“Death and slaughter continue to be our visitants,” wrote Samuel Ancell, a regimental clerk, in September 1781. “On every hand impending ruin hourly upon us, seemingly studiously meditating our overthrow.” Desertion and attempted desertion were common. In October, crewmen on a navy cutter plotted a mutiny with the intent of sailing to Algeciras. Eliott discovered the plot and jailed the ringleaders.14
In November, the Spanish finished new trenches and batteries on the isthmus closer to British lines. Eliott’s guns were ineffective in stopping them, so he chose another tactic. On the night of November 26, he sent 2,500 men across the lines to destroy the new batteries. In an hour, they succeeded. “The enemy,” Eliott reported, “after a scattering fire of short duration, gave way on all sides, and abandoned their stupendous works with great precipitation. . . . Many of the enemy were killed upon the spot.” His men returned to safety by 5 A.M. the next morning. Four were killed, twenty-five were wounded, and one was declared missing. They took twelve prisoners. Because of the dark, they couldn’t estimate the number of Spanish casualties.15
Drinkwater described the damage: “The principal magazine blew up with a tremendous explosion, throwing up vast pieces of timber, which, falling into the flames, added to the general conflagration. Although the enemy must have been early alarmed, not the smallest effort was made to save or avenge their works. The fugitives seemed to communicate a panic to the whole.”16
By the end of 1781, the British were again in distress. Not only were they running low on arms and men, but scurvy appeared. Two American rebels, held prisoner by the British, escaped to Algeciras, where they said Gibraltar was “devoured with the scurvy . . . but that of other articles of provision they have plenty, and flatter themselves that they shall soon receive a fresh supply.”17
The information was accurate. Six of Eliott’s boats successfully ran the blockade, sailed to Portugal, and returned in late February 1782 with supplies—and lemons. “The garrison grows daily more and more healthy,” Eliott said. By spring, Eliott’s scouting boats, allied deserters, and blockade-runners were bringing him intelligence that something different was happening in Algeciras. A French military engineer had had an idea.18
Jean-Claude-Éléonore le Michaud, Chevalier d’Arçon, had a passion for weapons. Although his father wanted him to become a priest, d’Arçon studied at the French royal engineering school. He had firsthand knowledge of sieges: During the Seven Years’ War, he was one of the besieged at Cassel, a French-held German town that fell in one of the war’s final European actions.19
In March 1780, d’Arçon, 47, was a colonel. Breaching Gibraltar’s defenses became d’Arçon’s personal challenge, and he made a proposal to Spain’s ambassador in France. Spain agreed the idea had merit. It sent for d’Arçon, and he arrived in Algeciras in July 1781.20
D’Arçon’s idea was to sail ten floating gun batteries close to the weakest spot in Gibraltar’s defenses, destroy it, and land an invasion force. Why wouldn’t the British destroy the floating batteries first? D’Arçon proposed using advanced technology so they would be “insubmergibles et incombustibles”—unsinkable and unburnable. The ships’ sides and enclosed decks would use timber a yard thick to repel cannonballs. Within the ship’s walls, d’Arçon implanted wet sand and cork. To protect against British red-hot shot, pump-driven water would keep the timber soaked. The ten batteries would have 152 heavy guns. With gunboats and land batteries, the allies would direct a total of 398 guns against a British position near the town defended by eighty-six.21
The allies began preparation. In June 1782, they erected large tents in Algeciras to shelter the men as they converted old merchant ships into the floating batteries. French admiral Guichen arrived in Algeciras with twelve ships and an additional four thousand French troops. In July, the Spanish fleet repositioned itself from the Atlantic, where it had captured eighteen ships of a British convoy headed to Canada.22
By mid-August, the allies had forty-seven warships, forty gunboats with heavy artillery, three hundred troop landing ships, and scores of frigates, xebeques, gallies, and other boats—in addition to d’Arçon’s ten-ship armada. More than 27,000 Spanish and 4,000 French soldiers manned gun batteries or waited to land on the Gibraltar beach. Altogether, 100,000 men opposed Eliott’s garrison of no more than 7,500 men, of whom four hundred were hospitalized and unable to fight. To lead the massive and complex operation, the allies chose a man who was comfortable wearing both uniforms: the victor at Minorca, Crillon.23
Crillon arrived on August 15, and four days later announced his arrival to Eliott. He wrote about “the pleasure to which I look forward to becoming your friend, after I shall have learned to render myself worthy of the honor by facing you as an enemy.” He then made a gesture: “I know you live entirely upon vegetables,” and he offered to provide some if Eliott would tell him what he preferred. Eliott politely declined.24
Crillon and his naval counterpart, the Spanish admiral, Don Juan de Córdoba, were skeptical that d’Arçon’s batteries would work. “You have a fatherly love for your batteries, and are only anxious for their preservation,” Crillon told d’Arçon. “Should the enemy attempt to take possession of them, I will burn them before his [the enemy’s] face.” To cover himself, Crillon wrote Madrid. He pledged to support d’Arçon “by every means,” and if the allies succeeded, he would give “all the glory of this feat of arms” to him. But if the operation failed, “no reproaches can be made to me, since I have taken no part in the project.”25
Except for the date, the attack was now common knowledge. Some eighty thousand spectators lined the hills. The Spanish built a grandstand for dignitaries.
