During the conquest of the French islands Rodney regularly reported progress to his patron of Newcastle, and did it, too, with details which show that he had measured His Grace’s foot to a hairbreadth. Writing for instance to Newcastle from Fort Royal Bay in Martinique to give the good news of the conquest, and point out how advantageous it will be for His Majesty’s service, he does not fail to insist how useful it may also be to Thomas Pelham. “I have likewise,” he says, “great satisfaction when I consider that the conquest puts it into Your Grace’s power to oblige many of your Friends by the Posts and Employments in Your Grace’s gift, and which are very lucrative in this Island, particularly those relative to the customs and Secretary of the Island. This I thought my duty to represent to Your Grace that you might not be deceived in their values, which are computed at four thousand pounds a year each. If I have the good fortune to continue in Your Grace’s esteem, and that my conduct in this expedition meets with Your Grace’s approbation, I shall be extremely happy, as among Your Grace’s many friends none is more truly so than him who has the honour to be with the most profound respect and gratitude, etc. etc.”
Rodney was not a man to do things by halves, whether it was fighting the French or cultivating his interest with the Duke of Newcastle. Also he was clearly a man of the eighteenth century when the need, not to say the imperative social duty, of obliging one’s friends was much borne in on governing persons. So, having beaten the French in a workmanlike style, he hastens to call His Grace’s attention to these two important facts—first, that there are places of dignity and emolument to give away, and second, that here is George Brydges Rodney, His Grace’s humble and grateful servant. Then he leaves him to perpend.
If Rodney cherished any hope of good things to be obtained by the help of Newcastle in the West Indies he was to be disappointed. In more ways than one his command in these wars was less good than he might reasonably have expected. A grant of land in one of the conquered islands turned out to be mere fairy gold. It had not been confirmed in time, and with the retrocession of our conquests any chance of making it good disappeared. Rodney had to complain, too, that General Moncton and the military gentlemen, particularly those of them who belonged to the North American plantations, had secured an undue share of the prize-money. He accused them of underhand dealings with the enemy, and not without good grounds. Owing to these dubious transactions of theirs, the naval officers, he complained, did not get their fair share. All this business of prize-money, and the division of it, plays a very important part in the history of the navy for as long as there were wars in which booty was to be earned. The desire to obtain it was a great motive with both officers and men. Lord Dundonald has left it on record that a captain who had a reputation for luck never had any difficulty in finding volunteers to man his ship, even when the most severe use had to be made of the press to complete the complement of other ships. In so far the acts for the encouragement of seamen, which recognised and satisfied this natural human love of occasional lumps of extra money, served the purpose for which they were designed. But their influence was by no means wholly for good. Our fathers were much of Cassio’s mind. They took it for granted that the lieutenant was to be enriched before the fore-mast hand, the captain before the lieutenant, and the admiral before the captain. When the man got a few pounds, just enough to keep him drunk for a fortnight, the lieutenant gained a few score, the captain a few hundreds, the admiral gained thousands, for he shared in all the prizes taken on his station, whether he had been present at the capture or not. It is therefore easy to see what an important matter prize-money was to a flag-officer. To get a rich station, and to keep it free from the intrusion of a superior, was the ideal of luck. Unless an admiral was a very magnanimous man indeed, or the pressure of the time was so great as to silence the voice of interest, he was sorely tempted to allow the cause of his pocket to interfere with public service. He was certain to be very angry if a brother-admiral of senior rank turned up to share the booty, and never failed to take advantage of every technical excuse which could be found for disputing the claims of a colleague. How intensely these old heroes resented the diminution of their “loot,” with what honest natural rancour they would fight over it, let a long series of quarrels and lawsuits, conducted with all the pertinacity of Dandie Dinmont, say. In the heart of such as fight on blue water there has always lingered a something of the pirate—they have a smack, they do somewhat grow to, as we shall see when this story has gone a little farther.
