Types of Naval Officers, Drawn from the History of the British Navy

Probable also is Hood's solution of Rodney's persistence in remaining at St. Eustatius, and keeping the squadron under the command of his second to leeward of Martinique. He was possessed with the fancied paramount necessity of protecting St. Eustatius against a sudden attack by the enemy, which he imagined might be supported by the small division in Fort Royal; and the value of the booty shut his eyes to every other consideration. As on the evening of the 12th of April, the great day of glory in his career, the captures already made assumed sufficiency in his eyes, and co-operating with surmisings as to what the beaten and scattered French might do deterred him from further action; so now the prize already secured at St. Eustatius combined with the imaginative "picture he made for himself"—to use Napoleon's phrase—of its possible dangers, to blind him to the really decisive needs of the situation. It is clear, however, that local naval provision for the safety of a petty island was in point of difficulty, as of consequence, a secondary matter, within the competence of many of his captains; and that the primary factor, on which all depended, was the control of the sea, by the British fleet predominating over the enemy's. Consequently the commander-in-chief should have been where his second was, at the centre of decisive action, where an enemy's fleet was to be expected.

This was the more incumbent because Rodney himself, writing to Admiral Parker in Jamaica on April 16th, said, "As the enemy hourly expect a great fleet in these seas, I have scarcely a sufficient number of line-of-battle-ships to blockade the island of Martinique, or to engage the enemy's fleet should they appear, if their number should be so large as reported,"—twenty-four. This report came from French sources, and it will be noted, from the date of his letter, was in his possession twelve days before the enemy arrived. It was both specific and antecedently probable, and should have determined the admiral's action. Whether he had similar news from home does not appear. Sandwich writing him on March 21st, the day before the French left Brest, professed ignorance of their destination, but added, "the most prevailing and most probable opinion is that they are to go to the West India Islands, and afterwards to North America." Their number he estimated at twenty-five, which tallied with Rodney's intelligence of twenty-four. The latter was exact, save that four were armed en flûte; that is, as transports, with their guns below, to be subsequently mounted. Despite everything, the admiral remained at St. Eustatius until May 4th, when the arrival of a crippled ship from Hood brought him the news of the skirmish. He was attending, doubtless, to details pertaining to his command, but he was chiefly occupied with the disposition of the property seized on the island; a matter which he afterwards found to his cost would have been much better committed to administrators skilled in the law. "Had they abided by the first plan settled before I left them," wrote Hood, "and not have interfered, but have left the management to the land and sea folk appointed for that purpose, all would have gone smooth and easy."

However this might have proved, the immediate supervision of the island and its spoils was no business for a commander-in-chief in active war time; particularly when it entailed leaving the charge of his main fleet, at a critical moment, to a junior admiral of very recent appointment, and still unproved. It was not the separate importance of the position intrusted to Hood that made it peculiarly the station for the commander-in-chief. It might have been intrinsically as important, yet relatively secondary; but actually it was the centre and key upon which, and upon which alone, the campaign could turn and did turn. Neither was the question one of the relative merits, as yet unknown, of Rodney and Hood. A commander-in-chief cannot devolve his own proper functions upon a subordinate, however able, without graver cause than can be shown in this instance. The infatuation which detained Rodney at a side issue can only be excused—not justified—by a temporary inability to see things in their true proportion, induced on more than one occasion by a temperamental defect,—the lack of the single eye to military considerations,—which could find contentment in partial success, and be indifferent to further results to be secured by sustained action.

