The Rock of Gibraltar

The Rock of Gibraltar

Few locations in the history of Mankind have been as devoutly coveted as Gibraltar, a blade-shaped stab of land thrusting out from the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.

The first recorded inhabitants of Gibraltar were the Phoenicians, who no doubt saw the importance of the peninsula in re-supplying their forays into the Atlantic Ocean starting around 1000 B.C. The Carthaginians and the Romans also established settlements there at the time when the Rock of Gibraltar was considered one of the Pillars of Hercules, after the Greek legend that pegged Hercules as the creator of the Straits of Gibraltar. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Gibraltar was occupied first by the Vandals and subsequently by the Visigoths.

The Siege and Relief of Gibraltar, 1862

All that changed in 771 A.D. when the great armies of Islam swept across North Africa and up into Spain and France via Gibraltar, conquering everything and everyone in their path and bringing with them, into the Dark Ages, the enlightenment of the ancient Greeks and Persians. Islam maintained an iron grip on most of Spain until 1462 when the duke of Medina, acting on behalf of King Henry IV of Castile, reclaimed Spanish control of Gibraltar.

But alas for Spain, Gibraltar was not to remain forever in Spanish hands, despite its geographical and emotional attachment to mainland Spain. In 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession, a combined English and Dutch force captured the town. Under the terms of the subsequent Treaty of Utrecht, Gibraltar was ceded to Great Britain in perpetuity. Spanish attempts to regain control in 1727 and again starting in 1779 both ended in failure.

So how did Gibraltar appear to someone who had never before visited the area? Below is a scene from For Love of Country, Volume II in the Cutler Family Chronicles, in which protagonist Richard Cutler sails in an armed family-owned schooner from Boston to Algiers to try to rescue his brother and his brother’s shipmates from an Arab prison. On the way he stops over in Gibraltar to visit with his brother-in-law, a post captain in the Royal Navy attached to the Mediterranean Squadron. Richard is under the impression, mistakenly as it turns out, that the Royal Navy will assist him in his mission.

Europa Point, Gibraltar

            Richard sat in silence as the oarsmen rowed the boat over to the naval squadron’s anchorage. Only the steady creak of oars rising and dipping, rising and dipping broke the silence. Richard took advantage of the lull to survey the western face of Gibraltar, now revealed to him by an evening sun streaking through broken clouds. Through the dissipating fog and mist he saw what appeared to be a gargantuan battle cruiser of mythical proportions pointing north, the magnificent height of the Rock serving as an old-fashioned poop deck rising high above the Mediterranean. There was even what seemed to be a ship’s hull, a substantial wall running close to the water’s edge from as far north as he could see all the way south past the fortress to Europa Point at the southern tip of the rocky promontory. Interspersed along the wall every fifty feet or so were clusters of star-shaped batteries housing cannon of various firepower standing in defense of official and private buildings of Spanish, British, and Italian construction. And, to his surprise, he saw Moorish construction too: holding a commanding position where a gentle slope gave way to a steep escarpment a third of the way up to the top of the Rock loomed a massive stone castle in a triangular shape resembling an Egyptian pyramid. Attached to the castle was a square-turreted redoubt replete with merlon battlements and a huge stone archway flanked on both sides by thick stone walls that zigzagged down along the embankment to the wall at the water’s edge.

Tower of Homage in the
Moorish Castle, Gibraltar

            The coxswain followed Richard’s gaze. “The Tower of Homage, sir,” he explained, his seasoned tone suggesting prior experience acting as tour guide to visiting dignitaries. “That’s what we English call it. The Moors call it Al Qasabah. It was built in the early fifteenth century after the Moors recaptured Gibraltar from the Spanish. Quite a sight, isn’t it? The British governor lives on the top floor of the redoubt.”

            “I’ll be damned,” Richard marveled, awed by the sight and wondering what it must have cost the Spanish to finally wrest this fortress away from the Moors.

            A glance to the right or left of the castle confirmed how heavily fortified Gibraltar was, and why the Spanish had failed during the Great Siege of 1779–83 to take back from the British what was, geographically if not by the Treaty of Utrecht, Spanish soil. All along the escarpment were natural caves of various sizes, giving the impression of an enormous, two-mile-long honeycomb of gun ports. The iron black of cannon muzzles protruded everywhere like the dark tongues of unseen beasts lurking in their dark depths. In areas devoid of caves the British had erected additional gun batteries, armed to the teeth with 64-pounders--some larger, it seemed to Richard, if guns of such enormous size existed. And from his current vantage point out on the waters of Algeciras Bay, away from the dominance of the fortress and the sheer rock cliffs, he could see high up on the very peak of the Rock what he would have deemed to be impossible: silhouettes of mammoth cannon arrayed in back-to-back formation. One rank faced north toward Catholic Spain, the other south across the eight-mile Strait toward the empire of the Prophet: the North African realm of Islam.


As a footnote to history, in 1967 the citizens of Gibraltar rejected a proposal for Spanish sovereignty. Today Gibraltar governs it own affairs, with certain powers such as defense and foreign relations residing with the British government.

Photo Credits: "The Rock of Gibraltar's North Front cliff face from Bayside showing the embrasures in the Rock." c. 1810. [public domain]; "The Siege and Relief of Gibraltar, 13 September 1782" by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), c. 1783. [public domain]; Eastern cliffs at Europa Point, Gibraltar.[Creative Commons]; Tower of Homage in the Moorish Castle, Gibraltar.[Creative Commons]