CHAPTER VI
THE RELIEF OF GIBRALTAR
Rodney was now sixty. In the June of this year 1778 he attained the rank of Admiral of the White Squadron. He had for some time been Rear-Admiral of England, an honorary rank, to which however a salary was attached. The Vice and Rear-Admirals of England were, and indeed are—for the titles are still to be seen in the navy lists—supposed to be second and third in command to the Lord High Admiral when there is one. In rank, therefore, he was at the head of his profession, but his reputation was still to make. The forty years or so of service which he had accomplished had gained him distinction, but not more than had been won by several of his contemporaries. When the American War broke out, Keppel, Byron, Barrington, and Howe were as well known as himself. Keppel at least was far more popular. It was the work of the next three years which secured him his unique position in his own generation. What has been recorded hitherto must be looked upon as introduction. What is coming is the real work of his life. Up till now his career has been divided by commissions and periods of years. The rest will be told in campaigns and days of battle.
It is therefore interesting to be able to see what kind of man he was, now when his great career was about to begin. His own deeds and letters have told something, and will tell more, as to his character, but one must go to his contemporaries for what he looked like, and what the world thought of him. Sir N. Wraxall took care to leave some knowledge on both points duly recorded in his reminiscences. Wraxall is no doubt a writer whom it is advisable to use with caution. Not being of opinion that it is worse to tell lies about Whigs than about other people, nor even convinced that every discreditable story told about a member of that virtuous party must needs be a lie, I do not know that the Mendacium Wraxallianum deserves particular condemnation. Still the book is largely composed of an old man’s reminiscences of other men’s tittle-tattle. Such an authority is only to be used safely by those who can distinguish and divide. When, for instance, Wraxall, under the attractive head of “Rodney’s Amours,” tells us that scandal associated the Admiral’s name with the frail reputation of very “exalted females,” we need not take his words as more than what they really are—evidence of what people said. This again is evidence of what was thought sufficiently credible to be worth repeating in that world and at that time. Society then did not think it manifest nonsense to whisper that this naval officer was the father of one of the limited number of royal bastards who are of royal blood on the mother’s side. Supposing the story true, it only proves what is otherwise abundantly known, namely, that Rodney—living as he did when not at sea in the pleasure-loving society of London, at a time when it did those things which it always has done, perhaps more, and certainly more openly than it has done since—was not morally either better or worse than most men of the world.
For the rest, these days lay far behind Rodney in 1778. The heat of his youth had been tamed by age and pain and disappointment. His affection was now given to those to whom it belonged of right—to his second wife, and to his children by both his marriages. There is a reference to the death of his second son by his first marriage, in the shipwreck of the Ferret, in one of his letters to Lady Rodney, which has a very genuine ring of grief. His eldest son, now an officer in the Guards, seems to have lived much apart, as was only natural, but from Lady Rodney’s letters it appears that he was on friendly terms with her and with his half-brother and sisters. This half-brother went to sea with the father, and was treated with the best of all forms of kindness—that namely which insisted on making a man of him, and refused him promotion till he knew his business. Lady Rodney herself had her husband’s affection and entire confidence. His letters to her put that beyond dispute. Collingwood himself, the most tender-hearted of men, did not write of and to his daughters more lovingly than Rodney. Their names occur constantly in his correspondence, and thoughts for them, their good, and their future, were never absent from his mind. The natural instinct, and sometimes the cant, of the moralist lead him at times to assert that these domestic virtues in later years are in themselves disproof of the truth of such stories as are told of Rodney’s earlier life. When that is not an affectation it is a very innocent belief. Whether it is better or worse for a man to go through the “mud bath” may be doubtful. What is certain is that many men do go through it and live to be clean. In 1778 the passion which remained strongest in Rodney was ambition.
