The Project Gutenberg eBook ofRodney

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofRodneyThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: RodneyAuthor: David HannayRelease date: May 24, 2016 [eBook #52155]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images available at The Internet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RODNEY ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: RodneyAuthor: David HannayRelease date: May 24, 2016 [eBook #52155]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images available at The Internet Archive)

Title: Rodney

Author: David Hannay

Release date: May 24, 2016 [eBook #52155]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images available at The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RODNEY ***

English Men of Action

R O D N E Y

[Image unavailable: colophon]

[Image unavailable: portrait of RODNEY.]RODNEY

BYDAVID HANNAYLondonMACMILLAN AND CO.and New York1891All 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 house was summed up by Sir Edward Rodeney, the last of them who held the family estate, in words which I do not presume to think I can better, and shall therefore quote.

Their faults whatsoever are not written in great letters, or become the subject of common fame, or the courts of justice; but as they lived without scandal, so they died without shame, going out of the world by the ordinary gate of sickness, and never by the hand of violence, some few excepted of ancient times, that died in the wars, and the late unfortunate gentleman, Sir George Rodeney, who fell by his own sword; and although civil dissentions, in the Barons Wars, didengage men in one side or the other, yet they for any I can find lived in a calm amidst these tempests, and were not entangled in the quarrels of the times. The reason of it may be that having a firm estate of their own, and able to subsist of themselves, they kept independent, living within their own orb, and mastering those affections of envy and ambition which commonly do but raise men for a greater fall. They had been always, from the time we first discover them, of the middle rank of subjects which is the most safe place—“Cives medii salvi sunt maxime,” few or none of better estate, under the degree of Lords until the great flood of Church lands (whereof they possessed not one foot) improved many men’s fortunes to a great height; nay, which is strange, from Sir Richard Rodeney, who was borne under Henry the Third, to Sir George Rodeney in 42 of Elizabeth, the space of above four hundred years, they stood likeMare Mortuumand neither ebbed nor flowed in their fortunes; they were so provident not to lessen; but neither by marriages, which is the ordinary step of augmentation, nor by any other means did they make any addition, insomuch that at this day I give the coat single which my ancestors gave without quartering any other.

Here, adorned with the brocaded elegance proper to the time of the writer, is a summing up of the history of a solid English country family. Stoke Rodney lay out of the track of the great storms of English history, and its position helped the family to stand likeMare Mortuumfor four hundred years. Still, a house which could live through all that happened in England between Henry the Third and Elizabeth without loss or gain, must have been of an equable temperament, free from great vices, follies, or qualities. The last stage was less peaceful, for Sir Edward Rodeney has to record money troubles and family disputes. He was himself a more stirring man than his ancestors had been. In his youth he fled abroad with Sir Edward Seymour, the husbandof Arabella Stuart, afterwards Marquis of Hertford. His exile, however, was short. He returned, was married, not, as he complacently records, without splendour of ceremonial, to Mistress Frances Southwell, “a lady of Queen Anna’s private chamber,” in 1614, and spent the remainder of his life as a country gentleman in the west. In 1626 he was a deputy-lieutenant, and felt himself called upon to explain in his place in Parliament the excesses of the pressed men who were drawn into the west by Buckingham’s unlucky expeditions, and were treated as to pay and provend with that little care which Captain Dugald Dalgetty told the Marquis of Montrose might, according to custom, be bestowed on the common soldier. Sir Edward was a strong Royalist, and lived long enough to suffer for his royalism. Although he was otherwise a man much of the same kidney, he did not share the Baron of Bradwardine’s opinions as to the duty of keeping a family estate in the male line. His only son died before him, and he allowed Stoke Rodney to pass to his daughters. One of these ladies married into the family of Brydges of Kainsham, and thereby supplied a cousin of hers with a useful connection.

Sir Edward could have found male heirs had he so chosen, for he had three brothers: Henry, who was drowned on the coast of Africa; William, who does not concern us; and George. From this George came Anthony (the first of the family who spelt his name Rodney), Lieutenant-Colonel of Leigh’s regiment of horse, who served under Peterborough in Spain, and Henry. This Henry was the father of the Admiral. Having begun as a cornet of horse, he left the army and then was appointed, by the interest of his connection theDuke of Chandos, the representative of the Brydges of Kainsham, to a post in the Royal Yacht of George the First. Henry Rodney had a family of five children by his wife, Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Newton, “Envoy-Extraordinary to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and afterwards Judge of the Admiralty, etc. etc.” He naturally profited by his position for the good of his family. The King stood godfather to the second son, together with the Duke of Chandos, and the boy was christened George Brydges. It was for this reason, according to Major-General Mundy, the Admiral’s son-in-law and the editor of his correspondence, that the Christian name of George, which had been common in the Rodney family, was given to the boy who was to live to break the French line on August 12th, 1782.

This is the family account of the Admiral’s descent, and there is no reason to doubt its substantial accuracy. Sir Egerton Brydges, than whom no one was better entitled to insist on the delusions to which men are subject when their pedigrees are in question, does indeed utter a word of warning in his edition of Collins’ Peerage. He remarks with perfect truth that “the slender notice taken of such branches [as this younger branch of the Rodneys to wit] in the Heralds’ Visitations, the long disuse of those visitations, together with the general confusion in which this kingdom was involved by the Civil War between King Charles and the Parliament, and the great destruction of family deeds and evidences which it occasioned, must render it extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, for not only his lordship, but also most of the descendants from younger sons of the best families of the kingdom to join themselves to their oldfamily stock.” These are words of wisdom, and it is just possible that the Admiral did not really descend from the Rodneys of Rodney Stoke. Still there is good evidence to show that the claim was well founded. It was recognised by the Duke of Chandos when the Admiral had become famous, which is something; and, what is much more, it was allowed in his youth by George Brydges of Avington and Kainsham—a representative of the house into which Sir Edward Rodeney’s daughter had married. Sir Egerton Brydges has himself recorded that young Rodney “was brought up and spent part of his early youth under the patronage of George Brydges of Avington and Kainsham, which confirms the presumption of his descent.” We may therefore take it as reasonably well proved that the Count de Grasse, who by the way dated from the tenth century, was defeated and taken off Dominica by a gentleman of descent not greatly inferior to his own. It is just possible that the Admiral’s Christian names were given in compliment to the kinsman who patronised his early youth. Henry Rodney was at least fortunate in that he was able to so name his son as to give him a species of claim on his King, on one whom his King delighted to honour, and on a relation whose interest was well worth having. The boy started in life in the position of a gentleman with excellent connections.