There is a saying, apt to prove true, that war does not forgive. For his initial error Rodney himself, and the British campaign in general, paid heavily throughout the year 1781. The French fleet in undiminished vigor lay a dead weight upon all his subsequent action, which, like the dispositions prior to its arrival, underwent the continued censure of Hood; acrid, yet not undiscriminating nor misplaced. As already observed, the surrender of Cornwallis can with probability be ascribed to this loss of an opportunity afforded to strike a blow at the outset, when the enemy was as yet divided, embarrassed with convoy, raw in organization and drill, in all which it could not but improve as the months passed. The results began at once to be apparent, and embarrassments accumulated with time. Hood's ships, though no one was wholly disabled, had suffered very considerably; and, while indispensable repairs could temporarily be made, efficiency was affected. They needed, besides, immediate water and supplies, as Rodney himself stated—a want which Hood would have anticipated. To increase difficulty, the French mounted the batteries of the vessels en flûte, and so raised their total nominal force to twenty-eight. Hood was unable to regain Santa Lucia, because his crippled ships could not beat against the current. He therefore left it to itself, and bore away to the northward, where he joined Rodney on May 11th, between St. Kitts and Antigua. The campaign of 1781, destined to be wholly defensive for the British, opened under these odds, the responsibility for which lies in considerable measure on Rodney.

After the junction, the British fleet went to Barbados, where it arrived May 18th. Meantime, the French had proceeded in force against Santa Lucia, landing a considerable body of troops, and investing the island with twenty-five sail-of-the-line, two of which with 1300 soldiers went on to attempt the British Tobago. The attack on Santa Lucia failed, and the French returned to Martinique; but learning there that Rodney was at sea, heading southward, De Grasse became alarmed for his detachment at Tobago, and moved to its support with his entire fleet. Rodney, knowing of the detachment only, sent against it six ships under Rear Admiral Drake; a half-measure severely censured by Hood, whose comments throughout indicate either a much superior natural sagacity, or else the clearer insight of a man whose eye dwells steadfastly on the military situation, untroubled by conflicting claims. "What a wonderful happy turn would have been given to the King's affairs in this country had Sir George Rodney gone with his whole force to Tobago as soon as he might, and in my humble opinion ought to have done. Nay, had he even gone when Mr. Drake did, the island would have been saved. I laboured much to effect it, but all in vain, and fully stated my reasons in writing as soon as the intelligence came. Every ship there with all the troops must have fallen into our hands two days before De Grasse got there with his twenty-one sail;" to which Rodney, in full strength, would again have opposed twenty. "Now the enemy may do as they will;" for they were united in Martinique, twenty-eight to twenty. In short, Rodney saw at Tobago only the one French detachment; Hood saw therein the definition of the enemy's purpose, the necessity laid on them to fly to the aid of their exposed division, and the chance to anticipate them,—to gain an advantage first, and to beat them afterwards.

Rodney's tentative and inadequate action was not improbably induced partly by the "extreme want of water," which he reported in his despatches; and this again was due to failure to prepare adequately during the period of respite foreseen by Hood, but unnoted by his own preoccupied mind. The result is instructive. Drake fell in with the main body of the French, and of course had to retire,—fortunate in regaining his commander-in-chief unmolested. De Grasse's movement had become known in Barbados, and as soon as Drake appeared Rodney sailed with the fleet, but upon arriving off Tobago, on June 5th, learned that it had surrendered on the 2d. Its fall he duly attributed to local neglect and cowardice; but evidently the presence of the British fleet might have had some effect. He then returned to Barbados, and during the passage the hostile fleets sighted each other on the 9th,—twenty British to twenty-three French; but Rodney was unwilling to engage lest he might be entangled with the foul ground about Grenada. As that island was then in the enemy's hands, he could get no anchorage there, and so might be driven to leeward of his opponent, exposing Barbados. It is perhaps needless to point out that had he been to windward of Martinique when De Grasse first arrived, as Hood wished, he would have been twenty to twenty, with clear ground, and the antagonist embarrassed with convoy. His present perplexities, in their successive phases, can be seen throughout to be the result of sticking to St. Eustatius, not only physically, but mentally.

And so it was with what followed. On reaching Barbados again, he had to report that the French were back in Martinique, and now twenty-eight through the arming of the ships en flûte. Despite their superiority, "they do not venture to move," he said somewhat sneeringly, and doubtless his "fleet in being" had an effect on them; but they were also intent on a really great operation. On July 5th, De Grasse sailed for Cap François in Hayti, there to organize a visit to the continent in support of Washington's operations. Rodney, pursuant to his sagacious plan of the previous years, sent also a detachment of fourteen ships under Hood, which he endeavored, but unsuccessfully, to have increased by some from Jamaica. That De Grasse would take his whole fleet to North America, leaving none in the West Indies, nor sending any to Europe, was a step that neither Rodney nor Hood foresaw. The miscalculation cannot be imputed to either as an error at this time. It was simply one of the deceptions to which the defensive is ever liable; but it is fairly chargeable to the original fault whereby the French admiral was enabled to enter Fort Royal uninjured in the previous April. From the time his fleet was concentrated, the British had to accept the defensive with its embarrassments.

