You are hereby required and directed to proceed on board theFrederick and Williamtender, taking with you forty men from His Majesty’s ship under my command, and immediately proceed to the eastward of the Isle of Wight, and cruise for the space of eight days between that island and Beachy Head, using your best endeavours to impress or otherwise procure all such seamen as you possibly can for His Majesty’s service. At the expiration of eight days you are to return to Spithead for further orders. Given under my hand February 14th.G. B. R.
You are hereby required and directed to proceed on board theFrederick and Williamtender, taking with you forty men from His Majesty’s ship under my command, and immediately proceed to the eastward of the Isle of Wight, and cruise for the space of eight days between that island and Beachy Head, using your best endeavours to impress or otherwise procure all such seamen as you possibly can for His Majesty’s service. At the expiration of eight days you are to return to Spithead for further orders. Given under my hand February 14th.
G. B. R.
Lieutenant Bickorton was one of many officers in command of the tenders then swarming in the Channel, waiting all of them for the homeward-bound merchant ships and their crews, which were returning in ignorance of what was waiting for them. One can imagine the feelings of the merchant sailors when they were stopped in sight of shore, and carried off to serve King George for nobody knew how long, without as much as an hourgiven them to put a foot on dry land. A letter written by Rodney in June of this year to Sir Edward Hawke, now commanding at Portsmouth, will show what one crew thought of it all.
Sir—Lieutenant Robert Sax of His Majesty’s ship under my command, who was sent on board thePrincess Augustatender in order to procure seamen for His Majesty’s service, is returned this morning with fifteen men which he pressed out of theBritannia, a ship from Leghorn bound for London. He acquaints me he fell in with the said ship at 5 o’clock in the morning on June 1st off Portland, and ordered them to bring to. The master desired he would defer pressing the men till they got out of the Race of Portland—to which desire of the master’s Mr. Sax acquiesced; but observing after they got out of the Race of Portland the ship continued to crowd all the sail she possibly could set, Mr. Sax fired a shot athwart her, and ordered them to bring to again, upon which the master of theBritanniahailed the tender and acquainted the Lieutenant that his men refused to obey his commands, and desired the said Lieutenant would board him. Mr. Sax after acquainting the men several times the Channel was full of tenders, and that it was not possible for them to escape being pressed, and could not prevail upon them to submit, they answered with three cheers, and fired a shot at him, on which Mr. Sax boarded them with the tender; but [I] am sorry to acquaint you three men on board the said ship was killed in boarding, tho’ Mr. Sax assures me he gave positive orders to his men not to fire. The ship is now come into Spithead, and I shall take particular just care to send a sufficient number of good and able men to navigate her to London. I should be glad to receive your directions how I am to proceed in this affair, and what is to be done with the men that was killed, as I find they are still on board.
Sir—Lieutenant Robert Sax of His Majesty’s ship under my command, who was sent on board thePrincess Augustatender in order to procure seamen for His Majesty’s service, is returned this morning with fifteen men which he pressed out of theBritannia, a ship from Leghorn bound for London. He acquaints me he fell in with the said ship at 5 o’clock in the morning on June 1st off Portland, and ordered them to bring to. The master desired he would defer pressing the men till they got out of the Race of Portland—to which desire of the master’s Mr. Sax acquiesced; but observing after they got out of the Race of Portland the ship continued to crowd all the sail she possibly could set, Mr. Sax fired a shot athwart her, and ordered them to bring to again, upon which the master of theBritanniahailed the tender and acquainted the Lieutenant that his men refused to obey his commands, and desired the said Lieutenant would board him. Mr. Sax after acquainting the men several times the Channel was full of tenders, and that it was not possible for them to escape being pressed, and could not prevail upon them to submit, they answered with three cheers, and fired a shot at him, on which Mr. Sax boarded them with the tender; but [I] am sorry to acquaint you three men on board the said ship was killed in boarding, tho’ Mr. Sax assures me he gave positive orders to his men not to fire. The ship is now come into Spithead, and I shall take particular just care to send a sufficient number of good and able men to navigate her to London. I should be glad to receive your directions how I am to proceed in this affair, and what is to be done with the men that was killed, as I find they are still on board.
Rodney’s composition was hasty, or his clerk’s copying was careless, as we may see from the two sentences jumbled into one in the middle of his letter (“the men that was” is quite good grammar of the time), but themeaning is clear enough. Composition and meaning are alike luminous in Hawke’s answer.
By Sir Edward Hawke, Knight of the Bath, Vice-Admiral of the White Squadron, and Commander of His Majesty’s ships and vessels at Spithead and PortsmouthYou are hereby required and directed to cause the utmost despatch to be used by the surgeons to whom the accompanying order is directed in finishing their examination of the wounds of the three men killed the 1st inst. on board theBritanniamerchant ship. Then you are without a moment’s loss of time to put on board her men sufficient in number and quality to navigate her in safety to her moorings in the river Thames, directing them as soon as they get without St. Helen’s to throw the dead bodies overboard. For which this shall be your order.Given under my hand on board His Majesty’s shipSt. Georgeat Spithead, this June 2nd 1755.Ed. Hawke.
By Sir Edward Hawke, Knight of the Bath, Vice-Admiral of the White Squadron, and Commander of His Majesty’s ships and vessels at Spithead and Portsmouth
You are hereby required and directed to cause the utmost despatch to be used by the surgeons to whom the accompanying order is directed in finishing their examination of the wounds of the three men killed the 1st inst. on board theBritanniamerchant ship. Then you are without a moment’s loss of time to put on board her men sufficient in number and quality to navigate her in safety to her moorings in the river Thames, directing them as soon as they get without St. Helen’s to throw the dead bodies overboard. For which this shall be your order.
Given under my hand on board His Majesty’s shipSt. Georgeat Spithead, this June 2nd 1755.
