To Rodney it was now only left to do his own duty as a brave man. He placed his ship at about a pistol shot from the nearest Frenchman, and by furious cannonade drove him from the line. Even now he was exasperated by further bungling and by downright misconduct. The Cornwall, the ship immediately ahead, went too far from him. The Yarmouth, the next ahead of the Cornwall, did worse. She first stopped at too great a distance from the French, and then actually drew out of action and lay to windward of the Admiral. This last piece of misconduct Rodney did amend. First a signal, and then when it was not obeyed a cannon shot fired into her, brought the Yarmouth down to the flag-ship’s quarter. There by the voice of the signal lieutenant, who, standing by Rodney in the stern walk—the gallery outside the cabin—roared at her through his speaking-trumpet, she got the order to come into action again under the Admiral’s stern. But the battle had gone to pieces. Nothing was left of it but a furious cannonade between the rear divisions of the two fleets. Fortunately the French made no use of the opportunity presented them by the confusion in the English line. Some of them were crippled, others misunderstood orders. By three o’clock many of them had fallen to leeward. M. de Guichen called off the ships engaged to form a new line. Rodney, seeing that nothing effectual could now be done, hauled down the signal for battle. The two fleets separated—the French standing to the north, the English to the south—and by night they were out of sight of one another. Even now the confusion in the English fleet did not end, for during the darkness some of the vessels were separated, and did not rejoin their admiral till late next day.
The bitterness of this disappointment remained with Rodney as long as he lived. He told Gilbert Blane that he was prouder of the plan he laid to beat Guichen than of the actual victory he won over Grasse two years later. On this latter occasion he owed something to fortune and much to the enemy’s blunders. Grasse too was the inferior man. Had his orders been obeyed on April 17th, Rodney felt that he would have won by pure good management, and against an adversary who was a master swordsman. This was the feeling of a genuine artist, and one cannot but sympathise with the anger he felt and expressed. Guichen even had a fellow-feeling for him, and wrote condoling with him on the bad support he had received. For himself, so he said, he thought eight of his ships were gone when he saw the beginning of the English attack. This letter, it is almost unnecessary to say, is not mentioned by French historians, but we have Rodney’s word for it; and nothing could be more in keeping with the gallant, courtly manners of a time which retained the old faith that the noble cavaliers who follow the honourable profession of arms are not the less brothers and fellow-artists because they fight on opposite sides. Rodney indicated his feelings sufficiently clearly in his public letter—so clearly in fact that Sandwich thought it better to suppress a paragraph. Even as it was published there could be no doubt what the Admiral meant. He pointedly complimented Guichen on the support he had received from his captains, and abstained severely from any praise of his own subordinates. In private letters to Sandwich and to Lady Rodney he was vehement in wrath and denunciation, declaring in so many words that it was all a villainous plot to ruin him and discredit the Administration. Something must be allowed here for natural heat and something for gout. Rodney had already complained in bitter general terms of the conduct of some of his captains in the fight with Don Juan de Langara, when, if we are to judge by results, every man’s duty was well done. We need not suppose there was any villainy or plot, but only stupidity and routine. It is a fact which ought to be remembered that the conduct of Parker and the captains in the van was partly justified by the hidebound fighting orders. The fault of the failure rests more with the neglect to form a proper code of signals, and the foolish system which compelled an admiral to fight in chains imposed by standing orders.
