1790 – Business, Bribes and Brutality

O’Hara, Harmwood and Jervis – Inglefield and Tucker

In 1790 Sir Robert Boyd, a loyal and hard working second in command who had already been Governor in 1776 eventually took over from Elliot. It may have made little difference to life in the Garrison but the end of the Siege – and the attendant Treaty of Versailles in 1783 that had finally ended the European involvement in the American War of Independence - had shifted Gibraltar’s main role in British affairs. The increase in trade with the east following the loss of the American colonies forced a change in Gibraltar’s role from fortress to naval station.

Late 19th century French map of Gibraltar. Among other things the Map highlights the following: The gardens and cemetery in North Front, Boyd's and Eliott's residences, a first mention of Irish Town, King's Bastion, Windmills in Windmill Hill, the remnants of Hardy Town and the Nun's Well  

( Barbie du Bocage and Jean Denis )   LINK

Numerous medals were struck several years after the Siege to commemorate various aspects of the event. The one shown on the left was given to the Hanoverian troops by Eliott.

The one on the right was issued to the artillery men who had handled the guns that fired the red hot cannonballs. The Pastora, Captained by Admiral Morino was the second floating battery to run into trouble after the Talla de Piedra.

One very obvious sign of this change of priorities was the appointment in 1793 of Captain Harry Harmwood as the first Commissioner of the Navy in Gibraltar. It was his job to oversee both the dockyard and the all important navy stores. He was given a fine house in the Southern part of the Rock overlooking Rosia Bay. It was called Mount Pleasant - soon shortened to the 'Mount' - and would eventually become the official residence of the Admiral of the Fleet in Gibraltar.

'The Mount' - official residence of the first Commissioner of the Navy and later that of the Admiral of the Fleet in Gibraltar.

According to a visitor, Cooper Willyams, it was 'by far the most picturesque place on the Rock. The Gardens were laid out in great taste . . . a delightful retreat from the extreme heat which prevails during the greater part of the year.' In actual fact the magnificent panoramas from the house must have been the cause of much irritation to the various Commissioners who lived there. It had - and still has - a perfect view of Cabrita Point, just to left of Algeciras where the Spaniards had a signal station that gave them intelligence on the movement of ships coming into Gibraltar.

As these ships approached the Bay they were frequently becalmed and were set upon and more often than not taken by Spanish gunboats that relied on oars rather than sails. They were even known to have taken on British battle ships of the line to great advantage.

  

Late nineteenth century map showing Cape Carnero (J.N. Bellin)   LINK

Even optimistic stalwarts such as the British Admiral Lord St Vincent - who was living in Gibraltar at the time - were getting worried.

Admiral John Jervis, Earl of St Vincent

In a letter dated 1799 to Lord Spenser, the first Lord of the Admiralty, St Vincent reminded his boss that things had been going downhill in Gibraltar for the last few years and that 'the Spanish Gunboats having been held up as most formidable machines, it is not an easy matter to persuade any person to face them'.

Late 18th century engraving showing the signal tower at Cabrita Point - Punta Carnero. It was known as La Torre de las Cuatro Esquinas and was eventually destroyed in 1939. The fortress to the left of the tower is Algeciras LINK

It was indicative of the significance of the appointment of a Commissioner on the Rock that there were only five of them in the whole of the Royal Navy. Apart from Harmwood in Gibraltar the others were stationed in Portsmouth, Chatham and Plymouth in England and Halifax in Nova Scotia. Gibraltar being Gibraltar none of this seems to have had much effect on the efficiency of the Rock as a supply depot for the Royal Navy.

Five years after Harmwood’s appointment, St Vincent - who for health reasons had taken up residence in Rosia House in Gibraltar, mentions his preference for using Sardinia as a base for resupplying his ships. It was, he wrote, ‘a seasonable relief’ as against Gibraltar which was only capable of supplying them with chickens. Gibraltar was, he also wrote, 'without a fathom of rope, yard of canvass, foot of oak or elm plank, board or log to saw them out of; we have not a bit of iron but what we draw out of condemned masts and yards, nor the smallest piece of fir plank, board or quarter stuff.' Not exactly a vote of confidence on Harmwood. Later St. Vincent would indirectly accuse him of corrupt practices of which Harmwood was almost certainly involved in.

Miniature of Captain Harry Harmwood, first Commissioner of the Navy in Gibraltar.

Saumarez was yet another British sailor associated – perhaps rather indirectly – with the history of the Rock. His greatest triumph was during the Battle of Algeciras in 1801 which was witnessed by Sarah Fyer, the seventeen year old daughter of Gibraltar’s chief engineer and as described elsewhere in this history.

Vice-Admiral James de Saumarez - Could that be the Rock of Gibraltar behind him?  (Edwin Williams)

The first installment of The Battle of the Bay of Algeciras – A view from the Spanish side. The civilian population of Gibraltar – the non-British ones that is – presented Saumarez with a sword in honour of his eventual triumph. (William Clarkson Stanfield) 

One of Saumarez' subordinates was Jahleel Brenton. His particular own claim to fame included the fact that it was he who had presented Sarah Fryer with Saumarez' 'handsome fish slice.' He was also captain aboard the HMS Caesar with Saumarez during the disastrous first encounter of the Battle of Algeciras. Shortly after the engagement he was given command of HMS Speedy a 14-gun brig of the Royal Navy and seems to have spent most of his time in Gibraltar during the Peninsular War chasing small French and Spanish privateers in and out of the Straits of Gibraltar.

