The Brest Fleet, however, he found had already given him the slip, and thus it came about that on the 17th of July these two energetic naval officers found themselves about seven leagues to the east of Tetuan with nothing to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the attack on Gibraltar was decreed as the distraction of an intolerable ennui. The stronghold was known to be weakly garrisoned, though, for that time, strongly armed; it turned out afterwards that it had only a hundred and fifty gunners to a hundred guns, and it was thought possible to carry the place by a _coup-de-main_. On the 21st the whole fleet came to anchor in Gibraltar Bay. Two thousand men under the Prince of Hesse were landed on what is now the neutral ground, and cut off all communication with the mainland of Spain. On the 23rd Rear-Admirals Vanderdussen and Byng (the father of a less fortunate seaman) opened fire upon the batteries, and after five or six hours' bombardment silenced them, and Captain Whittaker was thereupon ordered to take all the boats, filled with seamen and marines, and possess himself of the South Mole Head. Captains Jumper and Hicks were, as has been said, in the foremost pinnaces, and were the first to land. A mine exploded under their feet, killing two officers and a hundred men, but Jumper and Hicks pressed on with their stout followers, and assaulted and carried a redoubt which lay between the Mole and the town. Whereupon the Spanish Governor capitulated, the gates on the side of the isthmus were thrown open to the Prince of Hesse and his troops, and Gibraltar was theirs. Or rather it was not theirs, except by the title of the "man in possession." It was the property of his Highness the Archduke Charles, styled his Majesty King Charles III. of Spain, and had he succeeded in making good that title in arms, England should, of course, have had to hand over to him the strongest place in his dominions, at the end of the war. But she profited by the failure of her protégé. The war of the Spanish Succession ended in the recognition of Philip V.; and almost against the will of the nation--for George I. was ready enough to give it up, and the popular English view of the matter was that it was "a barren rock, an insignificant fort, and a useless charge"--Gibraltar remained on her hands.