Ed. Hawke.
This brief official letter, and the laconic order which is its answer, bring before one, all the more effectively because of their business-like calm, the most cruel phase of the press-gang. It was necessary, no doubt, that men should be found for the defence of the country, and at all times in all nations the State has compelled the service of its subjects. At this time the French had (as they still have) aninscription maritime, which spares no part of the maritime population; and nobody needs to be told in these days that the obligation to render military service is universal in nearly all the nations of the old world. But a conscription works on a definite system. The burden it imposes is known, foreseen, and adjusted with some approach to equality and justice. The press-gang was utterly erratic. It was, in fact, asurvival of the prerogative by which Edward the Third could order the Lords Marchers to bring up just as many Welshmen as he wanted for his French wars. Time and the growth of the “freedom of the subject” had limited the incidence of the prerogative (if the expression is permissible) to the levies for the sea service, but in that restricted though still considerable field it worked as it had done in the fourteenth century. Men were seized wherever they could be found, with little or no regard to aught save the convenience of the service. As a matter of course, the easiest thing to do was to wait for the home-coming merchant ships, and take the men out of them close to port. This could be done without stopping the trade, and so raising a clamour among the merchants who possessed a vote. Moreover, it saved the press-gangs an immense amount of trouble in hunting for men in the back streets of towns and on the high roads. For the sailors seized in this fashion at the end of a long sea voyage it was a cruel fate, and one’s heart is sore for the three poor fellows who only came back to the sight of Portland Bill to die by the hands of their own countrymen.
The tone of the letters, too, is not unworthy of notice. There is no anger in Rodney’s mind with the sailors of theBritanniafor resisting. That was “the game”; and if he feels aught, it is annoyance that Sax’s men disobeyed orders, and regret that three stout sailors, who might have been used in thePrince George’stops and batteries, should be lying stiff and stark on the merchant ship’s deck, waiting to be thrown to the fishes off St. Helen’s. Noteworthy, too, is Sir Edward Hawke’s summary decision that there shall be no coroner’sinquest to start unpleasant inquiries. There shall be no bodies for the jury to sit on. Such were the freedom of the seafaring subject and the sanctity of the law as understood by post-captains and vice-admirals of the blue, white, and red squadrons in 1755 and for long afterwards. No wonder that desertions were incessant, or that in this year Rodney has to receive on board thePrince Georgea company of “Colonel Bockland’s regiment of foot” to stand sentry over his pressed men. Haslar Hospital was a common “take off” for desertions. It was full in those times when complaints were common from every ship in the Channel that there are not slops enough, so that the men are naked, and in want of every necessary; that the beef is bad, the beer sour, the cheese and butter “stinking rotten.” From it the men ran in such numbers that the leakage threatened to counterbalance the inflow due to the press. On the top of the press warrants came orders to Lieutenant This and Mr. That, midshipman, to take so many trusty men, and with them keep watch and ward round Haslar to shut in the convalescent men who might try to make a run for the free air of the South Down. One touch more and we can be done with the press-gang. When in the following year Rodney had been transferred to theMonarch, seventy-four, and was lying at Plymouth, he reports in an official letter that many sailors use the high road by Wendover in going from port to port. He suggests the despatch of a lieutenant and a dozen trusty men to set up arendezvouson the road, and catch the seamen in transit. The merchant sailor was hunted like the flying-fish. Clearly Rodney was a zealous officer, and whether he liked this kidnapping work ornot he did it without shrinking. Probably he neither liked nor disliked it, but just did it as a matter of course. As for the men, they too took it as part of the incurable nature of things. They might give three cheers, and fire a gun, or knock the press sailors down, or desert if they could, but once in the mess, after a reasonable amount of cursing and storming they settled down. The fund of loyalty in the country was immense. They laid the blame of the misfortune on the French, and prepared to take it out of the hereditary enemy. The country in the meantime clung to the press out of the abundance of its love for the freedom of the subject. A proposal to replace it by a registration of seamen, made in Walpole’s time, was rejected indignantly because of the increased power it would give the administration. In a muddle-headed way the country was right, given the point of view. It was better to tolerate the survival of an old and now limited prerogative as an evil necessity than to give Government power to register men and call them out in classes. That would have been a recognition of a principle and a serious concession.
In 1755 Rodney was transferred from thePrince Georgeto theMonarch, and from Portsmouth to Plymouth. During the first half of the next year he was in this latter ship and port, engaged in much the same work as before. Fighting had begun not only in America, but in the Mediterranean, to which Byng sailed this year on his disastrous expedition to Minorca, but there was no formal declaration of war till May, 1756. At Plymouth, Rodney came across an illustration of the barbarity of the time not inferior to the press-gang, which also he doubtless accepted as a matter of course. We had stopped aFrench emigrant vessel, apparently before the declaration, bound to Louisiana with Alsatian emigrants. Louisiana meant then the valley of the Mississippi, and as much to right or left of it as the French could seize. It would never do to allow them to increase their number if it could be prevented. There was no peace beyond the line—to the west that is of the line drawn from north to south, three hundred and seventy leagues to the west of the Cape de Verd Islands. So, though we were nominally at peace with France, the emigrants were stopped in the Channel by a kind of application, I take it, of theCyprèsdoctrine. Among them were some twenty women and children, whom Rodney was ordered to send over to Ostend in a tender. The poor creatures petitioned to be allowed to remain with their husbands, promising to share the subsistence allowed the men by the French King. What answer was given I do not know, but it is characteristic of the slovenly inhumanity of the day that we should, after stopping these poor people, have calmly proposed to separate the wives from their husbands, and send them to beg or starve at Ostend—and have done that too, as was no doubt the case, under the impression that it was the good-natured thing to do. The British official man of the middle of the eighteenth century was above all things a very great ass. He was not so corrupt as he has been called; he could work very hard, was conscious of the duty he owed his king and country. Nobody, I think, can look at the evidence and doubt that he tried his best, but it was absurdly bad, for being an ass what could he do but administer in an asinine manner?
