Rodney 20

Rodney 20

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.

 

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