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:--
I have the greatest respect for you as a man who, by the greatest
merit, has raised himself from the station of a fore-mast man to
the rank of an admiral--a circumstance which not only does you the
highest honour, but would have led me to have expected you as an
advocate instead of an opposer to such a necessary indulgence. Many
of the poor men at the door have been your shipmates, and once your
companions. Never hurt a brother sailor. And let me warn you
against two things more: the first is in future not to interfere
between me and my duty as Governor; and the second is, not to
object to these brave men having greatcoats whilst you are so fond
of one as to wear it by the side of as good a fire as you are
sitting by at present. There are very few young sailors that come
to London without paying Greenwich Hospital a visit, and it shall
be the rule of my conduct as far as my authority extends to render
the old men’s lives so comfortable that the younger shall say when
he goes away, “Who would not be a sailor to live as happy as a
Prince in his old age?”
The form of this rebuke may owe something to the reporter, but Rodney
was just the man to have said the substance. To do a good-natured thing,
repel an intrusion on his authority, and remind an officer who had come
in through the hawse-hole of the respect he owed his social superiors,
while fully acknowledging his merit, was quite in the Admiral’s way. For
the rest, Boys richly deserved his snubbing. Rodney also showed a
wholesome dislike to useless dirt. He first established the practice of
clearing away from the shore in front of the Hospital the garbage thrown
up by the river. The administrative garbage he left alone, and perhaps
it was as well for us that he did. If he had meddled with it he would
certainly have come in contact with Sandwich, and the result of that
collision would have been that he would have been left on shore
throughout the American War, as both Duncan and Campbell were. They were
the friends of Keppel, and therefore the enemies of Sandwich, and
therefore also were left unemployed--at a time when England had need of
every man--though known to be among the best officers in the service.
In 1768 Rodney stood, and was elected, for Northampton. The same arts
that gained a power, must maintain it. It was necessary for him to keep
that position in the House which had hitherto been so useful. But times
had changed. He could no longer be “chosen member for Okehampton” by
Newcastle, whose day was over--who indeed died in this very year. The
King had set himself resolutely to fight the Whig oligarchy with its own
weapons, and was doing it with success. Rodney took his place with the
King’s friends, and did it this time at his own expense. The fight for
Northampton was very severe, which, given the time and place, means that
it was very costly. It gave Rodney his seat in the House, but it hung a
load of debt round his neck from which he did not shake himself free for
years. Nor was electioneering the only “method of evacuation” to which
he had recourse, and perhaps it was not even the most effectual. He
lived in the great and “fast” society of his time, which may safely be
taken to be only another way of saying that he gambled. Between the one
form of extravagance and the other he certainly impoverished himself.
In 1771 he was appointed to a command, and again sailed to the West
Indies. The dispute about the Falkland Islands seemed likely in that
time to lead to another war with Spain. If it had done so, the West
Indian command would in all probability have made good the damage done
to Rodney’s fortune by his seven years on shore. Money was now very
important to him, and as has been already said, he made a claim to be
allowed to retain his governorship while in command at sea. With the
help of the double salary he might have been able to free himself from
his liabilities. But the request was refused, and he sailed for his
station, which was on this occasion Jamaica, and not the Leeward
Islands. Here again disappointment awaited him. The quarrel with Spain
blew over, and there was no war. In the early days of his command Rodney
caused His Majesty’s ministers some considerable anxiety. Just after his
arrival on the station there had arisen one of those periodical
squabbles with the Spanish guardacostas which had been the fertile cause
of quarrels and bloodshed in the West Indies. An English tender which
was found “prowling with hostile keel,” as Mr. Bright would have said,
too close to the Spanish main, was arrested by the Spanish cruisers. It
doubtless appeared ominous to the officers of the Catholic king, who
must have been perfectly well aware of the nature of the relations of
the two countries at the time, that an armed English ship should have
been just there just then. Rodney took a high tone, protested fiercely,
and sent a line-of-battle-ship to look into Carracas. Technically he was
in the right, but his superiors at home were far from pleased at his
promptitude. There was no wish in England--not at least among those who
were responsible for the government of the country--for a war with
Spain. When, therefore, it was known that war-ships had been sent on a
mission of remonstrance, and almost of menace, into a Spanish port,
ministers who knew what a trick the cannon had of “going off by
themselves” in the West Indies were greatly displeased. The Ministry
suspected their Admiral of an intention to bring on a quarrel if he
could. Rodney was sharply rebuked for sending a subordinate officer to a
place where a little want of tact and temper might so easily produce a
collision. Sandwich even took very strong measures. In a letter which is
a model of official reprimand he told Rodney quite plainly that if he
thought a war in the West Indies would do him any good he was greatly
mistaken. If war should unfortunately break out, said the Minister, it
would be necessary to send out strong reinforcements, and in that case a
superior officer would be sent in command. Rodney could be trusted to
know what that meant. It was manifestly calculated that he had no wish
to repeat his experience in 1762. How far the suspicions of the Ministry
were founded no one can say. Probably they were not altogether baseless.
