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Updated: May 4, 2025
During the first years of this siege the supreme command of both land and naval forces rested with the Spanish, but, having met with failure after failure, they were ready at length to give way to the French, who promised to capture the stronghold by constructing a powerful fleet of battering-ships, enabling them to fight at close range, so that gun to gun and man to man should decide the contest.
In the end, nine of the ten blew up at their anchors, with a loss estimated at fifteen hundred men, four hundred being saved from the midst of the fire by the English seamen. The tenth ship was boarded and burned by the English boats. The hopes of the assailants perished with the failure of the battering-ships. There remained only the hope of starving out the garrison.
France's ally Spain had been besieging Gibraltar for three years, but in September, 1782, when the great battering-ships specially built for the purpose began a furious bombardment, which was expected to end the siege, the British defenders destroyed every ship, and after that Gibraltar was safe. These events naturally stiffened the backs of the British in negotiating peace.
The battering-ships seem in the main, and for some hours, to have justified the hopes formed of them; cold shot glanced or failed to get through their sides, while the self-acting apparatus for extinguishing fires balked the hot shot. About two o'clock, however, smoke was seen to issue from the ship of the commander-in-chief, and though controlled for some time, the fire continued to gain.
The same misfortune befell others; by evening, the fire of the besieged gained a marked superiority, and by one o'clock in the morning the greater part of the battering-ships were in flames.
This formidable fleet was supported on land by an army of forty thousand men reinforced with batteries of the heaviest ordnance stretched along the shore. To oppose these the English commander, General Eliott, had ninety-six pieces of artillery and seven thousand men. So confident was the enemy of success that the triple-armored battering-ships moved boldly up to within half-gunshot range.
At seven A.M. of that day the ten battering-ships unmoored from the head of the bay and stood down to their station. Between nine and ten they anchored, and the general fire at once began. The besieged replied with equal fury.
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