His sense of their conduct was not unknown to his captains, and one of them actually complained to him and insisted on a court-martial. This was Carkett of the Stirling Castle, the officer who led the van right away from the centre. He drew upon himself an admirably worded and most severe rebuke. No court-martial on him was ever held. Poor Carkett perished in the dreadful hurricane which desolated the West Indies in the following October. He was one of the officers from before the mast, and had been the hero of a famous episode in the Seven Years’ War. At that time he was first-lieutenant to Captain Gardiner in the Monmouth, sixty-four, in Admiral Osborne’s squadron, which was blockading a French force in Carthagena. One of the Frenchmen was the Formidable, eighty, which had been the French flag-ship in the scandalous battle off Minorca. Now Gardiner had been Byng’s flag-captain on that occasion, and he had sworn to attack the big Frenchman whenever he met him, if it were only in an open boat. The French squadron slipped to sea, were seen by the English, and scattered in flight. Gardiner picked out the Formidable and followed her. Both sailed well, and had soon run the other ships out of sight. Then the Frenchman, exasperated by the pursuit of an enemy half his size, turned at bay. Gardiner was as good as his word. He attacked in a masterly manner and with indomitable pertinacity. Shortly after the action began he fell with a musket-shot in the head. The wound was swiftly mortal, but while he could still speak he charged Carkett to fight it out, to go down if he must with his colours flying, but never to leave the Frenchman, or to strike. Carkett kept his charge in the letter and the spirit. Metaphorically, or perhaps in heroic reality, he nailed his colours to the mast, and fought till the Monmouth was a hulk, and the Formidable was beaten to a standstill. At last two of the slower sailing ships of the English squadron, guided by the sound of the cannon, for the action had been carried on in the night, came up, and the French captain struck. He insisted, however, on surrendering his sword to Carkett; not to the senior captain of the two new-comers. It is impossible to believe that such a man wanted courage or loyalty. Indeed Rodney, even while rebuking him, fully recognised his bravery and the quality of his former service.
The case of Bateman of the Yarmouth was very different. He too had risen from before the mast, but with no such record as Carkett. In the action he had simply misbehaved, and it was not for the first time. The Yarmouth had been badly handled in Admiral Byron’s action off Grenada. Bateman was court-martialed and dismissed the service at New York some months later. In his case Rodney was implacable, and even allowed his feelings to carry him into what the officers of the court-martial thought undue interference and protested against with spirit. The Admiral had to make something approaching an apology to the President of the Court, Sir Chaloner Ogle. With this and one other exception there were no courts-martial. Rodney knew that the Government was exceedingly anxious to avoid any repetition of the scandals which had followed the battle off Ushant. He did not himself wish to discredit the flag by publishing details of misconduct. For the rest, though his teeth were sharp, his bark was worse than his bite. In the course of these months he tells his wife a story which shows that he was not implacable. A certain Captain —— had angered him by allowing his ship to get into a bad condition. Rodney had resolved to suspend him, and had actually gone on board with some hostile intentions. It happened that the captain’s wife and daughters were staying on board. Now the girls were such nice girls, and the mother was such an agreeable woman, and the whole family was so amiable, that the Admiral’s heart bled at the thought of bringing misery upon them. The old Adam of gallantry was too much for him. Rather than bring tears into the eyes of those sweet girls he let the service go for once, and contented himself with sending the ship home in charge of a convoy. It was well for Captain —— that his wife was above rubies, and that he had such children to parley with the enemy at the gate. As a rule, indeed, Rodney’s course was to get rid of captains whom he could not trust by sending them on convoy so soon as reinforcements from Europe enabled him to dispense with them.
The days immediately following the battle were spent in hard work. Although he had missed victory Rodney was not beaten, and determined to show the Frenchmen as much. He therefore resolutely kept the sea, and barred their road to Fort Royal. The Sandwich was so battered that for twenty-four hours she was in danger of sinking. Rodney shifted his flag to the Montague. The damage was repaired at sea. As the French, who are driven to some straits to find victories at sea, have claimed April 17th as one, we may pardonably remind them that quiescence on the part of their admiral seems to show they were as badly mauled as we were. On the 20th, three days after the battle, the French reappeared to the north, but on finding the English waiting for them, made off at once. Guichen took his ships northward to the Dutch, and then neutral, island of St. Eustatius, where he was able to refit, which does not look like the conduct of an officer who felt conscious of superiority. After cruising for a few days longer in sight of Martinique, to the no small disturbance of the French colonists, Rodney, seeing that Guichen had retreated, went south himself to Santa Lucia, leaving frigates to watch Fort Royal. At Choque Bay he was able to get fresh water, to land his sick and wounded, and to complete his repairs.