Rodney had contemplated going in person with his ships, which Sandwich also had urged upon him; but his health was seriously impaired, and the necessity for a surgical operation combined to induce his return to England. The final decision on this point he postponed to the last moment of the homeward voyage, keeping a frigate in company in which to go to New York, if able; but ultimately he felt compelled to give up. This conclusion settled Cornwallis's fate, antecedently but finally. That year Great Britain fell between two stools. In view of De Grasse's known expressions, it may be affirmed with great confidence that he would have seen reason to abandon the Chesapeake, leaving open the sea road for Cornwallis to escape, had either Rodney or Hood commanded the British fleet there in the battle of September 5th; but Rodney was away, and Hood second only to an incompetent superior.

Rodney landed in England, September 19th, and was again afloat by December 12th, although he did not finally sail for his station until the middle of January, 1782. This brief period was one of the deepest military depression; for during it occurred Cornwallis's surrender, October 19th, under conditions of evident British inferiority, on sea and shore alike, which enforced the conviction that the colonies must be granted their independence. Not only so, but the known extensive preparations of the Bourbon courts pointed to grave danger also for the Caribbean colonies, the sugar and import trade of which counted largely in the financial resources of the empire. Amid the general gloom Rodney had his own special vexation; for, before he left, news was received of the recapture of St. Eustatius by a small French expedition, prior to the return of Hood to the West Indies from the unfortunate operations on the continent. As in the case of Tobago, Rodney severely blamed the local defence, and very possibly justly; but attention should not wander from the effect that must have been produced upon all subsequent conditions by preparation and action on the part of the British fleet, in the spring of 1781, on the lines then favored by Hood.

Shortly before he had sailed for home, Rodney had written his wife, "In all probability, the enemy, when they leave these seas, will go to America. Wherever they go, I will watch their motions, and certainly attack them if they give me a proper opportunity. The fate of England may depend upon the event." The last sentence was in measure a prophecy, so far, that is, as decisive of the original issue at stake,—the subjugation or independence of the United Colonies; but, without further laboring the point unduly, it may be permitted here to sum up what has been said, with the remark that in the summer of 1781 control of events had passed out of Rodney's hands. From the time of the original fault, in suffering the French to meet Hood to leeward of Martinique, with an inferior force, more and more did it become impossible to him to assure conditions sufficiently favorable. With the highest personal courage, he did not have eminent professional daring; nor, with considerable tactical acquirement, was he gifted with that illuminative originality which characterized Hood and Nelson. He therefore needed either a reasonable probability of success, or the spur of imminent emergency, to elicit the kind of action needed to save the British cause. The chances to windward of Martinique would have been ninety out of a hundred; from that time forward they diminished with continually increasing rapidity. With such a situation he was not the man to cope.

On reaching Barbados, February 19, 1782, Rodney learned that the garrison of St. Kitts was besieged in Brimstone Hill, and the island itself beleaguered by the French fleet, thirty-three of-the-line, which Sir Samuel Hood, with two thirds their number, had so far held in check by a series of manoeuvres unusually acute in conception and brilliant in execution. Proceeding immediately to Antigua, he there heard on the 23d that St. Kitts had capitulated on the 13th. Two days later he was joined by Hood, and then took the united fleet to Santa Lucia, where he was on March 5th. The knowledge of a large supply fleet expected for the French, and essential to the known project of the allies against Jamaica, carried the British fleet again to sea; but it failed to intercept the convoy, and returned once more to Santa Lucia, where it anchored in Gros Ilet Bay, thirty miles from Fort Royal, where the French were lying. Various changes made the respective numbers, when operations opened, British thirty-six of-the-line, French thirty-five, with two fifty-gun ships; a near approach to equality.

