Elliot was not a man to stand on ceremony or regimental traditions if they hindered his cause in any way and believe me, the British army's regiments are laden with them and they were protected at all costs. The British army in those days was at war with itself, still is to a degree, as the regimental system engenders fierce rivalry between them and if they had no enemy to fight, they would fight each other, which is why it was rightly described as a loose amalgamation of warring tribes and in those days it consisted of around one hundred of them, predominantly county regiments. This rivalry was responsible for victories where victories should not have been won because no regiment would dream of leaving a battlefield if another remained upon it, I refer to the battle of Albuera as a prime example. So, infantry soldiers on the rock were trained in gunnery so as to assist the artillery if any of their gunners were killed. He organised a band of snipers from the best shots, or sharpshooters as they were known then and these were to take a deadly toll of those exercising a little too much bravado. Their survival depended on the flexibility of all concerned but there was one thing which was out of their control and that was provisions. Captured Spanish merchantmen had stocked them handsomely before the main siege began but when the winter arrived they were seriously depleted and they were down to the dreaded ship's biscuits and salted beef. The consequences of this was an outbreak of scurvy, a truly shocking and debilitating disease caused by lack of vitamin C. Of course, nobody positively knew what actually caused scurvy in those days. Following a desperate plea to London a convoy of merchantmen, guarded by the Royal Navy under the command of Admiral Rodney, set sail on their rescue mission and as luck would have it, they stumbled across a very handy Spanish convoy of merchantmen and decided to relieve Spain of them. Stung into action the Spanish sent a large fleet to attack the British under Admiral Sir John Jervis in his flagship, HMS Victory. It's no exaggeration to say that the Spanish knew they were out of their league when the Brits formed up into a line of battle with an efficiency and speed that stunned them, although there was a moment in the battle when things got tricky and it was the action of a rising star, Captain Horatio Nelson, disobeying orders, broke from the line and captured one ship, which he then used to cross over from one Spanish deck to another by its side and capture that too, but that battle is for another day, needless to say the RN won and neutralised the threat of the huge Spanish fleet. The rock was handsomely provisioned following this and ready to fight on, especially having been reinforced by a further one thousand men of the Highland Division but this fortuitous sate of affairs was only to last for nine months before starvation, disease and scurvy once again struck the defenders.

The latest scurvy attack came as the winter of 1779 closed in. The whole island was forced onto meagre rations as starvation struck with many succumbing to disease. As the spring of 1780 arrived the skeletal defenders were in a desperate way, not knowing when the Spanish would attack or when they could expect to be rescued. The Spanish blockade had brought them to the edge of victory when suddenly a British convoy of 150 merchant ships, guarded by 29 ships of the line sailed into view. When they left they took with them around 100 civilians to the safety of home. Rearmed and restocked, their morale restored, they were once again ready for battle. The Spanish realised they'd missed the boat by not attacking earlier, when the garrison was on the edge of total despair but renewed their campaign by positioning dozens of cannon on the isthmus leading to the rock with the intent to flatten everything and everybody in sight. Consequently the problem for them was, they themselves were now in range of the British gunners and one of those gunners managed to hit the Spanish gunpowder magazine placed conveniently close causing explosions and fire which spontaneously spread to other magazines which also went up, killing dozens of the attackers. Eventually they rebuilt their forces and with resupplied new cannon began the bombardment once more with a new plan of attack.

In the British garrison spies arrived with the news that the Spanish army was preparing a mass infantry attack. General Elliot responded by planning a preemptive strike of his own and gathering his entire army of 2000 men. They attacked in three columns, left right and centre. Both flanks routed their opponents whilst the centre column (Hanoverians) captured a huge battery of canon, plus powder and shot. The left column stormed through the Spanish lines, causing mass confusion, killing all of the attackers who stood their ground and destroyed their guns. Having defeated their army they now set about destroying their whole garrison and everything of use before returning back to their own lines. The death toll was two Brits killed and well over one hundred Spanish. Their extensive fortifications had been obliterated, fortifications that had taken them a year to build at a cost of a staggering amount of money were gone and they would have to start all over again.

This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, To finish the speech off from Richard 11nd This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise; This fortress built by Nature for herself, Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. Stirring stuff eh?

With the situation stabilised Elliot now put his men to creating a tunnel system in the Rock and what a system! D'you know, Gib is only 2.6 square miles in size but the Brits have managed to honeycomb 34 miles of tunnels in it. It's a wonder it doesn't fold in on itself. Within this tunnel system gun platforms were created with exterior holes for canon to fire from and they even came up with a brilliant contraption, a downward firing canon, which could sit on the peak and fire almost straight down. With the army gemefully employed as moles boredom wasn't a problem and life settled down to a more sedate one. British ships came and went and even other nations, such as Portugal took the opportunity to do business, especially in the vital supply of fruit. However, news was to arrive of the loss of Minorca to the French and Yorktown to the traitors in the America colony, which shook morale badly. Now, instead of the battle of arms, came the battle of politics. There wasn't just the colonists involved in this as they had employed a continental army to defeat the Brits, including the Spanish, Germans and most notably, the French. Britain's plan now was to attempt to separate the colonies from the French, as after all, they were kith and kin. In exchange for this they would agree a lucrative trade agreement, which would bring peace and prosperity to them. The French on the other hand were tied to the Spanish and wanted out, as they had almost bankrupted their nation in their attempt to have revenge over their old enemy but Spain was adamant there could be no negotiations until they had Gibraltar back, so the French were forced to ally with Spain in their quest for the rock.