No doubt Rodney, like other Englishmen in the West Indies, did long to
give the Spaniards a lesson. Sandwich, measuring the corn of others by
his own bushel, may have thought that an officer whom he must have known
to be embarrassed in his affairs would risk much for the chance of a
stroke at a Spanish port or the capture of a treasure-ship. Here, again,
he was certainly not altogether wrong. Rodney’s need of, and desire for,
place and money in those years was great, and was quite frankly avowed.
He was, however, far too capable a man not to know that too much may be
risked even for the greatest prize. To fall into disgrace at
headquarters would be ruin. When therefore he distinctly understood what
the Ministry wanted he conformed precisely to their wishes, and was soon
rewarded by being told that the King was pleased with him.
The remainder of Rodney’s three years of command, then as now the fixed
term of a commission, were passed in routine work. He showed his natural
hatred of slovenly inefficiency by stamping out one scandalous little
piece of jobbery. It had become the custom in Jamaica to water the
fleet by contract. There was no real need to do so. Good water had been
obtained in the immediate neighbourhood of Port Royal by Vernon, and
could be obtained again. Nothing more was needed to make it accessible
than the construction of a small aqueduct to bring the water down to the
beach. Under the pretence that it could only be obtained good in the
high ground, a system had arisen of buying it from contractors, who sent
it down to the beach in barrels. There it was taken by the ships’ boats.
The system was thoroughly bad. It was costly; it imposed a great deal of
hard beach work on the seamen, which was bad for their health in the
tropics; it caused a great waste of time, the water supplied was
inferior, and the length of time during which they were on shore
afforded the sailors too many opportunities to get drunk. The one
advantage the practice had was that it allowed of many mutually
advantageous pecuniary transactions between the government officials and
the contractors. On this pleasant commerce Rodney ruthlessly put his
foot. In vain was it represented to him that nobody knew where Admiral
Vernon had watered, that the spring had disappeared, that, in short,
there were a dozen excellent reasons why the water must be brought down
in barrels. The Admiral was not to be fooled. He hunted the spring up,
and found that only a narrow slip of marshy ground separated it from the
beach. After a tussle with red tape, he contrived to get a small
aqueduct constructed, and so set up a rational watering-place. He was
rewarded, as too many reformers have been, by the ingratitude of those
for whom he worked. The sailors ended by hating the aqueduct. At first,
indeed, they blessed the Admiral, who had relieved them from the toil
of rolling barrels down the beach and shipping them. But soon they
discovered that if there was no more beach work there were no more
opportunities of “sucking the monkey,” which, as Swinburn explained to
Mr. Peter Simple, was the name given to the practice of sucking rum from
cocoa-nuts. Then they d----d the Admiral in chorus. To that, however,
Rodney was supremely indifferent. His aqueduct was made with notable
results, both in economy of money and for the health of the men of the
squadron. This story is more to Rodney’s credit than some others we have
come across. If the watering contracts had been necessary for
electioneering purposes he would doubtless have tolerated them as he did
other corruptions--because Parliamentary government could not be carried
on without them--and in that case the end would have justified the
means. But where there was no such excuse, then Rodney could put himself
to some trouble for the good of the service. This is what distinguishes
him from meaner men. They would have lazily tolerated the old muddle, or
have shared the gains of jobbery. Rodney was not a man of that stamp.
