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

The Hector, César, and Glorieux, already paralyzed ere the chase began, were the only results of this languid movement, except the French flag-ship and the Ardent, 64. The latter was taken because, notwithstanding her being an indifferent sailer, she gallantly tried to pass from her own division, the van, to support her commander-in-chief in his extremity. It was 6.29 P.M. when the Ville de Paris struck; sixteen minutes later, 6.45, Rodney made signal to bring-to for the night—to give over pursuit. Only the Ville de Paris and the Ardent can be considered to have been secured by following, after the battle proper closed.

Nor was any other attempt made to profit by the victory. On the 13th the fleet began to move very slowly towards Jamaica, the local protection of which had become imperative through the failure to annihilate the enemy, who must now go to leeward—to Hayti; but after four hours Rodney brought-to again, and on the 16th, according to Hood, was in "the exact same spot off Guadaloupe. It has indeed been calm some part of the time, but we might have been more than twenty leagues farther to the westward." The César having been accidentally burned on the night of the battle, the prizes Hector and Glorieux were sent ahead in charge of three ships-of-the-line. This was a questionable disposition, as they were advancing in the direction of the enemy, without being covered by the interposition of the main fleet. The Ville de Paris Rodney kept close by his own side, unable to tear himself from her; so at least said Hood, who "would to God she had sunk the moment she had yielded to the arms of His Majesty," for "we would then have had a dozen better ships in lieu of her." Rodney was so tickled with her that he "can talk of nothing else, and says he will hoist his flag on board of her."

On April 17th Hood, having vainly urged his commander to improve the situation by more energetic action, represented to him that the small detachment convoying the Hector and Glorieux might fall in with a superior enemy, if not supported. Rodney then directed him to go ahead with ten ships until as far as Altavela, midway on the south side of Santo Domingo, where he was to await the main body. Hood gave a wide construction to these orders, and pushed for the Mona Passage, between Santo Domingo and Porto Rico, where on the 19th he intercepted two sixty-four gun ships, and two smaller cruisers. In reporting this incident to Rodney, he added, "It is a very mortifying circumstance to relate to you, Sir, that the French fleet which you put to flight on the 12th went through the Mona Channel on the 18th, only the day before I was in it." That sustained vigorous chase could not have been fruitless is further shown by the fact that Rodney himself, deliberately as he moved, apparently lying-to each night of the first half-dozen succeeding the battle, reached Jamaica three days only after the main body of the defeated French gained Cap François, though they had every motive to speed.

Of the reasons for such lethargic action, wholly inconsistent with true military principle, and bitterly criticised by Hood,—who affirmed that twenty ships might have been taken,—Rodney drew up an express account, which cannot be considered as adequate to his justification. In this he argued that, if he had pursued, the enemy, who "went off in a close connected body, might have defeated by rotation the ships that had come up with them, and thereby exposed the British fleet, after a victory, to a defeat." "They went off in a body of twenty-six ships-of-the-line, and might, by ordering two or three of their best-sailing ships or frigates to have shown lights at times, and by changing their course, have induced the British fleet to have followed them, while the main of their fleet, by hiding their lights, might have hauled their wind, have been far to windward before daylight, and intercepted the captured ships, and the most crippled ships of the English;" and he even conceived that, as the main body of the British would at the same time have gone far to leeward, the French, regaining their own ports in Guadaloupe and Martinique, might have taken Antigua, Barbados, and Santa Lucia.

The principal impression produced by this formal summary of reasons is that of unwisdom after the event, and that it was elicited by the remonstrances of Hood to himself, which are known to have voiced discontent prevalent in the fleet, and rendered some ready reply expedient. The substance of them, when analyzed, is that war must be rendered effective by not running risks, and that calculation to that effect is to be made by attributing every chance and advantage to the enemy, and none to one's self. Further, no account is to be taken of that most notable factor, ultimate risk,—as distinguished from present risk. This phantasm, of the sudden assumption of the offensive by a beaten and disordered fleet, which, through the capture of its chief, had changed commanders at nightfall, is as purely and mischievously imaginative as the fiction, upon which it rests, of the close connected body. Instead of being close-connected, the French were scattered hopelessly, utterly disabled for immediate, or even proximate, resistance to a well sustained chase and attack. During the next twenty-four hours their new admiral had with him but ten ships; and only five joined in the following twelve days, to April 25th, when he reached Cap François, where four more were found. Six others had strayed to Curaçao, six hundred miles distant, whence they did not rejoin the flag until May. Neither in Rodney's surmises, nor in the actual facts of the case, is to be found any reasonable excuse for failure to observe the evident military duty of keeping touch with the enemy during the dark hours,—"pursue under easy sail," to use Hood's words, "so as never to have lost sight of the enemy in the night,"—with a view to resume the engagement next day, at farthest. This, and to regain to windward, were as feasible to the victor as to the vanquished.