Now Shula, the French are our first ally against the evil Brits. See Lafayette, Ben Franklin in Paris diddling the ladies, the Statue of Liberty, Thomas Paine in Common Sense.

Now Shula, the French are our first ally against the evil Brits. See Lafayette, Ben Franklin in Paris diddling the ladies, the Statue of Liberty, Thomas Paine in Common Sense.

Now Shula, the French are our first ally against the evil Brits. See Lafayette, Ben Franklin in Paris diddling the ladies, the Statue of Liberty, Thomas Paine in Common Sense.

In the negotiations with the colonies the Brits took the opportunity to distance the colonies from their allies by dangling lucrative deals before their eyes which meant that the French were excluded because of their agreement with Spain and Spain was determined to keep it that way until they had the Rock back. So, the French now found themselves up to their neck in an Anglo Spanish tiff. Mind you, if they weren't fighting us here, they'd be fighting us there, so Gib was as good as anywhere. To make it a quick affair the French transferred their victorious army from Minorca, no less than ten infantry battalions of infantrymen along with their engineers and to add to that, the French fleet joined with the Spanish navy in their blockade. In pretty short order they had the destroyed Spanish lines rebuilt and now they were ready for the assault. Meanwhile General Elliot had a few surprises ready for the old enemy and one of them was a weapon he's used on Spanish ships that dared to get too close and they were cannonballs, heated to red hot before being fired. The Brits nicknamed them hot potatoes and as the French and Spanish were ready to attack the Brits let fly with them. They set fire to the newly built wooden stockades and fortifications, causing explosions and chaos. Almost 300 of the attackers were killed in this bombardment. If they thought this was going to be a straightforward affair they were now sadly mistaken, so their next tactic was to build bombardment ships, ten of them. These consisted of modified hulks with pitched roofs over their main deck, which would protect their ships from hot potatoes and heavily armoured sides which could withstand anything the Brits could blast at them. This would allow them to get close enough to unleash a devastating bombardment of their own, wrecking the artillery, pinning down their forces whilst their infantry attacked from the mainland. It took over 5000 men to man this fleet of ships with over 200 canon at its disposal. This was a serious fleet.

Seems to be the Brit strategy over the centuries. "Keep the fighting everywhere but here."

Seems to be the Brit strategy over the centuries. "Keep the fighting everywhere but here."

The defenders now faced their greatest ordeal and the odds against them were quite overwhelming. Besides the fleet of bomb ships there was the vast Spanish and French fleets and over 40,000 infantrymen and 46 canon on the land side of them. This spectacle of a slaughter had attracted about 80,000 spectators, who packed the adjacent hillside to watch it. When the bomb ships were in range they opened fire, all 200 canon. The British reply only saw their canon balls simply strike the ships and roll harmlessly off the side. The army on the landslide now opened up a brisk bombardment of their own but it wasn't long before they ran out of gunpowder, why is a mystery. Meanwhile Elliot began to employ his hot potatoes, which successfully landed on the gunboats but teams of men were employed to douse them but the problem was, they did douse them but not sufficiently and subsequently the inner stored heat slowly began to conduct its way back to the surface. To add to this the bomb ships were slowly being washed towards the shore, dragging their inadequate anchors with them as they were simply too small for the massive extra weight given to these ships. As they hit land, rigging and masts were toppled causing chaos and then the smouldering canon balls began to reignite the decking fires and soon, in a spectacular explosion one of the ships was blown to pieces by their own powder. As chaos began to infect the fleet of bomb ketches the small fleet of Royal Navy ships in Gibraltar harbour now sailed out to attack them and ended up rescuing and taking prisoner hundreds of men. By nightfall another two bomb ketches had exploded, followed by most of the rest during the night with only two surviving until the morning light, which revealed a scene of carnage with hundreds of bodies floating in the water. 700 of the crews had been killed and 350 taken prisoner. On the landward side the deadly accurate British canon fire had claimed a further 500 more casualties. Compare that to just 15 British killed and it was a stunning victory. There followed political repercussions between the French and Spanish who now began to squabble amongst themselves, leaving their American allies up the creek without a paddle, for now they knew that if Britain turned on them there would be no help from their old allies. Britain now took advantage of the situation and  stiffened the terms on the Americans, who rather than face their kinfolk once more, alone this time, acceded to their demands. The Brits forbade them taking any land north of the Ohio and insisted they pay all of their prewar debt for their salvation from possible French control, which they did. Now if only they had done that in the first place, as honour required, thousands of people would not have been killed and thousands of fellow citizens, not wanting to be traitors, would not have been forced to trek north and leave their homes. The border was eventually settled when they agreed that the great lakes would mark it, instead of the Ohio and articles of peace were signed on that basis. The French, in debt and tired of war with Britain over the colonies, who had just signed a peace treaty with their enemy, urged their other ally Spain to offer Britain concessions to end the war, however, on hearing that there was a British fleet heading for Gibraltar, intent on keeping it in British hands, a combined fleet set out to intercept them but Admiral Howe outwitted them and sailed in to Gib with a huge amount of men supplies and three infantry battalions. The Spanish knew the game was up and sought a treaty with France from Britain but the negotiation dragged on and on and Britain, fearing a new campaign against the Rock, launched an attack from Gibraltar against the besieging enemy and routed them. It was the last straw and so they both signed a treaty, witnessed by their old ally the colonies, which ceded Gibraltar to Britain. After almost four years of holding out over great odds, the defenders had won.

Wow Major, so you have re-written history & by your account the British actually won the Revolutionary War?