BY DAVID HANNAY London MACMILLAN AND CO. and New York 1891 All rights reserved...

George Brydges Rodney , the most famous of the great generation of English admirals who raised the navy to the level at which Nelson found it, was by descent a Somersetshire man. The family was one of considerable antiquity—of more antiquity indeed than fame. From the reign of Henry the Third until far into the seventeenth century they were established as owners of land in and about Stoke Rodney, at the foot of the Mendips, in the valley of the Axe between Draycott and Wells. The history of the

On his arrival in England Rodney’s post-rank was confirmed, and he was appointed to the Sheerness . She was a much smaller ship than the Plymouth , but a post-ship none the less—that is, a vessel large enough to be commanded by a post-captain and not by a commander. Over this intermediate rank, which every officer must now pass through on his way from lieutenant to captain, Rodney appears to have skipped in the free and easy way the time allowed to those who had luck or interest. Interest Rodney

After twenty-two years of unbroken sea service Rodney was well entitled to an easy billet on shore, or in a harbour ship. Besides, he now established a kind of moral claim to a stationary post, for in 1753 he married. The rank of the lady shows that he had a better social position than the very great majority of contemporary naval officers. They were largely sons of other officers or middle-class people, and they lived among themselves in the ports, marrying and giving in marriage in their own c

When Rodney became a rear-admiral he had already been in Parliament for eight years. No word good or bad need be said of his career as a member in the House, for it had necessarily been, and was to continue to be, insignificant. The truth is that he valued his seat for social and professional reasons. It has always been a pleasant thing for a gentleman to be a member of the House, and at that time the best club in England was particularly agreeable. The work demanded was as much as you chose to

In 1763 Rodney returned home and hauled down his flag. He did not hoist it again in war time for sixteen years, though in the interval he held a peace command in the West Indies. Before again going to sea—from 1765, in fact, to 1771—he had the governorship of Greenwich Hospital. In 1764 he was made a baronet. In the same year he married for the second time. The lady was apparently of Dutch descent, and by name Henrietta Clies, the daughter of one John Clies of Lisbon, who again was probably a ma

Rodney was now sixty. In the June of this year 1778 he attained the rank of Admiral of the White Squadron. He had for some time been Rear-Admiral of England, an honorary rank, to which however a salary was attached. The Vice and Rear-Admirals of England were, and indeed are—for the titles are still to be seen in the navy lists—supposed to be second and third in command to the Lord High Admiral when there is one. In rank, therefore, he was at the head of his profession, but his reputation was sti

After touching at Barbadoes on his way, Rodney reached Santa Lucia on March 28th, and fought his first battle in those waters on April 17th. A variety of causes—some political, some physical—made the West Indies the great scene of naval fighting in the American War. France had been induced to help the insurgent colonists, partly from a desire for revenge, partly in the hope that she would be able to compensate herself for the losses imposed at the Peace of Fontainebleau by the conquest of the Le

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

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

Rodney’s return home was not what he might have hoped it would be a year before, or what it was destined to be when he returned from his great campaign a year later. His health was wretchedly bad, and after a very brief stay in London he went down to Bath to recruit. His son-in-law Mundy, who edited his correspondence rather in what Carlyle called the rubbish shot here style, says that he was under the necessity of consulting London surgeons for some ailment other than the gout from which he had

When the Admiral and his second in command met off Antigua it was manifest that the crisis of the war was fast approaching in the West Indies. Since Grasse had returned from the coast of North America the French had possessed a considerable superiority of force, and had used it to complete their conquest of the English islands. The bolder and more efficacious policy would have been to seek out Hood and crush him before reinforcements arrived from England. But this was at no period in the war the

The great importance of this battle seems to justify a survey of the strength of the two fleets which took part in it. As the result of that survey, common honesty extorts the confession that the English were distinctly the stronger of the two in ships and guns. Very legitimate national pride enables us to add that it was also much the better. On that day Rodney had under his command thirty-six sail of the line, including five three-deckers, carrying in all two thousand six hundred and seventy-f

When Rodney issued the order to cease action on the evening of April 12th, his active life had practically come to an end. He proceeded with his fleet and his prizes to Jamaica, after despatching Hood, somewhat tardily, in pursuit of the scattered French. Hood picked up two liners and a few smaller craft in the Mona Channel between Porto Rico and San Domingo. At Jamaica, Rodney was received with natural and well-deserved enthusiasm by the people whom he had saved from a great danger. He remained