Rodney had contemplated going in person with his ships, which Sandwich also had urged upon him; but his health was seriously impaired, and the necessity for a surgical operation combined to induce his return to England. The final decision on this point he postponed to the last moment of the homeward voyage, keeping a frigate in company in which to go to New York, if able; but ultimately he felt compelled to give up. This conclusion settled Cornwallis's fate, antecedently but finally. That year Great Britain fell between two stools. In view of De Grasse's known expressions, it may be affirmed with great confidence that he would have seen reason to abandon the Chesapeake, leaving open the sea road for Cornwallis to escape, had either Rodney or Hood commanded the British fleet there in the battle of September 5th; but Rodney was away, and Hood second only to an incompetent superior.
Rodney landed in England, September 19th, and was again afloat by December 12th, although he did not finally sail for his station until the middle of January, 1782. This brief period was one of the deepest military depression; for during it occurred Cornwallis's surrender, October 19th, under conditions of evident British inferiority, on sea and shore alike, which enforced the conviction that the colonies must be granted their independence. Not only so, but the known extensive preparations of the Bourbon courts pointed to grave danger also for the Caribbean colonies, the sugar and import trade of which counted largely in the financial resources of the empire. Amid the general gloom Rodney had his own special vexation; for, before he left, news was received of the recapture of St. Eustatius by a small French expedition, prior to the return of Hood to the West Indies from the unfortunate operations on the continent. As in the case of Tobago, Rodney severely blamed the local defence, and very possibly justly; but attention should not wander from the effect that must have been produced upon all subsequent conditions by preparation and action on the part of the British fleet, in the spring of 1781, on the lines then favored by Hood.
Shortly before he had sailed for home, Rodney had written his wife, "In all probability, the enemy, when they leave these seas, will go to America. Wherever they go, I will watch their motions, and certainly attack them if they give me a proper opportunity. The fate of England may depend upon the event." The last sentence was in measure a prophecy, so far, that is, as decisive of the original issue at stake,—the subjugation or independence of the United Colonies; but, without further laboring the point unduly, it may be permitted here to sum up what has been said, with the remark that in the summer of 1781 control of events had passed out of Rodney's hands. From the time of the original fault, in suffering the French to meet Hood to leeward of Martinique, with an inferior force, more and more did it become impossible to him to assure conditions sufficiently favorable. With the highest personal courage, he did not have eminent professional daring; nor, with considerable tactical acquirement, was he gifted with that illuminative originality which characterized Hood and Nelson. He therefore needed either a reasonable probability of success, or the spur of imminent emergency, to elicit the kind of action needed to save the British cause. The chances to windward of Martinique would have been ninety out of a hundred; from that time forward they diminished with continually increasing rapidity. With such a situation he was not the man to cope.
On reaching Barbados, February 19, 1782, Rodney learned that the garrison of St. Kitts was besieged in Brimstone Hill, and the island itself beleaguered by the French fleet, thirty-three of-the-line, which Sir Samuel Hood, with two thirds their number, had so far held in check by a series of manoeuvres unusually acute in conception and brilliant in execution. Proceeding immediately to Antigua, he there heard on the 23d that St. Kitts had capitulated on the 13th. Two days later he was joined by Hood, and then took the united fleet to Santa Lucia, where he was on March 5th. The knowledge of a large supply fleet expected for the French, and essential to the known project of the allies against Jamaica, carried the British fleet again to sea; but it failed to intercept the convoy, and returned once more to Santa Lucia, where it anchored in Gros Ilet Bay, thirty miles from Fort Royal, where the French were lying. Various changes made the respective numbers, when operations opened, British thirty-six of-the-line, French thirty-five, with two fifty-gun ships; a near approach to equality.
Rodney's faculties were now all alert. He had had some needed repose, and he was again under the stimulus of reputation to restore; for it would have been vain to assert, even to himself, that he was entirely clear, not merely of error, to which the most careful is liable, but of serious fault in the previous year. Moreover, he had been sharply assailed in Parliament for the transactions at St. Eustatius on the civil side, distinct from his military conduct. To such ills there is no plaster so healing as a victory; and the occasion about to arise proved, in its successive stages,—until the last,—admirably adapted to his natural and acquired qualifications. First, a series of manoeuvres protracted over three or four days; and afterwards a hard fought battle, converted by a happy yet by no means unusual accident into a decided and showy success. Decided, but not decisive; for, like the soldier desperate in deed before rewarded, but who, when summoned again, advised that the chance be given to a man who had not a purse of gold, Rodney preferred to pause on that personally safe side of moderation in achievement which is rarely conducive to finality, and is nowhere so ill-placed as in the aims of a commander-in-chief. The true prudence of war,—as it is also its mercy, to friend and to foe,—is to strike without cessation or slackness till power of future action is crushed.
