In this July Rodney decided to leave waters in which nothing could now be done. He sent the trading ships, which had collected for convoy, to Europe under charge of Sir Hyde Parker and those of his captains whom he desired might be better strangers to him in future. Rowley and Walsingham were ordered to Jamaica. The safety of the Lesser Antilles was provided for sufficiently, and then he sailed for Sandy Hook himself with ten line-of-battle ships and a frigate.
The campaign of 1780 had done nothing to diminish the reputation Rodney had gained by the relief of Gibraltar. He was not held responsible for the failure to win on April 17th, or the subsequent failure to force Guichen into close action in May. Although what fighting there had been was but indecisive, the substantial results were considerable. All attacks on the English islands had been stopped, and although no effective counter-stroke had been delivered at the French, yet we had remained masters of the field of battle at the end in spite of the enemy’s superior numbers. To be sure the sufferings of the Spaniards from the plague had helped us materially, but they were the consequences of a dirty inefficiency in our foes which would one day, when opportunity and faculty combined, give us a decisive victory. At home, therefore, Rodney’s fame was great. He was being sung into immortality by ballad-mongers. His lady was highly complimented by the King in frequent Drawing-room. Other rewards of a more substantial kind were not wanting. When the thanks of the House were voted him for the relief of Gibraltar, his friends had, with more zeal than judgment, moved that the King should be petitioned to grant him a pension. With almost incredible want of taste they made much of the Admiral’s notorious pecuniary embarrassments. The motion was opposed by North as irregular, and even indecent. It was certainly unnecessary. A pension with remainder to his children was granted, and would certainly in any case have been granted by the King.
CHAPTER IX
ST. EUSTATIUS
Rodney’s decision to go to New York was not a hasty one. It was part of a scheme which had long matured in his mind. When he was applying for command during the summer and autumn of 1778 he had written several papers to Sandwich, giving his views of the principles on which the naval war should be conducted by us in the West Indies and on the coast of North America. They show a power of looking at warlike operations as a whole, and a sense of the vital importance of plan and aim which cause some doubt whether the Admiralty made the best use it could of his services when it appointed him to a command at sea. The capital defect of our management at that time was precisely the want of coherence in our operations which Rodney could have supplied. If instead of sending him to the West Indies the Government had given him the post which was to have been held by Collingwood, and was actually filled by Lord Keith in Napoleon’s time—if it had named him commander-in-chief with his headquarters at Portsmouth, and had given him a general control over the movements of squadrons—we might have been the poorer for one great victory, but our navy would have been used with a definiteness of aim which was conspicuously wanting in fact. This, however, could not be, and the next best post was the one he actually held. In the West Indies Rodney was at hand to help our commanders on the American coast. His plan was to act against the French in the Antilles during the spring and early summer with vigour enough to keep them well employed, then, when the hurricane months made cruising too dangerous in the West Indies, to proceed to the North American coast, and there, uniting all available forces, to strike hard at the insurgents. If the French followed they might be forced to fight a battle.
Acting on this plan Rodney sailed from the Antilles in July. He took this step on his own responsibility, though he had good general reason for believing that it would be approved. In this he was not mistaken. Sandwich highly approved, observing with much truth that unless His Majesty’s officers would “take the great line” nothing effectual would ever be done. He was right; but unfortunately it was somewhat difficult for His Majesty’s officers to take the great line effectually with such forces as they were supplied with and such inspiration as they received from home. Our military forces were ridiculously inadequate to the work they had to do, and were moreover divided as if to make the utmost of their weakness. Clinton was holding on to New York with one half of the army. Cornwallis and the other half were fighting in the Southern States with a valour, skill, and success which, ungrateful people that we are, we have too much forgotten. United under Cornwallis our army might have done something. Divided it could only stand at bay, or at best carry on a guerrillero warfare which might be, and was, brilliantly successful for a time, but was none the less doomed to be futile in the long run. Rodney could do nothing to remedy the defective management of the land forces. He had little chance to use his squadrons with effect. The departure of Guichen had made it impossible for the enemy to keep the sea. Their squadron which did remain on the coast kept close in Rhode Island Harbour, where it had the protection of powerful batteries and of an American force. Clinton declined to co-operate in an attack, alleging that the enemy’s works were too strong, and that the time had gone by in which anything could be effected against them. He laid the blame of failure to act sooner on Arbuthnot, the admiral on the station. Arbuthnot attributed it to the sloth and stupidity of Clinton. There was a great deal to be said on both sides, for the soldier though brave, now and then active, and a “good drill,” was a wooden personage; and the sailor, though no one ever questioned his courage, and he was doubtless able to manage a ship, was a quarrelsome, narrow-minded, selfish man. Rodney could do little except comment on the miserable management of the war and stimulate the activity of our cruisers against the Yankee privateers. He was moreover in ill health himself—compelled to remain much on shore at New York, complaining bitterly of the damp and cold of the climate. His presence in irresistible force on the coast served to depress the rebels, then at the lowest point of their fortune. Nothing, however, was done, or could be done, to really weaken the immense essential strength of the American position.
