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.
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.
With this misfortune all our superiority of position and numbers
vanished away. Rodney was thoroughly savage, and hinted pretty
intelligibly that Hood had manœuvred so as to fulfil his own
prophecy--a monstrous charge, which he did not venture to press. It is
to be hoped for his honour that his conscience pricked him. Whether he
or Hood was right as to the best way of meeting Grasse, there can, I
should imagine, be only one opinion on the question whether his conduct
during these months was worthy of his renown or of his actions before
and afterwards. At a time when a great hostile force was approaching the
station committed to his care, the proper place for an English admiral
was at sea and at the head of his fleet. He should not have remained on
shore with the auctioneer’s hammer in his hand superintending the sale
of his booty amid surroundings redolent of the redoubted Sir Henry
Morgan. His health was indeed bad, but it did not prevent him from
putting to sea when informed of the arrival of Grasse. Besides, if it
had been so shaken as to make him incapable of command, he was all the
more bound not to interfere with the officer whom he left in the post of
danger and honour. On the whole, one has to come back to the view that
Rodney’s eyes had been dazzled and his better nature corrupted for the
time by the fairy gold poured out before him at St. Eustatius.
During the two and a half months which remained before the return of the
hurricane season everything went wrong. The English admirals met on May
9th between Montserrat and Antigua. It was necessary to take Hood’s
battered ships into harbour in the latter island to refit. While they
were so occupied the French were busy. Grasse was, no doubt, a less wary
and skilful tactician than Guichen. He had faults of character which
proved his ruin--faults which may be all collected under that
untranslatable French word _suffisance_; but he was a clever officer. In
Bouillé he had an ally of extraordinary energy. The two combined to
carry out an aggressive campaign against our islands. While Rodney was
refitting at Antigua, a double expedition sailed from Fort Royal. The
larger part, under Grasse and Bouillé, was to attempt the recapture of
Santa Lucia; the smaller, under a M. de Blanchelande, was to go south to
Tobago. The attack on Santa Lucia failed, thanks, in part, to Rodney’s
foresight in fortifying Pigeon Island; thanks also to the accidental
arrival of several English frigates, whose captains landed their men to
reinforce the garrison. Bouillé disembarked his soldiers and attacked in
his usual fiery style, but our fortifications round Gros Islet Bay were
too strong, and the guns on Pigeon Island kept the French fleet off.
Finding that the island could not be mastered so soon as they expected,
Grasse and Bouillé re-embarked their men, and followed Blanchelande to
Tobago.
In the meantime Rodney was hurrying south from Antigua. He was met at
sea by news of the retreat of the French from Santa Lucia, but did not
learn their course. Concluding that they would probably steer for
Barbadoes, which had not yet recovered the effects of the great
hurricane, he hastened there at once. On his arrival he was greeted by a
despatch from Captain Fergusson, the Governor of Tobago, reporting the
appearance of Blanchelande with the smaller French expedition.
Rear-Admiral Drake was at once sent off with six sail to help defend the
island. Soon after he had gone came news that the whole French fleet was
on its way to Tobago. For a time there was great fear for Drake, but he
discovered his danger in time and avoided it by speedy retreat. When he
had rejoined the Admiral, the whole English force sailed for Tobago, and
arrived in time to be too late. After a gallant resistance, Fergusson,
who was well supported by the planters, had been compelled to surrender.
Rodney found the French at sea, standing to the north along the string
of little islands called the Grenadines, between Grenada and St.
Vincent. They were somewhat superior in force, but he expressed his
readiness to fight. No battle, however, took place. According to Rodney
the French manœuvred to draw him to leeward of St. Vincent, with the
intention of getting between him and Barbadoes. According to Grasse,
the English admiral, who being to eastward had the wind, made use of his
advantage to avoid a battle. The French showed no eagerness to fight for
their part. During the night they went back to Tobago. When Rodney
discovered that they had vanished his fears for Barbadoes revived, and
he returned there at once. Grasse after a short stay at Tobago returned
to Fort Royal, and so ended that campaign.
The ill health of which Rodney had complained all through the year had
now increased on him. He had applied for leave to come home during the
hurricane months, and it had been reluctantly granted him. As it was now
June, and therefore close on the dangerous season, he began to make
ready. Hood was to be despatched with the bulk of the squadron to Sandy
Hook. Rodney himself decided to make an attempt to go there also, and
only to sail for Europe if he found himself unable to stand a northern
latitude. His old flag-ship the _Sandwich_ was so battered as to be
unfit to stand the voyage. He therefore shifted his flag to the
_Gibraltar_, which had been the _Fenix_, Don Juan de Langara’s
flag-ship. On August 1st he sailed, and after going as far north as the
latitude of the Bahamas found himself so ill as to be compelled to
renounce all intention of going on to America. He therefore steered
directly for England, and after touching at Cork, arrived at Plymouth on
September 19th.