The meaning of this same word prize-money must be kept in mind in order to appreciate the full bitterness of the disappointment which fell upon Rodney in 1762. Spain had openly avowed the Family Compact, and had joined her fortunes with France. The avowal would have been made sooner if Charles the Third had not waited till the treasure-ships were home from America. By not allowing Pitt to force on a war in time, we gave the Spaniard a chance, which he lost by declaring war himself when France was too broken to afford him any help. At once the news was forwarded to Rodney from Europe, and better he could not have wished for. A war with Spain, as Nelson said, was a rich war; and for nobody was it more lucrative than for the officers in command in the West Indies. They had Cuba and the Spanish main under the lee. There was nothing to be done but to run down before the unfailing Easterly Trades, and there lay the Spanish colonies from which the strong man armed had but to ask with spirit, and to have. Another not unpleasant service was to cruise to windward of the passages through the Caribbean Islands, and there snap up the register ships as they passed. When, then, the news of the Spanish War reached Rodney, he set to work with all the energy of a commander for whom pleasure and duty were combined in an eminent degree. The French were so completely subdued that the English squadron could safely be spared from the Leeward Islands. Rodney decided to strengthen the Jamaica station, which was distinct from his own; and not only so, but to go there himself in order to assist in the defence of the island, in case a combined attack was made on it by the Spaniards and the French, who had recently contrived to smuggle a few ships through the Caribbean Islands to Hayti. In a despatch to the Admiralty he expressed the hope that their lordships would approve of his decision to take this course without waiting for orders. Having wound up his formal duties on the Leeward station, Rodney prepared to run down to Jamaica, and no doubt every man on board his flagship was looking forward to a slap at the Spaniards and a share of the booty with a natural, and withal honourable, feeling of satisfaction. But at the very last moment there came upon all these tender leaves of hope a frost—a killing frost. On March 26th Captain Elphinstone of the Richmond frigate turned up with orders from home. By the despatches brought him Rodney learnt that a great expedition was preparing in England for an attack on Havannah. It was to be commanded by Sir George Pocock. As for him, he was to remain on his station in order that he might render all possible assistance to the expedition as it passed. Rodney obeyed orders punctually. Ten sail of his squadron were sent to Jamaica, and he remained at Antigua collecting stores, water, and information for the use of Sir George Pocock. After delays which might have proved fatal, the great expedition arrived. It was carried by Pocock through the dangerous and then little-known Bahama Channel—a feat which was quoted as a masterpiece of seamanship—and after desperate fighting did take Havannah. The loss of the expedition by disease was heavy; but Pocock and Albemarle, the admiral and general in command, made a handsome fortune each out of the prize-money. Rodney’s share in the enterprise was to see his squadron depleted to strengthen Pocock; to have a great deal of work thrown on him; to be left behind at Antigua with the mere carcass of his command, and nothing but routine to attend to; to be, moreover, prostrated by a smart attack of bilious fever. Pocock had taken his best ships and officers, but had left him behind, having no desire that another flag-officer should come with him to divide the expected plunder.
On this, as on all other occasions, Rodney obeyed orders exactly, and without futile complaint. He was too able—too much a man of the world—to suppose that he could gain anything by showing himself unmanageable; too honourable a man to revenge a private disappointment by neglecting the service; and, above all, too proud a man to make an outcry where he had no quotable grievance. None the less he was disappointed, and did not scruple to say so when a fitting occasion presented itself. He did not do so now because there really was no ground for protest. It was a matter of course that a great expedition should be commanded by an officer of proportionate rank. Pocock was his senior both in rank and length of service. He had lately commanded with fair success in three battles in the East Indies against a superior French force. Rodney could not complain when such a man—whose reputation was then higher than his own—was put over his head. It was for Pocock and the Ministry to decide whether the expedition to Havannah required the presence of the Admiral on the Leeward station. They did not think it did, and so Rodney had to remain at his unremunerative command. Still, to Rodney, who neither was nor pretended to be indifferent to money, it was a disappointment to lose so splendid a chance. Some years afterwards he made it an excuse for a claim to be allowed to retain the governorship of Greenwich Hospital along with an active command at sea. He then plainly told Sandwich that he thought the Government owed him this, which had been granted in the noontide of jobbery to former admirals, as a compensation for what he had lost in the West Indies in 1762. If this did not sound heroic, it was honest and human. Moreover, it was only what was to be expected. If a government holds out the chance of earning money as an incentive to its officers and men, it must expect that its officers and men will think of money. Rodney did not cant on the subject. He liked money and wished to earn it as easily as possible. His code of honour consisted of two articles. The first was that he was to do his duty; the second was that he was entitled to all the places, pensions, allowances, prize-money, and praise which law, or public opinion, or the customs of society entitled him to get, down to the last farthing. Whoever stood in his way must take the risk of whatever George Brydges Rodney could do to break his neck—always in the way of fair fighting. It was not the code of a saint, or of an unselfish hero; but it was a good working code of honour for a plain man of the world.
