Rodney 16

Rodney 16

So it goes on till dark comes, and the fleets separate without loss of a

ship to either. Sometimes they cross on opposite tacks, and the rest is

as before with unimportant variations. The British admiral boasts he has

made the enemy run. The French admiral boasts he has crippled three or

four English ships and repulsed the attack. Each is quite sure he has

won the battle, whereas in fact there has been no battle at all, but

only an artillery duel, which in all war by sea and land is apt to mean

mere noise and waste of powder and shot.

 

About 1780, however, there were some both in France and England to whom

it had begun to be clear that with such strategy and tactics as this

nothing effectual would ever be done. Among the French officers Souffren

had become disgusted with the feeble principles adopted in his service,

and was longing for an opportunity to show his countrymen a more

excellent way. That Rodney had thought the subject out, and come to

conclusions of his own, he was to show in the first month of his command

in the Leeward Islands. But that subject of King George to whom the

folly of the old way and the need of a better was most clear was not a

seaman at all, but a Scotch gentleman, who is supposed to have been one

of the originals of Monkbarns. The name of Clerk of Eldin, the father of

Sir Walter Scott’s friend, must needs be mentioned in a life of Rodney.

A considerable controversy has raged over the question, whether he

influenced the Admiral, and if so to what extent. Like most controversy,

it has owed not a little of its vitality to a lax use of terms, and of

its rancour to professional vanity. To this day naval officers hear the

name of Clerk of Eldin with a certain irritation. It is an exasperation

to them that a landsman should have the credit of discovering what

remained hidden for so long to so many famous admirals. Yet that he did

see what they had not seen is certain. His family had crossed his boyish

longing to go to sea, and he consoled himself by making the sea his

hobby. He made short voyages from Leith. He sailed toy fleets on his

pond at Eldin. He carried little models of ships--wild ducks is the

proper name of them--in his pocket, and manœuvred them on the

mahogany whenever host or guest would allow him to mount his hobby.

Like a true Scotchman, he could not be satisfied without worrying out

the principles. At last it became clear to him that, until our admirals

gave up running along the enemy’s line, and took to smashing into it,

there would be no end of battles such as Pocock had fought in the East

Indies and Keppel fought off Ushant. He collected the result of his

inquiries and reflections in one of the most luminous books ever

written. It was so clear, indeed, that Adam Smith, with a respect for

the human intelligence somewhat startling in a philosopher, hesitated to

accept it all because it seemed to him so self-evidently true that he

thought the admirals must have seen it all long ago unless there had

been something against it which was obvious to their professional

knowledge. Their blindness was, however, due to other causes--to such

causes as prevented men of business from seeing those economic truths

which were thought out by Adam Smith himself. In 1780 this book existed

only in fragments printed for private circulation. These fragments were

given by Clerk to a Mr. Aitkinson, a friend of Rodney’s, in January of

1780, on a promise that they should be sent to the Admiral. Whether they

ever reached him we do not know. There is no evidence that they did, and

the evidence that they did not is purely negative. Clerk’s name and the

claims made for him will come up again. For the present, it is enough to

cite him as an example of what was working in men’s minds, and also

because one likes to do a little justice to an ingenious gentleman who

got firm hold of a truth, and has been carped at as a mere amateur by

some members of a profession which had forgotten that same truth, and

needed to be retaught.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VIII

 

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1780

 

 

At the end of March Rodney was at Gros Islet Bay in Santa Lucia with a

fleet of twenty-one sail of line-of-battle ships. His adversary Guichen

was at Fort Royal Bay in Martinique, some thirty miles off to the north,

with a force of twenty-three line-of-battle ships and two fifty-gun

ships--a class of vessels which held an intermediate position between

the liner and the frigate. Both admirals had their attendant swarm of

small craft. In spite of the superior numbers of the French, the fleets

were substantially equal. The French Government usually built its

vessels bigger and better than ours, and the calibre of its guns was

heavier. On the other hand Rodney had more three-deckers and

seventy-fours than his opponent. What advantage there was--and there was

some--was in favour of Guichen, but it was only just sufficient to

enhance the glory of beating him. The superiority or even the equality

of the Frenchman was somewhat of a surprise to Rodney, who expected to

find himself in greater force. He complained that he had not been kept

well informed by his Government of the movements of Guichen, who had

sailed from Europe shortly after he himself left for the relief of

Gibraltar, and had got to the West Indies first. There was doubtless

some ground for the complaint, but Rodney, who was just then rather

disposed to find fault, made the most of it. The position was certainly

not one which an admiral who believed in himself, as Rodney did, and

commanded an English fleet, need have considered unfavourable.

