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00:55 And now, Mediterranean mosaic.
00:58 The Mediterranean is the middle sea, is many seas.
01:11 Aegean, Tyrenian, Ionian, Adriatic.
01:16 The great rivers meet and mingle.
01:18 The Po and the Ebro, the Rhone and the Arma,
01:22 the Nile and the Tiber.
01:24 The waters wash the shores of Asia, of Africa, of Europe.
01:29 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:33 Europe's new master, Hitler, waxing bold in the limelight
01:52 of his conquering armies, grants an audience to his axis
01:55 partner from the Mediterranean.
01:57 Flourish and pomp are an integral part of such meetings.
02:01 Between them, these two, Efiora and Ilduche,
02:05 have arrogated to themselves the destiny of the old world,
02:09 all its oceans, all its people.
02:12 On the mountaintop headquarters in Berchtesgaden,
02:20 called the Eagle's Nest, plans are formulated
02:23 to conquer the Mediterranean.
02:25 Colonel General Jochum, Hitler's personal chief of staff,
02:28 urges reduction of Gibraltar and Suez.
02:31 Seal off the inland sea and make it an axis lake.
02:35 The Italian Navy, deployed in three swift squadrons
02:38 and manned by Able crews, is a grave, powerful menace
02:42 to the lifeline binding the British Commonwealth of Nations,
02:46 a menace to the Allied world.
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03:29 The French fleet guards the western Mediterranean
03:32 at the outbreak of war.
03:34 Famous for the speed of its cruisers and destroyers,
03:36 the French sortie from their bases at Toulon, Algiers,
03:39 and Oran.
03:41 Their hopes are high, their faith as yet unshattered.
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03:52 Churchill warns the Allied world that the safety of Great Britain
04:13 and the empire is powerful, though not decisively,
04:16 affected by what happens to the French fleet.
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04:44 For the British, control of the Mediterranean
04:47 rests literally on a rock.
04:49 Gibraltar, guardian of the narrow strait that
04:52 leads from the Atlantic into the sea, which serves as a moat
04:55 around Hitler's southern flank.
04:57 Natural fortress and destructible sentinel,
05:00 Gibraltar was ceded to the British by the Spanish in 1713.
05:05 What nature has provided, the British, through the centuries,
05:08 have improved.
05:10 The rock is encrusted with armament,
05:12 is alive with soldiers.
05:14 The Royal Navy faces the longest odds in all its history
05:18 in the coming battle for the Mediterranean.
05:21 If the rock goes, North Africa and the Near East go with it.
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05:55 His Royal Highness, the Duke of Gloucester,
05:58 brother of the king, inspects the defenses.
06:02 From Gibraltar, there is a 1,900-mile seaway,
06:05 east to Suez, that must be kept open, that must be protected.
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06:50 The flags of the free rally around the rock.
06:53 The ships gather for passage to Egypt and the Near East.
06:57 Some will go to Malta, England's mid-Mediterranean island
07:00 fortress so urgently desired by the Axis,
07:03 so vital to the Allies.
07:05 On these ships rests the fate of empires.
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07:14 As a convoy heads for Malta, the ship's officers
07:30 face the harsh knowledge that the enemy is under, over,
07:34 and on the sea route ahead.
07:36 But officers and men remember the ancient words.
07:40 It is upon the Navy, under the good providence of God,
07:44 that the wealth, safety, and the strength of the kingdom
07:48 do chiefly depend.
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07:52 One of England's great decisions of the war
08:06 is to strengthen her Mediterranean fleet
08:08 while the British Isles are still
08:09 in danger of German invasion.
08:12 The Royal Navy, outnumbered and outgunned here,
08:15 sweeps forth to clear the sea lane to Malta.
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08:21 Battleships like the King George V,
08:26 manned by men to whom long odds are not a discouragement
08:29 but a challenge, pull the Mediterranean open.
08:33 Horsepower, 110,000.
08:36 Speed, better than 30 knots.
08:39 Yet the soul of the ship is not her machinery,
08:42 but the spirit of the English sailors who manned her.
08:45 From the days of sail to the time of the turbine,
08:48 that spirit has remained unaltered.
08:51 It destroyed the Spanish Armada, smashed Napoleon at Trafalgar.
08:56 In World War II, this spirit permeates the fleet.
09:00 It is more formidable to Britain's foes
09:03 than armor plate and cannon.
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09:08 Wars are not won by guns alone.
09:20 The words, the great words of the Royal Navy's
09:23 traditional prayers sustain the sailors in their peril.
09:28 Eternal Lord God, who alone spreadest out the heavens
09:32 and rulest the raging of the sea,
09:35 who has compassed the waters with bounds until day and night
09:38 come to an end, be pleased to receive
09:41 into thy almighty and most gracious protection the persons
09:44 of us, thy servants, and the fleet in which we serve.
09:50 Aboard a British man of war, there are five meal times a day.