Eliott didn’t wait for the allies. On September 8, he began his own offensive with a steadily escalating bombardment of the allied position on the north side of the isthmus. “The effect of the red-hot shot and carcasses [incendiary bombs] exceeded our most sanguine expectations,” Drinkwater said.26
The attack forced Crillon’s hand. Concerned that the British would destroy the isthmus batteries, Crillon “determined to avoid the blow . . . by opening his batteries, even in their unfinished state.” He also had received intelligence that another British relief fleet would arrive soon. But D’Arçon said the batteries needed more testing, at least a trial run. The man named to command the ten batteries, Rear Admiral Bonaventura Moreno, also wanted to delay. Crillon knew Moreno well, because he had led the navy’s blockade at Minorca. “If you do not proceed to an instant attack, you are a man devoid of honor,” Crillon replied.27
The attack began around 9 A.M. on September 13.
At first, the attack went well for the allies, despite currents that caused most of the batteries to anchor out of position. The British fired and “to our great astonishment, we found they [balls] rebounded from their sides and roofs,” Ancell said. “The fire was returned on our part without intermission, and equally maintained by the foe.”28
The allied bombardment from sea and land took its toll. Ancell saw “a soldier before me, lying on the ground, and his head somewhat raised, and supported on his elbows. I ran to him, imagining the man had life, and lifted him up, when such a sight was displayed to my view that I think I never shall forget—a 26-pound ball had gone through his body, and his entrails, as they hung out from the orifice, were of a most disagreeable resemblance.”29
At this point, the British fired only cold shot; artillerymen were still heating up the red-hots. None would be fired until noon, and their full use wouldn’t begin for two hours after that. But by late afternoon, the red-hot shot took hold. A fire began on the floating battery d’Arçon was aboard, and Córdoba sent an oared boat to bring him back to land. Then Moreno’s flagship battery was afire, and he was evacuated. Another battery was helpless on a sandbar. By 7 P.M., crewmen were shooting few of the batteries’ cannons.30
“The continual discharge of red hot balls kept up by us was such as rendered all the precautions taken by the enemy . . . of no effect, fo
r the balls lodging in their sides, in length of time, spread the fire throughout,” Ancell said.31
To Guichen’s and other admirals’ frustration, Córdoba refused to send reinforcements, because, a Spanish newspaper said later, sending them “could not possibly be carried into execution on account of the rise of the wind and sea.” The reporter described what happened overnight and into daylight hours of the 14th: “A constant and heavy fire from all the enemy’s batteries . . . were more numerous than we imagined.” The red-hot balls, by burying themselves in the batteries’ sides, “spread the fire throughout.” Moreno’s ship “began to burn with such violence as made it impossible to save her. . . . All the other batteries began to be nearly in the same situation.” Boats sent to rescue battery crews turned back due to “the enemy’s dreadful fire of grape shot . . . The enemy sunk several of the small craft.” Later, when it was clear the batteries couldn’t function any longer, British gunboats began rescuing the crewmen, “making prisoners of all the troops that remained in the floating batteries.” By mid-morning, “the floating batteries blew up one after the other except three, which burnt to the water’s edge.”32
The British gunboat commander, who had fired on the allied rescue boats because he thought they were reinforcements, described the “dreadful” scene after the allies left the battery crews “to our mercy, or to the flames.” There were “men crying from amidst the flames, some upon pieces of wood in the water, others appear in the ships where the fire had as yet made but little progress, all expressing, by speech and gesture, the deepest distress and all imploring assistance, formed a spectacle of horror not easily to be described.” He saved 357 men. All told, 1,500 allied soldiers and sailors drowned, were killed or wounded, or went missing during the battle. Fifteen British soldiers died; sixty-eight were wounded.33