It is worth while to insist a little on this, because,unless you know the element in which a man swam, it is impossible to estimate his swimming. In 1755 that element was for naval officers one of official incoherence and incompetence. Contradictory orders with their inevitable consequences, which are omissions, and confusion, abounded. Men and officers were drafted from ship to ship according to what Nelson called “the infernal system” which prevailed too long in our navy. There seemed to be no plan at headquarters, or, what is even worse, several plans at once. To take a comparatively small detail as illustrating the working of the Navy Board. When in July theMonarchwas ordered to sea to join Boscawen, now cruising in the Channel, Rodney is found at the very last moment applying for a third surgeon who had been promised to him, but had not turned up. He did not come, but in place of him a consoling letter from the senior officer at Plymouth informing Rodney that theMonarchwould be better without him, for he had turned out on inquiry to be entirely ignorant of a surgeon’s business, and only seventeen years old. With that instance of official management we may leave the subject. That we pulled through it all is entirely due to the one redeeming merit our administration had. It did leave a very large share of power to the admirals and captains. When they were of the right stamp—admirals such as Hawke and Boscawen, captains of the order of Rodney and Hood, or the less famous Lockhart and Gilchrist, who were engaged in this and the following wars in snapping up the French cruisers and privateers as fast as they showed a bowsprit in the Channel—order and efficiency were soon evoked out of chaos. Of course when the commanderwas of the wrong stamp—when he was a Byng, who looked upon official mismanagement, not as a thing to be made good, but as mere matter of complaint and excuse for doing nothing, the result was very different. The fate which overtook Byng convinced every officer, however, that it was safer as well as more honourable to follow the example of Hawke and Boscawen. The naval officers and the great kindred spirit of Pitt, the master of them all, saved the country in spite of officialdom by sheer dint of playing the man.
In the July of 1756 theMonarchjoined Boscawen in Channel soundings for a short time. She had only been with him a few days when the carpenter, “a very good man,” who had been warned to present no frivolous complaints, had to report that the “knee of the head” was loose, and worked so much as to cause the ship to leak dangerously. There was nothing for it but to apply to the Admiral for a survey. The result of the report of the surveyors was an order to theMonarchto return to Portsmouth to refit. Rodney spent the remainder of the year and the beginning of the next in the dockyard. He contrived to get some good out of the evil state of theMonarchby inducing the dockyard authorities to alter the internal arrangement of the ship, which was a French prize, and had her magazines in the wrong place. Whatever good the alteration may have done theMonarch, the advantage of it was reaped by another captain. About the end of February Rodney was transferred to theDublin, which makes the fifth ship he had commanded in four years. One wonders how any kind of discipline and good spirit was maintained in the midst of these incessant changes.
Almost the last order given him on board theMonarchwas one by Admiral Thomas Smith, “Tom of Ten Thousand,” directing him to receive on board, as “supernumeraries for their victuals only,” Rear-Admiral Byng and his retinue. It is dated February 6th, 1757. On the 17th of the next month poor Byng, having now no need to think and act, but only to undergo his fate, faced the firing-party on theMonarch’squarter-deck like a gentleman, without fear and without ostentation. Rodney had no share, direct or indirect, in the trial or execution of the Admiral, but I have come to a very mistaken estimate of his character if he disapproved it. No man had less of the querulous spirit, which was Byng’s ruin, or less toleration for such half-hearted leadership as was shown in the fight off Minorca. If he ever saw, as he probably did, Voltaire’s famous jest, he replied, no doubt, that the execution did “encourage the others.” It set up a terrible warning to those who might in future feel inclined to think that if they were badly treated by the Admiralty they were therefore to be excused for not doing their best against the enemy.
Rodney’s new ship theDublinlay at Deptford, and he was now to begin all over again the weary work of fitting for sea. According to the wholesome custom of the navy he was allowed to bring with him a few chosen officers and men to form the heart of a new crew. From April to August then we will suppose him at work as before, setting up arendezvous, superintending the rigging of his new ship, dunning the Admiralty for slops to clothe his naked men, and food not “stinking rotten” for them to eat. Since the little picturesque touch is always welcome, we will note that he appliesamong other things to the Admiralty for a cook’s warrant for “Charles O’Raaf,” hardly an Englishman we should think, who had lost his arm in an action with the French in 1747. In September he had at last got his ship into shape and joined Hawke, now back from the Mediterranean, whither he had gone to supersede Byng, and preparing for the first of those combined attacks on the coast of France which were the least successful of the Great Commoner’s enterprises.
The history of the attack on Rochefort, which was made in September, may be quite fairly given in the words of Captain Marryat. “The army thought that the navy might have beaten down stone ramparts, ten feet thick; and the navy wondered why the army had not walked up the same ramparts which were thirty feet perpendicular.” Sir Edward Hawke, who commanded the fleet, was as capable an officer as ever hoisted his flag—and Wolfe was with the troops. The two, if they had been at liberty to act together, might have effected something, but unfortunately Wolfe was still only Lieutenant-Colonel in Kingsley’s regiment. The General in command, Sir John Mordaunt, was old and by no means competent. His personal bravery was nearly the only soldierly quality he had, and though he did not fear death he stood in terror of responsibility. With such a leader an expedition which required dashing management was sure to fail, and fail it did. Whatever credit was gained fell to Howe in theMagnanime, and then the squadron and the troops came back with very little glory, but with ample materials for a court of inquiry and a pamphleteering war. Rodney took no part in this last, and hadno conspicuous share in the previous operations. TheDublinwas in truth a wretched ship. Immediately after joining the squadrons he lost company because her rudder had got out of order. Soon, too, Rodney had to represent to the Admiral that a hundred and fifty of his men were down with an epidemic fever, while many others were so weak as to be unfit for work. To make good the defects of his vessel, and to recruit his crew, he was ordered back to Spithead.
