by Roy Adkins
The firing from the isthmus was intermittent, though quite intense at times, and the mortar boats and gunboats kept returning at night, even attacking the naval hospital and Windmill Hill, where their own prisoners-of-war were held. Instead of pressing home an immediate attack as everyone on the Rock feared, the French and Spaniards reverted to extending their siegeworks, but first they held a review, which Drinkwater watched: ‘The evening of the 26th of September, the whole of the Combined Army were under arms, formed in one line (which extended about four miles and a half) from the river Guadaranque to very near Fort Tunara [Atunara]. Some persons of high rank, attended by a numerous suite of cavalry, passed along the front; and they were not dismissed until after sun-set.’5
Crillon still planned to take the Rock and so now had scaling ladders made and iron grappling hooks forged for an assault. Houdan-Deslandes described a new and daring communication line a quarter of a mile long that was constructed overnight with sandbags, from the burnt Mahon battery to the shore at Bayside, cutting across a corner of the gardens at Landport: ‘It was on the night of 5 to 6 October that 6000 men, including 480 French, began the new communication ... The besieged were outwitted ... we didn’t lose one man, but we should have lost at least 300.’6 The next day, many of the prisoners-of-war rescued from the floating batteries were returned to Spain, apart from those too severely injured and fifty-nine who wanted to remain and were therefore distributed amongst the regiments. Bodies were still floating in with each tide, and Drinkwater noted that ‘the corpse of a Spanish officer was washed ashore under our walls. A purse of pistoles [gold coins], and a gold watch, were found in his pockets. He was buried with respect, two navy officers attending the funeral; and the following day a flag of truce delivered the watch and money, to be returned to his friends.’7
Even though the floating batteries had failed, Houdan-Deslandes thought that Crillon should continue bombarding the garrison vigorously, tighten the blockade and make all efforts to prevent the garrison being revictualled by a convoy:
That fortress hadn’t received any general supplies since that of Darby in April 1781. The Garrison therefore must be lacking in several essential ordnance supplies. They might last several months, but a longer period of privation would be unbearable and impossible to sustain. It was virtually certain that the besieged lacked shells, had little powder, and every day suffered small losses which, when multiplied, exhaust a garrison, add to the weariness of service, and end by completely wearing them down.8
Gibraltar could only wait, but there was renewed hope because the prisoners-of-war had disclosed that Lord Howe was preparing to sail from England with a relief convoy. The only worry was that the powerful combined French and Spanish fleet was unscathed, still controlled the bay and was also waiting for the convoy. The fate of Gibraltar hung in the balance, because nobody knew if the naval escort would be strong enough to ensure that essential supplies reached the Rock. Everything depended on Lord Howe and his fleet.
After sailing from Spithead on 11 September, Admiral Lord Richard Howe’s convoy had been disrupted by bad weather. Four days later, the wind changed direction but continued blowing a gale for almost the rest of the month. Several vessels in the convoy were badly damaged and were forced to turn back, as recorded by Henry Duncan, captain of HMS Victory: ‘The Duchess of Richmond, a large ordnance transport, lost her topmasts, made the signal of distress, and quitted the fleet in the night; several of the vessels loaded with wood and coals returned to England; others threw overboard part of their cargoes.’9 One newspaper reported the Duchess of Richmond limping back to Plymouth on the 19th, the same day as another ordnance vessel came in: ‘the Lord Holland, late an old East-Indiaman, but now an ordnance store-ship; she parted company with the fleet last Monday morning, having sprung a leak, and carried away her three top-masts, in the gale of wind last Saturday. Lord Howe took 200 matrosses from on board her, and distributed them on board the men of war ... The Lord Holland had a valuable cargo of ordnance stores, and will be a loss to the garrison.’10
Other ships from the convoy straggled into smaller ports, including Waterford in Ireland, according to Lloyd’s List:
Arrived the Jenny, Capt. Jacks, from London and Portsmouth for Gibraltar; she parted Lord Howe’s fleet in a gale of wind the 22d inst. ... The Captain says two East-India ships parted the day before, and two ships made signals of distress before he left them. The Mary, Wolf [the captain], from London for Tortola, parted the 23rd, is also arrived here; both these vessels are leaky, and had very bad weather, southerly winds, and are afraid most of the fleet are separated, and will be under the disagreeable necessity of returning into port.11
Close followers of the story in the newspapers could be forgiven for concluding that the entire convoy was broken and scattered, but most of the ships were able to continue their voyage. Once the West Indies and Oporto convoys parted company, Duncan noted that only ‘twelve or thirteen’ ships were missing from those intended for Gibraltar. A week later, the convoy arrived off Faro on the southern coast of Portugal, and a cutter was sent in which brought back the news of the overwhelming defeat of the French and Spanish floating batteries, though at the same time Howe received the ominous intelligence that the formidable combined fleet was lying in wait.12
While the convoy continued towards Gibraltar, pushed on at long last by favourable winds, in the Bay of Gibraltar the weather was rapidly deteriorating, with fierce winds increasing to what was described as a hurricane, as Drinkwater narrated: ‘The wind blew fresh westerly on the 10th [October] ... After sun-set the gale increased, and at Midnight it blew a hurricane, with smart showers of rain. Signal-guns were repeatedly fired by the Combined Fleet; and from their continuance, and the violence of the wind, we concluded some of them were in distress. At day-break, a Spanish two-decker was discovered in a crippled state, close in shore off Orange’s bastion.’ With Howe’s fleet expected any moment, Cordoba had ordered his own ships ‘to lie at single anchor, and prepare to weigh at the shortest notice’.13 This was a disastrous decision, because Houdan-Deslandes said that during the night, ‘the storm ripped up tents, broke down huts and flooded the camp ... it was horrible; officers and soldiers without shelter or bread, drenched, demoralised, vessels without cables, without anchors ... a great number of little boats sunk, 26 gunboats capsized on the riverbank, their guns stuck in the sand, corpses washed down to the beach and tossed by the waves’.14