Rodney was in all probability one of the many famous men who belong by birth to London. He was baptized on February 13th, 1718, at St. George’s-in-the-Fields, and it may be considered as certain that he was born in the January of the same year. His schooling, which cannot have been prolonged, was received atHarrow—then a grammar school of no especial fame. At the age of twelve he went to sea as a King’s-letter boy, being the last of those who entered the navy in that way.

The term King’s-letter boy requires some little explanation. Nothing distinguished our ancestors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from their descendants of to-day more completely than their indifference to formal regularity in the organisation of the public services, and their tolerance of anomalies. As for organisation, they were satisfied with as little of it as would serve the turn, and they endured anomalies with serene indifference as long as they were not intolerable in their practical results. They were not much addicted to giving their idea of an organisation, and when they did were inspired by the faith that if only the right men were got to fill places the good work would follow. The getting of good men, they held, was only possible by the strenuous application of patriotism, zeal for the King’s service, and intelligence on the part of those who had to select. Therefore they were content to allow a great freedom of choice to those in authority. The navy itself, though its efficiency was a matter of life and death to the nation, was contentedly left in a condition which on all modern principles should have had disastrous results. There was a central corps of commissioned officers—lieutenants, captains, and admirals. These men formed the permanent staff of the navy. Whether on active service or not, they were on the list, and drew pay. All others who were employed, warrant officers, petty officers, and men, were shipped as in the merchant service for the voyage.Their connection with the navy was limited to the ship on which they served, and terminated with the commission. Until some years after Rodney entered the navy the loss of a ship by wreck was held to terminate the engagement of all the crew. Their pay ceased, and with the pay their obligation to obey orders. It was not until it was found impossible to punish the men who so cruelly deserted Captain Cheape after the wreck of theWageron Anson’s voyage that the modern practice was introduced of holding that the commission of the ship lasts till she has been formally paid off, and with it the liability of all hands to punishment by court-martial. Hence the apparent absurdity by which a captain may be dismissed from a vessel which has been at the bottom of the sea for months. If she were not regularly paid off, captain, officers, and men would continue to belong to her, and to draw their full pay so long as they lived. At all times, no doubt, there were warrant officers and seamen who served for life, and the dockyards had a permanent staff. None the less it was wholly the theory, and very much the practice, that when a ship was paid off, all who had been on board her except her captain and lieutenants ceased to be officially connected with the navy. So long as squadrons had to be fitted out it was convenient for the Admiralty to have warrant officers and seamen under its hand. So those who chose to engage again were commonly taken on; but there was no obligation to take them, nor were they bound to serve, unless they were pressed again.

From out of this body were chosen the lieutenants, and here the indifference of our ancestors to finish of organisation was very strongly shown. There were a numberof regulations as to what qualified a man for a commission, but in practice the rule was that any one who had served a term of years at sea, of which some were in a king’s ship, who could hand, reef, and steer, could navigate a little and keep a log, who could find a friend to put in a word for him in the right quarter, was competent to receive a commission. If the friend could not be found then he might go on in the navy for life without ever, in Nelson’s phrase, getting his foot on the ladder. He might remain a midshipman, who was, and is, a warrant officer, till his death. Moreover, if he could not get a ship when his last had been paid off, the Admiralty did not recognise him. Men could be made lieutenants from before the mast, and there are cases of such promotions. A captain, as all readers of Marryat’sKing’s Ownwill remember, could put boys on the quarter-deck. If at a later period he had the interest, he could obtain a commission for his client. There is a romantic story told about that Admiral Campbell who was Hawke’s flag-captain at Quiberon, which, as it illustrates the navy of Rodney’s time, may be told here. Campbell was the son of a Scotch minister, and was apprenticed to the skipper of a small trading craft in the west of Scotland. The vessel was overhauled by a king’s ship with a press warrant. The navy captain selected those of her crew who seemed best worth pressing. Among them was a newly-married man, who, overcome at the prospect of indefinite separation from his young wife, began to cry. Campbell knew that as an apprentice he was exempt from the press, but he knew also that the King’s service went over everything. If he chose to volunteer he could thereby break his indentures. Being a boy of atender heart and a high spirit he resolved to save the husband if he could. He therefore went up to the naval officer and offered a bargain. He presented himself as a substitute for the sailor. The officer very sensibly took the offer, saying that he thought a spirited lad a good exchange for a blubbering man. Campbell made up his kit, and went to serve King George as powder monkey. But his spirit had pleased the naval captain, and after a time this gentleman put him on the quarter-deck, introduced him to good friends, who helped him to share in Anson’s famous voyage, and so to win his commission as lieutenant. Once on the ladder, Campbell rose by force of native faculty, and his power of making people believe in him. He lived to be at Hawke’s right hand at Quiberon, to become the friend of Keppel, and he died an admiral. Even if this story has been somewhat embellished, it shows what was thought possible in Rodney’s time, and illustrates what may fairly be called the elasticity of our old naval practice. No man could be a lieutenant who had not served the King; but he who had, whether it was as foremast-hand, master’s mate, midshipman, or captain’s servant (for young gentlemen were put on the quarter-deck under that title), and could be said to be competent, could in the old naval phrase “be made,” if he could induce an admiral in command of a squadron who had a vacancy, or the Admiralty at home, to make him.

