The Gibraltar Museum

Chronicle of an Excavation - Part Two

2011-08-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

Miscellaneous bits of activity on site in today's blog. Above and below: Dominic (undergraduate Leicester University) assisting in the setting up of a control point for the total station

Richard briefs the team on the recoreding methodology and use of the total station

Richard takes a reading - all artefacts are positioned in three-dimensional space with the total station

Geraldine and Richard confirm a reading

Jose Maria, Ana and Ciaran (University College Dublin) "patiently" wait while Geraldine marks the spot for a total station reading

as she moves to another point, the eager archaeologists get started on the Phoenician level

Dominic and Mark (undergraduate University of East Anglia) prepare to excavate - cave entrance in the background

Deeper in the cave, Marie (Gibraltar Museum Collections Manager) helps the total station team setting up for the Palaeolithic levels

Mark watches Jimbob and Antonio getting started on the Palaeolithic levels at the back of the cave

Jimbob in full swing

Marco gets stuck in at the very back of the cave, leading towards a deep chamber. More on this one in future blogs...

All this hard work needs nourishment and the team breaks off for lunch by the sea

Richard uses the lunch break to read up

Paco has a cat nap

while Marco goes for a full-blown siesta!

Chronicle of an Excavation - Part One

2011-08-17T07:30:00.000-07:00

No better way to resume our blog than with a diary of our current excavations at Gorham's Cave. In future posts we will describe this wonderful site and give updates on progress. Archaeological excavations may seem idyllic, the image of an archaeologist cleaning away with a brush to find an unecpected find being uppermost on many people's minds. But behind the brush and the trowel lies a lot of very hard work. Here in Gibraltar temperatures soar above 30C at midday and relative humidity levels may reach over 90% making work very hard indeed.

Today we start by describing how we get to the site. Located by the sea on the east side of the Rock of Gibraltar, Gorham's Cave requires a descent of over 350 steps down 60 metres of cliff. This is a hard job as we need to carry all our equipment with us...

The morning starts with the trek down. The blog will also allow us to introduce the team to you. Here Geraldine (Gibraltar Museum and co-director of the Gibraltar Caves Project) leads the group with Paco (co-director of the Gibraltar Caves Project since 1997) bringing up the rear of the column.

On reaching the base of the steps the team has to scarmble across a boulder field as the images below show...

Geraldine leading the line

Paco takes a break (above and below)

Jose Maria Gutierrez (Villamartin Museum) on the move

Reaching the cave along a spectacular landscape that dwarves the team...

The Cave! Its huge size makes us all feel insignificant

To get to the deep part of the cave where we are excavating requires access via this scaffold. At the top Richard Jennings (Site supervisor - from University College Cork, Ireland) is already getting started. Below, Paco is almost there!

Things don't always work out as planned! Having brought our generator down (quite a task through this landscape) it seemed that we did not have enough power to have all the lights working inside the cave. Stewart (Gibraltar Museum Operations Manager) repeated the trek with our electricians (above and below)

The problem was resolved but we took the decision to bring down a second generator this morning (below)!

A much needed drink of water after the effort and the two generators are down

Left to right: Jimbob (Oxford University), Marco (Seville University), Huw (Oxford University) and Antonio (Cadiz University)

...and if you think that's hard...

you then have to climb all the way up after a long day! (that's me by the way)

A Knight's Tale - Part One

2011-01-03T03:24:00.000-08:00

Chapel inside Tower of Homage

A fifty-two year-old knight kneels in front of a box containing some human remains. A tear falls onto his maille. After a brief pause, he picks himself up and leaves the chapel that he has hurriedly built inside this tower, potent symbol of a place that his family regards as theirs. The year is 1462. The place is Gibraltar and the chapel is in the Tower of Homage. The knight is Don Juan Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y Orozco and he is the first of a long lineage to bear the title of Duke of Medina Sidonia. The bones are his father’s...

The duke’s father was Don Enrique Pérez de Guzmán y Castilla, second Count of Niebla and grandson - his mother was the bastard daughter of the king - of Henry II of Castille. Being a descendant of the king this particular Guzmán had competence, under the peculiar medieval rules of warfare and engagement, to conquer cities. And he put this right to effect when chance came his way.

Tired of constant raids on his border lands between Tarifa and Cádiz by Muslims from Gibraltar, Guzmán decided to put a stop to the incursions. And so in 1436, one hundred and twenty seven years after Alonso Pérez de Guzmán - “El Bueno” - had first taken Gibraltar from the Muslims, his great grandson sought to emulate the achievement. In the interim Gibraltar had been retaken by the Muslims in 1333 and was now in the hands of the sultans of Granada. Guzmán’s intelligence was either out-of-date or simply wrong. He seemed unaware that the Muslims had, since the second capture, built a defensive wall around Gibraltar. His attempted amphibious landing was a disaster. Guzmán and forty knights drowned on the narrow beach between the walls and the sea as the tide rose. The Muslim’s beheaded the count and placed the decapitated body in a basket which they hung over the city walls. There it remained for twenty six years as lesson and reminder to others of the fate that awaited those attempting a similar folly.

Taking Gibraltar twenty six years later - in 1462 - was a simpler affair. Treachery made it possible without having to spill a drop of blood but it was not devoid of internal bickering and dispute over who was the rightful owner. It is a lesson of life that, in fighting the palpable enemy without, noble souls often succumb to the cryptic enemy within. The capture of Gibraltar in 1462 happened because a Gibraltar Muslim – known to the Spaniards as Alí El Curro – defected and converted to Christianity, in the process changing his name to Diego del Curro. He informed the Mayor of Tarifa – Alonso de Arcos - that Gibraltar could be taken easily and provided him with intelligence of such detail that convinced Alonso to mobilise and march on the Rock. This was not part of a concerted plan by the internally divided Kingdom of Spain; it was instead, like so many other gains wrongly attributed to a religious and righteous Reconquest, a scrap for booty and glory among warlords hiding under a veil of hereditary nobility. It was thus that flags, lances and cavalry gathered round the walls of Gibraltar – to the surprise of a terrified and unprepared garrison - in the August heat of 1462. Nobody could have predicted the unbelievable story, involving bureaucracy, deceit, disloyalty and betrayal, that would eventually allow Juan Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y Orozco to give rest to his father’s remains inside the Tower of Homage...