When he did attain command he knew what things worked for efficiency,
and would insist on having them done.
As his commission drew towards its end Rodney saw the approach of the
time when he must return to England--to face his duns on half-pay. It
was a disagreeable change, which he would fain have avoided. Nor was it
difficult to fix on a method of escape. If he could have passed from the
command of the station to the governorship of Jamaica he would be fairly
well extricated from this ugly pass. Sir W. Trelawney, the Governor in
office when Rodney went out, was in ill health. The Admiral decided to
offer himself as candidate for the vacancy, which everybody foresaw
would soon be made by the West Indian climate. Some months before poor
Trelawney’s shoes were empty--in the summer of 1772, in fact--Rodney was
already bestirring himself to secure the friendly offices of Sandwich.
It was a cause of bitter anger to the Admiral that these efforts were
made in vain. He had very good claims to the office, both on the ground
of his services as a naval officer and his knowledge of the West Indies.
He must have felt, too, that he had claims of a kind even more deserving
to be recognised than any based on service and knowledge, namely, the
votes he had given in Parliament and the money he had spent in
elections. Sandwich politely ignored both kinds of claim. The tone of
his answers to Rodney is that of a politician writing to a gentleman
from whom he does not expect useful support in future. His letters are
civil, but fusionless, with here and there a point of irony. He begins
with a dry remark that Sir W. Trelawney is still alive, and, so far as
ministers know, is likely to live; but, of course, if a vacancy should
occur it would be most proper that Sir George should have it; and he,
Sandwich, writing as a friend, would advise him to stir his, Sir
George’s, friends up to exert themselves. For the rest, Sandwich does
not object to tell him in confidence that there is no rival in the
field. Rodney knew his world too well to be in any doubt as to what that
meant. Sandwich would give no effectual help. If he wanted the place for
a partisan of his own he would even oppose. The place was obviously
wanted for somebody else, the partisan of Sandwich or of whomsoever else
had the patronage. When Sir W. Trelawney died in 1773 he was succeeded
by Sir Basil Keith. At the very close of this part of their
correspondence Sandwich, to judge from a sentence in one of Rodney’s own
letters, seems to have hinted that if the Admiral really could not
return to England he had better stay in Jamaica as a private person. The
suggestion was certainly made, and if it did come from Sandwich it more
than trenched on impertinence. Rodney refused to stay on any such
footing in a society which had seen him in a great command. When his
three years were up he returned to England, and struck his flag at
Portsmouth in September, 1774.
He returned to England an embittered and disappointed man, believing and
saying that he had been treated with gross ingratitude. It is of course
easy to say that this was absurd, that Rodney had held a succession of
good commands, and that if he had embarrassed himself by gambling and
electioneering, this want of judgment on his part did not entitle him to
more places. To this, if it had been said in the society to which he
belonged, Rodney might very properly have replied by asking the speaker
either to cease his impertinence or clear his mind of cant. As between
himself and Sandwich these embarrassments did constitute a claim. It was
an understood thing that when a gentleman had spent his money for the
right interest at elections he was entitled to compensation for it in
the form of office or pensions. If he did not obtain recognition it was
not because of any regard for the public service on the part of
ministers, but because they felt they could drop him with impunity. At
the close of his second West Indian command Rodney had, for the time,
fallen into the class of those who can be dropped. He was too much
indebted to be useful as a candidate for a borough which must be fought.
Men of smaller claims could be found for pocket boroughs. His old
political friends were all very sorry but really----! To be dropped as
useless can be pleasant to no man, and therefore it is not wonderful
that Rodney was savage, and cursed the ingratitude of politicians. For
the moment, however, there was nothing for it but to beat a retreat. At
the close of 1774, or very early in the following year, he did what many
half-pay naval and military gentlemen have been compelled to do
since--he betook himself to the Continent to economise, and set up his
quarters in Paris.