This laxity, as it would be called now, had its bad side, no doubt. Mean men in mean times took advantage of it, and permitted themselves a good deal of favouritism and jobbery. But it had its good side too. A captain might pay his tailor’s bill by putting his tailor’s son on thequarter-deck; but he was much more likely to put his own son or nephew, or the son of an old comrade, there. In any case his own honour was concerned in the fitness of the lad whom he thus marked out as candidate for a lieutenant’s commission. An admiral might give his own incompetent offspring a commission or a ship. Marryat has preserved a wild legend about an admiral who did so, and then, when the youth made a fool of himself, inflicted paternal chastisement on him in the after cabin of the flag-ship—perhaps with a piece of inch-and-a-half with a Turk’s head on it. As a matter of sober fact, an admiral who knew how much his own honour and even safety depended on the fitness of his officers had every motive to select them well—when he had a chance to select them at all. At any rate the system, or no system, which allowed the rapid rise of Anson and Hawke, Saunders and Pocock, Rodney, the Hoods, Howe, Collingwood, and Nelson, can dare to be judged by its fruits. Could the most uniform organisation, the most careful avoidance of favouritism and jobbery, have done better for us?

Our fathers were at ease in their minds on the subject, for about 1730 they—and here we come back to the King’s-letter boy—saw the abolition of the only approach to an organisation by which a regular corps of candidates for a lieutenant’s commission had till then been provided; and they saw it with indifference. During the Restoration, and in the early part of the eighteenth century, it had been the custom to send a certain number of boys on board ship with a King’s “Letter of Service.” These lads were considered to have a better right to be made lieutenants than others. They answered, in fact,to the modern cadet. It does not seem that they were held to be entitled to a commission, but they were more likely to get it than another. As a Letter of Service would not be given except to those who had some interest, they probably did get their commissions as a rule. In this way some regular provision was made for the supply of a corps of officers. About 1730, however, the elder Byng, he who won the battle off Cape Passaro, being then a commissioner at the Admiralty, decided to abolish the King’s Letter, and to establish a naval school at Portsmouth in which boys might be trained for the sea service. This sounds very modern, but Byng carried out his reform in the genuine spirit of the eighteenth century. He did not declare that only those should become lieutenants who had passed through the naval school, and he did leave the expense of supporting the boys who went to study there wholly to their families. It was therefore not the interest of a parent who could get his boy sent straight on board ship to send him to the naval school. So, though the place went on it was much neglected, and many of the most famous naval officers who entered the service after it had been established had never belonged to it. Rodney was, it has been said already, the last of those who entered the navy in the old way.

When he first went to sea we were in the middle of the long peace maintained by Walpole. A considerable naval force was kept up, for though Sir Robert would not use the fleet, he never allowed foreigners to forget it was there to be used in case of need. Little notice was taken of midshipmen in those days—so little, in fact, that it is often impossible to tellwhen an officer first went to sea. The actual date of the entry into the service of so famous a man as Lord Hawke was long unknown. According to General Mundy, Rodney’s first captain was Medley, afterwards an admiral, and he passed most of his early years of service on the Newfoundland station. He became an officer when he was “made” by Haddock in the Mediterranean on February 15th, 1739. It would seem, therefore, that Rodney’s interest was not strong enough to get him a commission till after an apprenticeship of nine years, or nearly thrice the period required by the rules of the service. In this respect he was far less lucky than his contemporary Howe, who was in command of a ship before he was twenty.

In 1739 the long peace was at an end, and England had entered on the three-quarters of a century of fighting, relieved by uneasy truces, which were to leave her the uncontested mistress of the seas. The war which began about Jenkins’ Ear and developed into the Austrian Succession had just broken out. A fleet was sent into the Mediterranean under Nicholas Haddock, member of an Essex family which had been distinguished in the navy from the Commonwealth time. Haddock’s duty was to look after any Spanish squadron which might put to sea, to support our garrison at Minorca, to take prizes, and to ravage the coast. The work was well done, but it afforded few opportunities of distinction. Spain was too weak to meet us openly, and the English fleet was mostly engaged in blockading Don José Navarro at Cadiz, and in endeavouring to keep the Straits of Gibraltar free from privateers. Towards the close of 1741 the Spaniards succeeded in slipping to sea whileHaddock was at Gibraltar, and in covering the despatch of Spanish troops from Barcelona to Northern Italy, where they were to operate against the Austrians for the purpose of putting the Milanese into the possession of the Infante Don Felipe. The escape of Don José and the passage of the Spaniards was a famous incident of the times, and the cause of much clamour; but it has no connection with the life of Rodney, and may be left alone here. It was almost a matter of course that the retreat of Haddock should be put down to the profound cunning which, to the unending joy of all Englishmen of humour, is attributed to us by the sagacious foreigner. We went away to gain our private ends. The true explanation was simpler. Ships grew rapidly foul in the time before the value of copper-sheeting had been discovered. Haddock’s vessels wanted scraping, and, moreover, had been knocked about by the autumn storms; so he retired to Gibraltar to refit. While he was there Navarro slipped out and ran through the Gut. As soon as the squadron was ready for sea Haddock followed. When he came up with the Spaniards he found them in company with a French squadron under M. de Court. The French Admiral informed him that the Italian enterprise was undertaken in alliance with his master, and that no attack on the Spaniards could be permitted. England and France were still nominally at peace, though they were actively opposed to one another in the character of allies to Austria or Prussia. The position was an extraordinary one, and Haddock very pardonably shrank from the responsibility of attacking the allies. He retired to Minorca and waited for orders.

For a period of more than a year after this the English, French, and Spaniards remained in a state of war which was no war, and peace which was not peace. The allies lay at Toulon quarrelling and fighting duels. The English watched them from Minorca or Hyères Bay. The French would not allow us to attack the Spanish squadron, but they left us at full liberty to obtain water and provisions in their territory. They even went so far as to tolerate the destruction of five Spanish galleys by our fire-ships in St. Tropez Bay, but they were notoriously preparing to fight us a little later on. Altogether, the diplomatic and military situation was one to which it would be hard to find a parallel. In this, as in the previous stage of the naval war, few opportunities for real service were afforded, and, such as they were, none of them came in Rodney’s way.