Jahleel Brenton, Master and Commander (Smith of Barbados)

The Speedy eventually become a sort of mascot to the British residents who seem to have followed her activities with obsessive interest. On one occasion the Speedy was attacked by Spanish gunboats while she lay becalmed waiting for convoy off the Rock. Although the boat was badly damaged and the crew suffered several casualties, the boat managed to drive them off – with absolutely no help from the guns of the fortress.

HMS Speedy attacked by gunboats just off Gibraltar (Engraving by Wells)

Once ashore the Brenton stormed off to the Convent with a furious complaint about the lack of support he had received. He might have saved his breath; the Governor had come to an agreement with his opposite number in Algeciras that if the gunboats refrained from firing on the town neither would he order his batteries to fire on them.

On another occasion the Speedy chased three small Spanish boats through the Gut and drove them ashore near Trafalgar. When Brenton sent in a party to destroy their cargo he was amazed to find that one of them was laden with hardware of British manufacture, this despite the fact that the two countries were at war. The goods had almost certainly entered Spain via Gibraltar.

The Battle of the Bay of Algeciras

Jahleel Brenton was quite a good artis. He made a series of 5 drawings of the Battle which were later reproduced as engravings. The proceeds were given to the dependents of those who lost their lives in the battle. The first picture probably represents the refitting of Royal Navy ships in Gibraltar before the second engagement. The second one probably depicts what Sarah Fyer meant by those 'illuminations'  (See LINK ) 

One of the main reasons for the lack of success of those newly appointed commissioners was because of those chain of command problems which are inherent in military bureaucracy. Several years into the system, the new commissioner, Captain John Nicholson Inglefield ran into trouble with his nominal inferior Lord William Stewart, captain of a ship that had been taken during the Battle of the Nile. The ship caused Inglefield endless trouble because she had been mistakenly listed as a British ship-of-the-line whereas in fact her real destination was to be converted into a hulk. To make matters worse the ship’s anchors were stolen and Inglefield held Stewart responsible. The whole thing came to a head when the good captain insisted that he was neither responsible for the lost anchors nor was he answerable to Inglefield.

Captain John Nicholson Inglefield ( Samuel Shelley )

Part of the fault, of course lay with Inglefield. According to Admiral St. Vincent he was ‘an honest man, and sufficiently intelligent, but pompous, flowery, indolent, and wrapped up in official forms, stay-tape, and buckram’. In fact honest enough to warrant a further comment; it seems that he had managed to correct many of the ‘gross and abominable abuses and peculations practiced under his predecessors.’ In other words, corruption in high places continued to be the norm in Gibraltar just as it had in the past.

Shortly before his appointment as Commissioner Captain John Nicholson Inglefield captained a ship called the Centaur which sank during a hurricane in the West Indies. Six hundred men were lost but eleven, including Inglefield, managed to escape aboard the pinnace. Inglefield is in there somewhere in this print by James Northcote. Ingelfield, incidentally was also one of the officers involved in the Bounty Mutiny Court Martial.

St Vincent, of course, seems to have forgotten his own less than above board dealings on the Rock. The agent victualler for the Royal Navy in Gibraltar – an appointment that was tantamount to being given permission to print one’s own money – was Jedediah Stephens Tucker, a friend of St. Vincent and later his private secretary. The excuse was that the Navy was forced to use civilians to do this kind of work because the fleet was always too busy doing its own thing. Moreover, the Garrison rank and file ‘were too old or too young for the fatigues of constant duty.’ The ordnance store keeper in Gibraltar was a Mr. Parish who was also a civilian who was almost certainly also lining his pockets.

St Vincent was also involved in another curious incident involving money - in this case an absolute fortune. Shortly after Napoleon's coup d'état in 1799 the Admiral was approached by a certain Señor Ygea, a Gibraltar tobacconist who was not the kind of person St Vincent would normally have given the time of day. In this case, however, he was forced to listen.

Ygea was the local confidential agent of the Spanish Prime Minister, Don Manuel de Godoy. Apparently Napoleon was blackmailing Spain into paying out an enormous amount of money or suffer the consequences. Spain simply didn´t have sufficient funds and would only be able to meet these demands by transporting bullion from her colonies. However she was loath to do so as the ships would almost certainly be taken by British cruisers.

In a nutshell, would Britain be prepared to rent out a British frigate to do the job. It would be, said Ygea, the only way to maintain Spain´s neutrality. History is silent as to what happened next but one would imagine that nothing ever came of it as the Napoleonic wars took on a different course

1835 Map showing the Victualling Yards, Water Reservoirs and Mole newly built in Rosia Bay at the instigation of Lord St. Vincent who managed to persuade Governor O’Hara to sell naval property to get the money to do so. A lot of people made a lot of money in the process but the new yard remained unrivalled throughout the British Empire until late into the 1830s. LINK

Governor Boyd was by now a doddering old man of 80 and was hardly aware of what was going on. In 1797 the soldiers’ pay was raised from eight pence a day to one shilling but it did nothing to lessen discontent. The soldiers simply spent the extra on even more drink. The officers were just as bad. As long as they were sober enough to stand up during parade their superiors simply turned a blind eye. They were mostly too drunk themselves to be able to notice the difference.

This contemporary map of the Spanish batteries was drawn after the end of the siege. The enlargement also showns that although Boyd was now Governor, Eliott had retained possession of the Convent and had kept his title as Governor. (Alhby)    LINK

Civilian life continued to be ruled by Fortress orders of varying degrees of arbitrariness. One of them was as follows; ‘It is again directed that every inhabitant cause the street before their door to be watered and swept every morning.’ There is something satisfying about that word ‘again’; not all the inhabitants were complying with these orders. Another to do with the hygiene of the town instructed everybody to collect their rubbish and put it into tubs or baskets so that they could be collected by a ‘scavenger’ every third day, a throwback of modern-day city council wheelie bin collection instructions.