In May of 1758 he sailed on a much more satisfactory piece of service. TheDublinwas ordered to join Boscawen in the attack on Louisburg in Cape Breton. She was sent in place of theInvincible, which had just been lost. After experiencing repeated delays, and a long struggle with the difficulty of manning his ship—to make his complement up at all it was found necessary to enlist “neutral” prisoners who volunteered—he got off at last with a convoy. General Amherst and his staff sailed in theDublin, which was in fact crowded with soldiers and stores.
The siege and capture of Louisburg marked the turning of the tide for us in the Seven Years’ War. It was the first completely successful thing we did. It gave us the command of the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and was a decisive step towards the final conquest of Canada. Navy and army, Boscawen and Amherst, worked admirably together, and Wolfe, who was here also, had some opportunity to show his great qualities as a leader. It would be pleasing to his biographer to be able to say that Rodney had a conspicuous share in the victory; but the truth is that during the greater part of the actual fighting theDublinwas at Halifax. Shemaintained her character as an unhealthy ship, and was hardly on the North American coast before the epidemic fever broke out again. Boscawen kept her mostly at Halifax, where Rodney had to discharge the very important but somewhat thankless duties of officer in command at the basis of operations. What part of his attention could be spared from forwarding transports was devoted to looking after the health of his men. The hospitals of Halifax were full of sickly sailors or soldiers, and theDublin’smen had to be attended to in sheds run up on shore by the ship’s carpenter. Rodney rejoined Boscawen outside Louisburg just before it surrendered in July, and then sailed for Europe on August 15th with the convoy which carried the French prisoners of war. The room which had been taken up on board theDublinon her way out by Amherst and his staff, was occupied on the way home by the officers of the eight French ships which were captured in the harbour. It is a not uninteresting detail that Rodney also took home a present of dried fish and Madeira from Wolfe to his family. One would like to know that the men were friends as they were certainly acquaintances.
The choice of theDublinto attend the convoy was not only due to the fact that she was the kind of vessel an admiral would be naturally anxious to get rid of. Rodney was now a very senior captain, and would as a matter almost of course be selected for independent service for which a flag-officer could not be spared. He was now almost at the very end of his service as post-captain. When he had brought his convoy into the Channel and had sent it into Plymouth he proceeded to Spithead himself, and there applied for leave to attendto his health. A year spent on board a very ill-ventilated vessel reeking with fever had been too much for him. The leave was granted, and there ended Rodney’s work as a post-captain. In May of 1759 he was promoted rear-admiral.
WhenRodney 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 do, and the privileges were many. For a naval or military officer a seat was especially valuable. When Rodney was on his way from the relief of Gibraltar to his third command in the West Indies in 1779, he wrote to his second wife a letter, in which he said that no man could hope to hold a satisfactory position in the navy unless he had a seat in Parliament. His meaning is easy to understand. A naval officer who was also a member had in the first place a much better chance of obtaining a command than another, and in the second, was much more likely to be well backed up when he was in it. The possession of a vote which might be used to support or annoy a minister would give him anindependent position, or at least a claim. Moreover, his mouth could not be shut. The calculation was a convincing one, and therefore His Majesty’s sea officers went into the House as much as they could. Indeed, the number of admirals and captains who were members of Parliament in the early and middle eighteenth century was large. The Treasury and Admiralty made a similar calculation for their part. If it was convenient for a naval officer to have a seat, it was equally useful to ministers that many members should belong to a body of gentlemen who might be soothed by the prospect of command, or kept in order by fear of the loss of place. Naval officers were therefore commonly chosen as Treasury candidates (i.e.nominees) for dockyard seats, or for the pocket boroughs in the west. So there was between ministers and naval officers not a little of that mutually advantageous give-and-take by which His Majesty’s Government was so largely carried on in the last century.
Rodney, with the sagacity of a practical man, had early seen the advantage of obtaining a seat in Parliament, to say nothing of the fact that as a gentleman of good connections he would naturally wish to be in the House if possible. For one who, like himself, could not cultivate popularity there were three ways in which his useful seat might be obtained. An officer might belong to a great family with plenty of “influence” of its own. This—the best—was Boscawen’s position. “Old Dreadnaught,” as the sailors called him, had largely to thank the fact that he was Lord Falmouth’s brother and M.P. for Truro for the commands which enabled him to destroy M. de la Clue at Lagos, and to help in thetaking of Louisburg. Another way was to inherit or make money enough to “cultivate an interest,” as the process was politely called, in some properly constituted borough. The third way was to attach yourself to a patron and follow him. It was the tamer eighteenth-century equivalent of the alliance recorded in theFair Maid of Perthwhich bound the stout Laird of Wamphray to ride with the redoubted Lord of Johnstone, who again was banded with the doughty Earl of Douglas. In the meantime the Devil’s Deck of Hellgarth was employed in looking after the borough.
Not having family influence or private fortune enough, or of the right kind in the right place, and being withal resolute to get on in this world by all means permissible to a gentleman, Rodney had nothing for it but to attach himself to a patron. With what Carlyle would doubtless have praised as showing a certain veracity of intellect, he recognised the conditions of the game and played it resolutely. He sat for Saltash in Cornwall as nominee of John Clevland, the Clerk of the Admiralty. Clevland, a Cornishman of Scotch descent, owned Saltash by inheritance, and used it with judgment to push his own fortunes in the world. To give the seat to a naval officer was for him an obviously convenient way of making it serve that end. In 1751 it was Rodney who was selected, while he was in command of theRainbowon the Newfoundland station. Doubtless, Mr. Clevland’s protection helped to make him a more acceptable suitor for the hand of Miss Jane Compton, and beyond all question it helped him to his successive commands of theKent, theFougueux, thePrince George, and theMonarch.
