish and French armies ... Such was the distressing figures of our men that many of the Spanish and French troops are said to have shed tears as they passed them ... The Spanish as well as the French surgeons attend our hospitals.’27
Hardly a fit man was left in the garrison, and they were allowed to be taken to England, technically remaining prisoners-of-war, on condition that they did not serve again until officially exchanged. This was an unusual instance of parole terms for officers being extended to all ranks, and Murray expressed his gratitude, in particular to the Comte de Crillon: ‘We owe infinite obligations to the Count de Crillon; they can never be forgot by any of us. I hope this young man never will command an army against my sovereign, for his military talents are as conspicuous as the goodness of his heart.’28 Less happily, Draper continued his complaints against Murray and forced a court-martial. Of all the charges against him, Murray was found guilty of only two, for which he was reprimanded, but it did not affect his subsequent career.
Civilians in the fort, other than the families of soldiers, had included ‘Twenty Corsicans, and twenty-five Greeks, Turks,
Moors, Jews &c.’ They were expelled from the island to Leghorn and left to their own devices. Some of the Jews had earlier fled to Minorca to escape the siege at Gibraltar, but they were not allowed to return, and thirteen of them eventually arrived in London, by then in a wretched state, to be taken in by the Jewish community.29 For Gibraltar, the fall of Fort St Philip had serious consequences. An important source of supplies was now completely cut off, the French and Spaniards had proved they could overwhelm a strong fortress, so they were buoyed up by success, and it was expected that their massive army on Minorca would soon join those besieging the Rock.
On 24 February, the day after the feu de joie around the Bay of Gibraltar in celebration of Minorca’s fall, the St Ann ordnance ship arrived with gunpowder and two gunboats, similar to those used by the Spaniards to such deadly effect. They were supplied in pieces, which the navy carpenters began to assemble. The St Ann also brought news that the Vernon would soon arrive with ten more gunboats. Four weeks later, the Vernon and Success were approaching the Straits when they encountered the Spanish 32-gun frigate Santa Catalina. After a long battle, the severely damaged Santa Catalina surrendered to the Success, but when other Spanish ships were sighted in the distance all the valuables and prisoners were taken off, and the prize-ship was set on fire, subsequently blowing up. The ships in the distance may actually have been the Royal Navy frigates Cerberus and Apollo, escorting a small convoy of four transports with troop reinforcements, primarily seven hundred men from a new regiment, the 97th. This convoy, along with the Vernon and the Success, reached Gibraltar at intervals on 24 March.