First Salute (18 page)

For Holland it would lead to capture by the British of colonies, trade and ships, and to the ultimate destruction of the Prince’s prestige when he was blamed for neglect of the navy, for delay in joining the Neutrality League and for everything else disastrous. As a result, the French party of the
Patriotes
secured political control, the Stadtholdership was overthrown and, through the prevailing of French influence, the United Provinces were incorporated into France by Napoleon in 1795, marking for the present the fall of the Dutch Republic after less than 150 years of its hard-won independence.

WHEN
Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney was given the mission to attack St. Eustatius, he was commander of the Leeward Island station of the British fleet in the West Indies and had long been angered by St. Eustatius’ daily operation as the principal source of supply to Britain’s enemies. A man of unforgiving character and vigorous action, he welcomed the opportunity for punishment. His orders, received January 27, 1781, when he was stationed off Barbados, at the eastern edge of the Windwards, informed him that Britain was now at war with the United Provinces and that in view of the “many injurious proceedings of the States-General of the United Provinces and their subjects, and for procuring reparation and satisfaction by attacking and subduing such of the Dutch possessions in the West Indies as the commanders of his Majesty’s land and sea forces shall be of opinion may be attempted with success,” the Admiralty proposed immediate action. They recommended as “
first objects of attack St. Eustatius and St. Martin’s, neither of which it is supposed are capable of making any considerable resistance.” Rodney was authorized to consult “on procedures” with General Vaughan, commander of land forces which had been sent out a few weeks previously
in anticipation of action. Material gain, the necessary justification for all warlike enterprise of the 18th century, was not overlooked: Because great “quantities of provisions and other stores are laid up there,” the Admiralty pointed out, and “may fall into our hands if we got possession speedily, the immediate attack and reduction of those islands” is recommended. Strategically, as Rodney wrote to Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, on December 25, Martinique, boasting the finest harbor in the Leeward Islands, “is the island most proper to attack.” British possession of that island could have made a real difference in the course of the war, but Britain’s immediate object was to cut off the contraband flowing from St. Eustatius to her enemies the French, as well as to the rebels in America. Two-thirds of the provisions and naval stores sent out from Britain under convoy, Sandwich had told the Cabinet in the September just past, ended up at St. Eustatius, from which they were shipped into French naval hands at Martinique. Well knowing this iniquitous trail, which his ships had often intercepted, and angered by the island’s withholding rope for repair of his rigging on a false plea of having none in stock, Rodney had conceived a hatred for St. Eustatius, and needed no prodding. He “lost not a moment’s time” in executing the order, he reported to the Admiralty. Troops were embarked, ships victualed and watered, guns and rigging inspected and readied, “the whole being kept
a most profound secret” so that the blow should fall like “a clap of thunder.” Late in the evening of January 30, his squadron of fifteen ships sailed on its mission, reaching the harbor of St. Eustatius on February 3.

It was one of the peculiar malfunctions of technology that shore batteries on the islands were generally of inadequate caliber and range to knock out a ship approaching with hostile intent. One is moved to wonder why, if a 10-pounder gun could be mounted on the rolling deck of a sailing vessel, the same or larger could not be mounted on land? The fact is that the blind parsimony of the defense kept the shore batteries usually too few in number to equal in firepower the heavy guns of a ship of the line. When one of these big ships engaged in an exchange with shore batteries, it was more likely to knock out the land guns than vice versa. The guns of Fort Orange, like those of other islands, can still be seen mounted in the courtyard of the fort pointing right down at the harbor. If they could not defend against a landing force, what were they for? Silent, technology has no answer.

Rodney’s troops were disembarked and a summons issued to the
island’s Governor for “
instant surrender,” within an hour, “of the island of St. Eustatius and its dependencies with every thing in and belonging thereto for the use of his said Majesty. If any resistance is made you must abide by the consequences.” With only one Dutch warship in port and no prepared defenses against Rodney’s heavy guns and his land force of 3,000, de Graaff had no choice. After firing two rounds from the fort as a show of resistance for the honor of Admiral Bylandt, representing the Dutch Navy in the harbor, he yielded St. Eustatius. Fifty armed American merchantmen in the roadstead with no chance to prepare for battle were taken. Their papers supplied more evidence, Rodney wrote, of the importance of St. Eustatius in assistance to the rebels. “All their rigging, sails, cannon powder, ammunition and stores of all kinds were sent from this island without whose assistance American navigation could not possibly have been supported,” again making his point that St. Eustatius had been essential to the colonial rebellion. Two thousand American seamen and merchants on the island wanted to fight but, being cut off from food by the British troops, had to join in the surrender and were made prisoner. British capture and occupation were effected February 3, 1781.

“I most sincerely congratulate their Lordships,” Rodney wrote in reporting the success of the enterprise to the Admiralty, “on the severe blow the Dutch West India Company and the perfidious magistrates of Amsterdam have sustained by the capture of this island.” He hoped it “would never be returned to the Dutch as it has been
more detrimental to England than all the forces of her enemies and alone had contributed to the continuance of the American war.”

The “surprise and astonishment of the governor and inhabitants,” he wrote further, “is scarce to be believed.” The arrival of Count Bylandt from the Admiralty of Amsterdam two days earlier had “allayed their fears of hostilities.” It might be supposed that Count Bylandt would have brought at this time a more acute warning of alarm when the prospect of war with England hung darkly over Holland. Presumably he saw no use in exciting efforts for defense when he had been given nothing to use for that purpose. In any case, the “surprise and astonishment” at a British demand for surrender was understandable, because Rodney reportedly sailed into the harbor flying the French flag, a report that lacks a verifiable eyewitness source. The deception, if true, seems a surprisingly dishonorable and unlikely procedure for an admiral of the Royal Navy, who might be expected to scorn disguise under the
flag of the traditional enemy. Warriors through the ages who have talked so much about the honor and glory of combat are always quite ready to act on the dictum that all is fair in war, no matter how crooked. In fact, the use of false colors was not contrary to international law such as it existed at the time, and did not excite any umbrage. Rodney was to practice another deception when he kept the Dutch flag flying over the island for several weeks after the British occupied it, as a decoy to lead unsuspecting vessels to their capture.