Before 1759 Rodney, however, had secured a greaterand more powerful patron than Clevland. I have already quoted the passage of one of his letters in which he thanked the Duke of Newcastle for all his preferment in the service. It was to the Duke that he owed his seat at Okehampton in this year. There does not appear to have been any quarrel with Clevland, but no doubt reasons judged sufficient by all the gentlemen concerned made it desirable to give Saltash to somebody else. For the rest, Newcastle was distinctly a patron worth having. He would, in this alliance, play doughty Earl of Douglas to Clevland’s Lord of Johnstone and Rodney’s Laird of Wamphray. It was promotion for the Laird to deal directly with the Earl. Between 1751 and 1759 there is evidence to show that Rodney was employed as negotiator in confidential transactions between Newcastle and the Earl of Northampton. He did not come empty-handed to the alliance. Rodney had his own “plump of spears,” in the form of some Parliamentary interest in Hampshire, acquired probably by his first marriage, which was at the minister’s disposal in return for the proper consideration. Still there can be no sort of doubt as to the relations between the men. They are indicated in a letter dated “Spithead, December 2nd, 1759,” which lies written in Rodney’s large, flowing, but slightly gouty handwriting in the Newcastle correspondence.
“My Lord,” he begins, “I beg Your Grace will permit me to return you my most sincere thanks for the Honour you have bestowed on me in chusing me a Member of Parliament for Okehampton. A steady adherence to Your Grace’s commands shall ever distinguish me while I have a seat in the House.” Then after a few words ofcongratulation on Hawke’s recent magnificent victory off Quiberon, he ends, “I have the Honour to be with the utmost Respect and Gratitude Your Grace’s most Devoted and most obedient humble Servant, G. B. Rodney.” The style of the time allowed a gentleman to write in this submissive way, but it was a gentleman who was protected writing to his protector. That this was the footing on which the Admiral stood to the Duke he never attempts to conceal, nor is there the slightest reason to suppose that he saw aught undignified in it. There is something respectable in the honesty with which he tells the naked truth as to his election for Okehampton.
The Parliament he joined in this year did not last long. It was dissolved by the death of George the Second in 1760, and a general election was made necessary. At once Rodney hastened to put his Parliamentary influence in Hampshire at the minister’s command. He did not again sit for Okehampton, but for Penryn. It appears, from a very piteous letter of Rodney’s to West of the Admiralty, written in February, 1761, that Okehampton was wanted for a Mr. Wenman Coke who was to be elected “on the interest” of Mr. Thomas Pitt. Rodney asks West in anguish to tell him, “for God’s sake,” what he has done “to gain His Grace’s displeasure,” which is the harder to bear because he came in only to serve His Grace, and wishes to “continue on no other foundation.” West stood his friend, and the Admiral was sent down to contest Penryn, where Clive was spending his Indian booty in “making himself an interest.” Rodney, though his reputation was as yet small, not only in comparison with what it was destinedto be, but with that of several of his contemporaries, was a distinguished naval officer, and Cornwall liked naval officers. He could, moreover, pay part at least of his expenses. It may be, too, that the death of Admiral Boscawen in the January of this year opened the way for Rodney by removing the natural candidate of the important Falmouth family. However that may be, Rodney went down supported by the Boscawens and the Edgcumbes, and recommended by His Grace. The contest is the subject of a letter of his to his patron, which is so characteristic of the man and the time that I shall quote it bodily.
Penryn,March 25th, 1761.My Lord—I must beg leave to lay before Your Grace the present situation of affairs at this place, where I arrived on Sunday last, and hence in company with Lord Falmouth and Mr. Edgcumbe canvassed the town.We find at present but a small majority owing to the defection of several officers in the customs and salt office, both here and at Falmouth, as likewise two men belonging to the Pacquets, who are all obstinate in opposition, the Agents of the other party having had the presumption to read a letter as from Your Grace, which has deluded these people so much that Mr. West’s letter signifying Your Grace’s pleasure had not the least effect. I must therefore join with Lord Falmouth and Mr. Edgcumbe for the Dismission of one Charles Robbins, a Tydesman, etc., at Falmouth, which may have the desired effect on the other officers.I must now take the liberty to point out to Your Grace a measure which I am sure will infallibly secure the election, and which I most earnestly entreat may take place immediately, as it will convince the people in general (whose minds have been poisoned with different notions) that I have the honour to be nominated by Your Grace as candidate.Captain Peard of the Savage sloop of war, a Freeman of this Town, whose friends have great influence, has been offer’d by the adversaries a bond of one thousand pounds,and that they will procure him a Post Ship; he has resisted the temptation, and continues firm.If Your Grace will make it a Point that it may appear here before the election that Captain Peard has post, I am sure all difficulties will be removed. My ship, theMarlborough, has no captain appointed as yet.From Your Grace’s firm friendship to me I cannot doubt but you will grant me this further mark of your favours, as I shall always continue to be with the utmost gratitude and respect Your Graces most obedient and most humble Servant,G. B. Rodney.
Penryn,March 25th, 1761.
My Lord—I must beg leave to lay before Your Grace the present situation of affairs at this place, where I arrived on Sunday last, and hence in company with Lord Falmouth and Mr. Edgcumbe canvassed the town.