 

Whatever ground of complaint he might feel he had, Rodney was resolved

that there should be no shilly-shallying. On March 21st he turned into

Gros Islet Bay with the four ships he brought from Europe and joined the

seventeen already lying there under Sir Hyde Parker. One does not

clearly understand why Guichen, who was already at sea with his

twenty-three ships, allowed the junction to take place. He did, and then

returned to Fort Royal Bay. After spending less than a week in watering

his ships, and in settling matters of detail, Rodney got to sea on April

2nd, and paraded in defiance off the French harbour. It would have been

utterly contrary to the usual practice of the French admirals if Guichen

had come out for the mere purpose of fighting a battle. He would not

stir till he had an “ulterior object,” and so lay tight under the

protection of the shore batteries. Finding that his enemy would not

stir, Rodney returned to Gros Islet Bay, leaving look-out frigates on

the watch. By April 15th the French had settled a plan. There was a

convoy of merchant ships to be seen safe to San Domingo for one thing,

and for another it was decided to make a stroke at one of the English

islands. In this work Guichen had the zealous assistance of the then

Governor of Martinique, the famous Bouillé, that “quick, choleric,

sharply discerning, stubbornly endeavouring man,” who afterwards played

so great a part in the Revolution. The plan was to ship a body of troops

under Bouillé himself on board the war vessels, to stand northward with

the merchant ships in convoy, to see them off for San Domingo, and then,

by turning to windward between Martinique and Dominica, to beat up to

Barbadoes in the hope of mastering it before Rodney could come up from

Santa Lucia. Barbadoes was then full of French prisoners and prizes. The

scheme was most characteristic of French naval operations at that time.

It depended for success not on the previous beating of the English

fleet, but on luck in avoiding a battle at sea. Of course if the English

admiral behaved with common sense and energy he would catch the French

up before they got to Barbadoes, and then they must fight or run. In

either case there was an end of the scheme.

 

As a matter of fact it hardly even began to be put into execution. No

sooner were the French known to be under way than the English look-out

frigates were signalling the news to one another all along the thirty

miles of sea between Fort Royal and Gros Islet Bay. As soon as the

signal of the nearest frigate was seen by the look-out on Pigeon Island,

a great mass of rock which shuts in the anchorage, the order was given

to the English fleet to get up anchor. Without delay it stood out to

sea, stretching to the north along the coast of Martinique in pursuit of

the enemy. The French had slipped out by night, but Rodney judged that

they would endeavour to make for Barbadoes through the Dominica Channel,

and followed them hot foot. In the course of the 16th M. de Guichen’s

fleet was seen by the English to the north, endeavouring to turn to

windward between Dominica and Martinique about twenty-four miles to

westward of the Pearl Rock. In order to secure the power to force on a

battle, and also in order to bar the road to Barbadoes, Rodney worked to

windward. Before night he had succeeded in obtaining that commanding

position. It was too late to force on a battle, but during the darkness

the English fleet kept across the road of the French, whose movements

were keenly watched and immediately signalled by guns. The _Venus_ and

_Greyhound_ frigates patrolled the space dividing the enemies till

daybreak.

 

At sunrise, shortly after five o’clock, the two fleets were drawn up in

two lines of from six to seven miles long, heading both to the north.

The French were at a distance of some seven miles to westward and

leeward of the English. At a quarter to six the signal was given to form

the line of battle on the starboard tack at two cables’ length. With the

wind at east this would mean that the fleet was heading to the north.

The cable as a measure of length being about two hundred yards, and the

average length of a ship fifty-four, the line must have been something

under six miles long. Before we go down with Rodney into the very

inconclusive battle which was about to be fought, there are two facts

which it will be necessary to note. The first is, that the system of

signals then used in our fleet was most defective. There was no proper

general code. Every admiral had to make his own on taking command of his

squadron. It was not possible to do work requiring such minute finish

of detail as the formation of a code of signals in such circumstances.

Much was apt to be omitted. In Rodney’s own code, for instance, there

was then no signal by which a captain could make known that he did not

understand the admiral’s orders. One was supplied after the battle. The

second fact is this: at that time there existed a body of laws for the

fleet known as the Fighting Orders and the Additional Fighting

Instructions. These were not statements of the principles on which

battles should be fought, but recipes for fighting a battle. They bear

an almost comic resemblance to those cut-and-dried rules for painting a

picture to be found in old drawing-books, which tell men that grief is

expressed by pulling down the corners of the mouth, and pain by

wrinkling the forehead. Moreover, they were worded with the looseness of

an Act of Parliament. Such as they were, however, they were binding on

all captains unless direct orders to the contrary were given by the

admiral, who disregarded them at his peril, as had been shown in the

case of Rodney’s old chief, Mathews, who was broken by court-martial for

an offence against them, though he only did it to get at the enemy and

support the honour of the flag. With insufficient power to give orders,

and hampered by a competing authority, a British admiral was very liable

to find his fleet get out of hand. These same standing orders are

responsible for much of the pedantry of our fighting during a century.

 

Rodney had decided to break away from the old tradition by which our