“Everything is lost and through my fault,” d’Arçon wrote a friend. (Later, he decided it wasn’t his fault and wrote a defense of his actions.) The British stopped the invasion, but the siege and bombardment continued. Eliott needed urgent relief.34
The third relief expedition was on its way, led by a failed admiral who, as a friend said, “had not enjoyed the smiles” of George III and his government.35
Richard Howe, 56, was London-born, but spent three of his early years in Barbados, where his father was governor. His mother was a member of George III’s household. Howe’s navy career crisscrossed the Atlantic, from Portugal to the Caribbean, South America (as far as Cape Horn) to Africa, the North Sea to North America. Concurrently, he had a long Parliamentary career and, as an admiral, sought diplomatic assignments.
Howe’s contemporaries acknowledged his personal courage, even as they described him as introverted and inarticulate. “Lord Howe’s ideas were commonly either so ill-conceived by himself, or so darkly and ambiguously expressed, that it was by no means easy to comprehend his precise meaning,” one MP said. Another contemporary said Howe had “a shyness and awkwardness in his manner, which to a stranger at first sight gave a rather unfavorable impression.” A friend conceded Howe’s “very peculiar manner of explaining himself,” but explained that “his mind was always clear, prompt, and willing to communicate with every person who consulted him, and who could get rid of the apparent coldness of his manner.” Others disagreed. Walpole talked about Howe’s “want of sense,” and a French diplomat said he was “very muddled.”36
Howe was down-to-earth and unflamboyant. “We cannot make a rake of Lord Howe, tho’ we have got him to a supper party and kept him there ’til one,” said a general who attempted to get Howe to enjoy himself. “Pains were taken to get him to play vingt-et-un, but he is as virtuous as yourself and could not be prevailed upon.”37
Howe’s men were fond of him and nicknamed him “Black Dick,” for both his dark complexion and his manner. One crewman said Howe would “go below after an action and talk to every wounded man, sitting by the sides of their cradles, and constantly ordering his livestock and wines to be applied to their use at the discretion of the surgeon, and at all times for the sick on board.” Another friend said Howe was “most deservedly popular with seamen” despite “no spice of the tar in his personal behavior anywhere.”38
Horatio Nelson complimented Howe to his face as “the first and greatest sea-officer the world has ever produced.” Privately, Nelson said he “certainly is a great officer in the management of a fleet, but that is all.”39
In 1776, London sent Howe and his younger brother, General William Howe, to be the respective commanders-in-chief for the navy and army in North America. At their request, they were vested with powers to negotiate with the rebels and reach a settlement. Although they met with Franklin and John Adams, the negotiations never began: The rebels already had declared independence, and they demanded recognition, not reconciliation. This the Howes “could not accept.”40
As the war escalated, and rebel privateers began seizing British ships, the Howes lost their political support. After the Saratoga debacle, they asked to be relieved. Richard returned to England in October 1778. For three and a half years, the government and the navy ignored him. Then, in March 1782, the government fell. A month later, the new ministry promoted Howe to full admiral and named him commander of the Channel fleet.
Over the summer, the cabinet debated whether it was worth the risk to send Howe with a relief expedition to Gibraltar. Howe’s absence could expose England to invasion, and there was no certainty that his fleet could get through safely. In late August, the government reached its conclusion: Send Howe.
