On the 2nd April Rodney put to sea in search of Guichen. The French admiral followed the usual course of officers of his service. Though equal in number to his opponents, he declined battle, remained at anchor under the guns of Fort Royal, and waited till the absence of the British fleet should offer him an opportunity to strike at one of the British Antilles. Rodney returned to Gros Islet, leaving frigates to watch. On the 15th April, Guichen came out, having with him a detachment of troops commanded by Bouillé. Rodney was instantly informed of his movements, and started in pursuit. On the 16th April he sighted the French twenty-four miles west of the Pearl Rock, a little island outside Fort Royal. On the following morning he was to windward of his enemy, having twenty sail of the line to Guichen’s twenty-two. The French had stood off to the N.W. when sighted, and had been followed by the British. Both fleets were to leeward of Martinique. At 6.45 a.m. Rodney signalled that he intended to attack the enemy’s rear, and at 7 a.m. ordered his line to close till the ships were at one cable’s length from one another. The order to bear down was given at 8.30. Both fleets were heading to the N.W., and the French were very much extended. There was a gap between their rear and their centre. Guichen seeing that his rear division was in peril, at once reversed the order of his van and centre, and stood to the south to its assistance. He thereby closed the gap, and as his rear turned also to the south, it became the van. Rodney was thus baffled, and drew off, resuming his course to the north. Guichen then turned his fleet in the same direction, and the two again stood to the northward side by side out of gun-shot. At 11 a.m. Rodney hoisted the signal to engage. It was his intention that his fleet should steer for the enemy’s rear with the ships at a cable’s length apart. His captains unfortunately understood the signal to attack the rear as applying only to the first movement. Brought up in the old faith of the Fighting Instructions, they fought as they had been trained to fight—steering van to van, centre to centre, and rear to rear. Rodney’s plan to concentrate his whole force on a part of the enemy was spoilt, and the battle to leeward of Martinique ended as many others had done, with a great deal of damage to the spars of the British ships and the retreat of the French little hurt.
This failure remained a subject of bitter regret to Rodney. At the time and afterwards he attributed it to the deliberate misconduct of his captains, who, he said, let the French escape in a factious spirit of opposition to the king’s Government. More credible explanations are: the influence of unintelligent rules of tactics; and his own partly valetudinarian and partly arrogant solitude. If he had explained to his captains the principles on which he meant to fight, his orders would not have been misunderstood, and it would have been impossible that they should have been disobeyed. The merit of his proposed plan is manifest when it is compared with the mechanical rules of the Fighting Orders. Yet that merit may be, and has been, exaggerated. Such a concentration as he designed could always be answered by an enemy who was prompt to reverse his order and to close his line, as Guichen showed in the early hours of the day. So long as the British fleet engaged to windward, there could be but indifferent security that the enemy would not cripple its rigging and slip away. Rodney, in short, set the example of innovating on the formal tactics of the time, but before great results could be obtained much more had to be done than he showed himself prepared to do on the 17th April 1780.
The operations following the battle were marked by no decisive event. Rodney, after keeping for a few days between Guichen and Fort Royal, returned to Choque Bay to refit. Several of his ships, and the flagship among them, the Sandwich, had been severely damaged. Guichen, after visiting the Dutch island of St. Eustatius to procure stores, stationed himself to windward—that is, to the west of Martinique. His object was to effect a junction with a Spanish squadron under Admiral Solano, which was known to be on its way from Europe. Rodney followed him. Exasperated by the want of support he had suffered from in the last action, he put his fleet through a severe course of manœuvres, and drew the reins of discipline tight with a severity which aroused the wrath of his subordinate, Sir Hyde Parker, who on his return home was with difficulty restrained by the advice of Sandwich from creating another naval scandal. Twice Rodney came close enough to Guichen to bring on partial actions—on the 15th and 19th May. But the Frenchman was resolved not to be brought to close action. He had the weather-gage, and kept it so carefully that only the van ships of the British line came into action with the rear of the French as the two fleets passed on opposite tacks. It was characteristic of the spirit and principles of the French Navy of the time that Guichen was much praised for, and was visibly proud of, his success in baffling Rodney’s attempts to bring him to battle. Rodney, who might have cut off two or three of the rearmost French ships if he had ordered his van to steer into the enemy’s line, was not prepared to depart wholly from the old methods. On the 21st May, Guichen, whose ships were in want of repairs, went off to the northward, and Rodney lost sight of him. The French returned to Fort Royal, and the English to Barbadoes.