De Grasse's immediate task was to protect a large convoy from Martinique to Cap François (now Cap Haytien), in Hayti, a distance of about a thousand miles. Cumbered with merchant vessels, and aware that Rodney would be at once on his track, he could not go straight across the Caribbean; the British fleet, not so hampered, would be sure to overtake and destroy. He purposed, therefore, to skirt the Antilles, keeping continually in reach of a port of refuge. Rodney, knowing the aim to be Jamaica, had little doubt of overtaking in any case, if started promptly. He therefore kept himself in signal touch of Fort Royal by a chain of frigates, extending from its offing to his own anchorage.
On the 8th of April the French sailed. The British followed instantly, and before sundown had them in sight, not only by lookout vessels, but from the mastheads of the main fleet. At daybreak next morning they were visible from the decks of the British van; a very marked gain. De Grasse saw that at that rate, unless he got rid of the convoy, he would certainly be overtaken, which it was his aim to elude in pursuance of the usual French policy of ulterior purposes; so, being then north of Dominica, he sent the merchant vessels into Guadaloupe, and undertook to carry the ships-of-war through the passage between the two islands, beating to windward. This would draw the British away from the convoy, unless they were content to let the fleet go, which was not to be expected.
Between 8 A.M. and 2 P.M. of April 9th, several sharp skirmishes took place between the French and the British van, under Hood.[9] De Grasse had here an opportunity of crushing a fraction of the enemy, but failed to use it, thus insuring his own final discomfiture. Rodney, who was becalmed with the centre and rear of his command, could do nothing but push forward reinforcements to Hood as the wind served; and this he did. Pursuit was maintained tenaciously during the following night and the next two days,—April 10th and 11th; but in sustained chases of bodies of ships, the chased continually drops units, which must be forsaken or else the retreat of the whole must be retarded. So in this case, certain of De Grasse's ships were either so leewardly or so ill handled that the bulk of the fleet, which had gained considerably to windward, had to bear down to them, thus losing the ground won. Under such circumstances the chapter of accidents—or of incidents—frequently introduces great results; and so it proved here.
At 2 A.M. of April 12th, De Grasse's flag-ship, the Ville de Paris, and the seventy-four-gun ship Zélé, crossing on opposite tacks, came into collision. The former received little damage, but the Zélé lost her foremast and bowsprit. De Grasse then ordered her into Guadaloupe, in tow of a frigate. When day broke, about five o'clock, these two were only about six miles from the British rear, under Hood, whose division had been shifted from the van in consequence of injuries received on the 9th. The British column was then standing east-northeast, closehauled on the starboard tack, the crippled vessel under its lee, but the French of the main body well to windward. To draw them within reach, Rodney signalled Hood to send chasers after the Zélé. De Grasse took the bait and ran down to her support, ordering his ships to form line-of-battle on the port tack, which was done hastily and tumultuously. The two lines on which the antagonists were respectively advancing now pointed to a common and not distant point of intersection, which the French, despite the loss of ground already undergone, reached first, passing in front and to windward of the head of the British column. Eight ships thus went by clear, but the ninth arrived at the same moment with the leading British vessel, which put her helm up and ran along close to leeward of the French line towards its rear, followed in so doing by the rest of her fleet.
The battle thus assumed the phase of two fleets passing each other in opposite directions, on parallel lines; a condition usually unproductive of results, and amounting to little more than a brush, as had been the case in two rencounters between Rodney and De Guichen in the prolonged chase of May, 1780. Chance permitted a different issue on this occasion. The wind at the moment of first collision, shortly before 8 A.M., was east, and so continued till five minutes past nine, when it shifted suddenly to the southeastward, ahead for the French, abaft for the British. The former, being already close to the wind, could keep their sails full only by bearing away, which broke up their line ahead, the order of battle as ranged for mutual support; while the British being able to luff could stand into the enemy's line. Rodney's flag-ship, the Formidable, 90, was just drawing up with the Glorieux, 74, nineteenth from the van in the French order and fourth astern of the Ville de Paris, De Grasse's flag-ship. Luffing to the new wind, she passed through the French line at this point, followed by the five ships astern of her; while the sixth astern, the Bedford, 74, luffing on her own account, broke also through the French astern of the César and the Hector, 74's, eleventh and twelfth in their order. The twelve British vessels in rear of the Bedford followed in her wake. Hood was in one of these, the Barfleur, 90. Of the ships ahead of Rodney the nearest one imitated his example instantly and went through the line; the remainder, sixteen in all, continued northward for a space.