The hurricane had caused the French and Spanish warships to drag their anchors, and many were in distress and fired guns to call for help. Some were forced on to the Spanish shore or were badly damaged, but the San Miguel (St Michael) two-decker had been driven relatively unscathed right across the bay. This was one of the best and newest Spanish warships, the leading vessel in the attempted invasion of Britain three years earlier. Eliott noted how the warship surrendered:
Friday 11th October. S:W [wind] — blew a storm before day light, with heavy rain. The St. Michael Spanish 70 gun ship of war ... having been driven from her anchors, drove down under our walls: a few shot being fired at her she hoisted an English Jack over her Spanish ensign and surrendered; Brigadier Curtis thereupon went on board her and took possession sending the prisoners ashore to the amount of 700 men including officers, the rest of the combined fleet suffered much by the storm.15
That evening, in all this chaos, Howe’s convoy suddenly arrived, and Eliott noted in his diary that ‘the British Fleet and Convoy appeared; about 6 p.m. the Latona frigate arrived and anchored off Bonavista and four storeships [arrived] in the evening’.16 The long-awaited convoy had taken one month to sail from Spithead to Gibraltar, after suffering the sinking of the Royal George and the loss of part of the convoy in storms. It now came into view at an ideal time – just as the hurricane was subsiding and when the combined fleet was in disarray. Only a few vessels actually made it into the bay, as a midshipman on board HMS Cambridge described:
On th
e afternoon of the 11th we entered the Gut or Straits, formed in a line of battle a-head, the Buffalo and Panther going on before with the convoy. The wind, which till now had been to the westward, chopped round to the north, just as we got a-breast of the Bay, so that we were compelled to stand on a little farther to the eastward. About ten o’clock at night, the whole fleet brought to, and we amused ourselves with observing a very heavy cannonade which was this evening carrying on betwixt the rock and the lines. Next morning the 12th, we found ourselves rather farther to the eastward than desirable, having been drove thither by the current, which always sets in to the Mediterranean.17
This was incredibly disappointing to those watching from Gibraltar, because with contrary winds it would be difficult for the convoy to return from the Mediterranean. Captain Curtis sailed from Gibraltar to HMS Victory to acquaint Howe with a complete picture of the situation, but the French and Spanish fleet was working hard to make good the storm damage, and the next day was ready to sail. ‘About nine o’clock a.m. the Spanish Admiral made the signal for the Combined Fleets to weigh anchor,’ Drinkwater wrote,
and by one o’clock the whole were under way. At three, a French Rear-Admiral, which was the last of the rear division, cleared the Bay. Their number in all amounted to eighty sail ... When the Combined Fleet had cleared the Bay, they stood some time to the southward, and leaving a line-of-battle ship and two frigates to prevent the Panther [at Gibraltar] from joining her Admiral, drove with the current some leagues to the eastward. They then appeared to edge down towards the British Fleet, which was in close line of battle upon a wind, with their heads to the southward.18
A major naval battle was now anticipated, and because Howe’s fleet was significantly outnumbered, it could prove disastrous for Gibraltar. There was huge excitement in the French and Spanish camps, as Houdan-Deslandes related: ‘Nothing without doubt offered or will ever offer a more superb sight than the strong combined fleet with 46 warships of the line, leaving Algesiras in magnificent weather, under the gaze of the army of San Roque and the garrison of Gibraltar, from which it was only separated by this mountain, the object of such a great quarrel, which, at this moment, was firing ferociously on those vessels that were forced to approach its batteries.’ He then added: ‘We believed in the camp that the battle was inevitable; our comrades ... wanted to avenge the burning of the floating batteries through the capture or sinking of some enemy vessels. Princes, generals, the curious, everyone made their way to high vantage points where they could see the two fleets. The enemy were near Estepona. We saw them, but night made us lose sight of them.’19
By the time darkness fell, the two fleets had still not reached each other. ‘As our observations on the manoeuvres of the fleet were interrupted soon after sun-set,’ Drinkwater remarked, ‘we impatiently waited for the succeeding day to be spectators of the action, which was now considered as impossible to be avoided; and orders were therefore given for preparing several wards in the Navy Hospital for the reception of the wounded.’20 The piper John Macdonald of the 73rd still helped at the hospital and had himself been injured when bringing in a wounded soldier during the floating battery attack. He was one of many looking forward to watching this contest in view of Gibraltar: ‘A great concourse of people of all ranks and denominations assembled on the different eminences expecting a general engagement’.21 The Spanish prisoners-of-war from the St Michael, who were being guarded in their Windmill Hill camp by the Corsican Volunteers, were so overjoyed on seeing the two fleets ‘that they could not forebear expressing their ecstacies in so riotous a manner, as to call for some severity, to confine them within the limits of their camp’.22
At first light the next day, 14 October, there was incredulity on all sides that the two fleets were far apart, but after the initial shock, the opinion on Gibraltar was that the combined fleet had decided against an engagement, while Howe was right to avoid one, considering that his primary aim was to ensure that the convoy of supplies reached Gibraltar. This was the view of the midshipman on board the Cambridge:
we discovered the enemy’s fleet [on the 13th] ... They were close in with the Barbary shore, near the east end of the Gut. We immediately prepared for action, tacked, and stood to the southward, being close aboard of the Spanish shore, near the town of Marvella [Marbella]. They showed no inclination to come down to us, and it was out of our power to go to them; neither was it our duty, could we have done it, because we had not effected the purpose for which we came thither; and it would have been imprudent to leave that to the issue of an engagement, whilst it could be avoided.23
Commanded by the overly cautious Admiral Cordoba, who had already failed to support the attack by the floating batteries, the French and Spaniards did not take advantage of the overwhelming odds in their favour, but kept away from the smaller British fleet.