Rodney's faculties were now all alert. He had had some needed repose, and he was again under the stimulus of reputation to restore; for it would have been vain to assert, even to himself, that he was entirely clear, not merely of error, to which the most careful is liable, but of serious fault in the previous year. Moreover, he had been sharply assailed in Parliament for the transactions at St. Eustatius on the civil side, distinct from his military conduct. To such ills there is no plaster so healing as a victory; and the occasion about to arise proved, in its successive stages,—until the last,—admirably adapted to his natural and acquired qualifications. First, a series of manoeuvres protracted over three or four days; and afterwards a hard fought battle, converted by a happy yet by no means unusual accident into a decided and showy success. Decided, but not decisive; for, like the soldier desperate in deed before rewarded, but who, when summoned again, advised that the chance be given to a man who had not a purse of gold, Rodney preferred to pause on that personally safe side of moderation in achievement which is rarely conducive to finality, and is nowhere so ill-placed as in the aims of a commander-in-chief. The true prudence of war,—as it is also its mercy, to friend and to foe,—is to strike without cessation or slackness till power of future action is crushed.

De Grasse's immediate task was to protect a large convoy from Martinique to Cap François (now Cap Haytien), in Hayti, a distance of about a thousand miles. Cumbered with merchant vessels, and aware that Rodney would be at once on his track, he could not go straight across the Caribbean; the British fleet, not so hampered, would be sure to overtake and destroy. He purposed, therefore, to skirt the Antilles, keeping continually in reach of a port of refuge. Rodney, knowing the aim to be Jamaica, had little doubt of overtaking in any case, if started promptly. He therefore kept himself in signal touch of Fort Royal by a chain of frigates, extending from its offing to his own anchorage.

On the 8th of April the French sailed. The British followed instantly, and before sundown had them in sight, not only by lookout vessels, but from the mastheads of the main fleet. At daybreak next morning they were visible from the decks of the British van; a very marked gain. De Grasse saw that at that rate, unless he got rid of the convoy, he would certainly be overtaken, which it was his aim to elude in pursuance of the usual French policy of ulterior purposes; so, being then north of Dominica, he sent the merchant vessels into Guadaloupe, and undertook to carry the ships-of-war through the passage between the two islands, beating to windward. This would draw the British away from the convoy, unless they were content to let the fleet go, which was not to be expected.

Between 8 A.M. and 2 P.M. of April 9th, several sharp skirmishes took place between the French and the British van, under Hood.9 De Grasse had here an opportunity of crushing a fraction of the enemy, but failed to use it, thus insuring his own final discomfiture. Rodney, who was becalmed with the centre and rear of his command, could do nothing but push forward reinforcements to Hood as the wind served; and this he did. Pursuit was maintained tenaciously during the following night and the next two days,—April 10th and 11th; but in sustained chases of bodies of ships, the chased continually drops units, which must be forsaken or else the retreat of the whole must be retarded. So in this case, certain of De Grasse's ships were either so leewardly or so ill handled that the bulk of the fleet, which had gained considerably to windward, had to bear down to them, thus losing the ground won. Under such circumstances the chapter of accidents—or of incidents—frequently introduces great results; and so it proved here.

At 2 A.M. of April 12th, De Grasse's flag-ship, the Ville de Paris, and the seventy-four-gun ship Zélé, crossing on opposite tacks, came into collision. The former received little damage, but the Zélé lost her foremast and bowsprit. De Grasse then ordered her into Guadaloupe, in tow of a frigate. When day broke, about five o'clock, these two were only about six miles from the British rear, under Hood, whose division had been shifted from the van in consequence of injuries received on the 9th. The British column was then standing east-northeast, closehauled on the starboard tack, the crippled vessel under its lee, but the French of the main body well to windward. To draw them within reach, Rodney signalled Hood to send chasers after the Zélé. De Grasse took the bait and ran down to her support, ordering his ships to form line-of-battle on the port tack, which was done hastily and tumultuously. The two lines on which the antagonists were respectively advancing now pointed to a common and not distant point of intersection, which the French, despite the loss of ground already undergone, reached first, passing in front and to windward of the head of the British column. Eight ships thus went by clear, but the ninth arrived at the same moment with the leading British vessel, which put her helm up and ran along close to leeward of the French line towards its rear, followed in so doing by the rest of her fleet.

