Gibraltar

by Roy Adkins

  In spite of their plight, the crews fought on, and Ancell thought he knew why:

  previous to the attack, an aid-de-camp to the Duc de Crillon was sent aboard each vessel, who after examining her condition, represented to the crew the glorious undertaking they were about to launch into, and promising in the King’s name, the highest regard for their bravery. Each soldier and sailor was to be exempt from all further service, to have a gratuity of fifty dollars and full pay for the remainder of his life. The widows and children of the killed were to enjoy the same benefit.24

  What nobody realised was that the fierce bombardment was actually weakening the structure of the floating batteries, preparing the way for red-hot shot to penetrate. From around midday, red-hot shot was at last available – relatively few at first, but a plentiful supply after another hour. The long distance to the floating batteries was now an advantage, because the guns needed to be elevated, with the barrels pointing upwards, to reach their target. This allowed the gunners to tip the red-hot shot down the muzzle and dispense with a wet wad to hold it in place. They soon learned that they could also abandon the wet wad between the cartridge and the shot. Instead, they simply loaded the gunpowder cartridge in the barrel, aimed the gun and tipped in the red-hot shot, which ignited the cartridge and fired the gun. This method produced an extremely fast rate of fire, such that the furnaces could not keep up with demand. Makeshift methods were devised, and Drinkwater described shot being heated ‘by piling them in a corner of some old house adjoining the batteries ... and surrounding them with faggots, pieces of timber, and small-coal. By those means, the artificers were enabled to supply the Artillery with a constant succession for the ordnance.’25

  The way the red-hot shot was carried from the furnaces to the guns now proved too slow, and Ancell said that while the blacksmiths among the artificers were busy at the forges heating the shot, ‘others were allotted to carry the blazing balls on an iron instrument made for that purpose, but as these did not furnish sufficient [shot] for the vast supply required at the batteries, wheel-barrows were procured, lined with wet sand, and half a dozen thirty-two pound balls thrown into each’.26 Because they were wooden wheelbarrows, the wet sand was essential to stop them catching fire. Gradually, the supply of red-hot shot increased to such an extent that a rate of fire was achieved similar to that for cold shot. On board the floating batteries, conditions had improved because the sea was now calmer, but the volleys of red-hot shot were a shock to the crews, because they had been told it would be slow and inaccurate. Lindsay even heard that the crews ‘were all made to believe that we could not fire above one red shot in an hour from a gun, and that it was against the rules of war’.27

  The gunners were being struck down by shot coming in from the Spanish land batteries, but instead of being distracted and turning some of their guns to retaliate, Drinkwater said that they increased their bombardment of the floating batteries: ‘A fire, more tremendous if possible than ever, was therefore directed from the Garrison. Incessant showers of hot balls, carcasses, and shells of every species, flew from all quarters, and as the masts of several of the ships were shot away, and the rigging of all in great confusion, our hopes of a favourable and speedy decision began to revive.’ Although they managed to destroy some of the masts and rigging, Drinkwater gloomily thought that they were achieving little else: ‘For some hours, the attack and defence were so equally well supported, as scarcely to admit any appearance of superiority in the cannonade on either side. The wonderful construction of the ships seemed to bid defiance to the powers of the heaviest ordnance.’28

  William Green told his son-in-law Nicolls that in the early afternoon he became aware of smoke seeping from some of the floating batteries: ‘we could perceive some of them, by the issues of smoke, [and they] seemed internally to be on fire, and as if some lurking embryos of fire were labouring to burst forth’.29 With the Pastora and Talla Piedra taking the brunt of the bombardment, conditions on board were worse than anyone on Gibraltar imagined. According to Houdan-Deslandes, a message was sent from the Talla Piedra to the French camp behind the Lines: ‘The Prince of Nassau has asked for another captain and 25 soldiers to replace the dead and wounded. He has added, so we were told, that the enemy has sent him a great deal of red-hot shot, but that they have easily extinguished the fires.’ The soldiers who delivered the message may well have been responsible for the subsequent speculation: ‘the rumour was spreading in the Spanish camp that the Pastora had lost an infinite number of people, that fire had taken hold several times and that they hadn’t managed to completely extinguish it, and Moreno had come to inform the Comte d’Artois of these disasters’.30

