by Roy Adkins
Everything appeared ready for the attack by the floating batteries, so it was strange that it had still not happened. Peering through a telescope, Ancell could even see that the ‘enemy have erected stands or booths around the shore, lined with crimson or scarlet, where the nobles and grandees will take their seats’.38 In a letter to his son-in-law Oliver Nicolls, William Green wrote:
Their ten great floating batteries ... seemed to be got all perfectly ready about the 1st of September, as was every other preparation by sea, including 3 bomb ketches, 16 gun boats, 8 mortar boats, 16 large boats with mantelets across their bow, to let down with a hinge for the easier disembarking of troops, besides about 2 or 300 boats brought from the adjacent coasts to assist in throwing troops ashore ... The whole of this sea attack, as we thought, was to be supported by 9 line of battle ships (7 Spanish and 2 French) and which had been in the Bay for some time.39
At about 8 o’clock in the morning of the 12th, a huge fleet appeared, which was initially thought to be the relief convoy from England, as nobody knew that Howe’s ships had only set sail from England on the previous day, the 11th. This was the enemy’s Grand Fleet from Cadiz, which had been prepared in the greatest secrecy. The garrison was completely taken aback. Captain Colin Lindsay of the 73rd Highlanders described the scene to his brother Alexander, the Earl of Balcarres: ‘a large fleet appeared in the Streights from the West, but the morning being hazy, it was not till they approached very near, that we discovered them to be the combined fleet of France and Spain ... It must not now be denied that their arrival, which was totally unexpected, had some effect upon the spirits of the garrison.’40
Green also admitted to Nicolls that the fleet’s arrival was completely unforeseen: ‘to our great astonishment in come their Grand combined fleet, and anchored at the head of the Bay, consisting of 41 large ships, 7 of which are three deckers ... A formidable fleet, you’ll say, and commanded by eight Admirals.’41 On the Rock, the overall effect was demoralisation: ‘This great accumulation of force could not fail to surprise, if not alarm the Garrison. It appeared as if they meant, previous to their final efforts, to strike, if possible, a terror through their opponents, by displaying before us a more powerful armament than had probably ever been brought against any fortress ... Such a naval and military spectacle most certainly is not to be equalled in the annals of war.’42 This was the largest concentration of military force ever known, and the odds were overwhelming, which Houdan-Deslandes commented on:
The heavens seemed to want to favour our efforts and crown them with victory. The wind from the west ... hadn’t changed. Forty-eight warships were anchored in front of Gibraltar and must have brought consternation to the English garrison, for whom their presence must have removed all hope of help. The Bay of Algeciras was covered with vessels of all kinds, destined for a maritime attack on this besieged fortress. The weather was beautiful, the wind was good, the floating batteries were ready, the two armies full of confidence. The firing from our Lines was continuous. Gibraltar was quiet. Everything promised us a triumph.43
Under such circumstances, it was natural to clutch at any straw of hope, as Drinkwater noticed: ‘When the van of the Combined Fleet had entered the Bay, the soldiers in the town were attentively viewing the ships, alleging, amongst other reasons for their arrival, that the British fleet must undoubtedly be in pursuit. On a sudden, a general huzza was given, and all, to a man, cried out, the British Admiral was certainly in their rear, as a flag for a fleet was hoisted upon our signal-house [flag]pole.’ They were disappointed to learn that it was not a flag, but an eagle perched on top of the pole for a few minutes. Eagles from Africa flew into Gibraltar from time to time, while some bred in remote places at the top of the Rock, so they were not such an unusual sight. Those officers and soldiers who knew some classical history were happy to view the eagle as a symbol of victory, and Drinkwater added: ‘Though less superstitious than the ancient Romans, many could not help fancying it a favourable omen to the Garrison.’44
CHAPTER TWENTY
MASS ATTACK
