HOW ENGLAND LOST TANGIER.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 22 June 1912, Page 9

HOW ENGLAND LOST TANGIER.

Tangier was acquired and lost so long ago, in the reign of Charles 11., that to the imagination of most people it has never been regarded as a British possession. Readers of Pepy'g immortal Diary' are the most likely to remember Tangier, and regard it with some interest for Pepys's sake, as he was a member of the Tangier Commission; and visited the place in the last year of its British ocoupation. This is recalled to mind by a volume which has just appeared—'Tangier: England's Lost Atlantic Outpost, 1661-1684.' By E. M. G. Routh, F.R.Hist.S. Tangier came to England as part of the dowry of Charles's quean, Catherine of Uraganza, and it was, says Clarendon a place of that strength and importance as would be of infinite benefit and security to the trade of England." ! NOT REALISED/ I But these hopes were not realised, though, as Mr Routh says in his learned and exhaustive work oa Tangier: "It is clear that the King, who at this ! time took a real interest in Tangier, saw m his imagination a busy and prosperous city, the capital of a Moroccan •mP"-e, possessing a harbour which, in the hands of English engineers, would make Tangier one of the best trading stations in the Mediterranean a self-supporting colony, and a souro* of strength and wealth to the Mother Country, It was a vision the realisation of which was no more beyend the bounds of possibility than was the growth of the Indian Empire from the possession of the island of Bombay." But the affairs of Tangier were mismanaged from the beginning. None of the Commissioners had any practical knowledge of the place, though Pepys did his best with the Tangier accounts. A costly mole was built, great expenses lw rr<£' and then **' wa* discovered that there were difficulties as to the water supnly and that the town was overlooked; by hills, which, with the growth of artillery, would render ite defence difficult: as it was there were constant struggles and difficulties with the Moors. So when Charles appealed to his Parliament for assistance the reply was: "Tangier is no port of England, and for us to provide for it as things stand now, is to weaken our own security."

ABANDONED! So m that temper Tangier wag aban£?™fl<i , Lol d Dartmouth was sent out m 1683 to destroy the harbour, blow up toe mole and bring home the garrison^ Pepys sailed with this expedition, and commented freely when he got there on the uselessness of the place. "fit* i Lord!" he says, in the true Pepysian manner, 'how could anybody ever think a place fit to be kept It this charge, that, overlooked by so" many hills, can never l»e, secured against an enemy!" p epyß was at Tangier for six months, for the mole which had cost so much to build was very difficult to destroy, and it took all those months and fc* npj P* 11 ■Lwd Dartmouth o? %F^ Rnd the sailed out of IS F Bay ' ani*** was the end of langier ac a British possession ar'^ er had greater possibil&es San the Englishmen of that day re»IM and had it not been that gStS came into our hands som. 20 lat f r u the loss might have beel?