Battle of Málaga, 1704: the great sea fight after Gibraltar

When Charles II of Spain died without children, Louis XIV set out to put his grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou, on the Spanish throne. As the historians of the French defense ministry's archive (SHD) explain in the navy magazine Cols Bleus, much of Europe would not accept it, and by 1704 two kings claimed the same crown: Philip V in Madrid and the Habsburg Archduke Charles, backed by England and the Dutch Republic.²

In August 1704 the English fleet of Admiral Sir George Rooke seized Gibraltar. Beyond the dynastic question, the SHD authors write, control of the Mediterranean was now at stake.³

Two fleets converge

Louis XIV had already decided to join his Atlantic fleet from Brest with the Mediterranean fleet at Toulon. Its commander was the Count of Toulouse, admiral of France and legitimized son of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. He left Brest on 14 May, reached Toulon on 11 June and sailed on 22 July. Only on 12 August, off Barcelona, did he learn that the English had taken the Rock, and Philip V charged him with driving them out of the Mediterranean.⁴

Cols Bleus counts 50 French ships of the line, 8 frigates, 9 fireships and 24 galleys, with 24,000 men and 3,500 guns. The galleys' job was to tow ships too damaged to fight out of the line. Toulouse, new to battle at sea, flew his flag in the Foudroyant and could rely on experienced admirals such as Villette-Mursay, d'Estrées, Coëtlogon and Langeron. Against him Rooke, a veteran of La Hougue, had 53 English and Dutch ships of the line, 22,500 men and 3,600 guns.⁵

The figures differ by source. The Royal Museums Greenwich, describing Isaac Sailmaker's painting of the battle, gives 51 ships of the line to each fleet.⁶

A line battle off Vélez-Málaga

On 21 August, while the French were taking on supplies in the roads of Vélez-Málaga, the allied fleet came up from the Moroccan coast. At dawn on 24 August Toulouse brought his squadrons out. Following the tactical teaching of the day, the two fleets formed lines several kilometers long, facing each other in parallel.⁷

The French tried to outflank the allied van; the English used the wind to counter the move and opened fire. The cannonade, Cols Bleus says, was terrible: close to 100,000 round shot exchanged in a single day. Attempts to board failed. Rooke's flagship, the Royal Katherine, was dismasted by bar shot, while the French Fier and Magnifique, too badly damaged, had to leave the line, which fell into disorder. Rooke, outnumbered, used the moment to strengthen his center. As the day ended the firing died down and the fleets slowly drew apart.⁸

Sailmaker's painting, shown above, captures that duel, according to the museum: the Foudroyant, 104 guns, closely engaged with Rooke in the 90-gun Royal Katherine, and French galleys towing ships in and out of the action, with the Spanish coast in the distance.⁹

The Dutch rear fought hard too. Van der Aa's nineteenth-century biographical dictionary records that the flagship of Vice Admiral Gerard Callenburgh, the Albemarle, had 20 killed and 45 wounded and was so shot through that it could no longer carry his flag, so he shifted to another ship. Three days later the Albemarle blew up from her own powder.¹⁰

Nobody won

The cost was enormous. Cols Bleus gives 1,585 French, 2,325 English and 700 Dutch dead, on average one man every ten seconds. Yet neither side lost a ship, as the Greenwich museum notes. Toulouse, who had the advantage, did not press it and let the English withdraw carefully. The French celebrated a victory while their enemies held on to their new base at Gibraltar.¹¹

The museum's verdict is that the battle was indecisive but ended the Franco-Spanish attempt to capture Gibraltar. The SHD authors conclude that no one came out the victor, and add that neither Toulouse nor Rooke ever commanded at sea again. The war itself dragged on until the treaties of Utrecht in 1713 and Rastatt in 1714, which confirmed Philip V on his throne.¹²

The Greenwich museum calls Málaga the only fleet action fought at sea during the whole war. The SHD historians, who curated a 2018 exhibition on the battle, argue that even Trafalgar a century later did not reach its scale, though it is far better remembered.¹³