1874 - John L. Stoddard - Gibraltar - Part 2
Stoddard pads out his lecture with a bit more history – some of it not quite correct, other bits down-right wrong. For example.
This was no short-lived conquest. The grand old vantage-point remained in Moslem hands for more than seven centuries, and (hard as it may be for us to realize it) it was not until 1462 that it became a permanent part of Christendom.
The Old Moorish Castle.
By that time the long struggle between Moors and Christians in the south of Spain was gradually nearing its conclusion, and the Spanish territory of the Saracens grew steadily more restricted, as the advancing Cross forced back the waning Crescent toward the sea. Gibraltar held out nearly to the end, and its surrender to the Christians preceded by only thirty years the capture of Granada and the departure of the Moorish King Boabdil into Africa.
Yes indeed, although Stoddard’s description of the Christian forces as Spanish is debateable. Spain did not as yet exist. As regards the photo of Gibraltar’s iconic “Moorish Castle” – possibly the largest if not the most elegant in the entire Iberian peninsula – archaeologists surmise that it probably dates from the mid-14th century, replacing two smaller ones built in the 12th and 13th.
Then for two centuries the government of Spain was its possessor, and on the shore which it so grandly dominated was focused for a time the attention of the civilized world. For then it was that the old promontory saw the little fleet of Columbus sail away on its immortal voyage, and first descried its happy home-coming with the astounding tidings of the discovery of a new continent. Thereafter, too, for many years it watched the ships of other heroes and adventurers, as they started forth upon the path of conquest, and grimly looked upon them as they came again, laden with that ill-gotten gold, whose weight was finally to paralyze the nation's energies and drag it downward to a gilded tomb.
If by “old promontory” the author was referring to Gibraltar, then I am afraid he was mistaken. Columbus famously set sail for “America” from Palos de la Frontera in Huelva - which happens to be nearly 300 kilometres away from the Rock in a straight line towards the North-West.
The Departure of Columbus from Spain
Yet Spain in her decadence did not place a proper estimate on this outer key of the Mediterranean, but left it to rust icily in the lock, guarded at last by only eighty men. The world being what it is, what followed was inevitable. In 1704, a sudden, unexpected attack on the part of England changed again the fortunes of Gibraltar; and with a trifling loss of life, and almost with the swiftness of a prestidigitator's legerdemain, it passed into Great Britain's unrelaxing grip.
It was not, of course, England that attacked the Rock but a joint Anglo-Dutch force fighting on behalf of the Archduke Charles of Austria pretender to the Spanish throne during the War of the Spanish Succession. In fact the leader of the expedition was the German Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt, Commander of the Austrian Army.
There it remains to-day, perhaps the strangest geographical anomaly in the world, - the natural terminus and bulwark of the great Iberian peninsula held by a foreign nation, - a fact as irritating doubtless to the Spaniards as the possession of the Isle of Wight by France would be to England, or the occupation of Long Island by the British would be to the United States.
It was about five o'clock in the morning, at the end of a transatlantic voyage, that I first saw Gibraltar. Called by the steward half an hour before, I hastened to the steamer's deck, to find the ocean covered with a tantalizing fog, beneath which only the edge of the Spanish coast was visible.
But soon, as if by a magician's spell, the soft grey curtain which surrounded us rose gradually from the rim of the horizon, and a bright spot of gold upon the Mediterranean's eastern verge foretold the coming of the god of day.
The effect that followed will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it; for, as if that first sign of the approaching luminary were a preconcerted signal, the sombre drapery of clouds, which had till then enveloped the stupendous rock, was slowly rolled up like a scroll, revealing first the feet and left flank, then the side and shoulder, and finally the majestic head of a couchant monster, three miles long and fourteen hundred feet in height, turned by a fiat of the gods to stone.
The Couchant Monster
Whether its form resembles most a lion or a sphinx, it is, at all events, sublime. I had supposed that it lay headed toward the sea; but its stern, awful face is turned toward Europe, as though at one time it had been the guardian of a narrow isthmus connecting the two continents, and had been stationed here to keep inviolate the northern limit of the causeway and check all European inroads into Africa.
The Northern Pillar Of Hercules
The photograph above was taken from Sierra Carbonera, a mountain in Spain just to the north of Gibraltar and more specifically from an area known as “The Queen of Spain’s Chair”. Curiously this name which is based on a misconception was also given to an Islamic watch tower built at the top of the Sierra as well as the entire mountain itself.
Gibraltar would lack a proper harbour until the late 19th century. This meant that visiting liners and other large craft were required to anchor several miles distant from a small commercial which was only approachable by tender. My guess is that seated gentleman is the author but I am not sure why the fellow to his left is holding his hand.
A Protected Anchorage – A view of the harbour
As regards the above photos, there really is no view as such of ”the harbour”. the one with the circular frame shows a four-masted steamer in front of – and unfortunately almost completely hiding Gibraltar’s Commercial Wharf - just about the only protected anchorage in Gibraltar apart from the time apart from Rosia. A better copy is shown below it. As regards the view on the right shows a distinctively unprotected area of the Bay in front of the middle section of the town proper.
Meantime, our steamer had dropped anchor in Gibraltar's pretty harbour, sheltered by its western side. Across this stretch of animated water, sparkling with the dawn, I could discern a group of stuccoed buildings, most of which were painted yellow.
Gibraltar’s principal street
The building on the right is the Catholic cathedral of St Mary the Crowned – The “principal street” was known as Main Street
These proved the existence of a town; but, when compared with the great cliff to which they clung, they seemed as insignificant as barnacles upon a vessel's keel. In fact, we do not think of this huge promontory as a residence, but as a fortress.
Under The Cliffs
True, it supports, besides the garrison of five thousand soldiers, a population of some twenty thousand souls; but these appear like supernumeraries on a stage, useful no doubt, but not essential to the performance of the play. Nor is there any special evidence that civilians are desired here. No foreigner may reside at Gibraltar unless his consul or a householder becomes security for him, and even then permits for such a privilege are rarely granted for more than twenty days.
Stoddard’s description of Gibraltar’s civilian population is also worth a comment or two – in particular as his views appear to correspond with those held by almost every visitor to Gibraltar from the early 18th right through to the modern era.
The problem was evident from the very beginning. It might have been relatively easy to take the place militarily – far less to hold on to it. From 1704 to 1727 Gibraltar was subjected to a series of assaults which included the 12th and 13th Sieges and consequently the deployment of a large Garrison. As for all intents and purposes the original Spanish population had all left the Rock, the British authorities pursued the idea that those who might supply the garrison with its needs would be loyal British Protestant ex-pats.
The number of these who actually settled in Gibraltar, however, were far too few and this led to an influx -legal or illegal - of people from elsewhere such as African Jews, Menorcans, Genoese, Spaniards and others which the local authorities were forced to allow into the fortress becoming more or less dependent on them for food and other essentials.
Fruit-venders in Gibraltar
It is these that Stoppard and others consider to be “useful” but “not essential”. I agree with the first description but not the second. If the authorities had not allowed these people to reside on the Rock, Gibraltar would not have been able to defend itself militarily and would have long returned to Spanish sovereignty .
Moreover, the rock is ruled by martial law. At sunset all the entrances are closed inexorably for the night, and even transient visitors from steamers halting a few hours in the harbour are not allowed to pass within the settlement until they have obtained at the Marine Gate tickets of admission, whose value ceases when the stern voice of the evening gun proclaims the passing of another day.
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