Over the next few days, while at the mercy of changeable winds, Howe’s fleet manoeuvred to ensure it was not caught at a disadvantage, while the larger, slower and more unwieldy combined fleet failed to engage. The convoy came into Gibraltar piecemeal, a few ships at a time, avoiding the enemy ships and gunboats. Stores and ammunition were landed, as well as reinforcements, most notably sixteen hundred men from the 25th and 59th regiments. The garrison also safely received three boxes containing £20,000 in gold and silver that Curtis brought back in a boat from the Victory.24 It would have been a valuable prize, but for all the efforts of the French and Spanish ships, and despite some near misses, only one transport ship, the Minerva, was captured, which was carrying the baggage, wives and children of the men of the 25th and 59th regiments. Drinkwater said that the last convoy ships to unload delivered that wretched news: ‘The missing vessel, they informed us, had been taken by the Enemy some days before, off Malaga; and having on board, the wives and baggage of the two regiments which were on board the Fleet, and were intended for our reinforcement, her capture greatly distressed those corps, and the Garrison heartily condoled with them.’25
Admiral Howe had now accomplished his mission and was preparing to sail for England, but first of all he dispatched the Tisiphone fireship with a further supply of powder collected from the fleet. Although the combined fleet was visible, the British fleet departed on the 19th, with Howe apparently refusing battle. Lieutenant Charles Wale of the 97th Regiment implied in a letter to his father that it did look as if he was running away:
The two Fleets are now going through the Straits at about 1½ league distant from each other. I am sorry to say our Fleet lead the way; however, Lord Howe knows what is best to be done. The Combined Fleets are upwards of ten sail superior to ours. But it is here supposed that our Fleet wish to avoid an action so near the enemy’s harbours, and wish to get them out into open sea, and there perhaps risk an engagement. There is this satisfaction for us, that their fleet is very badly manned. Ours was never better.26
Being dependent on the wind for both power and direction of sailing, large fleets needed room to manoeuvre in battles, and the Strait of Gibraltar was not ideal, as Captain Duncan of the Victory explained: ‘At 6 a.m. saw the enemy’s fleet. They were standing to the southward and we to the northward; [they] thus had the wind of us, and we found upon trial that the space between Europa and Ceuta was not sufficient to draw up our line.’ Instead, Duncan said, they continued through the Straits into the Atlantic until there was more room to manoeuvre, and the next day prepared for battle:
We were under an easy sail and hauled to the southward, in hope that the enemy would run right through and we might get the weather-gauge ... Our fleet was brought to, and formed a line ahead, with the wind upon the beam. The enemy kept bearing down upon us, but were so long in dressing their line that it was exactly sunset before a shot was fired. The action began in the van, and then the rear, and lastly in the centre; it ceased in the van and then commenced again there, and went through the line as at first ... the ships opposed to us kept up a heavy fire, but, being in the moonlight and at suc
h a distance, we received little or no damage.27
Major Henry Stanhope, a passenger on board HMS Courageuse, thought that ‘The combined fleet behaved in the most scandalous manner. They engaged us – with a superiority of 12 sail of the line, and continued firing for six hours without approaching ... It was not in Lord Howe’s power to continue the engagement, or to come nearer to the enemy, as he could not get windward of them.’28 Duncan’s ship, the Victory, had only minor damage and did not even fire a shot in what became known as the Battle of Cape Spartel. His account of the erratic battle was terse:
The English fleet consisted of 34 sail of the line, being 11 three-deckers and 23 of two decks. A return of their loss in the action gives 70 killed, 132 wounded. The combined fleet consisted of 46 sail of the line, being –
