Owing to a variety of causes which do not directly interest us, Holland had been drawn into the war. Orders, dated December 20th, came out to Rodney and to General Vaughan to seize the island of St. Eustatius, which, with St. Martin and Saba, belonged to the Dutch.
To quite understand all the enterprise was destined to mean to Rodney, it is necessary to take into account the position of St. Eustatius. This island, with its even less favoured sisters St. Martin and Saba, is little better than a mass of barren rock. It lies far up in the Lesser Antilles between Barbuda and Santa Cruz, just north-west of our own island of St. Christopher or St. Kitts. As it has little native wealth, the Dutch with their usual good business faculty made a free port of it, hoping that traders glad to be free from the severe colonial trade legislation of those days would use it as an open mart. They were not disappointed, and the island had always had a kind of prosperity as a place of exchange. The outbreak of the rebellion in the plantations gave an immense impulse to its industry. When direct trade with the insurgent plantations was stopped it was very soon found by both sides that this measure of hostility had its inconveniences. If, for instance, Americans were not to be allowed to export cotton and tobacco to punish them for rebellion, Englishmen could only inflict the castigation by depriving themselves of tobacco and cotton. The West Indies were nearly touched by a cessation of trade, for the planters were in the habit of importing the maize and bacon on which they fed their slaves from the North American plantations. If they were deprived of these the slaves would starve; if the slaves starved the islands would be ruined; if the islands were ruined the loss to England would be enormous. Our fathers, though high-spirited, were practical men. Patriotic emotion and the unity of the Empire were good, but they must not, it was spontaneously felt, be made to mean the loss of cheap cotton, the second qualities of snuff, good pipe tobacco, and the sugar trade. A compromise had to be made between our principles and our necessities. It was found by granting permission for the importation of American produce through St. Eustatius. The inevitable result was to throw the whole trade between England or her West Indian Islands and the plantations into the market-place of St. Eustatius. The island sprang for a day into the prosperity of Tyre and Sidon. There the English merchant and the West Indian planter met the Yankee trader, and they dealt with one another. There, too, they met and traded with the men of the French islands with whom they could no longer directly deal. Vast rows of warehouses arose like mushrooms and were rented for immense sums. Alongside of this trade there arose another. Given the natural inclination of mankind to sell in the dearest market, it was inevitable that a great business in contraband of war should be carried on in such a favoured spot. St. Eustatius became in fact what our own island of Nassau in the Bahamas was during the American Civil War—a depot for the articles classed under that name. Finally, it may be noted that great numbers of our own West Indian planters and merchants, particularly those of St. Kitts, endeavoured to secure their goods from the risk of capture by the French by storing them in a neutral island.
In fact the place was as useful to us as it could be to our enemies. But when war broke out with Holland it was decided to seize upon it as a matter of course. To Rodney no order could be more agreeable. He had long regarded St. Eustatius with particular hatred as the place from which our enemies drew most of their stores, and also as the place in which traitors to their King and country were base enough to trade with rebels. The opportunity for an attack was very good. The Spaniards were either lying at Havannah or wasting themselves in petty attacks on our garrisons in Florida. Only four French line-of-battle ships were at Fort Royal. On January 30th Rodney, having shipped a force of soldiers under General Vaughan, sailed from Gros Islet Bay. After passing in front of Fort Royal, he left Drake with six ships to watch the Frenchman and steered directly for St. Eustatius. The place was surrounded on February 3rd, summoned, and taken at once. The Dutch governor, Graaf, having no soldiers and no forts, could only surrender at discretion. Rodney, who had had a sharp passage of arms with him before concerning a salute fired to the Yankee flag, had a particular joy in receiving his submission, and, it must be acknowledged, treated the poor man in a very high and mighty manner. The disasters of the Dutch did not end here. A convoy of one hundred and thirty sail had left a few days before under the protection of a ship of sixty guns. It was followed by two seventy-fours and a frigate, which easily seized it all after a very brief action in which the Dutch admiral, Krull, was killed, fighting at hopeless odds for the honour of the flag.
