Up to this time, the sea service regiments had done good work. In 1702 eleven regiments of the line, of which the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 32nd still remain, with a battalion of Guards and some Dutch regiments, were despatched to the Spanish coast. An attack was first made at Rota, in the bay of Cadiz, which was captured, but abandoned; and then the squadron moved to Vigo Bay, where the Spanish galleons, laden with treasure and convoyed by a French fleet, had taken refuge. The entrance was difficult and guarded with batteries, and with a boom “made up of masts, yards, cables, top chains, and casks, about three yards in circumference, but this, though three-quarters of a mile long, and guarded at the ends by seventy-four-gun men-of-war, was broken by the _Torbay_ of eighty guns, the other ships following, while the troops landed, stormed, and silenced the shore batteries at the Rhondella, and this with little loss. The booty amounted to 20,000,000 pieces of eight, and an equally valuable amount of merchandise, of which 14,000,000 pieces were saved, and about £50,000,000 worth of stores; while 4,000,000 pieces of plate and ten of merchandise were lost.”[28] But the most noteworthy event of these times was the capture and retention in 1704 of Gibraltar, in which the 30th, 31st, and 32nd Regiments, serving as marines at first in Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s fleet, bore a gallant part. This is the early history of one of our proudest possessions, even if it be not as valuable strategically now as it was when the century was young.