Early in 1742 Haddock’s health broke down and he returned to England. After a brief period, during which Rear-Admiral Lestock held the command, Admiral Mathews arrived from England with reinforcements to take it over. The change did no harm to Rodney, who was appointed by the new commander to thePlymouth, sixty-four, on a vacancy made by the transfer of Captain Watson to theDragon. Immediately afterwards he was sent home with a convoy, and so escaped having to bear a part in the most inglorious passage in the history of the English navy—the battle of February 11th, 1744, off Toulon, and the long series of scandalous court-martials which arose out of it. We have happily no concern with the miserable Mathews and Lestock quarrel except to note that as the Admiral was afterwards dismissed the service for bearing downon the enemy out of his line of battle, it served to harden that hide-bound system of tactics which made naval engagements so utterly indecisive till Rodney himself broke through it thirty-eight years later in the West Indies. The acting rank as post-captain conferred by the command of thePlymouthwas confirmed on his arrival in England, and he was now firmly established on the ladder. A man rose from lieutenant to captain by selection, from captain to admiral by seniority, and if post-rank did not come too late, was tolerably sure of reaching flag-rank. Whether he would ever actually hoist his flag at sea would still depend on luck and merit. Rodney had passed from the great class below lieutenant which had no rights, and from the rank of lieutenant which was the highest reached by many men, not so rapidly as some of his contemporaries, but still speedily. At five-and-twenty years of age, and with twelve years of service, he stood on his own quarter-deck with the best of prospects that he might one day command a fleet.

Although these years of apprenticeship contain no incident of interest in Rodney’s career, they—and particularly the last three of them—must have been of vital importance to him. They had taught him his business as a matter of course, and had hardened him to the sea life. How hard it was we know fromRoderick Random. There is a certain amount of deliberate exaggeration for purposes of literary effect in Smollett’s great book, but its essential truth is beyond dispute. A ship is never for those who have to work her, or fight her, a luxurious dwelling-place, but in the early eighteenth century the interval between what would becounted decent comfort on shore and the utmost attainable comfort at sea was indeed great. Ships were small, and crowded with men and guns. The between-decks were low, ill ventilated, and abounding in stenches. Officers of all ranks slept in hammocks, and captains who were anxious for the efficiency of their ships would not tolerate standing cabins. It may be asserted with confidence that the officers of His Majesty’s ships were worse lodged, about 1740, than the crew of a sailing merchant-vessel of to-day. A man had to be made of tough stuff to stand it all. When Rodney was captain of theEaglehe took his brother to sea with him. One cruise was enough for James Rodney, and he went ashore for good on his return to port. Even those who were made of sterner fibre could not endure the hardships of the life. They broke down with gout, rheumatism, and diseases of the nature of scurvy, brought on by exposure, bad air, and bad food. Habitual indulgence in fiery liquors had something to do with the prevalence of gout and stone among naval men, but the fiery liquors were not only the fashion of the time, they were also the natural refuge of men whose nerves were affected by stinks and whose palates were exasperated by salt food. In the matter of liquor, Rodney probably went with the multitude around him to do evil, taking his share of whatever bumbo or hypsy (dreadful compounds of rum or brandy and wine, all young and all fiery, disguised in spices) was going on board or ashore. At least he never shrank from more fashionable dissipations in later times, and probably did not care to be singular in earlier days. When he was famous there were old men who boastedthat they had shared in the carouses of his youth. Then, too, he had tell-tale sufferings in later years from the gout, the prevailing disease of that hard-drinking generation.

All this, however, was the life of his time and his service which he shared with other men. To him, who was born to be a great commander, the spectacle afforded by the fleet during his three years’ service must indeed have been especially instructive. It must have taught him what a squadron ought not to be, and how it ought not to be managed. The navy of that time was the navy of Hawser Trunnion, Esquire. Now one may have a real affection for Hawser Trunnion personally, and yet be compelled to acknowledge that the generation of officers of which he is the type fought less well than English naval men have done before or since. It was not that they were not brave, for they often were; nor yet that they were not seamen, for that also they were; but there was far too often something which they preferred to the discharge of their duty. It was often party politics, for they were very Whig and very Tory. Too many of them were members of Parliament, and owed their commands to their seats. In that case they carried on the party battle with one another in presence of the enemy. Perhaps they did not actually betray one another, but they believed one another to be capable of treason. The Tory officer saw the Whig in a mess with a certain complacency, and the Whig was pleased when baffling winds gave him an excuse for not coming to the help of the Tory. As an inevitable consequence their fighting was apt to be slack, and their recriminations furious. Personal quarrels were carried to a pitch of rancour not to be rivalled out of acloister. Mathews was brutally insolent to Lestock, and Lestock hated Mathews with the concentrated fury of Mr. Browning’s Spanish Monk. When one turns over the pamphlets they wrote against one another, the picture of Commodore Trunnion as he listened to the report that Admiral Bower was to be made a British peer, rises at once. The mug, we remember, fell from his hand, and shivered into a thousand fragments; his eye glistened like that of a rattlesnake. Even so may Lestock have behaved when he heard that his enemy Mathews was coming to command him. His pamphlets were certainly written with the venom of a rattlesnake. Many years later, when Rodney was himself a peer, and at the head of the profession, he deliberately recorded on the margin of a copy of Clerk’sTacticshis belief that Lestock had betrayed his superior officer. The judgment was too harsh, but it shows what an impression the factions in the fleet had made on Rodney’s mind. When he was afterwards in command he showed a distinct readiness to believe that some of his subordinates were capable of the same conduct, and he resented their conduct fiercely. It is premature to discuss his justice on this occasion, but, no doubt, the memory of what he had seen in the Mediterranean was very present with him in those days, exasperating his suspicions and animating him to stamp the bad spirit out.

