The Strategic Importance of Malta

The Emperor Napoleon
in His Study at the Tuileries
by Jacques-Louis David, 1812

Located at the geographical center of the Mediterranean Sea, fifty miles south of Sicily, the tiny island of Malta (less than 10% the size of Rhode Island) has for centuries held a strategic importance far greater than its hundred-twenty square mile area might suggest. Catholic to its core – St. Paul himself ministered on the archipelago after being shipwrecked there -- Malta had teetered back and forth at the epicenter of a seemingly endless struggle between Greeks and Romans, Phoenicians and Turks, and Arabs and Spanish for supremacy in the Mediterranean.

In 1551, Barbary pirates landed on Gozo, an island adjacent to Malta, and took the entire population of 5,000 men, women and children back to North Africa as slaves.  Twelve years later, the Knights of Malta, led by Frenchman Jean Parisot de la Valette, successfully repelled an assault by a vast Ottoman fleet that nonetheless succeeded in causing considerable damage to the island and its defenses.  Nor did a treaty between Spain and the Ottoman Empire in the late 1700s bring any sort of reprieve to the long-suffering Maltese people. In 1798, on his voyage to conquer Egypt with his "Army of the Orient," Napoleon Bonaparte seized possession of Malta and left behind a sizable garrison under the command of a trusted commander, General Claude-Henri Belgrand de Vaubois. The general’s mission, Bonaparte publicly declared, was to hold at all costs an island so vital to French interests and supply lines he would rather keep it out of British hands than any village in France.

As profiled in A Call To Arms (Volume IV of the Cutler Family Chronicles to be released in October by the Naval Institute Press.), "Vaubois’s tenure on Malta proved to be ephemeral. Reinforced with weapons and manpower furnished by the kingdom of Sicily, the citizens of Malta, outraged by the French Republic’s hostility to Catholic doctrine, rose up in defiance. Their revolt was enthusiastically supported by the Royal Navy, which blockaded the islands and brought its unique blend of firepower to bear against the French. In 1800, to show their appreciation for British assistance and to protect themselves in the future from would-be molesters, the leaders of Malta formally petitioned the government of King George the Third to grant their island royal dominion status. Sir Alexander Ball, a former British naval officer much beloved by the Maltese, graciously accepted on behalf of His Britannic Majesty. Soon thereafter, Horatio Lord Nelson, Vice Admiral of the Blue and commander-in-chief of British forces in the Mediterranean, declared Grand Harbor at Valletta – one of the finest deep-draft harbors in the world – the new headquarters for the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet."

In 1803, Lord Neson invited Commodore Edward Preble, commander of the U.S. Navy’s Mediterranean Squadron, to use Valetta as his base from which to wage war against Tripoli.  Preble politely declined the offer, preferring for his purposes the harbor of Syracuse on the island of Sicily.

Postscript:  After playing a significant role during World War II due to its proximity to both Allied and Axis shipping lanes, Malta achieved its independence in 1964, but with Queen Elizabeth II retaining the title of Queen of Malta and remaining as de facto head of State.  A governor-general acting in her interests wielded administrative control over the island.  In 1971, Malta declared itself a republic within the British Commonwealth of Nations, with an elected president as head of State.

Terror in Whitehaven, 1778

Attack on Whitehaven
painting by Col. Charles Waterhouse

In the 1770's the town of Whitehaven was one of England's busiest seaports. Located near the shores of the Irish Sea, it looked out upon the Solway Firth that comprised the westernmost boundary between England and Scotland. Because Whitehaven was near where John Paul Jones was born and raised in the Scottish Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, it was where Jones decided to launch his one-ship invasion of England. Although this raid was strongly opposed by most of his officer corps, especially by First Lieutenant Thomas Simpson, it was sanctioned by a host of American dignitaries, including America's emissary in Paris, Benjamin Franklin.

John Paul Jones monument
in Whitehaven

Just after midnight on April 23, 1778, Jones ordered two ship's boats lowered away from the weather deck of the Continental sloop of war Ranger. Thirty sailors and Marines clambered down into the boats. Jones objectives: to first spike the guns of the English fort protecting the entrance to the harbor and the firth, and then to set fire to the three hundred or so vessels nested together at anchor in the harbor -- most of them either coastal merchantmen or coal transports. If the fires spread to the town, so much the better. Jones had no military objectives. Whitehaven held no strategic importance to him or to anyone else. It was simply a town that Jones had sailed in and out of many times in his boyhood, and it was here that he proposed to strike fear and panic among the citizens of Whitehaven – and by extension, among the entire British nation.

Despite a prolonged row ashore caused by shifting winds and a strong ebb tide, Jones realized his first objective. During the first inklings of dawn, he and his captain of Marines, Lt. Wallingford, entered the lightly garrisoned fort and spiked its cannon, temporarily disabling them. Jones, however, failed to realize his second objective, in part because the lanterns in both boats ran out of fuel sufficient to light a conflagration, and in part because a member of his raiding party, an Irishman, slipped away as dawn approached and ran along a harbor street of Whitehaven shouting out a Paul Revere-style warning. Only a single vessel, the collier Thompson, was set aflame, and the domino effect of one burning mast collapsing onto another mast did not materialize. Meanwhile, a fire alarm was sounded, Whitehaven's fire-fighting equipment was mobilized, and large numbers of townsfolk came running to the quays dressed in nightclothes and brandishing family weapons. Jones was forced to retreat to his two boats and back to Ranger, which he did without incident under the silence of the fort's spiked cannon.

We Americans do not like to think of ourselves as perpetrating any overt act of terrorism at any time in our history. But the raid on Whitehaven was one such act. As stated above, it had no military objective, other than perhaps to draw ships of the Royal Navy away from the Channel in pursuit of Ranger. Its primary purpose was to spread panic among British citizenry and it succeeded in doing just that. Britons were not accustomed to having their country invaded, even by a single ship, and few people living long the coast could rest easily at night knowing that ship was prowling offshore, ready, willing and able to strike again. As Midshipman Richard Cutler responds to Captain Jones in Ranger's after cabin when asked for his opinion of the proposed raid in A Matter of Honor, "It's a bold plan, Captain, because it does not rely on success. American Marines landing on British soil will have its effect, no matter the outcome." As it turned out, he was right.