We find at present but a small majority owing to the defection of several officers in the customs and salt office, both here and at Falmouth, as likewise two men belonging to the Pacquets, who are all obstinate in opposition, the Agents of the other party having had the presumption to read a letter as from Your Grace, which has deluded these people so much that Mr. West’s letter signifying Your Grace’s pleasure had not the least effect. I must therefore join with Lord Falmouth and Mr. Edgcumbe for the Dismission of one Charles Robbins, a Tydesman, etc., at Falmouth, which may have the desired effect on the other officers.
I must now take the liberty to point out to Your Grace a measure which I am sure will infallibly secure the election, and which I most earnestly entreat may take place immediately, as it will convince the people in general (whose minds have been poisoned with different notions) that I have the honour to be nominated by Your Grace as candidate.
Captain Peard of the Savage sloop of war, a Freeman of this Town, whose friends have great influence, has been offer’d by the adversaries a bond of one thousand pounds,and that they will procure him a Post Ship; he has resisted the temptation, and continues firm.
If Your Grace will make it a Point that it may appear here before the election that Captain Peard has post, I am sure all difficulties will be removed. My ship, theMarlborough, has no captain appointed as yet.
From Your Grace’s firm friendship to me I cannot doubt but you will grant me this further mark of your favours, as I shall always continue to be with the utmost gratitude and respect Your Graces most obedient and most humble Servant,
G. B. Rodney.
Thus did they consult the voice of the people in 1761. Whether Charles Robbins was dismissed, and Captain Peard had post, I do not know, and it does not greatly matter. Probably they were respectively punished and preferred, for Rodney was duly elected and returned to Parliament once more as one of the trusty band of gentlemen who enabled the “noodle of Newcastle” first to impose himself on the great Pitt and then to trip up his heels.
It is to be wished that some more heroic tale had to be told of Rodney as a Parliament man, but even from a biographer a decent measure of respect for fact is required, and the honest truth is that Rodney was one of the “items” which made up the sum of political strength in the hand of His Grace of Newcastle. There was in his case no shadow of that comely pretence of a regard for the principles of a party which was exacted from the nominee to a pocket borough in the last years of the old system. He did not profess to take a seat in order to fight for his principles. He struggled for one in order to push his fortunes, and in order to get the seat he made himself the humble servant to commandof the silliest and basest of the politicians of the eighteenth century. Whatever amount of stain this may be supposed to inflict on his character must, it is to be feared, remain there.
On the other hand, there is something to be said about the extent and nature of that stain. A man is to be judged by the morality of his time, and beyond all doubt that morality permitted Rodney to do what he did. To attach yourself to the Duke of Newcastle or any other patron was not thought to be an act deserving praise, but it was permissible without too much loss of character. It was only one of the many compromises which are necessary in life. If his patron had been other than Newcastle, who could not be served except by those who were prepared to subordinate in things Parliamentary all principle and patriotism to the interest of their patron, there would to a humane judge be no stain on his character at all. As it was, he followed many others to do a thing made disgraceful by the character of his leader, and I greatly fear that he never woke up to the real nature of his course, but remained to the end of his life convinced that a gentleman might, without loss of character, profess himself the “man” of such a one as His Grace of Newcastle in order to earn place by that act of homage. Here, again, a consideration on the other side suggests itself. It is this, that Rodney’s conduct differed rather in certain superficial matters of form, than in kind, from that of gentlemen of mark in the political world of to-day. There are many who would now make to a caucus that promise of unconditional obedience which he made to Newcastle, and would never be called contemptuousnames for so doing except in the criticism of the other side, which is a matter of course, and, by the way, did not spare the led captains of the electioneering duke. Which of the two forms of slavery is the more ignoble is a question to be settled rather by the taste than the reason. There are who would think it more shameful to be horsewhipped by a gentleman single-handed than to be dragged through a horse-pond by a mob. To the fastidious either experience is unpleasant. For the rest it was true in 1761, as it had been before and has been since, that “The rising untoPlaceis laborious; and by Pains men come to greater Pains; and it is sometimes base; and by Indignities men come to Dignities.” A man, too, ranks rather by what he does with his dignity when it has been won, than by what he does to win it. Now, it cannot be denied that if Rodney stooped somewhat to pick up command, he exercised it for the good of his country and the confusion of her enemies.
His electioneering adventures have been allowed to slightly overlap his services at sea. Between his election for Okehampton and his return—as Clive’s fellow-member, by the way—for Penryn he did a good stroke of service in the Channel. The French were busy in 1759 in preparing a great invasion of England. Flat-bottomed boats, such as were afterwards to reappear on a much more imposing scale in the Napoleonic wars, were being built all along the Channel. A powerful fleet was getting ready at Brest, and a smaller force at Rochefort. On our side Sir Edward Hawke had been told off to watch Brest, and Commodore Duff to pen in the Rochefort squadron. Rodney, now Rear-Admiral of the Blue, wasdespatched with one sixty-gun ship, theAchilles, and half a score of fifty-gun ships, frigates, and sloops, aided by six-bomb ketches, to answer for the flat-bottomed boats in the Channel ports. The work was smartly and thoroughly done in the month of July. Some of the flat-bottomed boats which, under convoy of a galley, endeavoured to escape from the Seine, and creep along the coast to Brest, were cut off at Cape Bassin and driven on shore. Havre was bombarded with success, and numbers of flat-bottomed boats were destroyed, together with great quantities of the stores collected for the proposed invasion. The destruction can hardly have been complete, and was probably not even so extensive as the English supposed. It was enough, however, to deal the French a shrewd blow. When Rodney returned to port he had greatly relieved the fears of his countrymen, and had raised his own reputation considerably. Before the close of the year Hawke’s victory over Conflans near Quiberon had broken the back of any possible scheme of invasion as effectually as Trafalgar was to do half a century or so later. It is not without interest to note that during these operations Rodney had under his command Captain Samuel Hood of theVestalfrigate, who was to be his second in the battle off Dominica. When he wished to direct the inshore operations in shallower water than could be safely navigated by theAchilles, Rodney hoisted his flag in theVestal. The two men now began a friendship which, if it was not quite proof against the strain of rivalry in the future—in the heart of one if not of both—was never openly broken. Rodney must have learned the undoubted capacity of Hood.