On May 6th the look-out frigates reported that the French had reappeared; this time to the eastward of Martinique. Rodney at once put to sea with nineteen line-of-battle ships and two of fifty guns, turning to the windward of Santa Lucia by the north to meet the Frenchman. He had now an opportunity of doing what he told his wife greatly needed to be done—namely, of teaching his captains to be officers. “Every captain in this fleet,” he once said to Gilbert Blane, “thinks himself fit to be Prime Minister of Great Britain.” The Admiral was resolved to show them that they should not disobey, or show a want of promptitude in obeying, the orders of George Brydges Rodney. He set resolutely to work to bring them to a proper degree of smartness. While he was manœuvring in front of Guichen the days were passed in tacking in succession or tacking together, in wearing in succession or together, in forming column and forming line. Whenever a ship was out of her station her signal was made, and she was publicly rebuked without regard to the seniority of her captain, or to the fact that she carried an admiral’s flag. Rodney even threatened to hoist his flag in a frigate in order to observe the line from a distance the better. It is easy to understand that such schooling was disagreeable to old captains who thought themselves masters of their profession. Rodney’s second in command, Sir Hyde Parker, a thorough seaman and solid fighter of the old stamp, was wrought by it into a state of sullen fury. When he returned to England a few months later he was with difficulty restrained by Sandwich from rushing into a pamphleteering attack on his late commander. For the present, however, there was nothing for it but obedience. At the end of a few days the lesson had been taught, and the English squadron manœuvred with the precision of Frederick’s grenadiers. Rodney might have found a more excellent way. If he had had more of the kindly good-fellowship of Nelson, if he had been wont to talk things over and explain his ideas to his captains, to get the wild ducks out after dinner and work out problems, it might have been better for his glory. But this was not Rodney’s way. He lived apart from his captains, whom he generally regarded as his social inferiors—neither asking for their friendship nor giving them his—asking only for that implicit obedience which he was ready to render to his own official superiors. As a natural consequence he got obedience, but he won none of that loyal devotion which bound Collingwood, or Hallowell, or Hoste to Nelson. His relations to his subordinates were always strained. They knew that he expected them to act only on his order, therefore they would do just what they were ordered and nothing more. He could never shut up his signal-book as Nelson could, with the confidence that he had instilled his spirit into his captains and could trust them to act in it. On Rodney’s part, however, it is only fair to remember that the relations of Nelson to his captains were exceptional, and would not have been possible unless he had been absolutely sure of their spirit of discipline. In the American War the bonds of discipline required to be tightened, and Rodney did well to tighten them. To say that he could not temper command by good-fellowship, that he could order but could not inspire, is to say that he had not the genial temperament of the very greatest stamp of leader, of a Nelson or of a Gustavus Adolphus, to whom, king as he was, all soldiers were brothers, who knew that his personal influence would give him all the superiority he wanted. To that race Rodney did not belong.