09:57 Cocoa on the morning watch, breakfast, dinner, tea,
10:01 and a supper.
10:02 The galleys of the King George V must feed a crew of 1,900 men.
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10:09 The captain assigns an officer to the mess deck
10:19 to see if there are any complaints about the chow.
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10:29 It's written in the King's regulations.
10:54 A daily ration of 1/8 of a pint of rum
10:56 shall be issued to every rating over the age of 20.
10:59 Those who do not drink get truffins a day,
11:01 called grog money instead.
11:04 The rum is issued neat to petty officers.
11:06 For the other ratings, it is mixed with two parts water.
11:10 Officers must supply their own spirits.
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11:19 The ship is more than a machine of war.
11:35 It is a community of men.
11:37 Between the salvos and the salts,
11:40 between the hours of work and sleep,
11:42 far from the world of chaos, safe in the world of memory,
11:47 is one constant dream.
11:51 And when peace and rest at length have come,
11:55 all the days' long toil is past.
11:58 Each heart is whispering, home, home at last.
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12:12 Home, home, sweet home.
12:16 And that may be within the sound of bow bells
12:18 in teeming London, where the blitz rages
12:21 and the bombs destroy.
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12:25 Nor around thee thy wife and sweet little ones come,
12:35 all clamoring joyous to snatch the first kiss,
12:39 transporting thy bosom with exquisite bliss.
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12:45 Suddenly, ominously, the mosaic of the Mediterranean
13:06 changes pattern.
13:07 June, 1940, France falls.
13:11 The Royal Navy is stripped of her allies
13:13 and must guard the far-flung battle line alone.
13:16 In the Atlantic, in the Channel, in the Mediterranean,
13:21 the clouds of catastrophe gather,
13:23 and the councils of despair urge that the Mediterranean
13:26 be abandoned to the enemy.
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14:07 But the Royal Navy knows no retreat,
14:31 believing that he either fears his fate too much
14:34 or his deserts are small, who dare not put it to the touch
14:38 to win or lose it all.
14:41 So for watch after watch, continuous, unbroken,
14:45 undismayed, the Royal Navy carries on.
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15:25 Malta, island, fortress, naval base, landing field.
15:33 Malta, the irremovable thorn in the soft underbelly
15:37 of the axis.
15:39 Whichever way the aggressors turn in the Mediterranean,
15:42 there stands Malta, a stumbling block in their path.
15:47 But the tiny island, with its 275,000 people,
15:51 must live from convoys that fight through.
15:54 The enemy is only 60 miles away in Sicily.
15:57 Whoever holds Malta controls the central Mediterranean.
16:00 And the British hold onto it like a bulldog.
16:04 The British and the Maltese themselves.
16:07 From times unimaginably remote, the waves of history
16:11 have washed over Malta.
16:14 The ordeals of the past hail before the present incessant
16:18 threat of terror from the sky.
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16:27 The enemy raids mount by fives and by tens,
16:48 by dozens and by scores, by the hundreds.
16:52 And still the Luftwaffe sends out more of its bombers
16:55 to blast, to burn, to butcher Malta.
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21:45 For 17 months, Malta lives through a nightmare of attack.
22:09 The Maltese fight terror and hunger with inadequate means,
22:13 but with unbreakable defiance.
22:15 Proudly, the score is kept.
22:18 Air raid number 1,774.
22:22 But the axis has its grim statistics too.
22:25 1,129 enemy planes break against the island of Malta.
22:30 And the people of Malta?
22:35 1,468.
22:39 Dead.
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22:44 The grand harbor of Malta becomes a shambles of rubble and twisted steam.
22:58 Ships that survived the long, long voyage from England
23:01 are smashed into useless hulks at journey's end.
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23:09 The bottom of Malta's harbor is littered with the skeletons of ships
23:15 that died to keep the island alive.
23:18 The waste and wreckage of war clutter mile upon mile at the ocean floor.
23:23 A cemetery of the sea.
23:26 Dead ships.
23:28 Dead sailors.
23:31 Dead hulks.
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23:38 [PHONE RINGING]
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23:52 [PHONE RINGING]
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24:06 But life goes on.
24:21 Through endless ages, aggressors have battered at the gates of Malta,
24:25 have had their hour, and disappeared.
24:28 The Carthaginians came and vanished.
24:32 Islam engulfed the island and ebbed away.
24:36 The Goths came plundering in the Vandals' rage,
24:39 but history swallowed up both Goth and the Vandals.
24:43 The Maltese remained.
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25:17 In the hour of Malta's ordeal, King George VI pays a sailor's tribute
25:22 to the island's allegiance to the royal navy.
25:25 All the bells in all the churches ring, and all the people greet his majesty.
25:31 Here in the Mediterranean are the elements on which aggression shatters.
25:37 The king, the people, the royal navy.
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26:19 (dramatic music)