The remainder of 1759, the whole of 1760, and theearly part of 1761 were passed either in watch and ward in the Channel, or in circumventing the “adversary” at Penryn. In the last-named year Rodney sailed with a considerable squadron as Admiral on the Barbadoes and Leeward station. Here he remained until the Peace of Fontainebleau in 1763. His services in these two years were divided between co-operating with General Moncton in the conquest of the French Caribbean Islands, and preparing the way for the great expedition of Pocock and Albemarle to the Havannah. Neither part of this service need be repeated here at any length. The French were in these wars so completely beaten from the sea that an English admiral engaged on such work as Rodney’s had little more to do than to superintend the transport of troops, to see them safely landed, and to organise naval brigades to co-operate with them when on shore. The work was thoroughly done. Navy and army helped one another in the proper way, and Martinique, which had repelled an attack in 1759, soon fell. Other islands followed, and the French were driven from all their possessions in the West Indies except Hayti. That they were able to use them against us in the American War which lay ahead was not the fault of the fighting men, naval or military. The islands were restored by the diplomatists as a set-off for Canada, which we retained, thereby removing that fear of French aggression which had hitherto been the main ingredient in the loyalty of the plantations to the mother-country.
During the conquest of the French islands Rodney regularly reported progress to his patron of Newcastle, and did it, too, with details which show that he hadmeasured His Grace’s foot to a hairbreadth. Writing for instance to Newcastle from Fort Royal Bay in Martinique to give the good news of the conquest, and point out how advantageous it will be for His Majesty’s service, he does not fail to insist how useful it may also be to Thomas Pelham. “I have likewise,” he says, “great satisfaction when I consider that the conquest puts it into Your Grace’s power to oblige many of your Friends by the Posts and Employments in Your Grace’s gift, and which are very lucrative in this Island, particularly those relative to the customs and Secretary of the Island. This I thought my duty to represent to Your Grace that you might not be deceived in their values, which are computed at four thousand pounds a year each. If I have the good fortune to continue in Your Grace’s esteem, and that my conduct in this expedition meets with Your Grace’s approbation, I shall be extremely happy, as among Your Grace’s many friends none is more truly so than him who has the honour to be with the most profound respect and gratitude, etc. etc.”
Rodney was not a man to do things by halves, whether it was fighting the French or cultivating his interest with the Duke of Newcastle. Also he was clearly a man of the eighteenth century when the need, not to say the imperative social duty, of obliging one’s friends was much borne in on governing persons. So, having beaten the French in a workmanlike style, he hastens to call His Grace’s attention to these two important facts—first, that there are places of dignity and emolument to give away, and second, that here is George Brydges Rodney, His Grace’s humble and grateful servant. Then he leaves him to perpend.
If Rodney cherished any hope of good things to be obtained by the help of Newcastle in the West Indies he was to be disappointed. In more ways than one his command in these wars was less good than he might reasonably have expected. A grant of land in one of the conquered islands turned out to be mere fairy gold. It had not been confirmed in time, and with the retrocession of our conquests any chance of making it good disappeared. Rodney had to complain, too, that General Moncton and the military gentlemen, particularly those of them who belonged to the North American plantations, had secured an undue share of the prize-money. He accused them of underhand dealings with the enemy, and not without good grounds. Owing to these dubious transactions of theirs, the naval officers, he complained, did not get their fair share. All this business of prize-money, and the division of it, plays a very important part in the history of the navy for as long as there were wars in which booty was to be earned. The desire to obtain it was a great motive with both officers and men. Lord Dundonald has left it on record that a captain who had a reputation for luck never had any difficulty in finding volunteers to man his ship, even when the most severe use had to be made of the press to complete the complement of other ships. In so far the acts for the encouragement of seamen, which recognised and satisfied this natural human love of occasional lumps of extra money, served the purpose for which they were designed. But their influence was by no means wholly for good. Our fathers were much of Cassio’s mind. They took it for granted that the lieutenant was to be enriched before the fore-mast hand, thecaptain before the lieutenant, and the admiral before the captain. When the man got a few pounds, just enough to keep him drunk for a fortnight, the lieutenant gained a few score, the captain a few hundreds, the admiral gained thousands, for he shared in all the prizes taken on his station, whether he had been present at the capture or not. It is therefore easy to see what an important matter prize-money was to a flag-officer. To get a rich station, and to keep it free from the intrusion of a superior, was the ideal of luck. Unless an admiral was a very magnanimous man indeed, or the pressure of the time was so great as to silence the voice of interest, he was sorely tempted to allow the cause of his pocket to interfere with public service. He was certain to be very angry if a brother-admiral of senior rank turned up to share the booty, and never failed to take advantage of every technical excuse which could be found for disputing the claims of a colleague. How intensely these old heroes resented the diminution of their “loot,” with what honest natural rancour they would fight over it, let a long series of quarrels and lawsuits, conducted with all the pertinacity of Dandie Dinmont, say. In the heart of such as fight on blue water there has always lingered a something of the pirate—they have a smack, they do somewhat grow to, as we shall see when this story has gone a little farther.