Wraxall’s picture of the Admiral’s appearance and manner may be accepted without any interpretation. He says that he was slight with delicate features. In that Wraxall is borne out by Sir Joshua Reynolds’s fine portrait. The features are refined rather than strong, and are small. Having been taken when the Admiral was old, the face is that of a man who has suffered much pain. We do not need Wraxall to tell us that the Admiral’s manners were those of a gentleman and not of a tarpaulin. Given his birth and training, what else should they be? Again it is very credible that the Admiral was a copious talker, vehement in the expression of his likes and dislikes, not at all averse to talk about himself, nor even to boast. The sailor has always, perhaps to console himself for much compulsory silence at sea, been open to reproaches touching his loquacity on shore. Moreover, he is by tradition hearty, given to speaking out his mind, not so conscious as other Englishmen of the decency of reticence—whereby if he is a good friend he is also liable to make enemies. Rodney made many enemies, and the tone of his letters bears out Wraxall’s assertion that it was by the vigour with which he condemned what he thought worthy of condemnation.
Rodney’s age at the time of taking his great command is a fact to be kept in mind. His years had necessarily some effect on his energy. The state of his health, too, is not to be forgotten. He was older than his years. The sea life, always a wearing one, was particularly hard in those times. No man could have inhabited such a floating pest-house as the Dublin without suffering for it. Besides, gout had made its home with Rodney long before this. He was liable to be laid up by it at any moment, and was so well aware of the danger that he took a doctor to sea with him to attend upon himself exclusively. It is no small drawback to the efficiency of a commander that he should be for ever compelled to struggle with an infirmity. There are no want of examples to prove that the misfortune is one which can be conquered. Rodney’s contemporary, Maurice of Saxony, beat or manœuvred the allies out of the Low Countries though he was a cripple with the same disease. Still, ill-health was a terrible addition to the difficulties of an otherwise trying position. Age and infirmity must be allowed for in his case, either for excuse or for honour. It will be necessary sometimes to remember that if he had been younger and stronger he might have done more, or that if he had not been old and sickly it would have been less honourable for him to have done as much as he did. His gout, too, had inevitably much influence on his relations to his officers. To say nothing of the notorious effect of this disease on the temper even of less nervous and passionate men than Rodney, it compelled him to seclude himself a great deal, and so intensified his natural disposition to hold himself aloof from his captains. His relations with his subordinates were rarely friendly, and this had, as it could not but have, effects which were not for the good of the service. One thing more must be noted, namely, the extent of his pecuniary embarrassments. This was at the time public property. All men knew, and Rodney himself never affected to deny, that command was necessary to him for the money’s sake. It will be seen that this impecuniosity was one of the excuses found for attacks on him at a later period. For the present it will be enough to remember that there was the need, and there was the general knowledge that it existed.
Throughout the second half of 1778 and the greater part of 1779 Rodney was established in London at lodgings in Cleveland Street, straining every nerve to secure a command. He pressed his claims and his views on the Ministry. His desire was to get back to the West Indies, which, as the enemy never made any but half-hearted attacks on us in the Channel, was destined to be the great scene of the war. Those seas were well known to him, and in a series of able papers he explained to Sandwich how, in his opinion, we could best conduct operations there so as not only to defend the islands, but to give the utmost possible help to the King’s forces on the northern continent. Later on, and after Rodney’s first successes, the minister hastened to claim credit for having listened to his arguments and secured his appointment. Rodney himself asserted emphatically that he owed his command to the King alone. It was to the King certainly that he applied. For a time he had necessarily to wait. All the great commands were filled when he returned from Paris. Neither his rank nor his wish allowed him to serve as a subordinate. He was therefore compelled to look on as a spectator at the first year and a half of the war. During that period events were working for him. The general course of operations was not of a nature to raise the reputation of other men to his detriment. On the North American coast, indeed, Howe beat off the superior force of D’Estaing stoutly and by dint of wary manœuvring. In the West Indies Barrington seized and held Santa Lucia—a position of immense value, as Rodney well knew—in the teeth of a far stronger French force. The whole subsequent course of the war was influenced in our favour by this timely capture. Still these successes were not of a kind to impose the victorious commander on the Ministry as a necessary man.