A truer explanation of this grave negligence is to be found in Rodney's more casual words recorded by Hood. "I lamented to Sir George on the twelfth that the signal for a general chase was not made when that for the line was hauled down, and that he did not continue to pursue so as to keep sight of the enemy all night; to which he only answered, 'Come, we have done very handsomely as it is.' I could therefore say no more upon the subject." He did, however, resume the subject with Sir Charles Douglas, the chief of staff. Douglas was of the same opinion as Hood, and for making the suggestion at the proper moment had been snubbed by Rodney, who had established over him a domination of manner which precluded proper insistence, or even due representation, such as became his office. "His answer was, 'Sir George chose to pursue in a body;'" that is, in regular order, not by general chase. "'Why, Sir Charles,' I replied, 'if that was Sir George's wish, could it have been more effectually complied with than by the signal for a general chase, with proper attention? Because, if a ship is too wide on the starboard wing, you have a signal to make her steer more to port. If a ship is too wide on the larboard wing, you have a signal to make her steer more to starboard. If a ship is too far ahead, you can by signal make her shorten sail,'" etc. This by daylight; while, "'if Sir George was unwilling his ships should engage in the night, there is a signal to call every ship in, and, that followed by the one for the form of sailing, the fleet might have gone on in sight of the enemy all night in the most compact and safe order for completing the business most gloriously the next day.' Sir Charles walked off without saying another word." There was in fact nothing to say. Hood's methods were not only correct, but in no respect novel. Every capable officer was familiar with them before, as well as after the battle. The trouble was that Rodney was content with a present clear success, and averse from further risk. He had reached his limitations. It is known now that Douglas agreed with Hood, but he was too loyal to his chief to say so publicly, then or afterwards; and especially, doubtless, to so irritable a talker.

As illustrative of Rodney's professional character the events of April 8th to 12th are therefore unfavorable rather than the reverse. Concerning his stronger qualities their evidence is simply cumulative; the new light thrown reveals defects, not unsuspected excellencies. The readiness in which his fleet was held at Santa Lucia, the promptness with which he followed, the general conduct of the chase as far as appears, though doubtless open to criticism in detail as in the ever censorious remarks of Hood,—all these show the same alert, accomplished, and diligent officer, resolute to the utmost of his natural and acquired faculties. It is the same after the battle joins, so long as its progress does not transcend his accepted ideas,—which were much in advance of the great mass of his contemporaries,—though under the conditions he saw no chance to apply the particular methods familiar to his thought.

But when sudden opportunity offered, of a kind he had not anticipated, he is found unequal to it. Neither natural temper, nor acquired habit of mind, respond to the call. To pass through the French line, when the wind shifted, was an instigation too sudden and a risk too great for his own initiative. The balance of evidence shows that it was due to the suggestion, and even more to the pressure, of Sir Charles Douglas. Carried beyond his habitual submission by the impulse of a great thought, and unburdened by the ultimate responsibility which must remain with the admiral, the Captain of the Fleet not only urged luffing through the enemy's line, but—so the story runs—in the excitement of the moment, and seeing the chance slipping past, even under the then sluggish breeze, he ordered the helm down. The admiral, thus faced, countermanded the order. A moment of silence followed, during which the two men stepped apart, the admiral even entering the cabin, which would be but a few paces from the wheel. Returning, he permitted Douglas to have his way; an act which, whether done courteously or grudgingly, does not bespeak professional conviction, but the simple acceptance of another's will in place of one's own indecision.