At Carlisle Bay, in that island, on the 22nd May, Rodney was joined by the Cerberus frigate. Her captain, Mann, brought news that when cruising off Cadiz he had sighted a Spanish squadron of twelve sail of the line on the 2nd May, with a convoy of merchant-ships. He had followed it for days, had convinced himself that it was bound for the West, and had left his station to warn Rodney. Sir George, who received further information from Lisbon, put to sea to intercept the Spaniard, who he concluded was bound for Martinique. But Don José Solano steered a more northerly course, and on the 10th June effected a junction with Guichen at Guadaloupe. Rodney had been reinforced by five ships of the line while to windward of Martinique, but was now so much outnumbered by the united Spaniards and French that he returned to Gros Islet Bay and stood on his guard. Nothing was attempted by the enemy. The Spaniards were horribly sickly and in no condition for service, while several French ships were worn out. On the 5th July the allies separated, Solano going to Havana, and Guichen to Cape François, in San Domingo, from whence on the 16th August he sailed for Europe. Rodney was joined at Santa Lucia by reinforcements under Commodore Walsingham on the 12th July, but no opportunity for action was presented by the enemy. The hurricane season, during which the West Indies are dangerous, had begun, and the trade had to be seen safe to Europe. Rodney sent off the merchant-ships convoyed by Sir Hyde Parker, detached ten of the line under Rowley and Walsingham to Jamaica, and sailed himself with ten ships of the line to North America.
On the North American station the British squadron had been commanded since the latter part of 1779 by Rear-Admiral Marriott Arbuthnot, a somewhat dull man of impracticable temper. During May he had co-operated with Sir Henry Clinton in the occupation of Charlestown, but during the rest of the year he had been checked by the appearance on the coast of a French squadron of nine sail of the line under the Chef d’escadre D’Arzac de Ternay. Ternay had sailed from Brest on the 2nd May, escorting 9000 troops under Rochambeau. On the 20th June, near Bermuda, he fell in with four British sail of the line under Cornwallis, who was escorting a flock of merchant-ships homeward bound through the Florida Straits. The two squadrons cannonaded one another feebly. Ternay having “his mission to fulfil,” would not stop to crush Cornwallis, and went on to Rhode Island, which he reached on the 11th July. Arbuthnot, who was reinforced by Graves on the 13th July, made preparations to co-operate with the army in an attack on the French; but delays followed one another, and no attack was made. The brief stay of Rodney on the station was not marked by any active operation. Arbuthnot looked upon him chiefly as a competitor for shares of prize money, and was angry at his intrusion. Sir George, whose health suffered in the keen air of a northern autumn, reached New York on the 22nd September, and was back in the West Indies on the 12th December.
In home waters the war was conducted with languor on both sides after Rodney’s relief of Gibraltar. The British Government having to meet calls all over the world, could only collect some thirty sail of the line in the Channel, which were successively led by Admiral Geary, a worn-out veteran, and Admiral Darby. Geary, after a cruise in June and July, during which he made a few prizes of merchant-ships, resigned in August. One object of his cruise was to see a large convoy of ships bound to the East and West Indies safe out of reach of the French and Spanish fleets. It was to be guarded when clear of European waters by Captain Moutray in the Ramillies, 74, with the Thetis and Southampton frigates. The convoy consisted of five East India Company’s ships, of eighteen transports carrying a regiment to the West Indies, and of forty West Indian merchant-ships. Moutray left Spithead on the 29th July. He was allowed two other line-of-battle ships till he was 300 miles beyond the Scilly Isles. He met Geary at sea, and was escorted by the grand fleet till he was some 340 miles west. Then he was left, the admiral thinking that he was now safe. But he was running into extreme peril. The French had sent the Chef d’escadre Bausset with seven of the line and the Spanish ships at Brest to join Don Luis de Córdoba at Cadiz. While they were there, secret information of the sailing of the convoy and of the weakness of Moutray is said, by Spanish historians, to have reached the Prime Minister of Spain, the Count of Floridablanca. He at once ordered Córdoba and Bausset to sail and intercept the prize. They were right across Moutray’s route when, on the 8th August, in Lat. 36° 40 N. and Lon. 15° W., their sails were seen on the horizon at sundown from the masthead of Moutray’s advance ship. Thinking the sails belonged to neutral ships, he held on till night. Then the number of lights reported as seen ahead made him alter his mind. He signalled to his convoy by gun-fire to lie to with their heads to the west, and then, again by gun-fire, ordered them to continue their course. It was his meaning that they should go as they were then pointing. The captains of the Indiamen, transports, and merchant-ships understood that they were to resume the course they were on before they lay to, which was to the south. His signals had been heard by the allies, who steered for the sound of the guns. So when the sun rose on the 9th August, Moutray with his solitary 74 and frigates was well out to the west and to windward. The sixty-three ships under his charge were sailing right into the arms of a big French and Spanish fleet, which closed on them, and carried them all into Cadiz. It was the greatest disaster suffered by British commerce since Tourville had scattered the Smyrna convoy. The necessity for satisfying the public by making an example led to Moutray’s trial by a court martial, and he was reprimanded. In truth, nothing he could have done would have saved his convoy when once it was close to so great a force. He lived to be appointed as Commissioner of the Dockyard at Antigua, and to have some difficulties with Nelson.