Clive Finlayson
This article was first published in the Gibraltar Chronicle

All change: Theories of human ancestry get an overhaul

2010-12-31T03:51:00.000-08:00

Article in BBC News Online, today 31st December, 2010

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12093345

The Goth, the Arab and the Berber

2010-12-21T02:13:00.000-08:00

Jebel Musa (Africa) from Jebel Tarik (Europe)

The atmosphere was tense as tired and hungry soldiers anticipated long-awaited orders. Finally Alaric, the King of the powerful Visigoths, gave the signal. On the 24th August, 410, they marched into Rome and sacked it. It was the end of an era. Rome would never be the same again. Flavius Honorius, Western Roman Emperor, could only contemplate civilization’s impotence from his distant refuge in Ravenna. As always, the mighty had fallen...

Later that year the forty-year old Alaric – his name meant “the king of all” – succumbed, it seems to malaria, and died. The accelerated life of the man born on the shores of the Danube thus ended in Cosenza, southern Italy. Thirteen years, almost to the day, after the sack of Rome the thirty-nine year old Honorius, emperor of a decayed empire, died of dropsy. Others, soon forgetting the nature of their own mortality, also allowed ambition and greed to rule over them. They filled the empty niches and perpetuated history.

One consequence of Visigothic success was their entry and settlement, five years after the sack of Rome, of the Roman territory of Hispania. Six hundred and thirty three years after the hard-earned Roman conquest of Hispania from the Carthaginians the Visigoths, with Roman encouragement, eased into the Iberian Peninsula and made it their home. Time had eroded the bravery and nobility of the great Roman general Scipio Africanus, victor over Hannibal in Zama, into forgotten futility. For history does not matter when confronted by expediency.

Almost three hundred years after the Visigoths had entered Hispania, a new king comes to the throne. This is not an unusual occurrence. Roderick happened to be the thirty-third monarch since Hispania came under Visigoth control, a testament to the turbulence and violence of the time. But even by Visigoth standards – I calculate the average life span of a reign to have been under nine years – Roderick’s seventeen-month sovereignty was, to say the least, brief. It is not unusual, either, that he came to power after a bloody civil war. It was the Visigoth way. On the 1st March, 710, Roderick was proclaimed king of Hispania. He was to be the last king of the Visigoths.

From the outset this king had to contend with intrigue and vengeance plots from those he had defeated and deposed: the brother of Witiza (Roderick’s rival) - Oppas, the bishop of Seville - among them. He sought refuge and assistance on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar, in Ceuta. Ceuta was under the control of an obscure character, a Count Julian who is often regarded to have been a Gothic relative of Witiza. Others regard him to have been the former Byzantine governor of Carthage, which had fallen to a new force – the young Muslim Empire – in 698. Julian, it seems, had good reason for wanting to remove Roderick from power. He had, in accordance with tradition, sent his beautiful young daughter Florinda to the Visigothic court in Toledo where she would receive education close to the king. Roderick raped the girl.

While all this was happening the relentless westward expansion of the Arabs across North Africa had brought them to the Maghreb where they had to contend with a tough resistance from the local Berbers. They were renowned warriors and had home advantage in the abrupt terrain of the Rif and Atlas mountains. Conquest took the route of absorption into the faith. Equipped with the fervour of their new-found religion, the Berbers were unstoppable. Tension and rivalry between them and their Arab masters simmered but a common faith kept the pot from boiling over. In history, the call of the gods has often been a powerful rallying force. Territorial expansion has been its close ally. Count Julian knew this and was about to exploit it to his advantage...

Two men sit, minds wonderfully concentrated, as Samuel Johnson would put it in another place and time, with the prospect of death looming. One is an Arab and the other a Berber. Here in Damascus in February of the year 715 it all seems so distant in space and time. Sulayman b. ‘Abdilmalik, has just achieved absolute power – he is the Caliph, successor to the messenger of God. The Caliph summons the Arab who approaches uneasily. It is hard to believe that this Arab – Musa b. Nusayr – had been the governor of the whole of North Africa and had been instrumental in the conquest of the territory that the Arabs had chosen to call al-Andalus – the old Hispania of the Romans and Visigoths. Why was he here and in such a precarious position? He had overstepped his authority. Worried that his massive achievement, beyond the orders given, might overshadow the Caliph, Musa had been summoned to Damascus. But Sulayman was also, more mundanely, concerned with the spoils of war. Musa had arrived as the former Caliph, al-Walid, was dying. Sulayman, al-Walid’s brother, ordered Musa not to enter Damascus – he wanted to receive Musa, once proclaimed Caliph, and receive the treasures for himself. But Musa ignored the order.

Musa faced many charges, most to do with division of spoils of conquest and misappropriation of treasury shares. Tariq, the Berber, confirmed the charges against his master. This should not surprise us. When Tarik crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in April 711 he had marched on and faced none other than Roderick in one of those singular battles of history that decided the fate of a kingdom. Tarik had managed to “sneak” twelve thousand men across the Strait and landed on the Rock which since then has borne his name. He did it with the help of the astute Julian – he provided Tarik with Visigothic merchant vessels that disguised conquest in a veil of commerce. He also advised Tarik on the manner of the conquest by providing him with intelligence. Julian had avenged his daughter.

Tarik, with significantly smaller numbers than Roderick’s army, won the protracted battle in July 711 and eventually caught up and killed Roderick. Betrayal played a central role in the defeat. Witiza’s sons had plotted to abandon Roderick in full battle, leaving his flanks exposed to the attacks of the Berber cavalry. They had expected Tarik’s to have been a raid followed by withdrawal, leaving Hispania to them. They had not anticipated Tarik’s rapid drive to the capital Toledo. It seems that Musa had not either. Envious of Tarik’s success, and not wanting to miss out on the booty, he quickly followed him to Toledo. When Tarik came to greet his master, the reward for his achievement was to be struck by Musa’s whip for having exceeded the limits of his authority. The division between Arab and Berber could not have been more accentuated – envy had, on this occasion, overruled religion.

Musa seems to have pacified Sulayman with his treasures to the point that both later travelled together to Mecca in 716. It seems, rather obscurely, that he died on the way. Musa’s family and friends were treated badly by the new regime in North Africa. Tarik’s fate seemed a better one for a while as Sulayman contemplated making him governor of al-Andalus but envious advisers told the caliph that “if Tarik were to tell the Muslims of al-Andalus to pray facing any direction other than the qibla, they would obey him, without thinking that this was heresy.” Tarik, a Berber after all, never got the job and died in total obscurity. Were it not for the Jbel Tarik in which we live, most of us would probably be oblivious of this Berber general’s achievement.