Onhis arrival in England Rodney’s post-rank was confirmed, and he was appointed to theSheerness. She was a much smaller ship than thePlymouth, 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 certainly did not want. If his own words, written many years later, are to be understood in their literal sense, it was the best a man could then have—the interest of the Pelhams. In 1756 Rodney declared in a letter to the famous electioneering Duke of Newcastle, the “noodle” who would allow nobody to govern England without him, that he owed all his preferment in the navy to His Grace. This statement was, however, made in a private note, at a time when the writer was in lively expectation of future electoral favours, and need not be taken as rigidly accurate. It is at all events certain that Rodney did not want for friends at Court, for he was in command of sea-going ships, mostlyon home stations, for the next ten years without a break. A man may use interest in two ways. He can either get comfortable billets on shore, or can avail himself of it to be put in the way of seeing service, and must be judged by the use he makes of a good thing.

On the whole the use Rodney made of it was honourable. It is true that he did not go to the East Indies, or to the Mediterranean, then the scene of mere dull cruising, and not the model station as it became in the Napoleonic wars. Neither did he go to the West Indies, which he was to make the “station for honour” in future years. He stayed steadily at home in the Channel doing such service as the nature of the war he was engaged in permitted. This, it must be acknowledged, was for the most part not brilliant. The war of Jenkins’ Ear, or of the Austrian Succession, was the dullest we ever fought. At sea it was first and foremost a privateer war. The navy was poorer in spirit than it ever had or has been. Failures and courts-martial were numerous, and the decisions of some of these last were so scandalous that Parliament was driven into passing the drastic act which left the officers who tried Byng no alternative but to condemn him to death for want of spirit. Part of our sins was the fault of our enemies. They were never strong or spirited enough to make us stretch ourselves. The Spaniard would never fight unless his back was against a wall, and then to be sure, as we found at Carthagena, he could make a desperate stand. Now and then a Spanish liner would bear a tremendous amount of hammering before she struck—witness the Glorioso, which kept a whole swarm of our warships and privateers at work for days before they got her. Buttheir fleets were contemptible. Their courage and efficiency were of the passive kind. The French fleet was at its lowest in strength if not in courage. Cardinal Fleury had persistently neglected it, and France herself had hardly begun to recover from the terrible exhaustion caused by the wars of Louis the Fourteenth. Neither Spaniards nor Frenchmen could put our fleets on their mettle, and so the natural tendency of a dull time was unchecked.

From 1743 to 1747 Rodney was engaged on mainly routine duties in the successive ships which he commanded—theSheernessof twenty guns, theLudlow Castleof forty, theCenturionof fifty, and theEagleof sixty. He patrolled the North Sea in search of privateers, he protected convoys, he took soldiers to and from the Low Countries. In theLudlow Castlehe took a large privateer from St. Malo. In theCenturionhe helped to patrol the coast of Scotland during the Forty-Five on the look-out for adventurers who might bring help to the Jacobites. When bringing theCenturionback from this service he had the ill-luck to run on the Whiting Sand off Orfordness, and lose thirty feet of his false keel and his rudder. The pilot was held very properly, no doubt, to be responsible, and Rodney passed without loss of credit to the command of theEagle. The four years were useful to Rodney, no doubt; they gave him experience in the handling of a ship, and they showed his patrons that he was worth patronising. More need not, and indeed cannot, be said about them.

In 1747 the lazy naval war flamed up for a moment—just before it was ended by the uneasy truce called the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. France made a resoluteeffort both to help its forces in the East Indies, and to protect the return of its convoys from the West. England pulled herself together, and decided to defeat this intention. Early in spring two squadrons were despatched—a strong one under Anson, to look for the French on their way to the East Indies, and a small one under Commodore Fox, to look for the home-coming French West India convoy. Both were successful. Fortune, which was never tired of rewarding Anson for so magnificently supporting the honour of the English flag in the bad times when Vernon was failing at Carthagena and Mathews was wrangling with Lestock in the Mediterranean, threw the East India convoy in his way. He captured ten of them—thereby earning his peerage and a second sackful of prize-money. Rodney served in the subordinate squadron under Fox. His ship theEaglewas one of the six which this commodore had under him. To them also fortune was kind. In June, about a month after Anson’s victory, the English squadron fell in, off Cape Ortugal, with the West India convoy of one hundred and seventy sail of merchant ships, under the guard of four war-ships. Men-of-war and merchant ships scattered at the sight of them. The King’s ships got off, but Fox’s squadron had a day of easy and lucrative work in snapping up the merchant runaways, whereof they took forty-eight of 16,051 tons in all. As they were laden with West Indian produce, the day’s work must have been better than a year’s pay to at least every captain in the squadron.

Here Rodney had seen how a convoy ought not to be protected. It was the clear duty of the four French captains to fight so long as fighting was possible, to coverthe escape of the unarmed ships. Before the year was out he had an opportunity of seeing how that duty could be fulfilled in the most noble manner. During the summer the French were collecting in the Basque Roads a great convoy of outward-bound merchant ships. The English Government resolved to intercept this also, and in the autumn Lord Anson, who was at the head of the Admiralty, selected the best officer he could have found in the navy to replace himself. A squadron of fourteen sail, with theEagleamong them, was collected at Plymouth, and placed under the command of Rear-Admiral Edward Hawke. In August Admiral Hawke sailed with orders to attack the convoy in the roadstead; but when he was on Lord Anson’s cruising ground, off Finisterre, he came at daybreak on August 14th upon the French at sea under the protection of nine ships of war. There was on the English side a superiority of five ships and more than two hundred guns, but the French commander, Desherbiers de l’Etenduère, decided to make a fight. He had approached the English under the impression that they were a portion of his own convoy, which had parted in the night. So soon as he saw his mistake he did his best to correct it. The convoy was sent off under the care of theContent, sixty-four. Then, having weakened himself for the sake of his charge, M. de l’Etenduère made ready to sacrifice himself for it also. He formed his remaining eight ships into a line of battle across the road of the English squadron, and, keeping vigilantly on his guard, edged away after his flying convoy.