The second phrase, as the fencing men would say, of the duel with Guichen was pure manœuvring on both sides—mere doubling and disengaging. The Frenchman, who had the advantage of the wind when they met, took care not to lose it, and though he had a distinct superiority in number of ships, would not force on a battle. According to the French historians it was the English admiral who avoided action. It does not seem to strike them as absurd that, if it were so, Guichen did not bear down, and either force him to stand, or chase him ignominiously into Santa Lucia, as on this supposition he could have done. The facts show that Guichen was by no means anxious for a close fight. He would come down in line of battle to just out of gunshot, and there parade in defiance much as a mischievous boy might flaunt a red rag at a bull from the safe side of a fence; but so soon as the English seemed to be coming into striking distance the French worked up to windward at once. “They kept,” said Rodney, “an awful distance.” It was a somewhat risky game, for the fence was not quite permanent. Though the trade wind blows from the east it does not blow always from the same point of east, and a slight shift in it might enable Rodney to get to windward. Once it did give him the chance, but only for a moment. Then it dropped back and the Frenchman slipped off. During the fortnight in which the two fleets were zigzagging in front of one another, the Frenchman always breaking measure, to take to fencing language again, so soon as the English were within lunging distance, there were two partial actions, one on the 15th the other on May 19th. On one if not on both of these occasions the English fleet could have forced on a battle by steering into the rear of the French line, and so cutting off the last three or four ships. If this had been done Guichen must either have left his tail behind him like the lizard, or have fought a real battle. But Rodney was not prepared to break away from the old system of tactics as yet. He could only use it with more tactical judgment than his contemporaries. These actions, therefore, presented no particular novelty, and were thoroughly feeble. At last the two fleets separated by mutual consent. Both were in fact in a very bad condition. The use of copper sheathing was only coming in among ourselves. The French had not begun to use it. Ships, being unprotected against barnacles and worms, grew rapidly foul and leaky. Some of Rodney’s were in an almost sinking state, and Guichen’s were not in better case. Finally, the admirals were glad enough to separate, and return to port on May 21st. Guichen steered for Fort Royal round the north end of Martinique, Rodney sent three ships into Santa Lucia, and then made his way with the bulk of his fleet to Barbadoes, in order to be on the spot if the French should persevere in their designs on that island.
Practically this was the end of the measuring of swords between Rodney and Guichen. There was no further fighting or attempts to fight among the Lesser Antilles that year. Hardly had Rodney reached Carlisle Bay in Barbadoes before he received news which materially altered the position. It was brought by Captain Mann of the Cerberus, who, while cruising off Cadiz early in the month, had sighted a large convoy under the protection of a squadron of line-of-battle ships steering to the west. He followed them in the hope of cutting off one of the merchant ships, and so learning more about them. The enemy was too vigilant, but he saw enough to convince him that this was a Spanish force on its way to the West Indies. Captain Mann used his discretion in the right way. He left his station and hurried with the news to the Antilles. Soon other messages to the same effect arrived from Commodore Johnstone’s squadron on the coast of Portugal. Rodney made all possible haste to sea and resumed his cruising to windward of Martinique. But the Spanish commander, Don Jose Solano, was a more capable man than Langara. He had foreseen the possibility that the English might be at sea on this station, and therefore steered farther to the north so as to enter by the Saints’ Passage between Dominica and Guadaloupe. Then he anchored in Prince Rupert’s Bay in Dominica, and there waited to be joined by Guichen. The meeting was effected, and the force of the enemy thereby raised to thirty-six line-of-battle ships. It was hopeless to attempt an attack on such a force, and Rodney made at once for Gros Islet Bay in Santa Lucia. He moored his fleet under the protection of batteries, and fortified Pigeon Island. The measure was destined to be the salvation of the station in the next year, but for the present its worth was not put to the test. The Spaniards were as usual much more a hindrance than a help to their allies. They had the plague on board, and were dying like sheep with the rot, or as they say themselves—say with less than their habitual felicity of expression—como chinchas, which, saving the reader’s reverence, are bugs. This great force therefore did nothing. Don Jose was so cowed by the wretched state of his squadron that he insisted on being convoyed to San Domingo by Guichen. From thence he made the best of his way to Havannah. No wonder that French and English naval officers alike prayed that they might have the Spaniard as an enemy but never as a friend. As soon as he had seen his burdensome allies well into the Bahama Channel, Guichen, who knew that his squadron was worn out and saw the hurricane months close on him, left the West Indies. After touching on the coast of the insurgent colonies he, to the bitter disappointment of the rebels, insisted on sailing for Europe. The West Indies were thus practically clear of enemies.
In the meantime Rodney had been waiting for the attack which never came. Early in July he was reinforced by a squadron from England under the command of Captain Walsingham, but it was now too late to do anything. The hurricane months were just beginning. A very rude rhyme has been formed to aid the mariner’s memory, and it limits the hurricane season with reasonable accuracy—
June too soon,
July stand by,
August look out you must,
September remember,
October all over.