The meaning of this same word prize-money must be kept in mind in order to appreciate the full bitterness of the disappointment which fell upon Rodney in 1762. Spain had openly avowed the Family Compact, and had joined her fortunes with France. The avowal would have been made sooner if Charles the Third had notwaited till the treasure-ships were home from America. By not allowing Pitt to force on a war in time, we gave the Spaniard a chance, which he lost by declaring war himself when France was too broken to afford him any help. At once the news was forwarded to Rodney from Europe, and better he could not have wished for. A war with Spain, as Nelson said, was a rich war; and for nobody was it more lucrative than for the officers in command in the West Indies. They had Cuba and the Spanish main under the lee. There was nothing to be done but to run down before the unfailing Easterly Trades, and there lay the Spanish colonies from which the strong man armed had but to ask with spirit, and to have. Another not unpleasant service was to cruise to windward of the passages through the Caribbean Islands, and there snap up the register ships as they passed. When, then, the news of the Spanish War reached Rodney, he set to work with all the energy of a commander for whom pleasure and duty were combined in an eminent degree. The French were so completely subdued that the English squadron could safely be spared from the Leeward Islands. Rodney decided to strengthen the Jamaica station, which was distinct from his own; and not only so, but to go there himself in order to assist in the defence of the island, in case a combined attack was made on it by the Spaniards and the French, who had recently contrived to smuggle a few ships through the Caribbean Islands to Hayti. In a despatch to the Admiralty he expressed the hope that their lordships would approve of his decision to take this course without waiting for orders. Having wound up his formal duties on the Leeward station, Rodney prepared to rundown to Jamaica, and no doubt every man on board his flagship was looking forward to a slap at the Spaniards and a share of the booty with a natural, and withal honourable, feeling of satisfaction. But at the very last moment there came upon all these tender leaves of hope a frost—a killing frost. On March 26th Captain Elphinstone of theRichmondfrigate turned up with orders from home. By the despatches brought him Rodney learnt that a great expedition was preparing in England for an attack on Havannah. It was to be commanded by Sir George Pocock. As for him, he was to remain on his station in order that he might render all possible assistance to the expedition as it passed. Rodney obeyed orders punctually. Ten sail of his squadron were sent to Jamaica, and he remained at Antigua collecting stores, water, and information for the use of Sir George Pocock. After delays which might have proved fatal, the great expedition arrived. It was carried by Pocock through the dangerous and then little-known Bahama Channel—a feat which was quoted as a masterpiece of seamanship—and after desperate fighting did take Havannah. The loss of the expedition by disease was heavy; but Pocock and Albemarle, the admiral and general in command, made a handsome fortune each out of the prize-money. Rodney’s share in the enterprise was to see his squadron depleted to strengthen Pocock; to have a great deal of work thrown on him; to be left behind at Antigua with the mere carcass of his command, and nothing but routine to attend to; to be, moreover, prostrated by a smart attack of bilious fever. Pocock had taken his best ships and officers, but had left him behind, having no desire thatanother flag-officer should come with him to divide the expected plunder.
On this, as on all other occasions, Rodney obeyed orders exactly, and without futile complaint. He was too able—too much a man of the world—to suppose that he could gain anything by showing himself unmanageable; too honourable a man to revenge a private disappointment by neglecting the service; and, above all, too proud a man to make an outcry where he had no quotable grievance. None the less he was disappointed, and did not scruple to say so when a fitting occasion presented itself. He did not do so now because there really was no ground for protest. It was a matter of course that a great expedition should be commanded by an officer of proportionate rank. Pocock was his senior both in rank and length of service. He had lately commanded with fair success in three battles in the East Indies against a superior French force. Rodney could not complain when such a man—whose reputation was then higher than his own—was put over his head. It was for Pocock and the Ministry to decide whether the expedition to Havannah required the presence of the Admiral on the Leeward station. They did not think it did, and so Rodney had to remain at his unremunerative command. Still, to Rodney, who neither was nor pretended to be indifferent to money, it was a disappointment to lose so splendid a chance. Some years afterwards he made it an excuse for a claim to be allowed to retain the governorship of Greenwich Hospital along with an active command at sea. He then plainly told Sandwich that he thought the Government owed him this, which had been granted in the noontide of jobberyto former admirals, as a compensation for what he had lost in the West Indies in 1762. If this did not sound heroic, it was honest and human. Moreover, it was only what was to be expected. If a government holds out the chance of earning money as an incentive to its officers and men, it must expect that its officers and men will think of money. Rodney did not cant on the subject. He liked money and wished to earn it as easily as possible. His code of honour consisted of two articles. The first was that he was to do his duty; the second was that he was entitled to all the places, pensions, allowances, prize-money, and praise which law, or public opinion, or the customs of society entitled him to get, down to the last farthing. Whoever stood in his way must take the risk of whatever George Brydges Rodney could do to break his neck—always in the way of fair fighting. It was not the code of a saint, or of an unselfish hero; but it was a good working code of honour for a plain man of the world.
In1763 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 man of business. During these years of quiet he rose steadily in rank. In 1762 he became Vice-Admiral of the Blue, in 1771 Vice-Admiral of the White, and in the following year of the Red. This division of the navy into the Blue, White, and Red Squadrons, which has now been entirely given up, was purely formal in Rodney’s own time. It had been invented in the seventeenth century when fleets of eighty or a hundred ships of all sorts and sizes were collected in the North Sea to fight the Dutch. A sub-division had to be made if they were to be handled at all. They were split into three squadrons, which were distinguished by the colour of their ensigns—the blue, now used only byyachts or naval reserve ships; the red, now used by merchant ships; and the white, the red cross of St. George, which was at all times emphatically known as the English ensign, and is now the flag of the navy. The highest in dignity, though we have named it second here, was the red—the royal colour. Until late in the reign of George the Third, not long before the division was given up altogether, there was no Admiral of the Red Squadron, but only Vice and Rear. Admiral of the White was the highest rank an officer looked to reach. The classification was kept up in theory, because it was supposed to answer to the natural division of all forces into van, centre, and rear, though in practice it was not much attended to. Among the admirals a man’s colour simply marked his seniority. It may not be thought out of place to name the successive steps in order. They were—