As dawn broke the next day, Friday 13 September, everyone on Gibraltar expected the floating batteries to have moved into position under cover of darkness. Instead, it looked to be another day of waiting, though each day brought the hope of a relief convoy arriving from England. As usual, everyone kept a close watch on what the enemy was doing, including Drinkwater: ‘we observed the Combined Fleet had made some new arrangements in their position, or moorings and that the remaining two battering-ships had joined the others at the Orange-grove, where their whole force seemed to be assembled’. At around quarter to seven in the morning, some movements were spotted amongst their shipping, ‘and soon after, the battering-ships got under way, with a gentle breeze from the north-west, standing to the southward, to clear the men of war, and were attended by a number of boats’.1
Because the other warships were showing no signs of setting sail, Drinkwater said it took some time to realise what was happening, in broad daylight, with the floating batteries:
As our Navy were constantly of the opinion that the [battering] ships would be brought before the Garrison in the night, few suspected that the present manoeuvres were preparatory to their finally entering on the interesting enterprise. But observing a crowd of spectators on the beach, near Point Mala, and upon the neighbouring eminences, and the ships edging down towards the Garrison, the Governor thought it would be imprudent any longer to doubt it. The Town-batteries were accordingly manned, and the grates and furnaces for heating shot ordered to be lighted.2
The spectators on the distant shores were expecting something dramatic to take place, while Ancell’s excitable words imply that on Gibraltar they were all galvanised at the prospect of action:
To arms! to arms! is all the cry. The enemy’s floating batteries have weighed anchor, and are now under sail with a fine breeze at N.W. Their colours wanton in the wind, with gaudy decorations for the battle, while thousands of spectators from yon glittering shore impatiently wait to triumph in their success. They have now tacked with their head towards the garrison, and what is remarkable, they work them without a man being exposed or seen.3
That morning, Houdan-Deslandes had seen the signals: ‘The floating batteries spread their sails and steered towards Gibraltar ... in a moment the news spread all round the camp. No news had ever spread so quickly. Officers, soldiers, servants, all climbed on the most elevated rocks from where they might see the new and daring operation that was going to take place in full daylight.’4 Unprepared for a daytime attack, the garrison was caught by surprise when the ten floating batteries set off, not least because it was an inauspicious day of the week. Sailors generally did not like setting sail on a Friday, and one French traveller confirmed that it was also a widely held superstition in Spain: ‘The Spanish are convinced that Fridays are unlucky, and that although there are orders in all the ports to allow the King’s ships to leave on any day of the week, most captains avoid setting sail on Fridays, perhaps out of consideration for their crew, or perhaps they themselves fear a malign influence on Fridays.’5
French sailors held the same view, and it was generally believed, both on land and at sea, that it was bad luck to start anything new on a Friday. Since the numeral thirteen was also considered unlucky, this Friday the 13th may have seemed particularly unlucky, though for which side was unclear. Faced with such an overwhelming force, some on Gibraltar took comfort that this day was the anniversary of the victory in 1759 at the Battle of Quebec. Even though General Wolfe, the British commander, did not survive the battle, the victory over the French was periodically celebrated by those who had served in North America, including members of Gibraltar’s American Club, such as William Green.
There might have been slightly more optimism if it had been realised that none of the commanders of the French and Spanish forces agreed with one another. The Duc de Crillon, who was in overall command, and Admiral Cordoba,
who was in command of the combined fleet, were both sceptical about the plan to use floating batteries, while d’Arçon, who had designed them, wanted to carry out more tests. Early on, he had insisted that the effects of red-hot shot on the floating batteries should be tried out by firing from the Spanish batteries, but it was now too late.6 With the pressure of so many impatient spectators, including two French princes and other aristocrats and dignitaries, Crillon was not willing to wait any longer, and so he overruled d’Arçon’s protests and gave the order for the attack.