In the end, the loss of energy that defeated the Romans ironically affected the formerly energetic conquering Visigoths who were themselves conquered by a new wave of energy. Once in al-Andalus these new settlers would also be accused by other North African dynasties of having become soft. The Strait of Gibraltar would see repeated waves of conquerors from the south over the next six hundred years...

Clive Finlayson
This article was first published in the Gibraltar Chronicle

The Prince and the Tadpole

2010-12-16T05:38:00.000-08:00

A decomposing, decapitated, frogman floats off Pilsey Island in Chichester Harbour. It is the 9th June, 1957. Out of a wave of controversy a coroner announces that he is convinced that the frogman was Lionel Crabb. At the end of 2007, a 74-year old former Soviet frogman – Eduard Koltsov – clears his conscience by admitting to having killed Crabb in Portsmouth Harbour in 1956. In a different time and place, the 26th August, 1974, Junio Valerio Borghese who had settled in Conil de La Frontera, Cádiz, died in suspicious circumstances. It is thought that he may have been poisoned.

Borghese had had a distinguished career in the Italian Navy. He had been born in Rome in 1906 into the rich Aristocrazia Nera (the “black nobility”) Borghese family and, by 1933, he had become a submarine commander. Seven years later, on the night of the 29th September, 1940, Borghese – the Black Prince – was 50 miles off Gibraltar in command of the 620-ton Seria Adua class submarine Scire. It was a dark night, the moon was in its last quarter, and the Black Prince was poised to exploit the cover of darkness and attack the British Fleet in Gibraltar Bay. The moment had been carefully chosen. Then the disappointment came. The British Fleet had sailed to escort a convoy and the operation had to be aborted. Borghese was back a month later.

Scire had been refitted in la Spezia in order to carry out covert operations with manned torpedoes – the Maiale . It had been given a smaller conning tower than other submarines and she had been painted a pale green colour. The outline of a fishing boat had been painted on the bow, pointing in the opposite direction to the movement of the submarine. All these adaptations had been designed to promote stealth. The Black Prince was appropriately at the helm – he had after all organised the Decima Flottiglia, arguably the first modern naval commando unit – as he entered Gibraltar Bay. So, on the night of the 29th October, 1940, Scire surfaced at the entrance to Gibraltar Bay. But finding too much surface activity she submerged once more and made for the northern end of the Bay. Here, in shallow water off the Guadarranque River, she spawned her Maiale and left. The plan was that the frogmen manning the torpedoes would make their escape by swimming to the Spanish beaches.

The attack was one of three attacks of this kind and they met with varying success. A year later, the Black Prince was commanding Scire off Alexandria and severely damaged HMS Valiant and Queen Elizabeth. The success refreshed his spirit and he refocused on Gibraltar. He introduced the GAMMA group of elite frogmen who were specially trained for underwater sabotage. They reputedly attacked ten ships, damaged six and sank four. They operated from the Olterra in Algeciras harbour, a refitted 5000-ton Italian tanker which had been scuttled by its crew in 1940 when Italy entered the war. The conversion allowed the human torpedoes to operate from a fixed base.

The threat was countered in Gibraltar by a mine and bomb disposal unit – the Underwater Working Party. In November, 1942, a young naval lieutenant arrived at Gibraltar. Born in 1909, Lionel Crabb, was three years younger than the Black Prince. His job had been to disarm mines removed by divers but the determined lieutenant, by all accounts not a good swimmer, learnt to dive and was soon checking ships’ hulls for limpet mines. They swam breaststroke, without fins, using the rudimentary Davis Escape Apparatus which had only been used for breathing close to the surface. It was a kind of oxygen re-breather that had been invented in 1910. On the 8th December, 1942, they acquired two Scuba sets (these had first appeared in 1939 and are not to be confused with the open circuit – aqualung – system invented later by Cousteau and Gagnan) from two Italian frogmen who appear to have been killed by depth charges in the bay. Crabb became known as “Buster Crabb”, after the American actor and swimmer Buster Crabbe although his subordinates called him Tadpole.

When I walk past South Jumpers Bastion I sometimes imagine the sound of a dog barking and a parrot squawking... It was here that Tadpole and the Underwater Working Party had their headquarters and they lived, reputedly, with a few canaries, an Alsatian with six pups, and a parrot which belonged to Crabb himself.

A small rowing boat weaves its way round the large warships and merchantment anchored in Gibraltar Bay. In it is a shabbily dressed Mediterranean-looking individual, nondescript, a fisherman. But he is no ordinary fisherman. His name is Elvio Moscatelli, an Italian, and he is the doctor of the secret unit operating from the Olterra. His intelligence was invaluable in selecting the targets that the Maiali would hit. We can only imagine Crabb sitting on his boat, preparing to dive or drop depth charges, watching Moscatelli fishing close by. Did they ever make eye-contact?

By 1944, after Italy had fallen to the allies, Crabb was given command of anti-sabotage diving in northern Italy. Some Italians had joined the allied cause while others fled the country. While head of the Clearance Diving Team in Venice, Crabb’s senior diver and medical officer was none other than Elvio Moscatelli! Among those who fled was the Black Prince. An ardent fascist, it is no surprise that he chose to carry on fighting alongside the Nazis. After the war he was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment but was released by the Italian Supreme Court, four years later, in 1949. On the 8th December, 1970, the Black Prince returned to the centre stage. He was thought to be at heart of a failed coup d’Etat - the Golpe Borghese – and fled the country.

By then Crabb had been long dead. Crabb, by then retired, was recruited by MI6 to check out the Soviet Cruiser Ordzhonikidze which had brought Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin on a diplomatic mission to the United Kingdom. On the 19th April, 1956, the Tadpole dived in Portsmouth harbour and was never seen alive again...

Clive Finlayson
This article was first published in the Gibraltar Chronicle

Warren's Map

2010-12-10T05:37:00.000-08:00

The fog swirls down the Thames as the night sets in. The timeless mists are ready, one more time, to hide the shadowy activities of Londoners who, like bats, swarm the back streets after dark. Will the city’s most notorious predator, a veritable vampire, pounce tonight?