Having fun also seems to have been frowned upon. Shops were now required to close on Sundays and no sporting activities were allowed on that day. Those fairs and masquerades so beloved of the Genoese and Spanish residents were expressly forbidden and when the locals decided to celebrate one of the many British military triumphs of the day the Governor issued instructions forbidding those as well. Although he acknowledged ‘their public demonstrations of joy on the late glorious victory’, the Governor forbad the use of ‘Illuminations, Bonfires, and Fire Works of any kind’ in future.

Large swathes of the Rock were placed out of bounds to civilians and many house owners were forced to repaint their houses because the Governor objected to the use of whitewash. ‘The strong refection and glare of light from the houses’ - stated yet another intrusive Fortress Order - had been ‘found prejudicial to the eyesight of the troops and inhabitants.’

1784 - Irresponsible Rascals

Eliott, Spilsbury and Drinkwater - Wilkie, Whaley and Leinster

Late eighteenth century German satirical print showing the Spaniards going home after the end of the Great Siege       
( unknown engraver )   LINK

For many years after the Great Siege Gibraltar remained what was essentially a bomb site. Drinkwater left us a vivid description of what the town looked like. The buildings, he wrote, ‘exhibited a most dreadful picture of the effects of so animated a bombardment. Scarce a house north of Grand parade was tenantable; all of them were deserted. Some few near South Port continued to be inhabited by soldiers’ families, but in general the floors and roofs were destroyed, and the bare shell only was left standing.’ Apart from its quickly repaired taverns, the rest remained uninhabitable for years. The damage caused by the cannons was just one part of it. All the houses had been stripped of timber to build the huts in the Black Town.

The Cathedral of Saint Mary the Crowned with its missing top was unused, almost in ruins and covered in debris. The authority’s offer of repairs in 1787 would come at a price. Some twenty years later when they were finally carried out, one third of the ground area of the Church was lost to a capricious grand design to straighten out Main Street. The Jews shook their heads in disbelief and wisely decided to repair the damage to their own synagogues by themselves. A visitor in 1792 was appalled to see that most of the houses were still in ruins.

View of Main Street looking south just after the end of the Great Siege. The Line Wall batteries on the right are unmanned.

To make matters worse the attitude of the British towards the civilian population continued to be both unhelpful and contemptuous. Garratt tells us that ‘it would be hard to exaggerate the irresponsible rascality of those Jews, Levantines, dissident Spaniards, Moors and Italians who found their way back to Gibraltar after the Great Siege.’ They had, he wrote, discovered ‘innumerable ways of making money’ as they continued ‘to occupy the cramped and shoddily-built town which had been so hastily erected on the ruins.’

View of Main Street looking south just after the end of the Great Siege. The Line Wall batteries on the right are unmanned.

Garratt offers no evidence for his comments, fails to mention the ‘irresponsible rascality’ of his own countrymen, and forgets to remind his readers that many inhabitants were forced to live in a derelict town because they had no other alternative. In fact the various census figures for this period suggests that a large number of the ‘inhabitants’ were people who were specifically employed by the authorities to carry out reconstruction work - and were then thrown out when no longer needed. It meant that the Rock ended up with a smaller population than before the Siege.

The main problem was that the decade following the war was one of general economic depression which made sure that life on the Rock would continue to be unpleasant for everybody and not just the locals. Soldiers continued to desert long after peace had been declared – ‘seven musicians sailed in a boat taking their instruments and music with them’. A boat’s crew knocked their officer on the head and took their leave. Insolence was the order of the day. Drunken fights were ending up with people in hospital with fractured skulls and the loss of eyes. Soldiers spent their spare time teasing animals and baiting other soldiers. A Corsican who had put up with more enough of persistent bullying stabbed his tormenter and ended up receiving 500 lashes for his pains ‘and then 300 more’.

Most of the blame actually lay with Elliot. The Governor had absentmindedly allowed so many of his officers to take their leave from the Rock that there weren’t enough of them to maintain even a modicum of restraint among the troops. Those that had stayed found it hard enough to discipline themselves.

Rare peacetime picture showing Eliott facing his chief engineer, William Green with a flamboyantly dressed soldier looking after his horse.

Elliot may have eventually been honoured and feted by his countrymen but as yet another military historian pointed out, ‘the nation showed little gratitude to the bulk of the soldiers and sailors’ that had saved Gibraltar. It would pay the consequences in the mutinies of Spithead and Nore.’

Elliot also seems to have gone out of his way to make life as difficult as possible for the locals. Many of his actions hindered rather than encouraged any sort of quick recovery and the joys of no longer being under siege were soon forgotten as he deluged them with a series of inexplicable regulations.

A hut belonging to an elderly barber was pulled down because he had been accused – erroneously it so happens – of selling some of the Government’s supply of iron. The poor man committed suicide rather than face what he thought would be an undeserved fate.

The Governor then insensitively demanded payment of all arrears in ground rent, most of it unpaid because the inhabitants had not been in Gibraltar during the Siege. Nor were many of those who had remained on the Rock in any position to pay up. To make matters worse in 1786 Elliot decided that importing tobacco into Gibraltar was a worthless activity because it was ‘a small proportion of British trade’ and that in any case it was ‘foreign not English tobacco that the Spaniards’ were keen on smuggling’.