So far all seemed well. The booty taken was estimated at the magnificent figure of three millions sterling. Rodney announced that everything taken should be at the King’s mercy. The news was sent home at once, and received with much huzzaing and throwing up of caps. A great blow had been struck at the low-minded Dutch, and the people rejoiced therefore. Lady Rodney and Sandwich hastened to tell the Admiral how delighted everybody was with him. The King resigned all his rights to the officers of his sea and land service. A great cry of rage and disappointment went up from the French islands and the rebellious colonies, which was meat and drink to Rodney. For some time his letters are literally overpowering with triumph over the splendid blow he had struck at the enemies of his country and the traitors who dealt with them. But the somewhat of bitter which is proverbially seldom absent from human joys was soon found to be mixed with this cup also. In the fire of his zeal Rodney had been neither to bind nor to hold. He had confiscated immense quantities of property belonging to British subjects—to the planters of St. Kitts in particular. He had forgotten that the King could neither take nor give away more than his right. The letter in which George the Third resigned all his own claims contained a clause specially exempting the property of his subjects engaged in legitimate trade from seizure. It would have been well for Rodney’s happiness if he had paused to think what those words meant. It would have been well too for his reputation if he had remembered how careful it behoved a man, whose friends had paraded his poverty in the House of Commons, to be before he laid hands on money. He thought of nobody and nothing except the joy of trouncing enemies and traitors, and the happiness of at last getting prize-money enough to wipe all debt off, and leave something for his dear children.
In this frame of mind he remained for some time. When the planters of St. Kitts sent their attorney-general to state their case, he refused, rash man, to discuss the matter with a lawyer. The profession was amply avenged, for Rodney had to listen to many lawyers in the Admiralty Court, of which he appears to have totally forgotten the existence until reminded by writs. The Jews, who abounded in the island, were stripped to the skin and sent packing. The Dutch had surrendered at discretion, and were treated after the manner of Alaric. To the French, who were open enemies, Rodney showed more consideration. They were allowed to go with bag and baggage. Bouillé, who was furious, wrote angry letters, and he and Rodney, as Burke put it, defied one another in the highest style of chivalry. In this respect, however, Rodney’s conduct was, in diplomatic phrase, perfectly correct, and he stuck stoutly to his guns. Correct also was his conduct in respect to the naval stores, in spite of the charges brought against him later on. He sent them all to the King’s arsenals. As for the other goods, with the exception of a very small part which was returned to English owners, they were sold sub hasta. The island, in the words of the Annual Register, “became one of the greatest auctions that ever was opened in the universe.” All comers, except the late owners, were permitted to bid, and the goods were knocked down to the highest bidder—often, such was the glut in the market, at a third or quarter of their price. The buyers were permitted to take them away subject to a few restrictions imposed to prevent the transport of provisions to the French islands. The money was stored partly in the flag-ship, partly in the island, which was to be fortified, and provided with a garrison. What goods could not be sold, or were likely to prove more profitable in England, were laden on a great convoy, which was to have sailed under the command of Affleck, and did actually sail under Hotham. At this work Rodney remained till the beginning of May.
It is impossible, I am afraid, to acquit the Admiral of great want of judgment, and, what is worse, of inability to resist the temptation to look after his own pocket too eagerly, in the whole course of this transaction. His folly in taking upon himself to decide what was and what was not lawful prize was of course glaring. It carried its own punishment. Every man who knew he had a case brought an action against him in the Admiralty Court. One after another they went against him, and he was compelled to refund. What made this the more disastrous for him was, that the great convoy from which he hoped for so much fell into the hands of La Motte Picquet, who was cruising at the mouth of the Channel, and was almost wholly carried into Brest. The island of St. Eustatius was retaken by Bouillé, and immense booty lost there. Rodney had therefore to satisfy the claims of the suitors out of the remnants of his prizes and his other means. The drain left him a poor man to the end of his days. His family biographer, who has given a narrative of these events marked by judicious suppressions, complains that the Admiral was deserted by his official superiors. Some English merchants whom Rodney sent home as prisoners to be tried for unlawful dealings with the rebels were, it seems, released at once in England, and their books, alleged to be full of criminating evidence, were quietly returned by Lord George Germaine, the Secretary of State. But Rodney ought to have remembered that in any case it would rest with ministers to decide whether the accused men were to be tried for treason or not, and that it was mad in him to act as if they had been actually tried and condemned. I am afraid that zeal for the public service cannot be successfully pleaded in his defence. This could have been provided for by keeping the goods under lock and key till they were adjudicated on. Besides, the ugly fact remains that Rodney sold the goods for the benefit of himself and the other captors. It is true that he afterwards declared he had no idea they would be given up by the King. But this was said in the House of Commons, and can, to speak frankly, only be accepted as true in a Parliamentary sense. Rodney cannot possibly have been ignorant that in such cases the King commonly did resign his rights. The course he took can only be made intelligible by supposing that his hatred of the rebels, combined with the prospect of escaping for ever from poverty, overpowered his common sense.