CHAPTER V
SIXTEEN YEARS OF PEACE
In 1763 Rodney returned home and hauled down his flag. He did not hoist it again in war time for sixteen years, though in the interval he held a peace command in the West Indies. Before again going to sea—from 1765, in fact, to 1771—he had the governorship of Greenwich Hospital. In 1764 he was made a baronet. In the same year he married for the second time. The lady was apparently of Dutch descent, and by name Henrietta Clies, the daughter of one John Clies of Lisbon, who again was probably a man of business. During these years of quiet he rose steadily in rank. In 1762 he became Vice-Admiral of the Blue, in 1771 Vice-Admiral of the White, and in the following year of the Red. This division of the navy into the Blue, White, and Red Squadrons, which has now been entirely given up, was purely formal in Rodney’s own time. It had been invented in the seventeenth century when fleets of eighty or a hundred ships of all sorts and sizes were collected in the North Sea to fight the Dutch. A sub-division had to be made if they were to be handled at all. They were split into three squadrons, which were distinguished by the colour of their ensigns—the blue, now used only by yachts or naval reserve ships; the red, now used by merchant ships; and the white, the red cross of St. George, which was at all times emphatically known as the English ensign, and is now the flag of the navy. The highest in dignity, though we have named it second here, was the red—the royal colour. Until late in the reign of George the Third, not long before the division was given up altogether, there was no Admiral of the Red Squadron, but only Vice and Rear. Admiral of the White was the highest rank an officer looked to reach. The classification was kept up in theory, because it was supposed to answer to the natural division of all forces into van, centre, and rear, though in practice it was not much attended to. Among the admirals a man’s colour simply marked his seniority. It may not be thought out of place to name the successive steps in order. They were—
Rear-Admiral of the Blue—White—Red.
Vice-Admiral of the Blue—White—Red.
Admiral of the Blue—White.
The establishment of the Navy also provided that there should be one Admiral of the Fleet who flew the union at the main; but this was with few exceptions an honorary, and not an active, post.
The governorship of Greenwich Hospital, which Rodney, now Sir George, held from 1765 to 1771, was such a comfortable post as might very properly be given to a naval officer who had served with credit. If family tradition is to be trusted, and it is doubtless substantially correct, Rodney was a good-natured Governor to the pensioners. The Hospital was at that time a hotbed of the dirtiest conceivable jobbery and thieving of the lowest type of the eighteenth century. A few years after Sir George had left it, Captain Baillie, who had become Lieutenant-Governor in 1773, published an account of its condition which led to a famous scandal, and a famous trial. From Baillie’s narrative and the evidence produced in support of it, and in his defence in Court, it was shown that the funds were habitually pilfered; that dependents of great political personages were foisted on an institution established for the benefit of seamen; that the pensioners were starved and neglected. In point of fact the sailors who did get in were looked upon as a technical excuse for drawing the funds of the hospital, which were then divided among a mob of placemen. To be named a minor official and authorised to deal with contractors was to be provided for for life. It seems to me superfluous to say that Rodney never so much as put out his little finger to amend this sort of thing. His own friend Sandwich was one of the worst sinners connected with it all. To expect that a gentleman who was in the way of meeting Sandwich frequently at dinner, was on his side in politics, and looked to an alliance with him as a means of obtaining promotion, was going to hurt his own prospects and disturb the comforts of social intercourse merely because the office he happened to hold—partly, too, by the goodwill of this same Sandwich—was reeking with corruption, precisely as every other office was, would have been foolish indeed. Rodney would, no doubt, have allowed that it was all very contemptible; but then, so were so many other things, and as public business could not be carried on without jobbery, this piece of jobbery must be taken in with the rest. What, however, he could do was to be good-natured to the individual pensioner; and this, it seems, he was. On the general principle that the least possible proportion of the funds of the Hospital should be devoted to the purpose for which they were originally assigned, it had been the rule that greatcoats should only be given to the men as a special favour. The Governor had power to grant this indulgence. Rodney was much too good-natured a man to refuse a favour—which cost him nothing—to a poor old sailor, and accordingly greatcoats soon became the rule, and not the exception, in Greenwich. The story also says that there was a naval Bumble, by the name of Boys, at the Hospital, who was outraged by this lavish treatment of paupers. He was Rodney’s Lieutenant-Governor, and himself a naval officer. At the weekly Board he expressed his surprise at his superior’s extravagance. An anonymous writer in the Naval Chronicle speaks of the look which the Admiral was wont to put on when things were sprung on him. We can imagine it—a mixture of surprise, indignation, and contempt, all kept in order by the instinctive self-control of an English gentleman. Boys had the benefit of it now as he heard Sir George Rodney’s answer, which is reported as follows:—