The lazy autumn sun single-handedly battles miasma and smog as it struggles to make dawn. A shaky hand drops a Wedgwood cup, spilling some Earl Grey on a clean tablecloth, a metaphor for a decaying Empire. But the matter at hand is more pressing than the uncontrollable geopolitics of world affairs. The vampire struck again last night. The cause of the interrupted breakfast is not the news of the latest predatory strike. It is the realisation of what will follow: impotence is a powerful political force that can destroy even the most accomplished. This is the last straw: Charles Warren, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has been defeated and must go. Jack, our blood-sucking ripper, lives on and will strike another day.

The sands settle once more. Nothing has changed. Like many a modern football team striving for success, a change of manager has not altered the fortunes. Jack continues to terrorise the streets of London. Warren takes stock of his life. In a distant time and place, a tiny limestone Rock at a time when Empire still had meaning, a young officer had lived a life of freedom under the Mediterranean sun. Gibraltar was unaccustomed to peace and it was making the most of it. The city was a bee hive as wind and steam brought people and merchandise from the furthest confines of the planet. But so many people and so little hygiene were soon to create havoc in the population as the spectre of cholera loomed.

Charles Warren had not worried about these things. He shared every youth’s belief in personal immunity from fate. Nothing could stop him. He walked and climbed every bit of the limestone Pillar that had been put there by Hercules for him to survey eons later. And he was going to chart every one of its hidden secrets. Warren produced a spectacular map of Gibraltar, with the elegance and character that escapes a modern-day geographic information system. Things took longer then but, then again, the best dishes take time to bake. We have lost in quality what we have gained in speed.

The year is now 2010 AD. A family visits the Gibraltar Museum and they marvel at a wonderful model of the Rock that occupies an entire room. It took three years to make, from 1865 to 1868 and they wonder how it was made and who did it. The young boy calls his parents over and draws attention to a plaque that tells them the model was based on a detailed survey by a Lieutenant Charles Warren. They move on to the next room and Warren returns to anonymity. Meanwhile Jack the Ripper’s infamy guaranteed him immortality. Life and history are contingent. If we could go back to Warren’s time on the Rock and replayed the tape, would he have become Commissioner of the Metropolitan, and would Jack have terrorised London?

Clive Finlayson
This article was first published in the Gibraltar Chronicle

Next Museum Lecture

2010-12-02T08:16:00.001-08:00

The Ghosts of History

2010-12-02T00:34:00.000-08:00

It is Sunday. As is usual most weekends, I am in the museum working on some research article, preparing for a lecture or simply thinking. The telephone doesn’t ring and I can keep the pushy email at bay.

We spend most of our lives racing without dedicating enough time to pausing and contemplating. Last year we celebrated Darwin and his work and I stop and ask myself if the world of the 21st Century might be capable of producing a Darwin? The Origin was the product of observation and thought: Darwin one day took off on a world tour and had the time to do both. He did not have the incessant interruptions and bureaucratic intrusions that might have otherwise plagued him and kept him from expressing his genius. And the world would have suffered as a result.

Being alone inside the museum is almost like being in Dr Who’s tardis. I’m sitting in a room that is a curious mix of Mediterranean and Empire: sash windows and Genoese shutters are at peace today; as if this day of rest had given them a temporary reprieve from the hooting monsters that spew out diesel and petrol fumes on Line Wall Road every other day of the week. A hanging uniform, once proudly worn by a regimental sergeant-major of the South Staffordshire Regiment around 1900, silently imposes its presence upon me and makes me feel miniscule within history’s macroscopic agenda. Books narrate to me the well-rehearsed stories of Empire’s splendour but I just cannot get into the mind of the person who wore that coat. And I wonder whose history it is that I am reading?

The ageless church bells peal. You might be forgiven for almost expecting to hear the clatter of a company of Tommies as they march past outside, but that was another time…The space that I am occupying is timeless. How many stories have been told here? How many ephemeral lives have entered and left this space, unrecorded by the scribes, discarded to eternal anonymity? It is not an easy thing to grasp history’s reality. We construct and deconstruct filtered strands that have reached us from the past and which our imaginations then shape; and like Borges’ Averroes the characters simply vanish the moment I stop thinking of them.

I leave the room to wander along the galleries of an unlit and sleeping museum. My torch shines here and there revealing muskets and scarabs, flint knives and steel swords; and I see myself in the reflection on the glass pane from one of the cases. I struggle to assimilate how many other reflections there might have been in this very place. Perhaps we should imagine the lives of those other people who have shared the same space. With a little help from the objects which they left behind, and with a large helping of humility, we might just be able to get under their skin; in the process we may get glimpses of their lives and discover history.

Clive Finlayson

This article was first published in the Gibraltar Chronicle

Humans Who Went Extinct goes Paperback

2010-11-11T04:29:00.000-08:00

Museum Director, Clive Finlayson's, latest book has now been published by Oxford University Press in Paperback. The book describes Professor Finlayson's theory on the Neanderthal extinction but also looks at our own origins. Chance and Climate Change are prominent in this book.

The Barbary Partridge

2010-11-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

The Barbary Partridge is a resident breeding bird on the Rock of Gibraltar. This situation is unusual because the endemic partridge of south-western Europe is the Red-legged Partridge (below) which is not found on the Rock.

The partridge's situation is very similar to that of the Barbary Macaques that also live on the Rock (below).

In both cases the species, typical of North-west Africa, were introduced by British military personnel during the 18th Century.

At the time connection with the Spanish hinterland was severed by sieges and most supplies came in from "Barbary", the term given to the lands of North Africa on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar. A Governor's Order of 1749, for example, authorised the importation of game from Barbary. The partridges were released for hunting purposes in all likelihood and a feral population was established.

These, now wild, birds roam areas of rocky, open, vegetation in different parts of the Rock

Gibraltar is the only place in mainland Europe where this beautiful species breeds.

What happened this week in the past?

2010-10-29T03:44:00.000-07:00

Let's see what happened this week many years ago. Our archives provide us with much information. In 1779, Gibraltar was at the beginning of a siege that would last four years.

Diary entry - 27th October, 1779: Rice twenty one dollars per cwt. Great scarcity of Fresh Meat. Geese at a guinea each, ducks at $2 each and pork at 5 reals per lb.

Diary entry - 1st November, 1779: Bread delivered by bakers through a wicket protected by guards. Piteous sights seen of men, women and children struggling to obtain a morsel of bread at an incredible price. Flour stock available only for 2 months.

