Position: 2000 LT, 36°14’N, 004°38’W
Date:Sunday June 13, 2010
Date:Sunday June 13, 2010
The Rock
Already before dawn our anchor was heaved, in order to have breakfast against the quay in Gibraltar. Our fuel tanks have to be filled completely. The prices for diesel rise per every longitude in the Mediterranean. A few extra passengers joined our ship to sail with us to Valencia.
Gibraltar is an awkward rock that seems to be glued against the Spanish landscape. The Moors ruled the strategic peninsula until, in 711 the Spanish got interested in the narrow passage between Africa and Europe. From that moment the ownership changed often. From 1469 onwards it was a Spanish territory.
In the beginning of the 18th century the West European countries started to look at Gibraltar. In 1704 The English and the Dutch made a plan to concur the rock. The treaty of Utrecht declared the English possession of Gibraltar. The only signs of Moors are the monkeys that live on the rock and the origin of the name Gibraltar: Jebel al Tarik.
Richard Slootweg
Capitain Clipper Stad Amsterdam