  On Gibraltar, the effort to keep the guns firing at such a rate, hour after hour in the intense summer sunshine, was utterly exhausting, and by late afternoon the men were parched, hungry and thoroughly blackened by the dirty gunpowder smoke. Ancell described their predicament:

  The fatigue attending conveyance of shot to the cannon was very great, from the heat which issued from such large bodies of hot iron, together with wheeling the barrows up the ascent to the line wall. What with the arduousness of the work, the warmth of the weather, the scorching heat of the furnaces, forges, and piles of blazing balls, besides the clouds of smoke from the ordnance, a universal thirst prevailed, and a drink of water (which was all the allowance for the day) could scarcely be procured.31

  Lindsay was also worried that the huge combined fleet would shortly be able to join in: ‘It occurred to many that our artillery-men must soon be exhausted with mere bodily fatigue, and now that the wind had subsided to a breeze, and the sea was smooth, their whole train of gun and mortar-boats, and all their ships of war, were every hour expected ... the men [gunners] declared that had they but a short refreshment, they could stand to the guns for eight and forty hours, whatever might be apprehended.’ At this point, Eliott decided to bring in a hundred men from the Marine Brigade. Being naval seamen, they were accustomed to working guns, and so it did not take long to show them how to deal with the red-hot shot, while the artillerymen were able to have ‘a draught of water from the fountain, and such salt provisions as could be brought’.32

  No support came to the floating batteries from the French and Spanish fleet, though it could easily have upset the balance of the battle. One reason was that the floating batteries had been loaded with provisions, including plentiful brandy and wine, intended to last ten to twelve days, and the plan was for the bombardment of Gibraltar’s defences to take at least a week, with more ammunition supplied by boat if the garrison did not surrender within twenty-four hours.33 But according to d’Arçon, they should have been supported from the outset by the gunboats and mortar boats, and although the wind did strengthen through the day, causing a swell, he felt that conditions were perfectly adequate: ‘thirty gunboats, which were supposed to operate together, behind the shelter of the floating batteries, never appeared. Thirty mortar boats were also supposed to operate in the rear, on the flanks of the attack. Their purpose was (at the same time as all the mortars on land) not to let the enemy have one moment of safety ... it had been asked for in writing, agreed and promised.’34

  He was not alone in bemoaning the lack of support. Houdan-Deslandes was equally perplexed: ‘The galiots, the mortar boats, the gunboats that were supposed to help the floating batteries, and which should have added their firing to this powerful attack, made no move at all. Only one galiot fired. Nobody questions ... why all the armed ships didn’t advance at the same time as the floating batteries, but remained immobile.’35

  At long last the garrison gunners began to see some results for all their exertions, as Lindsay explained:

  A little before dark, the enemy hoisted a chequered flag, which inspired some hopes that all might not be quite so well with them on board. Some lucky shot entering their embrasures, were heard to ring against their cannon, and several ten-inch shells, sent with a fortunate horizontal directi
on from our howitzers were seen to enter in the same manner, and some at last stick in their sides, and afterwards explode. A considerable and increasing smoke was seen to issue from the vessel of their admiral [Pastora], but was soon extinguished.36

  The smouldering fire was in fact far from extinguished, and Houdan-Deslandes later learned that conditions were intolerable on board the two floating batteries closest to the Rock:

  Already, fire took hold eleven times in the Talla Piedra, and perhaps the Pastora as well. After the greatest efforts of valour, they succeeded in extinguishing it in several places. But the red-hot shot lodged in the thick side of the vessel ... starting a fire inside that was not suspected, that spread without being noticed, and only showed when it had become impossible to extinguish. More than 100 men have been killed on board the Pastora. The Talla Piedra has lost as many.37