He may have been correct as regards the ‘foreignness’ of the product but not so as regards the volume of trade. In effect he was blocking the one source of ‘export’ trade that might have speeded up the recovery. It also led him into a serious confrontation with several local merchants including a partnership known as John and George Ward.

 

Three Spanish smugglers look back at the source of their contraband. They may have been carriers but the people who making most of the profit lived on the Rock (Unknown)

When hostilities between Spain and Britain finally petered out the Governor issued orders for the huts and sheds of the Hardy Town to be levelled which meant that the locals had little option but to return to town. They were allowed to do so but only if they were able to confirm that they were bona fide residents, something that was never an easy thing to do in Gibraltar. Nor were they allowed to leave Gibraltar unless they could give details as to where they were going and for how long on pain of being expelled for good.

To make matters even worse, Elliot also forbad the inhabitant to make any lime, an important requirement for the repair of badly damaged stone houses. He also banned the employment of soldiers by civilians. The net result, as Spilsbury put it, was that ‘the town would not be rebuilt in a hurry.’ When they finally got round to it, ‘the greatest part’ of the place was rebuilt on the old foundations and according to the original Spanish plan, which according to Drinkwater, was ‘much to be regretted.’ 

View of the Rock from the south, drawn a decade or so after the end of the Siege. The huts of Hardy Town are no longer visible and the houses and military barracks south of Charles V wall all seem to have been properly repaired.  Not so the main town. The ruined facades are clearly visible in the distance on the far left of the picture (John Carr)

Garratt was probably right in at least one respect. His gut feelings about people who he perceived as foreigners probably reflected those of the British authorities at the time. The civilians, of course pressed in vain for some sort of compensation but not surprisingly nobody paid much attention.

There was also a big increase in the number of Spaniards as those who had decided to desert during the Siege were now free to wander around the town. As they had no possible means of supporting themselves the number of robberies and assaults increased dramatically. They were not the only ones to make a nuisance of themselves. Wine was plentiful again and the soldiers were perpetually drunk.

The stuff they drank was known as thunder and lightning, a mixture of a heavy Catalan drink called Blackstrap and a sweet white Malaga wine. The officers were just as bad. One captain employed a couple of privates for the specific purpose of collecting him at midnight from wherever he happened to be dining that night.

According to Allan Andrews the officers restricted their breakfasts to a little something and a cold punch to follow and then tried to get rid of their hangovers with a ‘spot of rackets’ until midday. Then it was some watered down Madeira to keep them going until dinner. This was, as Lieutenant-Colonel Wilkie noted ‘the most lucid period of the twenty-four hours’ for everybody in the Garrison. Incredibly, officers on guard duty often had their beds carried to their posts.

Quartermaster Taylor. This gentleman was one of the officers who served under General Elliot. Later while back home in Edinburgh ‘his extreme corpulence rendered him very conspicuous, and induced a certain Mr. Kay to make him the subject of the present etching’.

All of them, officers and men still seemed to bear a grudge against the Jews, a throwback from the days when they had been accused of hoarding and profiteering. When they were not quarrelling with them they quarrelled among themselves. As someone ironically commented at the time, ‘a fine scene of drunkenness and fighting etc is going forward.’

Court-martials for rioting were a commonplace but the Governor seemed loath to punish anybody despite the stiff sentences being imposed by the courts. He tended to forgive them after having ‘made them a very pathetick speech.’ Some of the soldiers’ wives also felt a general sense of freedom and good will after the war. More than one was caught in bed with men who were not their husbands often with serious consequence for the wife, her spouse and the adulterer.

The slow return to Gibraltar of those British Protestant inhabitants who had fled before the Siege had little effect on the overall climate of lawlessness. The celebration on the first St. George’s day after the end of the war, were a complete fiasco. According to Spilsbury who recorded this event in great detail and with undisguised glee the whole thing started with an endless gun salute answered by rounds of fire from the troops. Endless in the sense that both the guns and the soldiers were in such poor shape that it proved impossible to complete the cannonade. ‘Never’ it was said, ‘was a worse salute performed by the Artillery.’

The celebrations then moved to the Convent where field officers and other staff were invited to ‘a bottle of wine and a pound of beef each gratis’ so that the ‘Captains and subalterns are the only ones not taken notice of on this day’s entertainment.’

At dusk the lamps were lit to illuminate the colonnades but they were soon blown out by the wind. As the place surrounding the Convent became dark and deserted with no music to liven things up there was little joy to the celebrations and the few people present moved away towards the south to watch a scheduled firework display. This had been organised for the evening but ‘it rained at times very hard and of course did them no service.’ In any case the fireworks were ‘too much of a sameness’ to have been any good.

The rain then leaked through the canvas that had been set up in the Convent gardens for the benefit of those guests who had stayed behind while those that had gone off to the south to watch the spectacle found the town gates shut when they tried to return home. Getting wet with the rain they gathered in front of the gates and pressed for them to be opened. ‘Some lives’ it was said, ‘were in danger of being lost’ when the guards – who were probably drunk -threatened to open fire on them.

Captain John Spilsbury incidentally is one of the least quoted of all those who kept diaries during the Great Siege and for a very good reason; his notes were not published until 1908. The original hand written text was donated to the Gibraltar Garrison Library where it was subsequently edited and published by the librarian. 

Curiously Captain John Drinkwater’s own well known and endlessly quoted version was printed by one T. Spilsbury of London. This has led to the conjecture that the two captains may have come to some arrangement as some of the statistical figures on both diaries are remarkably similar. All of which is rather a shame as Spilsbury, unlike everybody else, continued to be as unenamoured of Elliot after the war as during it. A refreshing tone of mockery permeates his account.

