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Line Wall Curtain
The Line Wall Curtain is a defensive curtain wall that forms part of the fortifications of the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Description The Line Wall runs from the North Bastion south along the western coast of the town to Engineer Battery, just south of the South Mole. It protected the town from bombardment from ships in the Bay of Gibraltar and from troops landing from the sea. The Line Wall Curtain, as it stands, was built by the British in the 18th century running north–south as part of the Line Wall western defenses. History The wall incorporates, and is to some extent built upon, older Spanish and Moorish fragments. The earlier wall from the Moorish period incorporated square and round towers along its length, whose traces were still visible in the 1770s. It was pierced by clay pipes that carried water from a well down the slopes, used for supplying water to galleys moored in the bay. An aqueduct ran along the Line Wall, enclosed in its masonry, to the Wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortifications Of Gibraltar
The Gibraltar peninsula, located at the far southern end of Iberia, has great strategic importance as a result of its position by the Strait of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. It has repeatedly been contested between European and North African powers and has endured fourteen sieges since it was first settled in the 11th century. The peninsula's occupants – Moors, Spanish, and British – have built successive layers of fortifications and defences including walls, bastions, casemates, gun batteries, magazines, tunnels and galleries. At their peak in 1865, the fortifications housed around 681 guns mounted in 110 batteries and positions, guarding all land and sea approaches to Gibraltar. Hughes & Migos, p. 91 The fortifications continued to be in military use until as late as the 1970s and by the time tunnelling ceased in the late 1960s, over of galleries had been dug in an area of only . Gibraltar's fortifications are clustered in three main a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moorish Gibraltar
The history of Moorish Gibraltar began with the landing of the Muslims in Hispania and the fall of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo in 711 and ended with the fall of Gibraltar to Christian hands 751 years later, in 1462, with an interregnum during the early 14th century. The Muslim presence in Gibraltar began on 27 April 711 when the Berber general Tariq ibn-Ziyad led the initial incursion into Iberia in advance of the main Moorish force under the command of Musa ibn Nusayr, Umayyad governor of Ifriqiya. Gibraltar was named after Tariq, who was traditionally said to have landed on the shores of the Rock of Gibraltar, though it seems more likely that he landed somewhere nearby. Muslim sources claimed that Tariq established some kind of fortification on the Rock, but no evidence has been found and it is not considered credible. It was not until 1160 that a first fortified settlement was built there. The ''Madinat al-Fath'' ( en, City of Victory) was intended to be a major city ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Bastion, Gibraltar
The South Bastion was part of the fortifications of Gibraltar, protecting the western base of the Charles V Wall. It was originally built by Spanish military engineers, later improved by the British. The South Bastion stands at the south end of the Line Wall Curtain which defends the town from attack from the Bay of Gibraltar. Another curtain wall runs east from the bastion to the base of a precipice. This wall is pierced by the Southport Gates, guarded by the South Bastion and the Flat Bastion on either side. Early structures The Milanese military engineer Giovanni Battista Calvi visited Gibraltar in 1557 and drew plans for two defensive positions to the south of the town, where the South Bastion and Flat Bastion now stand, connected by a new curtain wall. Calvi was ill, and did not stay to carry out the planned works. It may have been another Italian, Amodeo Agostino, who died in 1571 who built the original bastions. Another source says the bastion that was incorporated into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orange Bastion
The Orange Bastion is one of the many bastions in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, which served to protect it against its many sieges. It is located along the Line Wall Curtain and was built to protect Gibraltar Harbour against enemy attack. History Named after King of England, William of Orange, this small asymmetric bastion was rebuilt by the British on the site of an older and larger Spanish bastion along the Line Wall Curtain. In 1758 the main face of the bastion held six guns intended to defend the Old Mole firing out to ships away. During the Great Siege of Gibraltar, the bastion was redesigned and enlarged to become a demi-bastion featuring a retired flank behind an orillon with parapets thick In the 1790s, Sir William Green oversaw improvements to Gibraltar's defences and had the Orange and the Montagu Bastions extended and also arranged for a counterguard to be constructed in front of them as additional defences. This 1823 counterguard which was origin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montagu Bastion
The Montagu Bastion is one of many bastions which were designed to protect Gibraltar. Montagu was joined to Orange Bastion by a curtain wall known as Montagu Curtain and this bastion was protected by the Montagu Counterguard. History Montagu Bastion was built on the remains of the Spanish ''Plataforma de San Andrés'' ('' es, St. Andrew's Platform''). A British bastion already existed on this site in the 1730s and was enlarged in 1773 giving it a pentagonal shape. In the 1790s, Sir William Green, oversaw improvements to Gibraltar's fortifications. As part of this he had the Montagu and the Orange Bastions extended and in addition he arranged for counterguards to be constructed in front of them in the Gibraltar Harbour. The counterguard, which mirrors the shape of its bastion, had been authorised by the Duke of Richmond in 1787. The theory behind constructing a counterguard, like the Montagu Counterguard in 1804, is that the enemy has to first capture the counterguard in order ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floating Battery