The incident is in entire keeping with the picture of Rodney's irresolution, and consequent uncertain course, drawn in successive touches by Hood in the hours and days succeeding the victory. Events had called him to deeds beyond his limitations. Age of course counted for much; fatigue, after three days of doubtful chase and one of prolonged battle, for more; but it may here be recalled that an older man, after a more wearisome and doubtful exposure, willed of his own motion to do what Rodney left undone. Sir Byam Martin has recorded,10 "After the battle of the 1st of June, Lord Howe was quite exhausted, as well indeed he might, considering that they had been manoeuvring and fighting for three days. Although feeble in body, and so exhausted as to be obliged to sit down in a chair on deck, he expressed a wish to pursue the flying enemy; but Sir Roger Curtis, the Captain of the Fleet (Chief of Staff, as Douglas to Rodney) said, 'I vow to God, my lord, if you do they will turn the tables upon us.' This anecdote I had from the late Admiral Bowen, who was master of the Queen Charlotte and a party to the conversation." Under circumstances approaching similarity,—so far as North Atlantic fogs and weather resemble West India climate,—Howe was sixty-eight, Rodney sixty-three, at the moment of testing. The one lost the support of the man—Curtis—upon whom he must chiefly rely for observation and execution; the other was urged in vain by the officer who held the same relation to him. Nelson once spoke slightingly of "a Lord Howe's victory, take a part, and retire into port;" as a trait of official character, however, Howe's purpose was far in advance of Rodney's, as this was viewed by Nelson's ideal admiral, Hood. It is now known, by a letter of Nelson's very recently published, that he held the same opinion of Rodney's remissness in this instance, although he cordially recognized the general obligation of the country and the navy to that eminent seaman. Writing in 1804 to his intimate friend Cornwallis, one of Rodney's captains, he used these words: "On the score of fighting, I believe, my dear friend, that you have had your full share, and in obtaining the greatest victory, if it had been followed up, that our country ever saw."11 It was a clear case of spirit being brought into subjection to form.

Rodney's professional career may be reckoned to have ended with his arrival at Jamaica on the 29th of April. The change of ministry consequent upon Cornwallis's surrender brought into power his political opponents, and in May the new Admiralty superseded him. News of the victory reached England just too late to permit them to revoke the order; his successor, Admiral Pigot, having already sailed. On the 22d of July Rodney left Jamaica, and on the 15th of September landed at Bristol. Although not so intended, his recall may be considered in line with his proverbial good fortune. He left his successor to grapple with difficulties, and with numbers, the continued existence of which was due chiefly to his own neglect after April 12th, and by the burden of which the conditions of peace were influenced adversely to Great Britain. To quote again Hood's apt comment, "Had Sir George Rodney's judgment, after the enemy had been so totally put to flight, bore any proportion to the high courage, zeal and exertion, shown by every captain, officer, and man under his command in battle, all difficulty would now have been at an end. We might have done just as we pleased, instead of being at this hour (April 30th) upon the defensive." This is ultimate risk, which is entailed by exaggerated concern for immediate apparent security, and ends in sapping endurance.

The auspicious moment at which the news of the battle reached England, and the surface brilliancy of the achievement,—especially the capture of the enemy's commander-in-chief,—diverted attention from any examination of possible shortcomings. Rodney received a vote of thanks from Parliament, and was advanced to the peerage by the King. A pension of £2,000 per annum was also voted, additional doubtless to a similar sum granted after his destruction of Langara's squadron and relief of Gibraltar. Other rewards and recognition had already attended his naval career. He had been made a baronet in 1764, at the expiration of his first tenure of the Leeward Islands Station; in 1780 the order of the Bath was bestowed upon him,—the distinction being enhanced by not awaiting a vacancy, but making him a supernumerary member,—and in 1781, upon the death of Lord Hawke, he became Vice-Admiral of Great Britain, the highest professional honor in the service.

After his return to England Rodney lived generally in retirement. His latter years were harassed by law suits, growing chiefly out of his proceedings at St. Eustatius, and the attendant expenses kept him poor. He died in May, 1792, at the age of seventy-three.