In any case it wasn’t just Spilsbury who was fed up. Many another officer seems to have had enough of post Siege conditions in general and of Eliott in particular. ‘Several Captains have taken great pains to get home and sell out, but have been refused.’ Captain Billinge, we are told, was not allowed to ‘get leave either to sell out or go home but is kept to die here; what quintessence of humanity!’

A satirical print dated 1790 suggesting that Baron Heathfield was quite unfit to be Governor of Gibraltar           ( S.W. Forbes )   LINK

Elliot’s financial dealings were also having an effect on his officers’ pockets. ‘It appears the Governor takes all the inhabitants money at 38p per dollar so that we can never get it at less than 39; what management for us.’ Not only that, but during a period in which fresh beef had become easily available, Elliot made sure that his principal officers kept the lion’s share with very little to spare for anybody else.

When Spilsbury’s colleagues put on a couple of plays called Cross Purposes and True Blue at the theatre in Calle Comedia, the Governor apparently disapproved of the content and put an end to it. In fact the regiments that arrived in 1782, just after the failure of the floating batteries and just prior to the end of the Siege were thoroughly disenchanted by Elliot’s discipline. The Governor had tried rather ineffectually to keep them busy repairing the damaged town as well as salvaging some of the ships which had sunk in the bay during the war. Their reluctance to take part in the later activity is hardly surprising. For approximately every penny of prize money given to the common soldier, the Governor and his senior officers received over a thousand.

 

Looking up Calle Comedia from Gunner's Parade in 1833 (Frederick Leeds Edridge)

In 1788 Thomas 'Buck' Whaley - Irish aristocrat, politician, gambler and traveller - visited Gibraltar on his way to Jerusalem. He had recently made a bet worth £15 000 with the Duke of Leinster and his friends , that he would be able to travel to Jerusalem and back within two years. That would be nearly two million pounds in today's money.

Despite the devastation that he found on the Rock - the storehouses and barracks destroyed in the lower part of the town had not yet been rebuilt since the siege - he seems to have been much taken with Gibraltar and its exotic inhabitants. To him 'all was masquerade' as he heard the 'odd and confused noise resulting from a dozen different languages spoken at once. Jews of all nations, Moors, Turks, and Christians were indiscriminately mixed together, each having a different dress, countenance, and religion.'

His journey up the Rock towards St. George's Hall revealed a different story; there were apple geraniums growing everywhere and the 'place was ornamented with neat cottages built by officers' as well as 'many gardens formed and cultivated with vast labour and expense, the produce of which every proprietor sends to the common market.'

Gibraltar in 1783. The place is probably Gunner's Parade and that barrel may have been full of Blackstrap ( Unknown )

That the officers had quickly made sure that they at any rate were not going to suffer the deprivations of a derelict town is understandable. That the locals were still making a killing out of their gardens need further explanation. The problem was that for various reasons and the lack of bribes may have been one of them, relations with Morocco had deteriorated once the Siege had ended and the Pasha was refusing to supply the Rock with its usual provisions. It meant that the cost of food in Gibraltar - 5 years after the end of the siege was just as high as it had been during it. It was a good time to be a Genoese gardener.

As was the custom with distinguished visitors, Whaley , who knew Eliott personally , was invited by the Governor to a party in the Convent. His record of this event is strangely at odds with what one would imagine a party at Convent to be like. Whaley tells us that he was introduced to a very beautiful sixteen year-old Spanish girl, who, apparently 'did not dislike the fandango' - whatever that might mean. Also one of the musicians, who was introduced to him as her uncle, was a 'fat friar of the Franciscan order, and so much of the bon-vivant as to have been excommunicated by the Pope'. He was probably, hints Whaley, the young girl's father.

 Thomas Whaley as a very young man

Generally he found 'very little society at Gibraltar, but he was struck by the 'perfect harmony' which 'subsisted between the Garrison and its few inhabitant.' An incomprehensible comment as relations between the British and the the local residents could not have been worse. He was probably referring to the relationship between the Military and the few British civilians living there at the time. He left the Rock with regret. He had been more taken by the hospitality he had experienced than impressed by the fame that the place had acquired through its memorable defence.

Whaley continued on his way to Jerusalem and then returned to Dublin within the two year time limit. He claimed his bet and Leinster paid up.

1704 - Simón Rodríguez Susarte - Hero to Myth

At the top of a high ridge just below Charles V Wall in Gibraltar there is - or once was -  a prominent tourist plaque with the following inscription:

Led by a shepherd 500 Spanish soldiers climbed the east face of the Rock in 1704 from Catalan Bay to surprise the Garrison, but they were discovered and made prisoner. The Shepherd's path from near this spot was scarped away soon after. 

The plaque is in the wrong place, fails to mention Simon Susarte, the main protagonist 1 and hardly does justice to what was either a romantically heroic event, a good 18th century example of Spanish propaganda - or a wonderful myth. 2

Background
In 1704 Anglo-Dutch forces under the command of Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt and Admiral George Rooke, captured Gibraltar in the name of Charles, the Archduke of Austria. Franco-Spanish forces loyal to Philip of Anjou - later Philip V of Spain  - under the command of the Marquis of Villadaria responded by blockading the Rock. This short and ineffectual campaign eventually came to be known as the 12th Siege of Gibraltar. 3

The twelfth Siege of Gibraltar  (1705 - from the book England's Glory)

The original story by Ignacio López de Ayala
The story of the shepherd and the climb was recorded as "historical fact" in 1782 by the Spanish historian Ignacio López de Ayala in his Historia de Gibraltar. His commentary can be roughly transcribed as follows.

