Dear listers, I am trying to find out why british naval vessels would be examining vessels coming through the Sraights of Gibraltar around 1768-9. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Yours sincerely, Anne in Wales

Hi Anne The Foreign Office papers at the National Archives or newspapers of the day might provide the actual reason, so can only surmise in the light of what little I know about the area. Eg one wonders if it might not have been the usual on-going problems of piracy and slavery associated with the Barbary States, which spread round from what is now Morocco through to Libya, and which remained an on-going problem over the centuries, up until the middle to latter end of the 19th Century. European mariners and passengers were frequent targets and when not used as slaves were often used to extract ransoms etc. And it shouldn't be forgotten that in earlier times towns and villages around the coast of the UK were occasional targets for these freebooters, and their presence in the English Channel as late as the early 19th Century was often noted in the papers of the day. As time went by both the Americans and the British attempted to resolve the problem, but pressure from Spain and France, which included occupation of these nation states seems to have been the only relatively permanent solution. In addition, I gather that relations between Spain and GB were somewhat strained by the GB's occupation of parts of the Falkland Isles, then, according to the Spanish, within their sphere of interest....plus no doubt, much as it is today, Gibraltar itself has been a bone of contention, and means of diverting the attention of the Spanish population from their problems at home, much as the Falkland Isles are used for the same purpose by the Argentines ? Paul On Sat, 17 Aug 2013 16:48:37 +0200 (CEST), [email protected] wrote: >Dear listers, >I am trying to find out why british naval vessels would be examining vessels coming through the Sraights of Gibraltar around 1768-9. Can anyone point me in the right direction? > >Yours sincerely, >Anne in Wales > >------------------------------- >To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message 50° 33' N, 2° 26' W http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/Naval.html