In 1805, the port of Gibraltar was busy in the aftermath of the Battle of Trafalgar:

Diary Entry - 27th October, 1805: General Thanksgiving service held in King's Chapel by the Rev. J. Hughes by command of H. E. the Lieut.-Governor. Arrival of Spanish Frigate San Juan Nepumoceno captured by Lord Nelson's fleet. Arrival of H. M. ship Victory having on board the remains of Lord Nelson.

Times change. In 1865, Gibraltar was celebrating the end of a cholera epidemic that decimated the population.

Diary Entry - 26th October, 1865: Thanksgiving service at Catholic Cathedral and principal Hebrew Synagogue for cessation of cholera epidemic. General holiday observed.

Communications improved at the turn of the century...

Diary Entry - 3rd November, 1903: First wirelsss telegraphic message between England and Gibraltar received by H. E. the Governor, through Signor Marconi.

...and by 1919 things were really changing in previously unknown ways...

Diary Entry - 25th October, 1919: Coalheavers strike which lasted till 24th November...

Secret passages inside the Rock

2010-10-28T04:15:00.000-07:00

There are many miles of tunnels inside the Rock of Gibraltar. Many of these were excavated during the Second World War and could house thousands of men and equipment. From one of these tunnels a secret passageway led to a cave...

steep steps led down to an opening in the cliff (above) below which a metal ladder (now gone) gave access to the cave.

Boat Hoist Cave is a huge cave, only accessible from this tunnel or directly from the sea, the Mediterranean.

These photos were taken during a visit that we undertook to explore the site. The boat and the diver (by the cave entrance) give an idea of scale and difficulty of access.

once inside, there is a beach with the debris brought in by the sea over the years...

the cave goes deep into the Rock, where the door leading to the tunnels is situated...

metal rings fixed to the cave wall were meant for ropes that would keep boats fixed alongside the beach...

this is Boat Hoist Cave - part of a secret escape route for the Governor of Gibraltar should Gibraltar have been overrun by the Nazis. From here a light craft would transport the Governor to a waiting submarine...

From sail to steam

2010-10-27T02:53:00.000-07:00

The transition from sail to steam during the 19th Century generated a great revolution in shipping. The port of Gibraltar benefited from this change. In the museum we have the logs of the port of Gibraltar which recorded many details about shipping. Below, we present a chart of the time taken for merchant ships to travel from Liverpool to Gibraltar.

The graph is very revealing and indicates that steam brought two big changes in transport. One was speed. While sailing ships couls take anything between 16 and 24 days to complete the journey, the equivalent trip was performed in 7 to 9 days with steam. But the graph also shows that the journey time was more consistent with steam, thus making it more reliable. One way of quantifying history!

The graph reveals one more thing - the transition to steam, despite its advantages, was not abrupt. In 1850 many ships arriving in Gibraltar were sailing ships.

Neanderthals in the Iberian Peninsula

2010-05-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

It seems hard to believe but I took the two photos above last Wednesday. I have put them because they are the perfect introduction to today's post. Yes, the Iberian Peninsula is so topographically diverse that you can go from snowstorm to desert and palm trees within a day! For those living in Iberia this simple fact may not seem unduly surprising but it is not self-evident if you come from outside. Yet this simple observation, which seems to have escaped archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists, is the key to the late survival of Neanderthals in this peninsula that is almost a mini-continent.

Those of you who may have read the latest news about the publication of the Neanderthal genome and the revelation that some Neanderthal genes are present in Eurasians today may be wondering why I am still talking of late Neanderthals, and their extinction. As some popular headlines, and even palaeoanthropologists, have proposed the Neanderthals are still among us! This is absolutely ridiculous. The Neanderthals are extinct, make no mistake about it. Their particular body form, physical and behavioural characteristics are gone. But, before going they left us the precious gift of some of their genes.

This latest find fits beautifully in the predictions I have been making in various publications for some years now, against the grain of scientific consensus. I have spent many years debunking the myth of the ape-like Neanderthal. Instead, I have called them humans, to the annoyance of colleagues. Now, we find they were so human that they even mated with our ancestors and thus were also ancestors of ours! Those who have argued that they were so different that they were different species must now bow to this new evidence and accept that they were not because it is a well known fact of biology that different species do not mate freely in the wild!

But let us return to Iberia and its contrasts...

The chart above is also from the paper I published in 2007 with Professor Carrion. It is based on fossil pollen analyses in three sites, numbered in the map above. The top section is Velay in the French Massif Central. It reveals that during the last Ice Age the vegetation went from steppe-tundra when it was cold and dry to an open taiga when it was warmer. In other words vegetation akin to northern Siberia today! The second set is from Navarres near Valencia. We see an improvement along the Mediterranean coast of Iberia with an open Mediterranean woodland when warmer but a conifer steppe when cooler. But when we looked at Gibraltar on the southern coast (the lowest section) the outcome was stunning. Mediterranean savannahs and woodland dominated at all times, no matter how cold it got. In the worst moments all we could pick up were some montane trees, like Black Pines, at the lower elevations. Recall that in the last post we showed how the cold fauna of Europe never reached this far south.

How do we find fossil pollen? In the Gorham's Cave we find it in the sediment that we excavate, but we also find it in hyaena coprolites (below). Coprolite is a nice way of saying fossil dung but how can carnivore dung have pollen? Well the hyaenas that roamed the area fed on carcasses or freshly killed herbivores, like deer. They ate their intestines and so swallowed the pollen. 40 thousand years later the fossil dung provided us with a perfect random sample of the plants that grew outside the cave at the time of the Neanderthals!

40-thousand year old fossil coprolite from a Spotted Hyaena from Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar

We will leave this here for today. Just a parting thought: the topographic diversity that gave me snow and palm trees on the same day allowed pockets of landscape where Neanderthals could seek refuge. In the open plains of central Europe these options were less readily available and the Neanderthals died out sooner than in the south - a simple lesson in geography that seems to have escaped the eye ot the students of the Neanderthals!

The Neanderthals

2010-05-01T01:30:00.000-07:00

The earlier post has generated a lot of interest and questions about the Neanderthals and their demise. So we have decided to spend some time in the next few posts describing the work that has been done in Gibraltar and our wider research looking at the bigger Eurasian picture of the Neanderthal distribution. The latest summary is in Clive Finlayson's book "The Humans who went Extinct" published in 2009 by Oxford University Press.