At the sight of the French, Hawke had at first formed his line of battle; but as the day wore on he saw theextent of his own superiority, and saw also that the French, being to windward of him, would be able to keep their distance till dark if he continued to approach them in the regular formation, which would necessarily mean at something a little below the speed of the slowest of his fourteen ships. He therefore hauled down the signal for the line of battle, and ordered a general chase, which is the technical name of the simplest of all possible manœuvres—going, namely, at the enemy as fast as wind, tide, and the sailing powers of your ship would allow you. Hawke was fond of attacking in this fashion, and about eleven years after this day did so, under heroic circumstances, at the magnificent sea-fight off Quiberon. In the battle with L’Etenduère there was less to do, but such as it was, it was gallantly done. The first to come up with the enemy was Captain Arthur Scott of theLion, who, at about midday, as it were, seized hold of them, and clung to their skirts till help came. It was not delayed. Other English ships swarmed up fast—theEagleamong them—each getting into action as she could, and all pressing on the Frenchmen. Six of the eight struck, but not till after hard fighting, prolonged in the case of two of them till seven in the evening. There was no manœuvring; it was all plain hammer-and-tongs work, in which theEaglehad her full share. Early in the fight she came under the guns of theTonnant, the French flag-ship, an eighty-gunner, and was badly mauled. Her steering-gear being disabled, she fell on board of Hawke’s own ship theDevonshire, and the two drifted out of the fight before they could get clear of one another. This stop was only temporary. Hawke soongot back into action, and Rodney made good his damage. When at last L’Etenduère, having done enough for honour, prepared to escape with his own ship theTonnant, and the only other survivor of his squadron theIntrepide, Rodney joined Saunders of theYarmouth(he who afterwards helped Wolfe to conquer Quebec) and Philip Saumarez of theNottinghamin pursuing the only remains of the enemy. TheEagleand theYarmouthwere soon left behind. TheNottinghamalone came up with the retreating Frenchmen. In this stage of the fight the odds had shifted to the other side. TheTonnantwas an eighty-gun ship; theIntrepidea seventy-four. Against two such enemies the sixty guns of theNottinghamwere too few. Captain Saumarez indeed fought till he fell mortally wounded; but the officer who succeeded him gave up the unequal conflict, and at dark Hawke hoisted the signal of recall. TheTonnantand theIntrepidemade their way back to port.

It was a very pretty fight altogether, and on L’Etenduère’s part a most gallant and able one. His bravery and his judgment were equally conspicuous. Not only did he save his honour, but he saved his convoy. During those seven hours of fighting the merchant ships had escaped to windward. When dark came down Hawke, with six shattered French prizes on his hands, and several of his own ships greatly damaged in hull and rigging, had nothing for it but to make his way back to England. On our side again, though it was not one of the fights we should rank with Quiberon or the Nile, it was a creditable piece of service. Good use was made of our superior numbers, and as the French ships were larger than our own, and the calibreof the guns somewhat heavier, the odds in our favour were not so great as they look on a mere statement of numbers and broadsides. One unhappy feature of the naval war of the time was not wanting. There was a court-martial on Captain Fox of theKent—Rodney’s commodore in the cruise of the previous June—who was accused of hanging back in the action. The charge was largely supported by Rodney’s own evidence, and was held to be proved. Fox was dismissed the service, and though afterwards restored by the King, was not again employed. Rodney was thought to have borne somewhat hardly on the poor man, being aggrieved by want of support when he felt he needed it in the action. As we get more means of seeing Rodney’s character it will, I think, become very credible that he would be especially harsh in his condemnation of want of zeal when he had himself suffered from it. That Fox had not behaved so well in the action as Rodney, Saunders, Saumarez, or Scott is beyond question. It is also certain that the naval courts-martial of that time were not, as a rule, remarkable for the severity of their sentences, and we may rest content that substantial justice was done.

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle did not turn Rodney on shore. His interest was good enough to save him from the too common fate of naval officers in the days when the reduction of the establishment from a war to a peace footing was carried out with but little regard to the claims of those who could not make their voice heard loudly at Whitehall. Moreover, he was now known as one who was well able to fulfil his side of the bargain which is generally made, at least tacitly, between patron and client. He was an officer whom it was a credit topush. When he happened to be in London, just after the action with L’Etenduère, Anson took him to the King. George the Second expressed his surprise at Captain Rodney’s youth, which, by the way, would imply that His Majesty’s acquaintance with his own post list was not exhaustive, for it certainly contained several younger officers than the commander of theEagle. Then Anson, so says the story, replied by expressing a wish that His Majesty’s Navy contained more young captains of the stamp of Captain Rodney. This was high praise indeed from Anson, who was never lavish of praise, and was indeed so cold that Smollett accused him of raying out frost on all who came near him. The words of a First Lord, and one who had a particular care in pushing on men whom he thought worthy of promotion, were not likely to fall to the ground. In March, 1749, Rodney was appointed Governor of Newfoundland, and at the same time Captain of H.M.S.Rainbow.

This was not a cumulation of offices. The governorship of Newfoundland was then a naval post. We considered the place as a fishing-station, and indeed it was little else. The fishermen and the fisheries were directly under “Admirals of the Fisheries,” resident officers from whom there lay an appeal to the officers of H.M. ships on the coast. Other settlers were under justices, who however had no jurisdiction over the fisher-folk. At the head of all was the chief naval officer on the station. So completely were the Fisheries considered as the colony that the Governor only stayed there during the season to protect them. For the rest of the year he was doing convoy work, out and home, or was lying in the Longreach. He had a regular round specified tohim with much precision by My Lords. In spring he was to drop down to the Downs with his own ship and any others put under his command. From thence he was to proceed down Channel looking in at Pool, Weymouth, Topsham, Plymouth, and Falmouth. Sailing from this port he was to make the best of his way to the Banks of Newfoundland with the Fishing Fleet, “And in regard it has been represented to us that pirate ships did formerly lurk about the Banks of Newfoundland and infest the ships fishing on that coast, you are never to make any unnecessary stay in port, nor suffer theBoston(she was another vessel under his command) to do so, but keep diligently cruising at sea, and so employ both ships as may most effectually keep the pirates from those parts and protect the trade and His Majesty’s subjects.” Here follow many instructions as to his duties in those parts touching the assistance to be given to the Fishery Admirals in keeping order, the care to be shown in excluding foreign interlopers, and the vigilance to be exercised in preventing the desertion of English sailors. It was not intended that the Fishery Fleet should limit the supply of men for His Majesty’s Navy by carrying emigrants to New England. Therefore Captain Rodney was to see that all ships brought back the complement they took out “except in case of death,” when some reasonable latitude would be allowed. On October 1st Rodney was to collect his charge, now fully laden with stock-fish for the Peninsula and the Mediterranean, and was to convoy them to Cadiz, whence after a stay of not more than ten or twelve days he was to see them and such other merchant ships as put themselves under his protection to their respective parts “as highas Livorno.” After a stay of not more than twenty days he was to return by Barcelona, Majorca, Minorca, Alicante, and Cadiz. From thence, after another delay limited to twelve days, he was to make his way, providing for the Lisbon and Oporto trade in person or by deputy, to the Downs, “giving us an account by all opportunities of your proceedings.” From the Downs he would come up to the Thames, and there remain, unless ordered to convoy His Majesty from Harwich, till such time as he had to sail for the Banks again.