On the 10th of November 1704, a Gibraltarian by the name of Simon Susarte, informed the Marquis of Villadaria that he had spent his childhood on the Rock tending goats and that he knew of a path along the 'impossible' east side that led to the top of the mountain. 

Villadaria had Susarte's story checked, found it feasible and arranged for a group of 500 Spanish volunteers led by Colonel Don Antonio de Figueroa to follow Susarte up the Rock. They would be joined shortly after by a main force of 1500 soldiers who were to meet them at la Silleta - the notch between Middle Hill and Rock Gun. The five hundred would be travelling light with no more than three rounds of ammunition apiece.

Late in the evening of the 10th Susarte led the first group of Spaniards up the side of the Rock. He used a path known as the Paso de Algarrobas which led towards los Tarfes - today's Windmill Hill' - before turning westward towards El Hacho or Signal Hill. They spent the night in St. Michael's Cave. 

An hour before dawn Colonel Figueroa took his troops up to the ridge while a small unit of men followed Susarte towards el Hacho where they killed the guard. The entire group then scrambled their way unseen to la Silleta and successfully carried out their mission to secure the area.  Reinforcements were supposed to climb up from the slopes above Catalan Bay.

When Hesse realised that the Spaniards had managed to scale the Rock, he ordered a regiment under his brother Henry to intercept them. There were casualties on both sides and Henry suffered a head wound. Once the Spaniards had exhausted their three rounds of ammunition the result was a foregone conclusion. Susarte managed to make his escape thanks to his knowledge of the various paths and goat tracks. Most of the rest were not so lucky. 4

It is probably worth pointing out that James Bell's 5 translation of Ayala's History whether  through choice or lack of ability,  does not follow the original version. 

Map of Gibraltar  showing places mentioned in the Simon Susarte episode  ( 1831 - Adapted from W.H. Smyth ) 

The primary source
Ayala quoted verbatim from a manuscript written by Juan Romero de Figueroa, parish priest in Gibraltar during the Anglo-Dutch capture of the Rock and an eye-witness to the event. Romero's notes went missing from San Roque during the upheavals of the Peninsular War and have yet to be recovered. Nevertheless the fact that the Ayala's quotes are stylistically identical to others written by Romero on the margins of the church's registers in San Roque make it easy to believe that Ayala's was an accurate transcription. 6

What other people wrote
The episode is recorded by an officer serving under Hesse who was also an eyewitness;

On the 31st Oct. 8 five hundred Spaniards attacked the Middle Hill . . . but were soon realised and 200 men with their commanding officer were taken, and the rest were either killed . . . or broke their necks over the rocks . . . 7

Prince George himself mentions the episode in a letter to the Castilian Admiral, Count Melgar;

On the 11th inst, they attacked over the top of the mountain using unknown tracks   which appeared impossible to travel on . . . . . with orders to secure la Silleta so as to wait for reinforcements of some two to three thousand men  . . . they did all this with such secrecy and skill, using rope ladders  . . . that it was only at dawn that we discovered that the mountain was full of people, but they were received in such a way that  very few of them ever returned . . 8

According to the Spanish historian Francisco María Montero the French General Canvanne was in charge of 3000  support troops who were supposed to climb  to the Silleta after it had been held by Figueroa's men. Cavanne refused to do so on the grounds that it would be wrong to allow the honour of retaking the Rock to fall on a local peasant. 9 Angel María Monti more or less repeated the story without actually mentioning Susarte. 10 Yet another, Francisco María Tubino, restricted himself to repeating Ayala's account but suggested that there were no survivors.11

The English historian John Drinkwater adds a few details of his own. In his version the volunteers took the sacrament, never to return till they had taken Gibraltar. Susarte is not mentioned by name but identified as a goatherd. Charles V Wall was scaled before the 'massacre' of the guard at Middle Hill and he gives precise details of Spanish casualties. There were 160 dead, killed or driven over the precipice - which is not named - and the colonel and thirty officers and the rest of the soldiers taken prisoner.12

G.T. Garratt takes his cue from Drinkwater. He also mentions the killing of the guard at Middle Hill. 13 Alan Andrews offers little that is new other than they started off by boat.  He refers to the party as the 'forlorn'. 14 George Hills suggests that the rendezvous was somewhere north of the Moorish Wall and 300 Spaniards lost their lives. 15

Local historian Dorothy Ellicott's account comes up with the suggestion that the Anglo-Dutch forces were not caught by surprise. The son of one of the guards was taking his father's dinner up to Middle Hill, discovered his father body and gave the alarm. 16 Philip Dennis simply refers to the incident but does not name the goatherd. 17 Another local, George Palau, repeats Ellicott's story of the boy discovering his dead father. 18

And these are not the only historians who accept the tale more or less at face value. David Francis suggests that the Spanish volunteers were spotted by the Catalan Guard at the cliffs known as Salto del Lobo which lie just below la Silleta, 19 while William Jackson 20 and Maurice Harvey 21 closely follow Ayala - although the former has Susarte climb Philip II Wall and the person giving the alarm a drummer boy.

None of the authors mentioned above actually give their sources which suggests that they all mostly took their lead from the original version - or some previous history quoting it. 