We will start by trying to understand who the Neanderthals were and, in future posts, zoom into Gibraltar which is where the last ones survived on this planet. The Neanderthals were humans. Some people consider them a separate species from our ancestors and others just a subspecies. Either way, they belonged to a lineage with a common ancestor to our own who lived some time around half-a-million years ago.

If you take a look at the map above, from an article written in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution by Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum and Jose Carrion of the University of Murcia, you will observe the maximum geographical distribution of the Neanderthals in red. They were clearly a Eurasian lineage of humans, with the southernmost part of their geographical distribution in Israel and Iberia. They weren't across this vast range all the time. During cold glacials their distribution was reduced to southerly refugia. Iberia was the major refugium. They had a permanent distribution in this peninsula, whether it was cold or warm. Contrast that with Germany where the Neanderthals only lived when the climate was mild.

This map, from the same paper, shows the southernmost limit of the cold fauna of the Ice Ages (dotted blue line). The Iberian Peninsula only saw the arrival of the cold fauna in extreme conditions. Even then the southerly limit was around the latitude of Madrid although some woolly mammoths did reach as far south as Granada. But the coastal south-west, from Malaga to Lisbon, with Gibraltar at the apex, never saw a woolly mammoth or woolly rhino. This is a first indication of how mild it was down here. More evidence will follow!

In this map, from a separate study of thousands of archaelogical sites by Clive Finlayson, we see that the last populations of Neanderthals were concentrated in four strongholds (1-4 in order of importance). The south of Iberia stands out as the largest stronghold and it is within this area that the last Neanderthals survived. We will explore why in the following blogs. But for now we leave you with one thought: so far we have not brought in our ancestors to this picture. For years, and some still cling on to this idea, it was thought that we were responsible for the Neanderthal extinction. So far we have been able to describe this extinction without having to bring our ancestors into the picture. More to follow...

Reconstructing past landscapes

2010-04-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

One of the most innovative aspects of our research at the Gibraltar Museum for the past decade has been the detailed reconstruction of past landscapes, especially those of the Late Pleistocene, around 40 thousand years ago. This has been possible because of the unique fossil record of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians in Gorham's and other important caves on the Rock.

Gorham's Cave (2nd from left) and Vanguard Cave (3rd from left) are a unique archive of fossils covering the period 50-15 thousand years ago. This was the last refuge of the Neanderthals in the planet but many other species lived here. One was particularly at home on the spectacular cliffs of the Rock and were the favourite prey of the Neanderthals. It was the Ibex Capra pyrenaica.

almost intact 40 thousand-year old Ibex skull from a cave excavated in 1994 by the Gibraltar Museum and named Ibex Cave after this find. The museum's collection is rich in the remains of this species.

Our work has involved the study of hundreds of species which left fossils in Gorham's Cave and studying their behaviour and ecology in sites where they can still be found today. This exhaustive work that has now surpassed the detailed record of over 1000 sites is giving us a very clear picture of what Gibraltar was like at the time of the Neanderthals. And images, like these, also help bring these places back to life in museum displays, our website and here. They are also an important part of our education programme. We will continue with this reconstruction in future posts. For now, enjoy imagining a scene on the Rock with herds of these majestic creatures!

Hidden amongst colourful and silent neighbours

2010-04-26T15:21:00.000-07:00

The Gibraltar Museum has an Underwater Research Unit (URU). Among its tasks is the surveying of the seabed for archaeology.

But not all good finds come from planned work.

Hidden for around two centuries, only known to the colourful and cryptic inhabitants of the seabed, an object waited patiently...

On Sunday morning Geraldine Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum was diving with colleagues, Jacqui Sanguinetti, Gerry Martos and Nick Ward, of the 317S Dive Club, in the Bay of Gibraltar when she spotted a strange shape buried in the seabed. After careful cleaning of the area, a complete stoneware flagon was recovered! Preliminary study suggests that it is an 18th or early 19th Century object. These flagons were usually used to store ale or whisky. The area from which the artefact was recovered was a well known anchorage, and the flagon may have accidentally fallen, or willingly discarded, from a ship. Further study may reveal more. The flagon is in remarkably good condition except for a crack visible in the photograph above. Conservation work on this object will now start in the Gibraltar Museum laboratories.

This story is a good example of the positive way in which sports divers can contribute to the better understanding and the conservation of our heritage.

Gibraltar's Changing Coastline

2010-04-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

A close look at a selection of historical prints, maps, watercolours and oils of Gibraltar shows us lots of interesting details of how Gibraltar has changed over the last three centuries, but especially the way Gibraltar’s coastline has developed in line with the changing needs of the fortress.

This coloured aquatint entitled ‘View of Gibraltar From Devil’s Tongue Battery’ by Lieutenant Henry Aston Barker, dates from 1804. Situated atop the Old Mole, at this time the battery helped to cover both the anchorage and neutral ground to the north and the western side of the Bay to the south. This spectacular view of the Rock stands as a good example of the changes that this area of Gibraltar has undergone. Since the painting of this view, all of the area seen has been reclaimed from the sea. Watergardens now stands on the land to the left and Varyl Begg and Montagu Gardens Estates on the land to the right. Devil’s Tongue is today home to a garden centre, but much of the original structure still survives.

This other general panorama of the Rock, an anonymous watercolour dating from 1800, shows the city walls running along the base of the Rock. The walls once marked the boundaries of the city. It also illustrates how mistakes can be made when drawing from memory – Charles V Wall is shown zig-zagging in the wrong direction up the Rock!

A closer look at the city walls in a number of watercolours by Lieutenant Frederick Leeds Edridge, shows the sea lapping at the city walls. This view of the Line Wall before the construction of Wellington Front, at the back of the Convent, and the view of the South Mole from Rosia Road both date from 1836 and clearly show the sea at the base of the walls. Note also the presence of steamships in the Bay. The first of these arrived in the 1820s. Before the end of that century the entire area south of Charles V Wall would be transformed with the construction of the dockyard.

This early photograph of the dockyard shows the transformation that took place along the City Walls following its construction

This watercolour, an oblique view of the Bay from the Rock, is entitled ‘Lookout Duty’ and dates from the 19th Century. In it you can appreciate the stark, artificial coastline, the Line Wall, which is clearly visible. This defined the Fortress of Gibraltar at the time. The sentry post on the ridge, traditionally referred to as the ‘Moorish Lookout’, is of British construction and its purpose is evident in this watercolour. Note also how Gibraltar’s east side had been allowed to retain its natural coastline, as the sheer east-side cliffs were considered sufficient defence in themselves.

