War of the Spanish Succession

When the last Habsburg king of Spain died in 1700, he left his throne to Louis XIV's grandson Philip. England, the Dutch Republic and Austria went to war in the Grand Alliance to keep France and Spain from being joined under one family. At sea the allies had the upper hand from the start. In 1702 Sir George Rooke broke into Vigo Bay and destroyed the Spanish treasure fleet and its French escort; in 1704 he took Gibraltar, and then fought the main French fleet to a standstill off Málaga, after which it never again came out in strength. The French turned to commerce raiding, and their privateer captains, Duguay-Trouin and Forbin above all, took thousands of British and Dutch merchant ships. In 1707 Sir Cloudesley Shovell's fleet, coming home from the Mediterranean, ran onto the rocks of the Scilly Isles in the dark with the loss of four ships and some 1,500 men, a disaster that led to the search for a way to find longitude at sea. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 left Philip on the Spanish throne but gave Britain Gibraltar and Minorca.