La Silleta and the Paso del Algarrobo
Frustratingly neither of these place names are in use today and it is hard to find a contemporary map identifying the first.  Very recently another historian, Roy Clinton has tried to identify the exact path taken by Susarte. His article contains evidence that la Silleta is today's Middle Hill, 22 and that there are references going as far back as 1771 to a British built parapet in the vicinity with musket emplacements. 23 A quick visit and a glance down towards Catalan Bay far below, leaves the modern observer in no doubt that whoever built it wanted to make sure that Gibraltar's defences would never be breached from here. 

As for the Paso del Algarrobo, a British map dated 1755  clearly identifies its position close to a hut captioned 'Scarp-rock guard house'. 24 Unlike the Middle Hill parapet this was a question of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. Understandably, Clinton is in no doubt that both Susarte and his exploits are well anchored in fact.

St. Michael's cave
For some reason George Palau 18 discarded St. Michael's as the chosen hiding place and opted for the more southerly twin caves overlooking the Mediterranean known as the Goat's Hair. He gives no source for his preference.

William Jackson 20 identified the Fig Tree and St. Martin's Cave as the hiding place. He may have been influenced by George Palao in this. The Fig Tree cave - or Sewell's Fig Tree caves - is the original name given to the Goat's Hair caves. His choice of St. Martin's cave was misplaced as this was only discovered in 1821 and was even then practically inaccessible. 25

Presumably the attraction of suggesting these alternatives instead of St Michael's is that all three are found well to the south and face the Mediterranean as against St. Michael's which faces west. One other quirky detail concerning St. Michael's is that several 18th century maps refer to it specifically as a place capable of sheltering 1000 men. Why 1000 rather than the obvious 500 is hard to understand.

Simon Rodríguez Susarte
George Palao with the help of the local parish priest of  San Roque - Father Caldelas - was able to uncover Susarte's  personal records in the registers of Saint Mary the Crowned, Gibraltar's principal Catholic Church. The books had been transferred to San Roque after the Rock had been taken by the British.   

Simon was born on the 6th of May 1676 and was the son of Pedro Rodríguez Susarte and Joana Muñoz. Simon was therefore 28 years old when the event took place. He was also a married man. Aged 23 he was married to Claudia Jacobo Ximenez by Juan Romero de Figueroa in the church of St. Mary the Crowned. 18

An attractive but unrealistic picture of Gibraltar - and of a rather oddly shaped Spain -  which nevertheless suggests the Rock's  imposing inaccessibility from the east (Unknown)

Official Spanish references 
Gibraltarians who maintain that they do not believe the story 2 claim that the Gaceta de Madrid - the official newspaper that covered the 12th Siege at the time in Spain - makes no mention of it. This is not strictly true. 

Although the Gaceta makes no mention of Susarte - or indeed of any local involvement -  it did carry a report of the event itself which it treated as a relatively minor skirmish involving 150 men led by Colonel Figueroa.  The actual text reads as follows;

El día 11 por la mañana 150 Españoles Voluntarios, comandados por el Coronel Figueroa, se arrojaron al Monte a desalojar a los enemigos, pero aviendo savido estos, se adelantaron en mayor numero; y después de una reñida contienda, con muertos de ambas partes, se retiraron los nuestros, cediendo al mayor numero, con pérdidas de algunos Oficiales.  . . . 26

Discrepancies between Ayala and La Gaceta
La Gaceta de Madrid was no bible. It was simply a four page semi-official newspaper with a marked tendency to toe the official party line. If somebody who was somebody in the court of Philip V of Spain didn't want something published  there was no question of doing so and be damned. And there were certainly several very good reasons why this particular story needed to be toned down. 27

Marquis of Villadarias
For a start the Marquis of Villadarias - whose bulletins were responsible for much of the reporting during the siege - was far more interested in defending his own role in the failure of the blockade than trying to promote the heroics of an insignificant local goatherd. As for the French, they could hardly disguise their contempt for Villadaria and his men dismissively referring to the event as l'affaire de la montagne. 28

For Villadarias the main problem was that l'affaire was simply one small part part of a planned three pronged attack every one of which failed. According to his reasoning it wasn't his fault but rather that of his troops who had refused to carry out his orders properly. There is more than a hint that he was accusing his soldiers of cowardice. It was certainly not the kind of thing the Gaceta would have been keen on publishing. 

The Spanish commander had appointed two leaders for the climb - the Marquis of Valdesevilla and his brother, Don Antonio de Figueroa. Valdesevilla  stumbled and injured himself at the start of the climb and was unable to continue. It was not an auspicious start. He also suggested that only a handful made it to the top and that when they were discovered the entire group retreated in confusion. 29

In the case of Colonel Figueroa, Villadarias was certainly doing him an injustice - he was no coward. In the Battle of Almansa he lost his right arm, On an expedition to Africa, two figures of his left arm, and as late as 1733 he was also injured in the battle of Yucatan. In Gibraltar, the only reason he surrendered was that he was hit twice in the chest and had his leg smashed by a bullet. 30

Villadarias' report also suggests that the Gibraltarians involved were paid to show them the way up - which manages to tarnish the goatherd's image as a hero but does little to make his involvement any less likely. 31

The general tone of Villadarias  report is that nobody did what they ought to have done and that nothing turned out right. He fails to mention that he had not followed up his own plan by failing to send in reinforcements. But perhaps more crucially there is no mention that he had sent his troops on a particularly dangerous expedition with an inadequate supply of ammunition. 

The three rounds of ammunition
Whether the state of the Prince of Hesse's defences at the time made it vulnerable to a surprise attack from above with a small number of well armed men is open to question, but it would seem very likely that a lack of ammunition would be decisive in turning the tide in favour of the defenders.