The sad truth is, that the chief outcome of his presence on the station was a violent quarrel with Arbuthnot. This officer, who was his inferior in rank, resented his arrival from the West Indies deeply. He thought it mean in a brother admiral to come and spoil the fun—to come, in plain words, and take the prize-money. A miserable interest of the pocket was at the bottom of this as of so many naval quarrels. To the good of the public service Arbuthnot seems never to have given a thought. All he cared to see was that the arrival of a senior officer on the station would deprive him of the commander-in-chief’s share of every prize. Indeed he had very soon practical demonstration of this unpleasant truth. Shortly after Rodney’s arrival one of the frigates which he had taken over from Arbuthnot captured a vessel laden with arms and stores for the rebels. The admiral’s share of the prize-money was £3000, and that Rodney pocketed with punctuality and despatch, thereby driving Arbuthnot into an explosion of fury worthy of Hawser Trunnion. Rodney’s own view is given by himself in a letter to Jackson the Secretary of the Admiralty. He points out that if he had looked to money only he might have made a lucrative cruise on the Spanish main, but “tho’ the hand of adversity and the base ingratitude of individuals had learnt me the value of Riches, it has not, or ever shall, eradicate from my mind the Duty I owe my King and Country.” He would not cruise for money only, but if in the fair way of duty he came where money was, he would take every sixpence to which he had a right. Arbuthnot was sulky and rude. He made difficulties and sent home complaints; but he had to deal with a man who was resolute to be obeyed. “I find myself, my dear Sir,” wrote Rodney again to Jackson, “a Butt for Envy and Mallice. I had rather have Envy than Pity. I will go on and endeavour by exerting myself in the Service of my King and Country to deserve more Envy and more Mallice. It cannot hurt me for I am resolved to do my Duty, and no Rank whatever shall screen any officer under me who does not do his Duty. The Good, the Worthy, the truly Brave officer will love and Honour me, others are unworthy my notice. All shall be treated like gentlemen, and none under my command shall ever have reason to tax me with Disrespect to them; but I will be the Admiral.” This, as Sandwich might have said, was “the great line.” Rodney was in the right, and was supported by ministers. If their support had gone to the length of superseding Arbuthnot it would have been the better for the public service in the following year.
A quarrel about money affords a convenient opportunity for reverting to Rodney’s own financial position. It had been materially bettered at the expense of the enemies of his King and country. His letters to his wife during these months contain satisfactory references to the speed with which his prize-money was enabling him to clear off the worst of his debts and provide for his family. There was another purpose for which funds were greatly needed. When he sailed at the end of 1779 Rodney had told his wife that a naval officer who wished for proper support must have a seat in Parliament. So soon, therefore, as the first creditors were satisfied—none, let us hope, were paid sooner than the Drummonds—he forwarded funds to Sandwich for the purchase of a seat. By the decision of his friend, apparently, he was put up for Westminster, and Sandwich was able to inform him in September that the funds having come to hand in time, “the free and independent” had duly returned him at the head of the poll. It is curious that he, a thorough-going supporter of the Administration and a “King’s friend,” stood with Fox, the bitterest of all the critics of Lord North’s Cabinet, who was destined to be a member of the very Ministry which recalled Rodney himself from the West Indies in 1782 with contumely.
At the close of 1781 he sailed again for the West Indies, and arrived early in December after a stormy passage. During his absence the station had been swept by one of the most dreadful hurricanes on record. It burst on October 10th, when, according to sea lore, it ought to have been “all over.” Not only was it late, but it was far-reaching. Barbadoes had been supposed to lie beyond the track of the hurricane, but this year it was terribly smitten. Plantations were desolated, and the very fortifications were blown down. The other islands were no more fortunate, and a whole squadron of war-ships was cast away or so shattered as to need a complete refit. The French islands suffered as severely as our own. The greatness of the disaster cowed both sides for a time into fellow-feeling. Spanish prisoners at Barbadoes exerted themselves “like friends” to help their captors, and were effusively thanked by the Governor. Bouillé, at Martinique, sent back some shipwrecked English seamen, declaring that he could not consider the victims of such a misfortune as prisoners of war.
This subdued mood could not last. Rodney was not likely to allow himself to be stopped by sentiment. In December he had his squadron in good trim again. He decided to see whether an effective stroke could not be delivered at the French. St. Vincent seemed to present an opportunity. The island was reported to have suffered seriously from the hurricane, and the fortifications were said to be entirely ruined. As the island lies directly to the south of Santa Lucia, and had been taken from us by the French early in the war, the temptation to attempt something on it was irresistible. A body of troops, under General Vaughan, was embarked on the squadron, and the combined force went south in good hope. But the expedition was a failure. The reports as to the damage done by the hurricane turned out to have been grossly exaggerated. The fortifications were found to be intact, and far too strong to be taken except by regular siege, for which Vaughan had neither men nor battering-train. After a few days’ stay on shore the soldiers were re-embarked, and the squadron returned to Gros Islet Bay.
Its stay here was not long. Reinforcements were coming, and there was work of a tempting kind to be done. The reinforcements included the prizes Rodney himself had taken from the Spaniards. We had sheathed them in copper, and they were among the finest ships afloat. Samuel Hood, who has been named as having served under Rodney in the attack on Havre as captain of the Vestal twenty-two years earlier, and had just been promoted rear-admiral, was in command. He had been expressly chosen in the hope, which was not to be disappointed, that he would prove a capable second. Samuel Francis Drake, who was as yet only commodore, but was soon to be rear-admiral, was third. Captain Edmund Affleck came next to them in seniority. The names of these three will be found conspicuous during the remainder of Rodney’s fighting. Hood arrived in January, 1781, and in that month there came also orders to set about a piece of work which Rodney undertook in joy and hope, not foreseeing that it was destined to prove to him the source of infinite worry, of bitter attacks, of loss of credit, and of loss of lawsuits, which reduced him in his old age to the poverty which he had just shaken off.