Under the command of Admiral Buenaventura Moreno, who was on board his flagship Pastora, the floating batteries sailed from the Orange Grove to the shoreline defences on the west side of Gibraltar town, a journey of some three miles that took three hours.7 Captain Colin Lindsay was amazed at how well they sailed, even though the wind had increased in strength: ‘We ... saw, what we could not have believed, that these unwieldy looking machines sailed and steered with as much quickness and precision as the lightest ships’.8 Eliott watched their manoeuvres as they came into position:
all the battering ships came forward to the several stations previously determined they should take up: the Admiral being placed upon the capital of [opposite] the King’s Bastion, the other ships extending three to the southward of the flag [flagship], as far as the church battery; five to the northward about the height of the Old Mole; and one a very little to the westward of the Admiral. By a quarter before ten, they were anchored in line, at the distance of a thousand to twelve hundred yards.9
Other eyewitnesses reported them as slightly closer, 800 to 1000 yards. Houdan-Deslandes heard that the original plan was for the larger floating batteries to anchor from the King’s Bastion as far south as the New Mole, spaced out sufficiently to allow the smaller ones to form a line behind and fire through the gaps. D’Arçon himself had done many soundings of the sea-bed and later claimed he wanted the main attack to be concentrated on the Old Mole, allowing the floating batteries to be more easily withdrawn if the need arose.10 In the end, two of them anchored opposite the King’s Bastion – Moreno’s flagship Pastora and the Talla Piedra, which had d’Arçon on board and was commanded by the French naval officer Prince of Nassau, who had only just arrived with the combined fleet. Two others were stationed south of the King’s Bastion, while the rest were to the north, as far as the Old Mole, and there were reports of several of them grounding on the sea-bed, unable to advance any closer.
The King’s Bastion was the strongest part of the Line Wall, with at least twenty-five guns. William Green was astonished and baffled at their decision to anchor there, as he had been responsible for improving this whole stretch of fortification, including the design and construction of the King’s Bastion. In 1773, years before Eliott became governor, Green and other officers had attended a ceremony in which Boyd laid the foundation stone, with the words: ‘This is the first stone of a work which I name the King’s Bastion: may it be as gallantly defended, as I know it will be ably executed, and may I live to see it resist the united efforts of France and Spain!’11 For the floating batteries to focus on this part of the Line Wall was, Green said to his son-in-law, rather like ‘taking the Bull by the Horns, viz. the King’s, the Prince of Orange’s, and the Montague Bastions ... universally acknowledged to be very conspicuous and efficacious, particularly the King’s Bastion, opposite to which the Spanish Admiral and Commander of the Armada drew up.’12
In all, the floating batteries carried just over five thousand men and around 142 guns ready to fire at Gibraltar – fewer guns than if three large warships were firing broadsides at the fortifications, though warships were not built to withstand fierce bombardments and red-hot shot. The number of guns varied in different reports – Drinkwater gave 142, d’Arçon 152 and Houdan-Deslandes 153, while Boyd’s journal said that a boatswain specified 166. As a minimum, the Pastora had twenty-one brass guns on the port side and a crew of around 760 men, almost the size of the crew of a 100-gun warship. The Talla Piedra and Paula Prima were roughly the same size, while the Rosario was slightly smaller, with nineteen guns and 700 men. The San Cristobal was smaller again, with eighteen guns and 650 men, and the Principe Carlos had eleven guns and 400 men. The remaining four vessels had far fewer guns – the San Juan and Paula Secunda nine guns each and crews of 340 men, the Santa Ana seven guns and 300 men, and the Dolores only six guns and 250 men. The brass guns were all specially cast, and the bigger vessels carried ten spares and the smaller ones four to six spares.
Within ten minutes, both sides began a devastating barrage of shot and shells, which Drinkwater tried to describe:
The cannonade then became in a high degree tremendous. The showers of shot and shells which were directed from their land-batteries, the battering ships, and on the other hand, from the various works of the Garrison, exhibited a scene, of which perhaps neither the pen nor pencil can furnish a competent idea. It is sufficient to say, that four hundred pieces of the heaviest artillery were playing at the same moment: an instance which has scarcely occurred in any siege since the invention of those wonderful engines of destruction.13
Boyd took up position on the South Bastion to watch, while Eliott was on the King’s Bastion, at the heart of the action. Walter Gordon of the 73rd, who was helping with the guns there, was greatly impressed: ‘With what amazing coolness does he issue his orders! His looks express settled contempt of their boasted batteries: His air is truly magnetic ... undiscomposed he stands, during the time of action, which was for many hours.’14 Most of the regiments remained in the south, ready to take part if there was an invasion by French and Spanish troops, but some of the officers, Lindsay said, chose to ignore orders ‘and to be eye-witnesses of the gallantry of the artillery, or to animate, by their presence, the men of their respective corps employed on the batteries, or on duty in the ruins of the town’.15
The furnaces were still not sufficiently hot to heat cannonballs, and so the artillerymen did what they could with cold shot, though Ancell and others were dismayed at the results: ‘the artillery ... directed the ordnance on these wonderful ships of destruction. Our astonishment was raised to the highest pitch on beholding our heaviest shot rebound from their sides, and an unusual anxiety seemed to possess the mind of all ranks, when a thirteen-inch shell, which dropped on the roof of the Admiral’s ship, resisted penetration!’16 With shot and shells bouncing off their roofs, the floating batteries were proving resilient to everything.