It is not only the construction of the city walls that changed Gibraltar’s coastline. Gibraltar’s sea cliffs were also altered by quarrying activities. This ‘View of the Devil’s Bowling Green with the pass leading to Europa from the south’ dates from the 1780s. It shows the Devil’s Bowling Green which was a naturally sloping expanse of rocky ground in the area of what is today Nuffield Pool and the adjoining car park. Enemy cannon balls falling short of the buildings in the area would roll back off the cliff- imitating a game of Bowles. The cliffs were heavily quarried in the 19th century and now no longer exist.

Living in close proximity to the coast means that the changing moods of the sea can often be appreciated. This watercolour ‘Stormy Seas’ again by Lieut. Frederick Leeds Edridge shows powerful waves battering the coast of Gibraltar.

This lithograph ‘Seesturm Bei Gibraltar’ (or Shipwreck off Gibraltar), by Heinrich Jessen, dates from 1870 and shows the effect these storms had on shipping around our shores, an ever-present danger as exemplified by the recent ‘New Flame’ and ‘Fedra’ incidents (below).

Verner, Parson's Lodge and the elusive Thrush

2010-04-19T03:01:00.000-07:00

Parson's Lodge Battery is a Victorian coastal fortification built on the site of earlier fortifications. It is managed by the Gibraltar Museum and includes its Field Centre. The battery was designed to protect the harbour from attacking ships. It was built on a promontory of breccia - fossilized mud, rocks and bones - that attracted much attention when engineers scarped these cliffs in the 18th Century. They did so to prevent them being scaled from the sea.

Cliff with breccias below Parson's Lodge (above) and sketch of the same cliff in 1772 by the Reverend John White (below)

Above: Parson's Lodge Battery on the 29th September, 1898. Around this time Lt. Colonel Willoughby Verner, a naturalist, was exploring Gibraltar and the surrounding areas, finding caves, cave art, birds and their nests. Egg collecting was regarded a serious scientific pursuit at the time. Below: some of Verner's colleagues in Gibraltar at the end of the 19th Century.

Gulls (above) have established themselves as guardians of the battery (below) today

...but the true and ancient guardian is the Blue Rock Thrush. It has been found in Gibraltar's fossil record going back 40 thousand years and it was certainly around, in Parson's Lodge, 131 years ago as this colourful quote by Verner shows us:

It was now (March 1879) that I learnt by painful experience the deceptive ways of the Blue Rock Thrush. One of their practical jokes was to simulate great interest in some cavern or fissure in a cliff and to disappear into it for a considerable time with the result that I was committed to a perilous descent only to find that I had been grossly imposed upon. At last on 5 April we decided that there must be a nest in a cave below Parson’s Lodge Battery. This happened to be quite inaccessible from above so I swam out from Camp Bay and scaled the cliff but found nothing. I realized however that between sharp rocks, barnacles and thorny scrub it was an overrated amusement to go birdsnesting unclothed.

Above and below: Blue Rock Thrush among rocks, throny scrub and battery walls in Parson's Lodge today, just like in Verner's day!

From our library - Jebel Tarik

2010-04-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

Ibn Battuta was born in Tangier in 1304 AD. He became one of the greatest travellers of all time, reaching as far as China during his travels in Africa and Asia between 1325 AD and 1354 AD. Gibraltar, Jebel Tarik, was his first port of call in Europe and he dedicated some time to it in his accounts. In the following passage he provides us with Ibn Juzayy's account of the place after it had been retaken by the North African Merinids in 1333 AD, after a brief time in Christian hands since 1309 AD. The great monuments that are still standing in Gibraltar today were constucted while under the rule of the Merinids:

Gibraltar was recaptured by our late master Abu’l-Hasan, who recovered it from the hands of the Christians after they had possessed it for over twenty years. He sent his son, Abú Málik, to besiege it, aiding him with large sums of money and powerful armies. It was taken after a six months’ siege in the year 733 (1333 AD). At that time it was not in the present state. Our late master Abu’l-Hasan built in it a huge keep at the top of the fortress; before that it was a small tower, which was laid in ruins by the stones from the catapults, and he built the new one in its place. He built the arsenal there too (for there was no arsenal in the place before), as well as the great wall which surrounds the Red Mound, starting from the arsenal and extending to the tileyard. Later on our master, the Commander of the Faithful, Abú ‘Inán (may God strengthen him) again took in hand its fortification and embellishment, and strengthened the wall of the extremity of the mount, which is the most formidable and useful of its walls. He also sent thither large quantities of munitions, foodstuffs, and provisions of all kinds, and thereby acquitted himself of his duty to God Most High with singleness of purpose and sincere devotion. His concern for the affairs of the Jebel reached such lengths that he gave orders for the construction of a model of it, on which he had represented models of its walls, towers, citadel, gates, arsenal, mosques, munition-stores, and corn-granaries, together with the shape of the Jebel itself and the adjacent Red Mound.

The reference to an older tower is interesting. Our research in the tower revealed a structure inside the tower which seemed to belong to this earlier tower that had been partly destroyed during the Merinid attacks. The smaller tower may have been the 12th Century tower built by the Almohads (al-Muwahiddun).

Our research inside the tower revealed hidden tunnels, secret passages and walls that may have belonged to an earlier tower, described by Ibn-Battuta

Merinid governor's quarters inside the enlarged Tower, after restoration by the Gibraltar Museum in 2007

Battuta would have seen a different view of Gibraltar from this one. Centuries of construction have covered the Red Mound, a huge hill of red sands that stretched from Casemates to the Alameda area. We often find it a metre or so underground when we excavate in the city. The Red Mound contrasted with the Jebel (the Rock) and the glistening white houses of the Madinat (the city). Today we are left with the Jebel and the City.

In the land of Hercules

2010-04-14T03:23:00.000-07:00

The 80th Anniversary logo of the Gibraltar Museum incorporates a Phoenician scarab. Scarabs were regularly used by the Phoenicians, who traded with their Egpytian neigbours, and were special objects representing deities, scenes, hieroglyphs. They were small items, about the size of a thumbnail, with amazing detail when enlarged with modern equipment. They were the shape of a scarab beetle and the depiction was on the reverse. The header image illustrates this well and the scene depicted is a lion attacking an antelope.