  On board the Pastora and Talla Piedra, Walter Gordon said, ‘Men were perceived to be using fire engines, and pouring water into the holes, endeavouring to extinguish the fire; this was found to be the case repeatedly during the day.’38

  At around eight in the evening of Friday the 13th, firing from virtually all of the floating batteries stopped, but the gunners on the Rock never let up. It was now decided that the infantry soldiers, who had been waiting all day, should get some rest. As Lindsay said, they would need to put up a determined resistance once the final assault came, because ‘the Duc de Crillon had often publicly declared, that one half of his army should be sacrificed, were it necessary ... and that in such a case, no quarter should be given to the garrison’.39 Everyone was apprehensive, as there were still many uncertainties. They had been attacked by the floating batteries and suffered a furious barrage from the guns on the Lines, but there had been no ground assault from the isthmus, no attempted invasions by troops in boats, and the powerful combined French and Spanish fleet had remained at anchor all day. What was the French and Spanish plan, and what would they do next?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  EXPLOSION

  In the evening darkness, Houdan-Deslandes climbed to the top of a signal tower near the French camp to try to make out what was happening, in the hopes that the fires he had heard about on board the floating batteries were extinguished. Flashes of guns firing could be seen, but as far as he was concerned, ‘everything was calm and appeared to have been so for a long time. The floating batteries were hardly firing, but I was far from suspecting the reason. I returned to camp. I went towards my tent, and I said adieu to one of my friends.’ The news he then received was shocking: ‘Another heard me, called me, and told me everything was lost. He advised me that Monsieur de la Tour had retreated from the French floating battery that was being consumed by a fire which was impossible to put out, that Monsieur du Berard had lost an arm, and that Monsieur de Myring had a broken thigh.’1

  When it was obvious that fires had taken hold in two of the floating batteries, with no significant breach in Gibraltar’s defences, Admiral Moreno had sent word to Admiral Cordoba. As later recorded by the Duc de Crillon, at a council-of-war he and the Prince of Nassau then asked Cordoba to send frigates from the combined fleet ‘to try to tow some floating batteries stuck on sandbanks ... which the enemy hadn’t been able to reach with gunfire. The admiral refused them, saying it would expose the frigates to the dangers of being burned, with the certainty of not bringing back anything.’2 On board the Talla Piedra and Pastora, the heat and smoke became so bad that rockets were fired in distress. At that moment Crillon decided to issue orders to send boats to take the men off the floating batteries, and he also ordered all of them to be set alight so that the British could not capture any. Because Cordoba was refusing to tow away the floating batteries that were unscathed – the majority of them – Crillon had no other option.

  While the council-of-war was still taking place, the reinforcements that had been earlier requested by the Prince of Nassau were still trying to reach the floating batteries – a dangerous undertaking because the garrison was constantly firing shells and red-hot shot. Eighty men were crammed in one boat, which was overturned by a shot as they reached the Talla Piedra. Most of the men drowned, while others managed to cling to wreckage. By now, d’Arçon had abandoned the Talla Piedra so that he himself could go to Cordoba’s flagship to beg for help, but it was too late: ‘He [d’Arçon] hurried to ask for help from the first flagship, from where they sent him to the General of the Land Forces, who had to decide on everything, they said, with the Commander of the Batteries. He rushed there. He couldn’t find anyone, but learned that the order had been given – and set in train – to set fire to all the [floating] batteries.’3

  Finding it too difficult to snatch some sleep, Captain Lindsay was soon back on the Line Wall, just as the men clinging to the wreckage of their boat were detected: ‘About eleven at night a boat was seen approaching to the shore, which, on its coming nearer, was discovered to be floating on its side, with twelve French soldiers and a Spanish officer upon it. The assistance they implored was sent to them, and they were received into the garrison.’ This windfall of prisoners was interrogated and provided the first real information:

  We learnt that the slaughter of the enemy on board had been so great, that a reinforcement had been necessary; that they had been volunteers for that purpose, and had almost reached the vessel they were destined for, which was manned entirely by the French, when a shot from the garrison overset the boat, which had fourscore men on board; that they had floated above four hours in the water ... that the tide had driven them beneath our walls.4

  Despite their own predicament, Lindsay said that these prisoners were adamant the garrison could not hold out: ‘if we thought to destroy the battering ships by our artillery, or by fire, we might spare ourselves the trouble of making the attempt; that whatever numbers we might kill on board ... their whole army and their fleet would eagerly crowd to supply the places of the slain, well knowing that it could not require any great length of time to make a sufficient breach’. He thought that these were not the words of bravado or defiance, but ‘nothing more than the creed with which the enemy were universally inspired’.5 The officers on board the floating batteries, not sharing the same enthusiasm, were the first to take advantage of the rescue boats. The Pastora and Talla Piedra were smouldering fiercely, and red-hot shot seems to have caused fires in a few other floating batteries, while the rest were being deliberately set on fire, with assurances given to the crews that further boats would rescue them in time.6

  It was now approaching midnight, and in the French camp Houdan-Deslandes watched the disaster unfolding: ‘We glanced towards the floating batteries. Two balls of fire erupted and terrified us. All our friends got up. Everyone looked eagerly towards these awful and terrible objects. Soldiers returned to the camp, all were still appalled at the dangers they had just run. We questioned them. “Two floating batteries are burning,” they said, “ours [Talla Piedra] and that of Moreno.”’7 These were the ones closest to the King’s Bastion, and they were no longer smouldering but completely ablaze. Drinkwater saw the fire spread: ‘About an hour after midnight [on the 14th], the battering-ship which had suffered the greatest injury, and which had been frequently on fire the preceding day, was completely in flames, and by two o’clock, she appeared as one continued blaze from stem to stern. The ship to the southward [Pastora] was also on fire, but did not burn with so much rapidity.’8

  To Colonel Picton, the fire consuming the Pastora ‘exhibited one of the most magnificent illuminations that the most fertile imagination could form an idea of, and resembled, from its apparent symmetry and uniformity, a most perfect artificial firework’. As the fire increased, so did the dramatic scene: ‘her guns, which had been left loaded, went off irregularly, and the flames were almost immediately after seen blazing. At the same instant, out of all the different ports and the entire roof or covering over the gun decks, seemed to be one continued sheet of vivid fire, from stem to stern.’9
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br />   Several more floating batteries were now obviously on fire, and their crews were in a state of panic, especially as few could swim. ‘We could plainly perceive the ships were on fire,’ one soldier said; ‘soon after we heard violent screamings on board them, rockets thrown up, and innumerable boats from the fleet coming to their assistance.’10 Lindsay also heard ‘the shrieks of horror, of agony, and despair, rendered more striking from the perfect stillness of the night, the scene illuminated to a distance and at hand as bright as day, closed in the back-ground with the rugged declivity of Gibraltar, towering to the sky’.11 Houdan-Deslandes and his fellow officers could only watch helplessly, after being so confident of glorious victory: ‘The shot and shells were thundering towards these machines that the fire was consuming. The boats of several vessels advanced towards the storm of shot, going to look for and rescue the crews. We were all at once moved, desperate, indignant. We abandoned ourselves to our blackest thoughts. We cried for our brave and unlucky soldiers who were trapped in these burning prisons.’12

  Their despondency was in marked contrast to the mood of the exhausted, smoke-blackened soldiers on the Rock, who had a new hope that they might prevail. As Drinkwater said, ‘the approaching day now promised us one of the completest defensive victories on record’.13 Walter Gordon was trying to snatch some sleep after an arduous session at the guns, when ‘a short time after, one of my companions came to the place where I lay, pulled me by the arm and woke me with these words, “get up, says he, and behold the most glorious sight ever was to be beheld, the floating batteries are at last done for. You’ll see the French and Spaniards flying in the air like rooks.” Though no doubt their defeat was a joyful sight, yet I confess their melancholy fate gave me no pleasure.’14