The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 1782

in the painting The painting is based on an attack that took place in Gibraltar on 13 September 1782. The Great Siege of Gibraltar was an unsuccessful attempt by Spain and France to capture Gibraltar from the British during the War of American Independence. In September 1782 the Spanish formulated a secret weapon known as the Floating Batteries. Designed to fire on Gibraltar at close quarters with deadly accuracy, floating batteries were built of -wide timbers packed with layers of wet sand, and were considered fire-proof and unsinkable. The British used heated shot to counterattack these batteries. These "hot potatoes," as they were nicknamed, were pre-heated to furnace temperatures before being fired at the advancing ships. Many were doused but a rogue heated shot could lie smouldering in the bowels of an enemy ship burning a cavity into the wood. Left long enough, these would eventually cause an inferno. ==Painting==

American-born John Singleton Copley was commissioned by the City of London in 1783 to depict the victory of the Great Siege which had been won a few months earlier. General Eliott, created Lord Heathfield in 1787, was also portrayed by Sir Joshua Reynolds (link), currently in the National Gallery, London and Copley himself (link), currently in the National Portrait Gallery; both pictures were painted in 1787. Two of Copley's preparatory sketches for the painting are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Several years after Copley began work on his canvas, fellow American painter John Trumbull began work on a painting of a different scene of the Great Siege, The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar. Trumbull finished his canvas in 1789 and displayed it in 1790, when Copley was able to view it and take some compositional inspirations, specifically in the lower left corner of his work. The painting was originally hung in the Common Council Chamber at Guildhall before being transferred to the original Guildhall Art Gallery in 1886. It is now on display at the Guildhall Art gallery in London, where it occupies the entire back wall of the main exhibition space. ==See also==