This routine is worth recording for the illustration it affords of the conditions under which trade was formerly carried on, and the contrast it presents to the freedom and safety of the seas in our times. It was also distinctly service, and Rodney, who served his apprenticeship in it under Medley, must have known what work there was in it before taking the billet. He did not therefore use his influence to shirk work. For the rest the post was a good one—an all-round cruise and a winter in England being much to be preferred to three consecutive years of a foreign station. At a later period the experience must have been invaluable to Rodney. When nearly twenty years later he sailed to relieve Gibraltar, he must have found the value of the practice he had had in taking convoys in and out of the Mediterranean.

In 1751 the regular round was relieved for him by a little piece of surveying service. The Trinity House had in that year before them Mr. William Otton and one Peter Ham his mate, sent by the Admiralty with a circumstantial story of discovery. It was to the effect that on March 4th, 1749, these two mariners in theirbark theSt. Pauldid discover an island in Latitude 49° 40´ N. and Longitude 24° 30´ west of the Lizard. They saw it clearly, and were prepared to swear that it was six or seven leagues long, lying S.S.E. and N.N.W., with a little flat island at the east point of it. Also they swore that there was a great surf, and that one point of the island was as high as Dunnose. On cross-examination it appeared that Mr. Otton and Peter Ham did not cast the lead. The Trinity House did not much believe these mariners who came from a far country, but it thought the matter might be looked into, and so the Admiralty instructed the commander of the Newfoundland convoy, on whose route the supposed island lay, to look into it. Rodney did, and had to report that the alleged island was not there—being either an invention of Mr. Otton and Peter Ham of theSt. Paul, or some Cape Flyaway seen in a haze, which had solidified in their imaginations between 1749 and 1751. Marryat was sent into the Atlantic on a similar wild goose chase long afterwards, which facts show how long it was before the ocean was so thoroughly surveyed as to make it appear impossible that an undiscovered island should lie between Cape Finisterre and Cape Race on the very track of the American trade.

At all times during this commission there was a possibility that Rodney might have more serious work to do than the protecting fishermen from lurking pirates, or assisting Fishery Admirals. The peace with France never really extended either to America or India. In both there was incessant underhand hostility, flaming now and then into actual fighting. On the North American continent, all along the frontier of NewEngland and Nova Scotia, there was almost avowed war from the first. Newfoundland was then to us a kind of outpost against the French in Canada, and it was part of Rodney’s duty to keep an eye on their agents, who were everywhere pushing, intriguing, insulting, in the style which provoked the great storm of the Seven Years’ War. When Rodney first took command of the Newfoundland station he was warned by Sandwich to be on the outlook for the French aggression, which His Majesty’s Ministers already expected on the very day after signing the Peace. The letter is worded honourably for Rodney. Sandwich speaks of him as one who can be trusted to act with judgment, and does not need precise instructions. His reputation must therefore have been well established at headquarters as a capable officer. The warning was not unnecessary, for in 1751 Rodney had to despatch Captain Francis William Drake (the brother of the Samuel Francis Drake who was to lead his van on the yet distant April 12th, 1782—Drakes both of them of the blood of the Elizabethan) to look into the proceedings of a French schooner reported to have turned up at Trepassey Bay just below Cape Race. She “was mounted with 14 carriage-guns besides a number of swivels. Man’d with upwards of fifty men ‘she’ had put into that port, and erected tents on shore, carrying with them a number of muskets, cuttlasses, and ammunition, giving no other account of themselves than that they were come to survey that part of the island, as likewise the harbour of Trepassey, to know whether their draughts in that respect were correct; the said schooner carrying a light in the night as if she expected other vessels.”

The storm did not break in Rodney’s time, however. Mysterious French schooners turned up with carriaged-guns and swivels, showing menacing lights, but they vanished away again. French agents came and went on the border, intriguing, vapouring, now and then murdering, maintaining French influence in the usual way, till the measure was full, and they were swept for ever from the country they could neither use themselves nor would let others till in peace. Strange it is, and a poor proof of our wisdom, that they still retain those fishing rights on the coast of Newfoundland which it was part of Rodney’s duty to see that they did not exceed.

The remnants—stained and tattered—of a letter-book kept by Rodney during his command of theRainbow, and still preserved by his descendants, show him at work doing his duty as naval officer in peace very much as his successors do to-day. He has to report on Dr. Knight’s “Magnetic bars,” and to test a quick-firing brass gun, as we test and experiment now. Touches here and there show that the Admiralty administration was not of the best—complaints, for instance, that the men’s clothes are worn out, so much so as to leave them in absolute need of cover from the weather. Again, the food was but poor, to judge by the frequent orders for survey, and by the condemnation of beef, bread, and beer (for it was not till long after that rum became the standard drink of the navy) which followed the surveys. Sailors of both services, naval and merchant, will grumble at their food on small provocation, and condemn it on trifling evidence; but one does not gather that Rodney was too easily disposed to allow this weakness its way. TheRainbow’sstores, whencondemned as bad, were bad, we may be sure. He appears at all times to have been careful of the health of his men, knowing that their efficiency depended on it, being moreover naturally a gentleman, and therefore anxious that the humbler folk dependent on him should be comfortable according to the modest standard of their place.