The results of the capture of St. Eustatius were evil for his fame directly and indirectly. The attacks made on him in Parliament will be dealt with later on. We need not pay much attention, or any indeed, to the charges brought against him by French historians. It is amusing to note the unction with which the countrymen of Napoleon’s marshals lift their hands in horror over the misdeeds of the British Admiral. But in Rodney’s own fleet the effect was bad, and it is certain that, till he left the West Indies in July, the course of events was unfavourable to England. There exists a series of letters from Hood to Jackson of the Admiralty, begun about this time, which is painful reading. From it we can only conclude that Hood, brave man and brilliant officer as he was, was guilty of the meanest backbiting, or that Rodney forgot duty and honour alike in his eagerness to collect the booty. If the accuser is to be believed, the Admiral went very near repeating the famous trick attributed to Sir Henry Morgan the Buccaneer, who, it is said, persuaded his fellow “brothers of the coast” to entrust him with all their booty, and then ran away with it. Rodney, said Hood, carried vast sums of money to his flag-ship, and never rendered any account of them. Alongside of this, minor charges such as that Rodney would not allow his subordinate to write home, in order that people might be kept in ignorance of what was going on, sink into insignificance. All this may be discounted, for naval men, though a heroic race, pay their tribute to human weakness like others. They are sadly addicted to grumbling and, as Rodney himself said later on, naturally censorious. Hood, however, did not speak only for himself. What he thought was thought by others. There never was any open breach between the men. Hood always obeyed orders punctually, but their mutual civility thinly covered a very genuine hostility.
It cannot be honestly denied that the course of events did often justify the criticisms of Hood. Shortly after the capture of St. Eustatius, Rodney was informed from home that a great French armament was preparing at Brest for the West Indies. It was to be commanded by Grasse. The Admiral at once sent Hood to take command off Fort Royal, raising the blockading force at the same time to fifteen sail of the line and five frigates. The object was to prevent the junction of the four ships in the port with the fleet coming from Europe. At a later period, when he was assailed in Parliament for not going to Martinique, Rodney justified his decision to remain at St. Eustatius by saying that Hood was as fit to command as he was himself. In the course of the blockade he had occasion to commend his subordinate highly for the sagacity he showed in refusing to be decoyed off his station by a false report of the appearance of the enemy elsewhere. Unfortunately he did not draw from Hood’s fitness the obvious deduction that he ought to be left to fight in his own way if he was to be left in command. He yielded to what for some men is the irresistible temptation to direct operations from a distance. Napoleon was in this sort a notable sinner, and in his as in all cases this interference was the mother of confusion which is the mother of failure. Only the man on the spot can tell what ought to be done at the moment, and he cannot act with effect if his hands are to be tied by a distant superior who does not know the facts.
In this case there was certainly failure, and, what is worse, failure foretold by Hood. He wrote to Rodney pointing out that the set of wind and current to the west made it very difficult for him to keep close to Fort Royal. An enemy coming from the eastward could, he said, hug the coast of Martinique, and slip into Fort Royal in spite of him. He therefore asked leave to cruise to windward of the island, where he would be on the track of Grasse and in a position to compel him either to fight a decisive battle or to give up the attempt to reach Fort Royal. The leave was refused. Rodney expressed a fear that the four ships in the harbour would slip out and attack our possessions, or, which had been even worse, might fall on him at St. Eustatius. The fear seems to me exaggerated. Even if the operations of the French had been bolder than they usually were, it was not likely that they would risk four ships in the middle of twenty at a time when they knew that reinforcements were coming. Hood bitterly jeered in his letters at the Admiral’s fear for his plunder.
Whatever Rodney’s motives may have been, the misfortune which Hood had foretold actually happened on April 28th. Grasse turned up to the north of Martinique with twenty sail of the line and a great convoy. Hugging the land closely he slipped along the shore inside of the English squadron. Hood had been reinforced and could dispose of nineteen sail, but he was to leeward in the westerly current and the treacherous light breezes which prevail under the land. He could not work up to windward. Grasse was joined by the four ships in Fort Royal, which gave him a great superiority of force. There followed on the 29th and 30th two days of confused and distant fighting. The French admiral declared that the English admiral ran away. The English admiral asserted in good set terms that the bragging Frenchman would not come down like a man. After an immense outlay of powder and shot, Hood, finding that the enemy had united his forces, that one of his own ships was in a sinking state, and that all were in want of stores, gave up the now impossible blockade, and hastened to join Rodney in the north.