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Gibraltar's strategic position at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea has endowed it with great military, and therefore political, importance. Indeed, the very name Gibraltar is a corruption of 'Gibel Tariq', or Tariq's Mountain, Tariq being a Moslem Berber chief who constructed a castle on the north-western slope of the Rock in 711 as a base from which Spain could be invaded. Further defence works were carried out in succeeding centuries to repel invading forces from North Africa and from within Spain itself. In 1501 Gibraltar became a Spanish crown property and the following year was granted a coat of arms consisting of a castle symbolising its role as a fortress. Attacks by corsairs in the sixteenth century caused the construction of a protective wall designed by the Italian engineer Calvi. The development of trading empires resulted in Gibraltar achieving even greater significance, and in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, an English and Dutch force landed and overpowered the Spanish; the English hegemony was formalised at the Treaty of Utrecht at the end of the war in 1713. "Gibraltar as a Naval Base and Dockyard", eight papers from the Naval Dockyards Society's conference at Greenwich, examines the influence of Gibraltar from the seventeenth century onwards. David Davies argues that the Rock had been exercising the minds of English politicians and the Admiralty for some time before its capture on 1704, in fact as early as the Cromwellian Protectorate, although his paper focuses on the years 1686-9 when Gibraltar became the leading base for the squadron operating against the Moroccan corsairs. The problems of supplying a fleet in locations distant from its English base are examined by Peter Le Fevre, who concentrates on the decade between 1680 and 1689, at the same time rehearsing the disadvantages of Tangier as a victualling depot. Despite the Treaty of Utrecht, for many years the Spanish sought to recapture Gibraltar, laying three sieges during the eighteenth century. Noting that the Great Siege of 1779-83 is well researched, Richard Harding pays particular attention to the less well known siege of 1726-7, and assesses its significance to the development of the base. An indication of the perceived importance of Gibraltar was the decision to relieve the base during the American War, even though this meant denuding resources from other theatres of war. Taking the 1781 relief as an example, Kenneth Breen considers the difficulties involved and offers an explanation for the failure of the French and Spanish fleets to cooperate, an action which in all probability would have led to an English defeat. Victualling was a constant issue for the base, which, as Janet Macdonald points out, was the oldest of the permanent victualling yards. After looking at the victualling system as a whole she subjects the operation at Gibraltar to detailed examination, the micro-scale analysis contrasting with the macro-scale of the earlier papers. John Black's piece also takes a micro-scale approach, investigating the work involved in the construction of a naval dockyard at Gibraltar in 1894 in the wake of the Naval Defence Act of 1889. Finally, moving into the twentieth century, the 1941 manpower shortage, solved by the creation of a Dockyard Mobile Squad comprising workers from British dockyards, is examined by Philip MacDougall. In an epilogue Ann Coats writes about the unsuccessful campaign to save the distinctive brick water tanks at the Rosia Bay Victualling Yard. These important structures were destroyed for development in 2006. By bringing together in one volume a substantial amount of work on Gibraltar, both factual and analytical, this issue of Transactions is essential for those interested in the significance of the Rock in maritime history. From the preface by the editor, Ray Riley.
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