Gibraltar

   A tiny peninsula on the eastern coast of the Bay of Algeciras at the exit of the Mediterranean Sea into the Atlantic Ocean and a British crown colony after 1830. A British fleet first seized Gibraltar in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, and it was formally ceded to Britain by Spain in the Treaty of Utrecht ending the war in 1713. Although Spain laid siege to Gibraltar during the American Revolution, British sovereignty was confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. Owing to its position at the gateway between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, Gibraltar acquired enormous strategic value to the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and thereafter in policing the oceanic waterways of the British Empire. John Fisher, First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910, referred to Gibraltar as one of the “five strategic keys” of British world dominion, the others being Alexandria and Suez, Singapore, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Straits of Dover.

   See also <>.

   FURTHER READING:

    Herman, Arthur. To Rule the Waves. New York: Harper Collins, 2004;

    Morriss, Roger. The Royal Dockyards during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Leicester: University of Leicester Press, 1983.

   CARL CAVANAGH HODGE