Richard, Earl Howe

HOWE

1726-1799

The name of Howe, albeit that of a stranger to the land, has a special claim upon the esteem and cordial remembrance of Americans. The elder brother of the subject of this sketch, during the few short months in which he was brought into close contact with the colonists of 1758, before the unlucky campaign of Ticonderoga, won from them not merely the trust inspired by his soldierly qualities and his genius for war,—the genius of sound common sense and solidity of character,—but got a deep hold upon their affections by the consideration and respect shown to them by him, traits to which they had been too little accustomed in the British officers of that day. Nor was this attitude on his part only a superficial disguise assumed by policy to secure a needed support. The shrewd, suspicious provincials would soon have penetrated a veil so thin, that covered only the usual supercilious arrogance which they had heretofore encountered. Lord Howe, almost alone among his military contemporaries, warmly greeted them as fellow-countrymen, men of no alien or degenerate blood. He admitted at once the value of their experience, sought their advice, and profited by both; thus gaining, besides the material advantage of methods adapted to the difficulties before him, the adhesion of willing hearts that followed enthusiastically, confident in their leader's wisdom, and glowing with the unaccustomed sense of being appreciated, of receiving recognition long withheld, but now at last ungrudgingly accorded. "The army felt him, from general to drummer boy. He was its soul; and while breathing into it his own energy and ardor, he broke through the traditions of the service, and gave it new shapes to suit the time and place.... He made himself greatly beloved by the provincial officers, and he did what he could to break down the barriers between the colonial soldiers and the British regulars."12

In campaign, Lord Howe adopted the tried expedients of forest warfare, associating with himself its most practised exponents; and on the morning of his death, in one of those petty skirmishes which have cut short the career of so many promising soldiers, he discussed the question of Ticonderoga and its approaches, lying on a bearskin beside the colonial ranger, John Stark, to whose energy, nineteen years later, was due the serious check that precipitated the ruin of Burgoyne's expedition. Endeared as he was to American soldiers by the ties of mutual labors and mutual perils gladly shared, and to all classes by genial bearing and social accomplishments, his untimely end was followed throughout the Northern colonies by a spontaneous outburst of sorrow, elicited not only by the anticipated failure of the enterprise that hung upon his life, but also by a sense of personal regret and loss. Massachusetts perpetuated the memory of her grief by a tablet in Westminster Abbey, which hands down to our day "the affection her officers and soldiers bore to his command."

Captain Richard Howe of the Royal Navy, afterwards Admiral and Earl, succeeded him in the Irish viscounty which had been bestowed upon their grandfather by William III. Of a temperament colder, at least in external manifestation, than that of his brother, the new Lord Howe was distinguished by the same fairness of mind, and by an equanimity to which perturbation and impulsive injustice were alike unknown. There seems to have been in his bearing something of that stern, impassive gravity that marked Washington, and imposed a constraint upon bystanders; but whatever apparent harshness there was in the face only concealed a genuine warmth of heart, which at times broke with an illumining smile through the mask that covered it, and was always ready to respond to the appeals of benevolence. If, as an officer, he had a fault conspicuously characteristic, it was a reluctance to severity, a tendency to push indulgence to undue extremes, into which may perhaps have entered not merely leniency of disposition, but the weakness of loving popularity. To be called by the seamen, as Howe was, the "sailor's friend," is in the experience of navies a suspicious encomium, involving more of flattery to a man's foibles than of credit to his discretion and his judgment. But at the time when the quarrel between Great Britain and her colonies was fast becoming imbittered, the same kindliness, coupled with a calm reasonableness of temper, ruled his feelings and guided his action. Although by political creed a moderate Tory, he had none of the wrong-headedness of the party zealot; and the growing alienation between those whom he, like his brother, regarded as of one family, caused only distress and an earnest desire to avert coming evils. Influenced by these sentiments, he sought the acquaintance of Franklin, then in London as a commissioner from the colonies; and the interviews between them, while resultless by reason of the irreconcilable differences of opinion severing the two parties to the dispute, convinced the wary American of the good will and open-mindedness of the already distinguished British seaman. The same qualities doubtless suggested the selection of Howe for the mission of conciliation to America, in 1776, where his associate was his younger brother, Sir William, in whom the family virtues had, by exaggeration, degenerated into an indolent good humor fatal to his military efficiency. The admiral, on the contrary, was not more remarkable for amiability and resolute personal courage than he was for sustained energy and untiring attention to duty,—traits which assured adequate naval direction, in case conciliation should give place, as it did, to coercive measures.