From his viewpoint in the French camp, Houdan-Deslandes remarked: ‘We saw then what has only been seen that once and what will probably never be seen again – ten monstrous vessels striking Gibraltar with artillery ... and that Rock deploying all means of defence ... firing at its attackers in the most astonishing way since the invention of gunpowder.’17 However, he thought that ‘all the moored floating batteries were ... too close to each other and nearly all opposite the same rampart’,18 though he could not help being impressed: ‘No spectacle has ever been more beautiful; never has genius and valour had as many judges and never could they have hoped for as many admirers.’19 Boyd’s journal mentioned that from Gibraltar they could see thousands of spectators all round the bay: ‘the Queen’s Chair, the hills and mountains round to Cabrito Point, we plainly saw with our glasses [telescopes] crowded, and by report, with people of both sexes and of all ranks, of people assembled from every village, town and city, far and near; even proud Madrid Dons brings up the promiscuous crowd to behold the reduction of Gibraltar.’20
The exchange of fire continued furiously, with little apparent effect on either side. The floating batteries were designed to pound Gibraltar’s fortifications, knock out the guns and create breaches to enable soldiers to land, but the sea swell was affecting the aim of their gunners, so that they had trouble concentrating their fire on a single point. More seriously, most of the vessels were too far from the defences. The fiercest battle was taking place between the King’s Bastion and the Pastora and Tal
la Piedra. The other floating batteries were unable to elevate their guns in order to increase their range, and d’Arçon reckoned that only sixty guns in all were capable of reaching their target.
On the Rock, the gunners had the problem of trying to hit relatively small targets that were becoming rapidly obscured by smoke from the gun fire. Although the garrison guns were pouring out cold shot and shells, nothing appeared to be effective against the floating batteries. ‘Our balls seemed to rebound into the sea,’ Lindsay admitted,
and even such shells from the thirteen inch mortars as struck, glanced off the shelving roofs, composed of logs, and did them not the least apparent injury; yet shells of this nature, when loaded, weigh above two hundred pounds upon the ground, and where they fall from their elevation, as that weight increases every instant of the fall, we might suppose the shock to be irresistible; accordingly, wherever they fall on our most solid fortifications, they never fail to make such havock as requires time and prodigious labour to repair. Of what sort of materials, it was then naturally asked, can these formidable engines be made, to possess a repelling and elastic power to so very wonderful a degree?21
The gunners kept persevering in the hopes of some success or a lucky shot striking home, and they enjoyed one freak accident: ‘A shot from one of the enemy’s junk ships came into one of our howitzers on the King’s Bastion, which fired her off, and the ball returned with the howitzer shell to its own ship again, through one of the portholes, and the shell exploding between decks, killed and wounded about 40 men.’22 Conditions for the crews of the floating batteries were terrible, with very little air except through the deep embrasures or gunports. These embrasures were actually a weakness because shells did occasionally get through, causing carnage. The plan was for the crew members to work in shifts: ‘Two-thirds of each crew were below, under the surface of the water,’ Lindsay related, ‘and relieved the decks alternately; they were there almost suffocated for want of air ... several of our shells entered at the ports or embrasures, and killed and wounded between thirty and forty men each time. A frigate cruised behind as a hospital ship.’23
