Illustration of an English warship breaking the boom at Vigo Bay as a fireship burns alongside in a cloud of snuff.

A fireship full of snuff: Vigo Bay, 1702

In 1702, early in the War of the Spanish Succession, an English and Dutch fleet under Admiral Sir George Rooke tried to take Cádiz. The attempt failed, and Rooke gave it up at the end of September. On the way home he learned that the Spanish treasure fleet was lying in Vigo Bay.

That fleet had left Veracruz in New Spain on 11 June under the escort of a French squadron, and it entered Vigo Bay, on the coast of Galicia, on 23 September. Rooke went after the treasure fleet.

The boom at Rande

The French commander, the Marquis de Château-Renault, took charge of the defences. Across the narrow entrance at Rande he laid a boom made mostly of timber and masts.

The allies attacked on 23 October 1702 (12 October by the old calendar England still used). The Duke of Ormonde landed about 2,000 soldiers near Teis to march on the fort at Rande. At sea, Vice-Admiral Thomas Hopsonn led the attack on the boom in his 80-gun flagship, the Torbay. With a breath of wind behind her, she crashed into it and broke through. Then the breeze dropped. The other allied ships couldn't follow, and for a while the Torbay took the enemy's fire alone.

A cargo of snuff

The French laid a fireship alongside her, a merchantman hastily converted for the job, and the Torbay caught fire.

The fireship was laden with snuff from the Spanish Indies. The National Maritime Museum's note on Hopsonn's portrait, which describes the fireship as Spanish, says the Torbay "would have perished by fire if the explosion of a Spanish ship alongside, laden with snuff, had not partially extinguished the flames." The Torbay survived, though Rooke's journal records that 53 men drowned in the fireship attack.

The rest of the allied fleet followed Hopsonn through the gap. By the end of the day the French and Spanish ships had all been burnt or captured. Hopsonn was knighted by Queen Anne when he got home.

How much silver reached London

Most of the silver had been unloaded before the attack. Isaac Newton's figures show the Royal Mint in London still received about 4,504 lb of silver and 7½ lb of gold, together valued at £14,000. Coins struck from that metal carry the word VIGO under Queen Anne's bust. In February 1703 Philip V of Spain ordered the silver of English and Dutch owners seized.

What happened to the snuff

Wilsons of Sharrow, the Sheffield snuff makers, say the snuff captured at Vigo was sold in London. The National Maritime Museum goes further: "The snuff captured at Vigo popularized the habit of taking it in England."

Wilsons' own history says the London clerks booked the Vigo snuff as "Spanish" and shortened that to "SP", and the firm gives that as the origin of the SP name. A 1964 BBC report from the Sharrow mill couldn't find anyone who could say for certain what SP stood for. "Spanish" was one guess, beside "Sheffield's Pride" and the reporter's own favourite, "Sweet and Perfumed".

Still on the shelf

We stock Wilsons of Sharrow Best SP. You'll find their other snuffs on our Wilsons of Sharrow page.

Sources

Voltar para o blog