Ayala seems to have realised that this was the crux of the matter - the difference between the story of a fiasco and that of a heroic failure. From the merely descriptive, the Spanish historian's style changes to one of frustration and indignation. 

I write about an event that seems unbelievable, but what I write is true . . .  it is backed by the testimony of Berlando, the Marquis of San Felipe, by Bruzen de la Martiniere, by the priest from Gibraltar . . . and finally by an old man who was still alive in 1781 and was a friend of the goatherd Simon Susarte. . . . Who would have believed that they would have been supplied with only three bullets? It is incredible. . .  32

Conclusion
The evidence for the climb from the blind side is overwhelming. With one or two small reservations Ayala's original story seems a reasonable one. 

Whether Simon Susarte was in fact part of the story is slightly less conclusive although the circumstantial evidence is strong enough to suggest that he was. So much so that it would be tempting to say that if it could be shown that Susarte was not involved then some other Gibraltarian very like him must have helped Figueroa. 

An admirable episode in a decidedly unromantic siege - or a complete fiasco - as that well-known cynic Richard Ford so aptly put it, whichever one chooses it can still best be described as . . . Cosas de España! 33

The paths taken by Susarte and his followers  ( 1704 - Inventario de bienes del Mayorazgo de Changurel )

Sources

1. Clinton, Roy. (2011) - The Goatherd's Path - Gibraltar Heritage Magazine - No.18 - P83
2. There are no mainline British or Spanish historians who suggests that the episode was either propaganda or a myth, but one has only to mention the name of Susarte to the odd Gibraltarian to be met with considerable scepticism as to both his exploits and his existence.
3. Hills, George. (1974 ) - The Rock of Contention - R. Hale and Co. London - P 168 and on
4. López de Ayala, Ignacio. (1782) - Historia de Gibraltar -  Don Antonio de Sancha , Madrid - P 297
5. Bell, James. (1845) - The History of Gibraltar (Translated from Ayala), William Pickering, London - P
6. Hills, George. (1974 ) - The Rock of Contention - R. Hale and Co.,  London - P 487
7. Anonymous. (1705) - A Journal of the Transactions of Gibraltar by an officer under the Prince of Hesse Darmstadt - J Nutt, London P 3
The discrepancy in the date is because the officer was using the Julian calendar which was still in use in British territories long after almost everybody else in Europe had changed to the Gregorian. 
8. Kuenzel, Heinrich. ( 1859) - Das Leeben und das Briefwechsel des Landgrafen George von Hessen- Darmstadt - Friedburg & London - P 512 
9. Montero, Francisco María. (1860 ) Historia de Gibraltar y de su Campo - Imprenta de la Revista Medica - Cadiz - P 284/285
10. Monti, Angel María, (1852)  - Historia de Gibraltar - Sevilla - P
11. Tubino, Francisco María. (1863)- Gibraltar ante la Historia - Sevilla - P84
12. Drinkwater, John. (1787) - A History of the late Siege of Gibraltar - Dublin - 3rd Ed - P15/16
13. Garratt, G.T. (1939) - Gibraltar and the Mediterranean - Coward-McCann, Inc, New York - P 47
14. Andrews, Alan. (1959) - Proud Fortress - E.P. Dutton & Co, Inc New York - P 44/45
15. Hills, George. (1974 ) - The Rock of Contention - R. Hale and Co. London - P187/188
16. Ellicott, Dorothy, (1975) - Our Gibraltar - Gibraltar Museum Committee - P17
17. Dennis, Philip. (1990 ) Gibraltar and its People - David and Charles, London P24 
18. Palao, George. (1977) - Our Forgotten Past - Gibraltar Chronicle Printing Works - P20
19. Francis, David. (1975) The First Peninsular War 1702-1713, E.Benn Ltd, London and Tonbridge - P 131
20. Jackson, Sir William G.F. (1987) - The Rock of the Gibraltarians - Gibraltar Books, Northants - P107
21. Harvey, Maurice.( 2000) - Gibraltar a History - Spellmount, Staplehurst -  - P71
22. Clinton Roy. ( 2011) - - The Goatherd's Path - Gibraltar Heritage Magazine - No.18 - P76
23. James, Thomas ( 1771) - The History of the Herculean Straits - Vol 2 - P 312/313
24. Annonymous - (1762 ) - Advantages to England from the Possession of Gibraltar - The Gentleman's Magazine- P 104
25. Captain Brome (1868)  - Transactions of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology - 3rd Session - London - P 134
26. La Gaceta de Madrid - (1704) - 18th Novemeber ; 210
27. Álvarez Vázquez, Manuel. (2003)- Noticias de la Perdida de Gibraltar en la 'Gazeta de Madrid' - Almoraima 29 - P 334
28. Hills, George. (1974 ) - The Rock of Contention - R. Hale and Co. London - P188 
29. Álvarez Vázquez, Manuel. (2003)- Noticias de la Perdida de Gibraltar en la 'Gazeta de Madrid' - Almoraima 29 - P 345
30. Luna, Jose Carlos de. (1944) Historia de Gibraltar - Graficas Ugina - 2P 342 and on
31. Álvarez Vázquez, Manuel. (2003)- Noticias de la Perdida de Gibraltar en la 'Gazeta de Madrid' - Almoraima 29 - P 346
32. López de Ayala, Ignacio. (1782) - Historia de Gibraltar -  Don Antonio de Sancha , Madrid - P 297/298
33. Ford, Richard ( 1855) - Handbook for Travellers - Part 1 - John Murray, London - P 278