Scarab depicting a flower (possibly a lily)

These scarabs are part of the Gibraltar Museum's collection and have been excavated at Gorham's Cave. The cave was visited by Phoenicians and Carthaginians and we have radio-carbon dated the use of the cave by them to between 800 and 410 BC. In fact they may have continued into the third century until the Romans took over the Iberian Peninsula.

Gorham's Cave (above) is situated at the base of the Rock of Gibraltar, the northern Pillar of Hercules. The views of Gibraltar from the sea, and its strategic location at the end of the world, made the cave a place to be visited by all mariners. Here they would leave their offerings to the gods of the sea and, especially, to Hercules (the Greek Herakles, Phoenician Melkart).

According to legend Hercules came to this part of the world to accomplish his tenth labour. He had to journey to the end of the world where he had to take the cattle of the monster Geryon and bring it back to Eurystheus. Geryon had three heads and pairs of legs which were joined at the hip. Geryon lived in Erythia, an island where Europe met Libya (Africa). Legend adds that, to commemorate his journey, Hercules created two mountains, one in Europe and the other in Libya. Thus the Pillars of Hercules were born and the channel dividing them, the Strait of Gibraltar, opened up and linked the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

Jbel Musa - the Pillar on the African coast

So the legend may have its origins in the Phoenicians who clearly knew this was not the end of the world. They sailed into the Atlantic and traded with the peoples on the European and African coasts. Maybe it was their way of keeping others away! In any case, Gorham's Cave was the prime coastal sanctuary at the end of the world and all mariners stopped here to leave their offerings. Here is a selection of scarabs excavated from the cave. A number are exhibited in the Gibraltar Museum.

This incomplete scarab shows a person driving animals. Could it be Hercules and the cattle of Geryon?

are these athletes representations of Hercules?

scarab with hieroglyphs

Sphinx

Uraeus and hawk

visit also http://naturalandalus.blogspot.com/, post of 25th February

Gibraltar in April 1930

2010-04-12T02:47:00.000-07:00

Early-mid 20th Century view of the Fleet in port by Gustavo Bacarisas

As we are celebrating the museum's 80th birthday this year we will regularly visit the Gibraltar of eighty years ago and see what was going on:

1st April

Golden Jubilee of Rev. Bro. P. C. Murphy, Christian Brothers, who had been engaged in education of Gibraltar well-to-do youths at Line Wall College, for nearly 40 years

2nd April

Publication of Coroners (Amendment) Ordinance, 1929, providing for payment of salary or fees to Coroner

Departure of Atlantic Fleet, cordial messages being exchanged by Admiral Brand and H.E. the Governor

Home Fleet at Gibraltar, 1939. Ships include Sussex, Nelson, Newcastle, Shropshire, Warspite, Revenge, Malaya, Ramilies, Royal Oak, Glorious, Glasgow, London, Hood, Repulse, Devonshire, Rodney, Sheffield, Guardian, Reliant and Aurora

3rd April

Opening of Arts and Crafts Exhibition at Exchange Rooms

5th April

Naval review at North Front, 4,000 sailors of the Mediterranean Fleet taking part in the same, and parading before Commander-in-Chief Admiral Field

Parades in North Front were a feature of Gibraltar. Here we see the 1st Battalion Wales Borderers in 1897

8th April

Departure of Mediterranean Fleet

11th April

Arrival on a visit of the R. R. Dr. F. C. N. Hicks, Church of England, Bishop of Gibraltar

13th April

"Adoracion Nocturna" hold solemn all-night Vigil in thanksgiving for the Centenary Celebration of Catholic Emancipation in the British Empire. The following day Solemn Thanksgiving services were celebrated at the Catholic Cathedral, Churches, &c., the R. R. Fitzgerald presiding at the Cathedral

17th April

Transatlantic Telephone Service extended to Gibraltar

23rd April

St. George's Day. Boy Scouts Rally at Naval Recreation Ground, Scouts from La Linea attending. His Excellency the Governor was present

Main Street in the early 20th Century

25th April

The huge "Graf Zeppelin" flew through the straits from East to West

27th April

Gymkhana at North Front in aid of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

extracted from the Gibraltar Directory for 1930

The Bedenham Explosion

2010-04-09T03:55:00.000-07:00

The Naval Armament Carrier RFA Bedenham arrived in Gibraltar on the 24th April, 1951, laden with 500 tons of ammunition. It tied up at Gun Wharf. While it was unloading depth charges into a lighter, on the morning of the 27th April, one ignited. Attempts to put the fire out failed and there was an explosion in the lighter. The fire spread to the Bedenham which blew up. The bow of the ship was blown out of the water and onto the wharf itself. The remainder of the ship sank. Thirteen people died as a result of the explosion, including Sub Officer George Campbell Henderson of the Fire Service who was posthumously awarded the George Cross for bravery in attempting to extinguish the fire. Many more people were injured and many public buildings in Gibraltar suffered damage. The Admiralty paid out around £250,000 in indemnity. The event has become a part of the living memory of the Gibraltarians of that time. These photographs document the incident, damage and the subsequent memorial service.

Introducing the Timeless Rock

2010-04-08T03:43:00.000-07:00

Gibraltar with ships in the Strait by Dominic Serres RA (1772-1793)

The aim of this blog is to keep you up-to-date with the work of the Gibraltar Museum and to provide a source of information on its history. It is a companion to the Gibraltar Museum website. It is launched to coincide with the 80th Anniversary of its opening. We will try and update it on a regular basis so do keep coming back. For now here are some images from our collection that speak for themselves about the richness of this Timeless Rock.

Above and below: Royal Navy in Gibraltar Harbour Late 19th-Early 20th Century

Part of the Line Wall with the Bomb House (right) and Synagogue (left). Bomb House is today's Gibraltar Museum. Watercolour by Frederick Leeds Edridge (1830-1834)

Engineer Lane and Castle Steps, Gibraltar. Watercolour by Frederick Leeds Edridge (1830-1834)

Duty Sentry. Top of the Rock. Late 19th Century. Anon.

Meet of the Calpe Hunt in the Cork Woods. Early 20th Century. George Cole

Fishermen at Catalan Bay. Late 19th-Early 20th Century

Presentation of colours to the 1st Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment by H.M. King George V. 31st January, 1912

Gibraltarian evacuees in Northern Ireland. World War II

Burning of U.S.S. Frigate Missouri at Gibraltar. 26th August, 1843. Drawn by E. Duncan from a sketch made on the spot by Lieutenant G. P. Mends.

Battleship in dry dock. Early 20th Century

More to follow!