A floating battery is a kind of armed watercraft, often improvised or experimental, which carries heavy armament but has few other qualities as a warship. History Use of timber rafts loaded with cannon by Danish defenders of Copenhagen against bomb ketches of a combined British-Dutch-Swedish fleet is attested by Nathaniel Uring in 1700. An early appearance was in 1782 at the Great Siege of Gibraltar, and its invention and usage is attributed to Spanish Lieutenant General Antonio Barceló. A purpose-built floating battery was ''Flådebatteri No. 1'', designed by Chief Engineer Henrik Gerner in 1787; it was long, wide and armed with 24 guns, and was used during the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen under the command of Peter Willemoes. The British made limited use of floating batteries during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, with the two-vessel and -class floating batteries, and some individual vessels such as . The most notable floating batteries were built o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heated Shot
Heated shot or hot shot is round shot that is heated before firing from muzzle-loading cannons, for the purpose of setting fire to enemy warships, buildings, or equipment. The use of heated shot dates back centuries; it was a powerful weapon against wooden warships, where fire was always a hazard. However, it was rendered obsolete in the mid-19th century when vessels armored with iron replaced wooden warships in the world's navies. Also at around the same time, the replacement of solid-iron shot with exploding shells gave artillery a far more destructive projectile that could be fired immediately without preparation.Roberts, 1863, pg. 107 The use of heated shot was mainly confined to shore batteries and forts, due to the need for a special furnace to heat the shot, and their use from a ship was in fact against Royal Navy regulations because they were so dangerous, although the American ship USS ''Constitution'' had a shot furnace installed for hot shot to be fired from her carron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Siege Of Gibraltar
The Great Siege of Gibraltar was an unsuccessful attempt by Spain and France to capture Gibraltar from the British during the War of the American Revolution. It was the largest battle in the war by number of combatants. The American war had ended with the British defeat at Yorktown in October 1781, but the Bourbon defeat in their great final assault on Gibraltar would not come until September 1782. The siege was suspended in February 1783 at the beginning of peace talks with the British. On 16 June 1779, Spain entered the war on the side of France and as co-belligerents of the revolutionary United Colonies—the British base at Gibraltar was Spain's primary war aim. The vulnerable Gibraltar garrison under George Augustus Eliott was blockaded from June 1779 to February 1783, initially by the Spanish alone, led by Martín Álvarez de Sotomayor. The blockade proved to be a failure because two relief convoys entered unmolested—the first under Admiral George Rodney in 1780 and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bastion
A bastion or bulwark is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of two faces and two flanks, with fire from the flanks being able to protect the curtain wall and the adjacent bastions. Compared with the medieval fortified towers they replaced, bastion fortifications offered a greater degree of passive resistance and more scope for ranged defence in the age of gunpowder artillery. As military architecture, the bastion is one element in the style of fortification dominant from the mid 16th to mid 19th centuries. Evolution By the middle of the 15th century, artillery pieces had become powerful enough to make the traditional medieval round tower and curtain wall obsolete. This was exemplified by the campaigns of Charles VII of France who reduced the towns and castles held by the English during the latter stages of the Hundred Years War, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Boyd (British Army Officer)
Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Boyd KB (c. 1710 – 13 May 1794) was a British Army officer. Life Boyd was baptized on 20 April 1710 at Richmond, Surrey and attended the University of Glasgow before entering the army in his father Ninian's profession of civilian storekeeper. In 1756 he served at the Siege of Minorca, and attempted to reach Admiral John Byng's fleet in an open boat with a message from the besieged garrison commander, William Blakeney. Boyd was a witness at the subsequent court-martial at which Byng was tried for the loss of the garrison. He subsequently became commissary general to the Marquess of Granby in Germany (1758 to 1759); he then rose through the officer ranks to be three-times Governor of Gibraltar (1776 to 1777, 1790 and 1790 to 1794). Boyd considered that his and General Sir William Green's work on the King's Bastion in Gibraltar was so important that he asked to be buried there. The site of his burial is not indicated but his body is lost under cem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gibraltar Harbour
The Port of Gibraltar, also known as Gibraltar Harbour, is a seaport in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It was a strategically important location during the Napoleonic Wars and after 1869 served as a supply point for ships travelling to British Raj, India through the Suez Canal. The harbour of Gibraltar was transformed in the nineteenth century as part of the British Government's policy of enabling the Royal Navy to defeat its next two largest rival navies combined. Both Gibraltar and Malta were to be made torpedo proof, and as a result the North Mole, Gibraltar Harbour, North and South Mole, Gibraltar Harbour, South Mole were extended and the Detached Mole, Gibraltar Harbour, Detached Mole was constructed. Three large dry docks were constructed and plans were available by 1894. Over 2,000 men were required and had to be billeted in old ships which had not been required since convict labour was abandoned. The demand for stone and sand necessitated building the Admiralt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King's Bastion
King's Bastion is a coastal bastion on the western front of the fortifications of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, protruding from the Line Wall Curtain. It is located between Line Wall Road and Queensway and overlooks the Bay of Gibraltar . It played a crucial role in defending The Rock during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. In more recent history the bastion was converted into a generating station which powered Gibraltar's electricity needs. Today it continues to serve the community as Gibraltar's leisure centre. Design and early history King's Bastion is located at the junction of Queensway and Reclamation Road on the western side of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. The bastion is believed to have started as a Moorish city gate but was later developed by the Spanish in 1575 to become the es, link=no, Plataforma de San Lorenzo. Construction began in 1773, when Lieutenant-general Sir Robert Boyd (1710–1794), then Governor of Gibraltar, laid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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