The battle thus assumed the phase of two fleets passing each other in opposite directions, on parallel lines; a condition usually unproductive of results, and amounting to little more than a brush, as had been the case in two rencounters between Rodney and De Guichen in the prolonged chase of May, 1780. Chance permitted a different issue on this occasion. The wind at the moment of first collision, shortly before 8 A.M., was east, and so continued till five minutes past nine, when it shifted suddenly to the southeastward, ahead for the French, abaft for the British. The former, being already close to the wind, could keep their sails full only by bearing away, which broke up their line ahead, the order of battle as ranged for mutual support; while the British being able to luff could stand into the enemy's line. Rodney's flag-ship, the Formidable, 90, was just drawing up with the Glorieux, 74, nineteenth from the van in the French order and fourth astern of the Ville de Paris, De Grasse's flag-ship. Luffing to the new wind, she passed through the French line at this point, followed by the five ships astern of her; while the sixth astern, the Bedford, 74, luffing on her own account, broke also through the French astern of the César and the Hector, 74's, eleventh and twelfth in their order. The twelve British vessels in rear of the Bedford followed in her wake. Hood was in one of these, the Barfleur, 90. Of the ships ahead of Rodney the nearest one imitated his example instantly and went through the line; the remainder, sixteen in all, continued northward for a space.

These sudden and unexpected movements overpowered the César, Hector, and Glorieux under a weight of successive broadsides that completely crushed them, separated De Grasse with six companion vessels from his van and his rear, and placed the British main body to windward of the French. Both sides were disordered, but the French were not only disordered but severed, into three formless groups, not to be united except by a good breeze and exceeding good management, neither of which was forthcoming. Even to frame a plan operative under such conditions requires in an admiral accuracy of judgment and readiness rarely bestowed; but to communicate his designs and enforce execution upon captains under such a staggering shock of disaster is even more uncommon of accomplishment. During the remainder of the day light airs from the eastward prevailed, interspersed with frequent calms; conditions unfavorable to movement of any kind, but far more to the French, deprived of concert of purpose, than to the British, whose general course was sufficiently defined by the confusion of the enemy, and the accident of a small group surrounding their commander-in-chief, to capture whom was always a recognized principal object. The very feebleness of the breeze favored them by comparison; for they had but to go before it with all their light sails, while their opponents, in order to join, were constrained to lateral movement, which did not allow the same canvas.

There was, in short, during the rest of the day an unusual opportunity for success, on such a scale as should be not only brilliant, but really decisive of the future course of the war; opportunity to inflict a maritime blow from which the enemy could not recover. Does it need to say clearly that here the choice was between a personal triumph, already secured for the successful admiral, and the general security of the nation by the "annihilation"—the word is Nelson's—of the enemy? That Rodney thus phrased the alternative to himself is indeed most unlikely; but that he failed to act efficiently, to rise to an emergency, for the possible occurrence of which he had had ample time as well as warning to prepare, is but too certain. Even after the British had got to windward of the enemy and seen their disorder, although the signal for the line was hauled down, none was made for a general chase. That for close action, hoisted at 1 P.M., was discontinued thirty minutes later, when five full hours of daylight remained. Even in example the admiral was slack, by Hood's account. "He pursued only under topsails (sometimes his foresail set, and at other times his mizzen topsail aback) the greatest part of the afternoon, though the flying enemy had all the sail set their very shattered state would allow." Hood, curbed by his superior's immediate presence, did what he could by putting all sail on the Barfleur, and signalling the various ships of his personal command to do the same; "not one but chased in the afternoon with studding sails below and aloft." It was bare poetic justice, therefore, that the Ville de Paris, the great prize of the day, though surrounded by numerous foes, struck formally to him.