Rodney descended upon Statia with devastation and confiscations that were to arouse the reproof of the Opposition at home, voiced by its supreme orator and master of outrage, Edmund Burke. To begin with, the seizing offshore of 130 merchantmen of all kinds, with their cargoes valued at £500,000, was normal enough as a prize of war. There followed the plundering of private property, in shops and houses, of naval stores and goods in the warehouses, arms and ammunition in the arsenals, crates of sugar, tobacco and rice on the beaches. The total proceeds have been valued at £3 million, excluding the captured ships. Asking for a list of merchants and their inventories, Rodney singled out the Jews, who had a small well-established community on the island, and ordered them stripped for cash or precious stones or whatever might be supposed to be secreted in their clothing. Acting out a common antipathy with unnecessary zeal, he ordered the Jews expelled on one day’s notice, without notice to their families or access to their homes. With more reason, French nationals as enemy citizens were all deported to neighboring French islands. With equal zeal Rodney pursued Governor de Graaff with penalties deserved by the “
first man who insulted the British flag by taking up the salute of a pirate and a rebel, and who, during his whole administration has been remarkably inimical to Great Britain and a favourer of the American rebellion.…” Two American ships named
de Graaff
of 26 guns and
Lady de Graaff
of 18 “prove how much the Americans thought themselves obliged to him.… He has made an amazing fortune and, by all accounts, much by oppression. His plantation is seized for his Majesty” and de Graaff himself taken as an enemy prisoner to be sent with all his other household property to Great Britain. With due respect for a rich man, Rodney explained further that the Governor “will be allowed to take with him his household goods, furniture, plate, jewels, linen and all his domestic servants, and he will be conveyed to Great Britain in a good ship properly fitted for his own and his family’s reception.”

While loot was being counted, Rodney ordered two warships and a frigate to chase a Dutch convoy of thirty ships, “richly loaded,” which had sailed from St. Eustatius 36 hours before his arrival. The convoy’s Dutch commander, Admiral Krull, who resisted against hopeless odds for the honor of his flag, was killed in the fight and all his convoy taken. “Not one escaped,” Rodney reported with satisfaction. Three large Dutch ships from Amsterdam and a convoy from Guadeloupe came in later and were taken, and “a squadron of five sail of the line is hourly expected.” When the squadron arrived with a man-of-war, the
Mars
, of 38 guns and a crew of 300, it proved no match for Rodney’s squadron. The
Mars
would “now be commissioned and manned, and in a few days she will cruise as a British ship of war.” He could also report the taking of five American frigates of 14–26 guns. In the first month of the Dutch war as a whole, 200 of the Dutch merchant fleet, an objective as important as St. Eustatius, were taken by the English, paralyzing Dutch shipping in the process that accelerated the decline of the Republic. Occupied on land in collecting and disposing of the island’s riches and arranging for their safe convoy to England, and in pursuing the iniquitous English merchants who had been
trading with the enemy,
^*
Rodney was not at the head of his fleet patrolling the waters to intercept possible French intervention in America. While he has borne responsibility for this fateful omission, the fault did not in fact lie with him so much as in the casual management by his government and its war ministers, who did not foresee or consider French intervention as a serious concern. At no time did they issue any orders to Rodney that a primary mission of his fleet must be at all costs to prevent French reinforcements from reaching America to aid the rebels. If he or his government had been gifted with a talent for seeing into the future, and could have anticipated the fatal effect for Britain of future French presence at Yorktown, orders to the Admiral might have been more definitive in the Spartan tone of “Come back with your shield or on it.” Rodney was given no such urgent advice because the English never seriously considered that the Americans could win the war or that French help could or would be decisive. Ministers did not act to prevent a siege of General Cornwallis’ army at Yorktown because it was a contingency they never conceived of as happening.

The objects of Rodney’s sternest wrath were British merchants of both Statia and, particularly, St. Kitts who had been selling arms to the enemy for use against their own countrymen. He pounced upon their records in accountants’ offices, which had not been destroyed owing to the speed and surprise of the English attack, and sent them back to England to the war ministry of Lord George Germain. Two American agents of the Continental Congress, by name Isaac Gouverneur and Samuel Curzon or Courson, who had handled the purchases were sent with the papers as prisoners, in the hope of seeing them tried as traitors. Acquainted though he was with loose practice in English office, Rodney placed too much trust in government. When he needed the evidence to defend himself in court in lawsuits brought against him by the accused, the documents revealing the practices and profits of the British merchants trading with the enemy, which had been deposited with William Knox, Germain’s under-secretary for the Colonies, and would have been injurious to the government if made public, were found to have disappeared, proving the usefulness of the right “connections.” Rodney was able to produce in court only one which showed the trade at work. Goods would be shipped by English merchants across the Channel to Holland, where they would be transshipped to St. Eustatius and sold there to American agents, for use on the firing line against English soldiers. The two American agents were in fact tried for high treason, but
in camera
, and were afterward imprisoned. When the war in America was over, they were released and one of the two died soon thereafter. Their correspondence and business documents, which had been turned over for the trial to the House of Lords and might have proved embarrassing if not incriminating to important persons, could never be found. By this time the British surrender in America was embarrassment enough, leaving no one anxious to pursue the scandal of the traitorous merchants’ missing papers.