A Flag of Truce (2012)
“Yet it was doubly so for a ship of the King’s Navy, being a beacon of the nation’s achievements, an outpost of British power that bearded the Spanish Crown and made impossible any secret egress to the Atlantic Ocean by elements of the French Mediterranean fleet. Such a body of ships, combined with those based in the Atlantic ports, would, given the Royal Navy’s commitments elsewhere, represent near parity of force, a threat to the shores of England that would be hard to contain.Wrested from Spa...in in 1702, following the Treaty of Utrecht, Gibraltar was the subject of an annual demand by the Spanish court for it to be returned, and just as often that request was denied; it was, quite simply, too valuable a strategic holding to be given up, quite apart from the fact that it had been taken by the effusion of much blood, and held through several sieges with a costly expenditure of that same commodity. There it stood, towering over the Straits, nine miles wide at the narrowest point, affording to anyone looking out from its pinnacle a good view of the African shore and the approaches from both west and east.MoreLess
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