Important events were to take place before they met. On the 27th of May the ships of Toulouse were sighted by the look-out vessels of Rooke’s fleet. But the abounding caution of the commanders of that generation was shown once more. The average speed of the French ships was better than that of the allies, yet it would have been possible to bring them to action by ordering all the ships to sail at their best rate of speed in a “general chase,” when the quickest of the allies could have overtaken the slowest of the French. But to do this appeared dangerous to the flag officers of 1704, since it might subject them to attack in detail, and they pursued in a body, regulating their speed by that of the slowest sailer among them. Thus the Count of Toulouse kept and improved his lead. On the 29th the allies were within ninety miles of Toulon. Then, fearing that all the French forces would unite and put them at a disadvantage, they returned down the Mediterranean. On the 14th June Rooke and Shovell united their forces in the Straits.
So far nothing very brilliant had been done, and the escape of Toulouse with his far inferior fleet was even discreditable to the allies. But now strong pressure was put on Rooke and his colleagues to act. Hitherto the conduct of the naval war had been of a somewhat peddling order. The buccaneering achievement at Vigo stood alone as a feat of any brilliancy. In the beginning of the war the failure of an officer named Munden (brother of him who retook St. Helena from the Dutch) to stop some French ships at Corunna, and his acquittal by a somewhat complacent court martial, had roused fierce anger in the country. There had since been a shameful business in the West Indies. The nation was becoming thoroughly tired of “naval miscarriages,” and the ministry was resolute that something should be done. Something doable lay at the very hand of the allied fleet. After hesitation, and discussions in the inevitable councils of war, it was resolved to make an attempt on Gibraltar, which Cromwell had indicated as a good post for us to hold half a century before. Though Rooke only acted under pressure, his conduct now compares very favourably with that of Russell in 1695. If he was slow and very cautious, at least he was resolute and exact. He did not allow the mere wind of the French fleet at Toulon to draw him off, but stood on guard with the bulk of his force, and sent in a squadron under George Byng to bombard the town, while a body of marines was landed under command of the Prince of Hesse, on the neck of the peninsula, to cut the garrison off from relief, at any rate, by small parties. Gibraltar even then was strong. Its fortification mounted a hundred guns, but its garrison of 150 men was ridiculously inadequate. On the 23rd the bombardment took place—the Spaniards making such reply as was possible to 150 men. The mole was swept by the fire of the ships’ guns, and then stormed by the sailors. An explosion, either deliberately caused by the Spaniards, or produced by one of our own men who dropped a light into a magazine, did considerable harm to the stormers, and for a moment there was a panic. But the Spaniards were too few to take advantage of the chance, or indeed to man the walls. Next day the governor promised to surrender, and the town was delivered on the 25th. The total loss of the allies was 60 killed and 217 wounded, nearly twice the number of the Spanish garrison, and almost all English. They shed their blood honourably and profitably in adding this noble fortress to the “patrimony of St. George”—happier men than the thousands of their comrades who perished miserably in these wars, fever stricken in filthy ships, rotten with scurvy, starved, or poisoned by bad food.