It is a little detail not without interest that Rodney must have worn his first uniform on this commission. Though we had had a regular corps of naval officers since the beginning of the reign of Charles the Second, when the first list was formed by James, then Duke of York (whose merits as an administrator have never had full justice done them), no uniform was ordered till 1749. Officers dressed as they pleased, with a preference for red for show, and for gray, the colour of the slops served to the men, for work. Gradually this omission became a grievance to the naval mind. The officers considered it as in some sort putting them below the soldiers, though they were, as their successors are, very conscious that the navy is the senior service. At last some of them petitioned for a uniform, and were told to choose. They asked for a blue uniform with red facings, or a red uniform with blue facings. It was for one fateful moment doubtful whether the “blue jacket” was to come into existence or not. Happily while it was yet time George the Second met the Duchess of Bedford in the Park wearing a riding habit of blue withwhitefacings. It charmed him, and he gave the colour and the facings to the navy, which was not the least wise thing George the Second did in his time—the old navy uniform, the blue coat relieved with white and gold, the white knee-breeches and stockings, was one of the most becoming ever worn.At first apparently, though there is a doubt, only captains and flag-officers were required to wear it. There is a legend to the effect that when lieutenants were similarly honoured, one uniform was kept in the ward-room, and worn by the officers in turn when they were summoned on board the flag-ship, or sent ashore on duty. Masters had no uniform, and on the Mediterranean station they bought the cast-off red coats of the soldier officers at Gibraltar—trimming them with black. Rum and the blue jacket, which have become inseparable from our notions of the old navy, are both, it will be seen, very modern.

TheRainbowwas paid off at Woolwich in 1752. Rodney himself landed at Portsmouth, leaving the vessel to be brought round to the river by his First Lieutenant Du Bois. He had to hand her over to his subordinate on the ground of ill health, being, as he pleaded to the Admiralty, very ill and in charge of a physician. Ill health was destined to be only too common with him for the rest of a long life, and he was probably already suffering from the disease of the century—the gout, which in later years first crippled and then killed him.

Aftertwenty-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 class. Rodney, who had some of the best blood in England in his veins, lived when ashore in the great society of London. His wife was chosen in this, and not in the naval world. She was a daughter of Mr. Charles Compton, brother of the sixth, and father of the seventh, Earl of Northampton. In Rodney’s life she is little more than a name. No letter to her or from her has come in my way—partly, no doubt, because the evidence about the Admiral’s life only becomes abundant in his later years when she was dead, when he had remarried and begotten a second family. All that can be said about her may be summed up in a few words. Her name was Jane; she married Rodney in 1753, anddied in 1757, having borne him two sons and a daughter. The elder of the two sons, afterwards an officer in the Guards, was the ancestor of the present Lords Rodney. The younger went to sea, and was drowned in the wreck of his sloop, theFerret. The daughter died in childhood.

In 1751, too, Rodney had entered Parliament as member for Saltash, which means that he was put into the seat by a patron. It was the first of five seats which he held, with an interval of exclusion from the House between the fourth and last, until he was made a peer in 1782. His Parliamentary adventures will, however, be more conveniently taken farther on.

With a wife and a seat in Parliament Rodney would have no present wish to go to sea, nor would his political patron wish him to be too much away. It was convenient to have him at hand if a critical division was expected. A guardship at Portsmouth would meet the case exactly, and accordingly he was appointed in 1753 to theKent, sixty-four. Very soon, in the next year in fact, this vessel was commissioned for service in the East Indies, and then Rodney was moved into theFougueux; and when she also was commissioned, he moved in 1755 yet again to thePrince George, still on guardship duty. In the earlier part of this time there was little beyond routine to attend to, but in the last-named year began the preparations for the Seven Years’ War. We were strengthening our hands in the East Indies, and Boscawen’s fleet was being got ready for that attack on the French-American fishing fleet which was our not formal, but effective, declaration of hostilities. Under these circumstances it was necessaryto raise men for the fleet, and no small part of that duty fell to the captains of the guardships.

The men were procured in two ways—by persuasion and by force. A bounty was offered for seamen; landsmen, of whom a good proportion was carried in every ship, were not then entitled to this advantage. When free enlistment failed to supply sufficient crews, and it always did in war, recourse was had to the press. Even if there had been a reasonable security that enough men would ultimately come in, some quicker process than the volunteer one was needed. The quicker process was compulsion, pure and simple. As the press-gang, though a familiar name enough, is but vaguely known in these days, some little account of Rodney’s share in the working of it may not come amiss. There is no reason to suppose that his activity differed from that of others in nature or degree, but yet some sketch of it will help us to realise the surroundings in which he worked. The letter book, already quoted, supplies some characteristic facts.

His volunteers having first been secured, the captain of thePrince Georgeselects from them and from the sailors who habitually enlisted in the navy, of whom there was always a backbone in the service, certain trusty gangs which he puts under active officers. One of these, a Lieutenant Allon, was sent to London to set up arendezvous, under the direction of the registering captain, probably in the neighbourhood of Limehouse or Wapping. From this centre of activity the lieutenant went to work, recruiting men freely when he could, or laying hands on them in the fashion described inRoderick Random. Lieutenant Allon’s requests for more “imprest” money were frequent, and were regularlyanswered with remittances. When he had secured a haul of men he sent them round by tenders to Portsmouth. It is curious to reflect that Lieutenant Allon and, through him, Rodney helped to secure Captain Cook for the navy. The navigator enlisted at this very time in order to escape the “hot press” on the river, deciding, like the long-headed Yorkshireman he was, that he had better go quietly, get the bounty, and likewise secure a chance of promotion, than be seized as pressed man, for whom there would be no bounty and no chance. So it will be seen the press-gang worked indirectly as well as directly. In the meantime other gangs were at work in the fashion indicated by this little order, which is addressed on February 14th, 1755, to Lieutenant Richard Bickorton.

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