In the Channel the course of the war had removed a whole batch of formidable rivals from Rodney’s path. Keppel’s feeble action with D’Orvilliers off Ushant in July, 1778, was a bitter disappointment to the nation. It was followed by a series of quarrels and courts-martial more discreditable and more injurious to the country than a defeat could well have been. The Tory admiral, Sir George Palliser, was egged on by Sandwich to discredit the Whig admiral, Keppel. There followed court-martial and counter court-martial. The mob of London took sides for Keppel, sacked the houses of Palliser and Alexander Hood, and burned the gates of the Admiralty in Whitehall. The navy went by the ears in a Whig and Tory quarrel. In the mind of the King and minister there arose a determination to employ no more Whigs if it could be helped. When the excesses to which faction carried men in that time are remembered, the resolution can be fairly justified. Mean things were done by the Ministry, no doubt. It was scandalous, for instance, that Duncan—he who afterwards conquered at Camperdown—should have been left on shore throughout the war, as punishment for the resolution he showed in securing fair play for his friend Keppel in the court-martial. Still, when it is remembered that the Whigs as a party were openly opposed to the coercion of the American colonists, and that they seldom scrupled to help the enemies of their country if their “connection” could profit thereby, it is only natural that the King should prefer not to employ them. If the work was to be done at all, it had better not be put in the hands of men who were half-hearted in the doing. Now, as this party had had the whole distribution of patronage for the greater part of the century, it follows, as the night the day, that the very great majority of admirals were Whigs. When to be a Whig became not an advantage but a disadvantage to the officer who was seeking command, great was the improvement in the position, and unaffected was the joy, of the admirals who were Tories.
Rodney was a Tory. At what period reflection and experience of public affairs brought him to these opinions I do not know. He can hardly have been a Tory when he was writing the letters quoted above to Newcastle. Probably he went to the side to which his instincts took him as soon as he saw that England had a king who meant to be king. For himself the conversion, if there was any conversion, was wholly for his good. I do not speak of his fortunes, but of his character. In future when he is found expressing devotion to a master it is not to a party manager, but to him to whom it was due of right—to his Sovereign. For his fortunes, too, his creed was advantageous. It must have been a real pleasure to George the Third to find an admiral who so thoroughly agreed with himself as to the proper view to be taken of the American insurgents. There was no doubt about Rodney’s opinions. They were rebels, piratical rebels, who were to be hunted down and crushed. Through 1778 and 1779 his mobile face and eager eloquence must have been familiar at levees and drawing-rooms, as he explained with vehement eloquence that it ought to be done, how it was to be done, and who ought to do it.
In the autumn of 1779 the right officer was chosen. Rodney was appointed to the command in the West Indies to replace Byron. He was to have the supreme command in the Leeward Islands and Jamaica, with freedom to intervene on the American coast. On his way a preliminary piece of service was to be done. Since the beginning of the war Gibraltar had been besieged by land and sea. The many claims upon us, and above all the necessity of standing on our guard in the Channel against an attack by the immense fleet formed by the combination of the French under M. d’Orvilliers and the Spaniards under Don Luis de Cordova, had compelled us to leave our outposts in the Straits, and our other outpost at Minorca, to their own resources. The cruise of the combined fleets had done us little harm, owing partly to the diseases which devastated their ships’ companies, and partly to those qualities of the Spaniard which have at all times made him the most exasperating of all mankind in a co-operation. The allies separated with mutual reproaches, and we were left free to strike a counter-blow. A great convoy was collected in the Channel. Twenty-one line-of-battle ships were to protect it. Of this force Rodney was to have the command. His duties were to proceed to Gibraltar, relieve the fortress, send a convoy up the Mediterranean to Minorca, then go on himself to the West Indies with four ships, leaving his second in command, Rear-Admiral Digby, to bring back the empty transports, the sick and wounded from the garrisons.