The allies returned in triumph to Cadiz, and their success encouraged the Spaniards to persevere in the war. A great fleet collected in the port in October,—Spanish ships, Frenchmen from Brest and from Toulon, and Guichen with a worn-out squadron from the West Indies; but it did nothing, and scattered to winter quarters.
In 1781 the war grew in intensity. Disputes arising partly out of the exercise by the British Government of its claim to take an enemy’s goods out of a neutral ship, and partly out of the encouragement given to the Americans by the city of Amsterdam, led to a declaration of war on the Dutch Republic by Great Britain in December 1780. To guard against an attack by the Dutch on the trade with the Baltic, from whence our naval stores were mainly drawn, it was necessary to station a squadron in the North Sea, which threw an additional burden on the already heavily taxed navy. Every ship which could be patched up for service had to be put into commission. The number of vessels in “full sea pay” was 398, and 90,000 men, including 20,000 marines, were voted to form the crews.
So many were the calls on the navy that it was not possible to collect sufficient line-of-battle ships for service in home waters. The nominal superiority of the allies was overwhelming, but the difference between paper and real strength has rarely been better shown than in this year. The Dutch were not ready. The French, though incomparably the most formidable of our enemies, could not man and officer all their ships effectively. The Spaniards were miserably inefficient. France and Spain alike were intent on pushing the war in America, or in endeavouring to recover Minorca and Gibraltar. Both dreaded the dangers of the Channel. Thus no resolute effort was made to assail Great Britain itself. In America our enemies gained, by the intelligent use of their fleets, the success which established the independence of the United States. In European waters the British Government was compelled to leave the garrison of Minorca to its fate. After a siege begun on the 18th August 1781, it surrendered on the 4th February 1782. Yet the foundations of our power were not only not shaken, but were not seriously menaced.
Before taking up the story of the war in American waters, it will be convenient to show how the heart of the empire was guarded, and how the forces on both sides started for operations in distant seas. The British Government had to provide first of all for the free movement of its trade—a task greatly complicated by the war with Holland. Then it had to reinforce its squadrons in America, to endeavour to strengthen its general position by seizing the Dutch possessions at the Cape, and by providing for the safety of Gibraltar. The great fortress was on a superficial view a mere burden on the fleet throughout the war. Three great armaments had to be sent for its relief first and last. Two of them were provided only by leaving the Channel with small or no protection. Some English public men were of opinion that it might be profitably exchanged for an island in the West Indies. Yet it attracted a large part of the enemy’s forces which might have been employed with more damaging results to us elsewhere. It is true that for this we have to thank the want of intelligence of our opponents. To recover Gibraltar was an object for which the King of Spain was prepared to make every effort, and he could think of no other way of taking it than by direct siege. His Ambassador in Paris, the Count of Aranda, had sagacity enough to see that it might be recovered “in the heart of Jamaica.” Aranda could, however, secure no hearing. So long as our opponents were intent on mastering Gibraltar by bombardment and blockade, the obvious interest of England was to keep it from capture. Nor could the pride of the nation be reconciled to the surrender of this trophy of former wars. Its importance to the ultimate interests of the naval power of Great Britain was to be amply proved in the next war.