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Last week Spanish fishermen quit working off the Irish coast because they saw too many U-boats to suit them. One torpedoed the 13,950-ton British merchant-cruiser Andania.
North Anchor of the British blockade in the Atlantic is the volcanic tableland called Iceland, which, until April 10, shared Christian X with Denmark as her King. British warships took Iceland under patrol, British troops were sent there "protectively" while the Nazis rampaged through Norway. Last week, following reports of a German expedition about to sail to seize Iceland, Prime Minister Mackenzie King of Canada announced that a Canadian force had landed at Reykjavik, home of the world's oldest parliament (930 A.D.). Should the Germans arrive and fight, the Battle for Iceland would bring World War II within 2,100 miles of U. S. soil.
South Anchor of the British blockade is that towering prong of limestone, Hades-hot in summer, 2½ miles long and 1,396 ft. high, which points like a torpedo from the Spanish mainland southward across the 15-mile Strait of Gibraltar separating Europe and Africa (see map, p. 29).
Its name is corrupted from Jebel Tarig (Mountain of Tarig), which the Moors called it in honor of their chieftain who seized it from the Visigoths in 711 A.D.
Before the Visigoths, Rome held it. The Spanish took it from the Moors in 1462 and in 1704 Sir George Rooke, who felt he must have something to show for an unsuccessful expedition which he had led against Barcelona, wrested it from Spain.
All through the 18th Century, the Spanish tried to get the Rock back. In 1779-83 they and the French besieged it continuously, finally gave up when their fleet of ships reinforced with green timber, cork and rawhide was set afire by red-hot British cannonballs. In that long siege, British General Sir George Elliot lost in action only 333 out of 7,000 men in the face of attackers totaling 40,000. Britain offered to trade Gibraltar for Florida or for Minorca, but the Spanish refused. Spain offered to buy it for $10,000,000 and the British refused. By the 19th Century its value to British naval supremacy was recognized as beyond price and it became a world symbol for permanent security.
Shaped like a lion couchant, it harbored a colony of Barbary apes—the only wild monkeys in Europe—on its rugged back.
Superstition says that so long as the apes survive, the British will retain Gibraltar.
Last week, a few Barbary apes—meat for air bombs—still squeaked and picked their fleas on Gibraltar, but the British garrison under Lieut. General Sir Clive Gerard ("Jock") Liddell, 57, knew that terrible tests lay not far in the future.
They were as ready as British ingenuity and foresight could make them. Their cisterns, filled with rain water from great catchments on the Rock's steep eastern side, held 140,000,000 gallons of water.
Huge caves and shafts held mountains of food and ammunition, furnished air-raid protection. The town of 21,000 on the western slope was evacuated of noncombatants. Debarkation of all non-Allies was stopped last week and a Spanish ship plying across the bay from Algeciras was not allowed even to dock.