It is of course needless to say that whatever he did in the capital of
France he did not economise. A gentleman who has preserved profuse
habits to the age of fifty-six, which Rodney had now attained, may
indeed (total abstinence being easier to men of passionate temperaments
than moderation) take up with the good old gentlemanly vice of avarice,
but he will not economise. As he did not become avaricious, the Admiral
naturally went on wasting money. By 1778 he had, without as it would
seem shaking off his English claims, contracted French debts to a
considerable amount. With these last is connected one of the most famous
of all the stories told about him. By this year France and England were
notoriously going to war. The House of Bourbon in France and Spain saw
in the revolt of the American Plantations an opportunity to revenge the
humiliations of the Seven Years’ War. Help was given underhand to the
rebels. American naval adventurers were received in French ports. Some
of them even found their way to Paris, where they swaggered in a fashion
which, so he told Lady Rodney, convinced the Admiral they must be
cowards. Finally came open war, the despatch of D’Estaing’s squadron to
the coast of America and the West Indies, and the formation of the great
French fleet at Brest. All this Rodney had to watch with longing. He
went much into the best society in Paris (which helps to account for the
fresh debt), and must have seen the growth of the hopes of the Court
that at last the time was come in which the “proud islanders” were to be
repaid for Quebec, Quiberon, Lagos, and much more. One story--one wild
legend which can hardly have even a basis of fact--tells how Rodney was
actually offered the command of the French fleet if he would betray his
country. A more acceptable tale records his answer to a question from
the Duc de Chartres, known to infamy as Philippe Égalité, as to what
would happen if he, the Duke, met the English at sea off Brest--“That
Your Highness will have an opportunity of learning English.” It was well
to speak up with spirit for his country, but it would have been better
to be in a position to fight for her. This, however, was what Rodney,
tied to Paris by his debts, could not do. His creditors became
clamorous. Thanks to the “protection of the Lieutenant of Police,” they
were not allowed to proceed to extremities. A gentleman was a gentleman
in France at that time, and was treated with consideration. If he was a
foreigner there was all the more reason why he should be tenderly
treated. His duns then were not allowed to imprison him, but they could
not be prevented from dunning him, and until they were satisfied he
could not leave Paris. Rodney applied for employment. A dry official
acknowledgment of the application was the only answer. Lady Rodney
returned to London, leaving the Admiral with his daughters in Paris, in
the hope that friends might be induced to give help. It was all to no
purpose. Rodney remained in Paris, and it seemed not impossible that he
might be kept there by his debts all through the war--perhaps even be
confined in prison as a debtor if ever the Lieutenant of Police were to
withdraw his protection.
From this shameful disaster Rodney was saved by the magnanimity of old
Maréchal Biron. The Maréchal had been much his friend, and in these days
Rodney speaks in his letters to his wife of the old gentleman’s
hospitality to himself and his daughters. At last the Frenchman offered
to lend him enough to pay his debts and cover the expenses of the
journey to England. Rodney was unwilling to accept the generosity of a
national enemy, even though he were a personal friend. It was not until
the offer had been three times repeated, until all hope of help from
England had proved vain, that he at last took the helping hand held out
to him. In May, 1778, he took the loan, paid his debts, and immediately
left for London, coming himself by Dieppe. The last few days in Paris,
he writes, “will be occupied in visiting all those great families from
whom I have received so many civilities, and whose attention in paying
me daily and constant visits in a great measure kept my creditors from
being so troublesome as they otherwise would have been.” It was the best
of the _Ancien Régime_ that it did at least know how to behave itself
like a gentleman.
The exact amount received by Rodney from Biron was 1000 louis. This
being a debt of honour was repaid at once by the help of the Drummonds,
the bankers. The children, who begin now to be constantly mentioned in
his letters, returned under the charge of a servant by way of Calais,
and the Admiral was at last able to push his claims at Court himself.