It is to be regretted that the methods, or the opportunities, of naval biographers and historians of the past century have preserved to us little, in personal detail and anecdote, of a period the peculiarities of which, if not exactly picturesque, were at least grotesque and amusing. The humor of Smollett has indeed drawn in broad caricature some of the salient features of the seaman of his day, which was that of Howe's entrance into the navy; and those who are familiar with the naval light literature based upon the times of Nelson can recognize in it characteristics so similar, though evidently softened by advancing civilization and increased contact with the world, as to vouch for the accuracy of the general impression conveyed by the earlier novelist. It is, however, correct only as a general impression, in which, too, allowance must be made for the animus of an author who had grievances to exploit, and whose great aim was to amuse, even if exact truthfulness were sacrificed at the shrine of exaggerated portrayal. Though not wholly without occasional gleams of light, shed here and there by recorded incident and anecdote upon the strange life of the seamen of that period, the early personal experiences of individuals have had scant commemoration; and with the exception of St. Vincent, who fortunately had a garrulous biographer, we learn little of men like Hawke, Howe, Hood, and Keppel, until, already possessors of naval rank, they stand forth as actors in events rather historical than biographical.

Of Howe's first services, therefore, not much record remains except a bare summary of dates,—of promotions, and of ships to which he was attached,—until 1755, the beginning of the Seven Years War, when he was already a post-captain. Born in 1726, he entered the navy in 1739, at the outbreak of the war with Spain which initiated a forty years' struggle over colonies and colonial trade. With short intervals of peace, this contest was the prominent characteristic of the middle of the eighteenth century, and terminated in the conquest of Canada, the independence of the United States, and the establishment of British predominance in India and upon the ocean. This rupture of a quiet that had then endured a quarter of a century was so popular with the awakened intelligence of England, aroused at last to the imminent importance of her call to expansion by sea, that it was greeted by a general pealing of the bells, which drew from the reluctant prime minister, Walpole, that bitter gibe, "Ay, to-day they are ringing their bells, and to-morrow they will be wringing their hands." Howe embarked with Anson's squadron, celebrated for its sufferings, its persistence, and its achievements, to waste the Spanish colonies of the Pacific; but the ship in which he had started was so racked in the attempt to double Cape Horn that she was forced to return to England. The young officer afterwards served actively in the West Indies and in home waters. On the 1st of May, 1746, being then in command of a small sloop of war, he was severely wounded in action with a superior enemy's force off the coast of Scotland. A few days before that, on the 10th of April, he had been promoted post-captain, being barely turned twenty. Thus early he was securely placed on the road to the highest honors of his profession, which, however, were not to prove beyond the just claim of his already established personal merit.

During the first thirty months of the Seven Years War, Howe was closely engaged with, and at times in command of, the naval part of combined expeditions of the army and navy, fitted out to harass the French coasts. The chief, though not the sole aim in these undertakings was to effect diversions in favor of Frederick the Great, then plunged in his desperate struggle with the allied forces of Russia, Austria, and France. It was believed that the last would be compelled, for the defence of her own shores against those raids,—desultory, it is true but yet uncertain as to the time and place where the attack would fall,—to withdraw a number of troops that would sensibly reduce the great odds then overbearing the Prussian king. It is more than doubtful whether this direction of British power, in partial, eccentric efforts, produced results adequate to the means employed. In immediate injury to France they certainly failed, and it is questionable whether they materially helped Frederick; but they made a brisk stir in the Channel ports, their operations were within easy reach of England in a day when news travelled slowly, and they drew the attention of the public and of London society in a degree wholly disproportionate to their importance relatively to the great issues of the war. Their failures, which exceeded their achievements, caused general scandal; and their occasional triumphs aroused exaggerated satisfaction at this earlier period, before the round of unbroken successes under the first Pitt had accustomed men, to use Walpole's lively phrase, to come to breakfast with the question, "What new victory is there this morning?" The brilliant letter-writer's correspondence is full of the gossip arising from these usually paltry affairs; and throughout, whether in success or disaster, the name of Howe appears frequently, and always as the subject of praise. "Howe, brother of the lord of that name, was the third on the naval list. He was undaunted as a rock, and as silent, the characteristics of his whole race. He and Wolfe soon contracted a friendship like the union of cannon and gunpowder." "Howe," he says in another place, "never made a friendship except at the mouth of a cannon."