Between Howe and Gibraltar were Córdoba and the allied fleet. Córdoba, 76, had a distinguished record, although like most Spanish admirals, he preferred defensive tactics. He had fought Algerians, Austrians, and the English, serving in Italy, both Americas, and North Africa. He was co-commander of an allied fleet that was to invade England in 1779, but bad weather and a typhus outbreak in the fleet ended the plan. The next year, Córdoba became a national hero by capturing a fifty-five-ship British convoy. He did it again in 1781, capturing twenty-four more ships. Córdoba’s name lives on—in Alaska, where a Spanish explorer named the city of Cordova after him.41
Howe’s thirty-five warships and eight frigates left England on September 11, 1782, escorting 130 transports. Córdoba’s allied fleet sailed from Cádiz to find Howe, but failed. One day before Howe reached Gibraltar, high winds damaged four of Córdoba’s ships in Gibraltar Bay. Howe’s convoy rode out the storm. On October 11, because of bad nighttime visibility, continuing winds, and inattention, all but a frigate and four supply ships missed Gibraltar and sailed past it into the Mediterranean.42
Again Córdoba chased Howe, but the winds favored the British. The convoy reached Gibraltar over three days, followed by Howe himself on October 18. Howe would later tell a friend that his relief and maneuvers at Gibraltar were “the greatest he had ever performed, and . . . the only one of which he claimed the sole merit to himself.”43
He left the next day with his warships for England, but Córdoba hadn’t given up the chase. On October 20, off Cape Spartel, Africa’s Atlantic entrance to the Gibraltar strait, Córdoba’s forty-three warships (including his French ally Guichen) sighted Howe’s fleet. The enemies fought for several hours, and each side lost about sixty men. Then they parted, but who sailed away first became a debate. Córdoba described the battle as a victory in which the defeated Howe was able to flee the Spanish and French only because the British ships, with their coppered bottoms, were faster. Howe disagreed. He said he would have fought on, but Córdoba was the one who refused close action.44
A French captain later praised Howe’s expedition. “There were neither separations, nor collisions, nor casualties; and there occurred none of those events so frequent in the experiences of a squadron which often oblige admirals to take a course wholly contrary to the end they have in view. . . . If it is just to submit that Lord Howe displayed the highest talents, it should be added that he had in his hands excellent instruments.”45
The encounter with Howe was Guichen’s last action. He had been in the French navy for fifty-two years. He died in France a little more than seven years later.
Back in Gibraltar, the allies gradually decreased their bombardment, although in January 1783, eighteen British soldiers were killed, and British and allied gunboats fought on January 29. Eliott ignored the peace rumors. When he saw his garrison relaxing, he prohibited entertainment.46
But peace was near. The British estimated that during the siege’s three years and seven months, their enemy suffered nearly 3,800 killed or missing. The British lost more men from disease than from enemy shells: 1,036 from illness versus 471 killed or disabled in action. Another forty-three deserted.47
On February 5, 1783, Crillon sent Eliott a message that the allies had lifted the siege. The diplomats had signed a preliminary peace treaty in Paris. When, a month later, Eliott confirmed the peace with a dispatch from a British frigate, he and Crillon agreed to meet. Crillon and his aides rode into Gibraltar on March 12. When he and Eliott saw each other, Drinkwater said, “both instantly dismounted and embraced. When the salutations were over, they conversed about a half an hour, and then returned to their respective commands.” Eleven days later, Eliott dined with Crillon within Spanish lines. At month’s end, Eliott gave Crillon a tour of Gibraltar. “Gentlemen,” Crillon told Eliott’s staff, “I would rather see you here as friends than on your batteries as enemies, where you never spared me.”48
Gibraltar destroyed Crillon’s reputation. It was the last of his sixty-eight battles and twenty-two sieges. He died in Madrid in 1796. Unlike Crillon, D’Arçon wasn’t blamed for the debacle. He wrote an account of the siege, as well as a military engineering book. In the early 1790s, he fought with the French revolutionary army, until ill health forced him to resign. He then became a professor of fortification at a military college. In 1799, Napoleon appointed him to the senate. He died a year later near Paris.
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