Authors: Barbara W. Tuchman
Although Rodney sailed in 1758 with the fleet under Admiral Boscawen that was sent against Louisburg, his vessel, the
Dublin
, was an unhealthy ship, with a crew laid low by an epidemic of fever. It was left behind at Halifax, with the men installed in sheds hastily erected on shore by the ship’s carpenters. Owing to the
Dublin
’s debility, Rodney missed the assault on the great French fortress whose capture opened the way to Quebec. He joined the victors just before the surrender and sailed home with them to England. He missed, too, in November, 1759, Admiral Hawke’s crushing of the French main fleet, intended for the invasion of England, in the Battle of Quiberon Bay, on the coast of Brittany. Called “
the greatest victory since the Armada” by an unidentified enthusiast, it added more laurels to the “wonderful year.” Rodney was engaged at the time on a mission against another aspect of the invasion plan, commanding a squadron ordered to destroy by means of bomb ships a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats gathered at Le Havre as landing craft. These boats were 100 feet long, capable of carrying 400 men each. Promoted in May, 1759, to Rear Admiral of the Blue (blue, white and red were colors originally indicating squadron position in the line, and carrying minor progression in grade from blue through white to red), he took his 60-gun flagship, the
Achilles
, with four other gunships, five frigates and six bomb ketches to bombard the harbor of Le Havre and burn its boats. While Rodney received from the shore batteries a “very brisk fire indeed,” he inflicted damage on the French boats that left all masts gone and the “boats to all appearance broken-backed” and the port itself believed ruined as a naval arsenal for any further annoyance
of Great Britain during the continuance of the war. His bombardment finished off what was left of the invasion plan after the smashing of the French at Quiberon Bay.
Upon his return from the fiery mission to Havre, Rodney found a new King in England. In October, 1760, George III had come to the throne. The first English-born native of the Hanover line, he was infused by belief in his own rectitude and by his mother’s prodding, “George be a King.” He wanted to be a good ruler to his country and a firm sovereign to his empire, especially to those restive Americans, so ungrateful for the war fought on their behalf against the French, as King George and most of his countrymen thought of it. American objection to being taxed for the cost of the war and for future defense was regarded as thankless ingratitude, not as a basic constitutional issue of taxation by a British Parliament in which they had no representation. Whether or not George III comprehended this view of the matter, he was determined to affirm the right of Parliament—or, as he saw it, of the Crown—to tax the Colonies, and he wanted action and active commanders.
A critical area of defense that the King did comprehend was the West Indies. “Our Islands,” George III wrote to Lord Sandwich twenty years later, in 1779, when the American Revolution had become a war, “must be defended even at the risk of an invasion of this island.” George was given to extreme statements, and “even at the risk of invasion” was certainly not a sentiment with which ministers would have agreed. But the navy could not be everywhere at once, and if held in home waters to repel a French invasion, it could not be in sufficient strength in the Caribbean to secure the islands there. “If we lose our Sugar Islands,” the King’s letter continued, “it will be impossible to raise money to continue the war.” While this too seems extreme, it had some basis in the revenue that flowed to the government from the abundant fortunes of the rich planters and merchants of the West Indies. Sandwich agreed that as the French grasp at sea power imperiled the Sugar Islands, Britain’s principal naval effort should be made in the Caribbean. Although the state of the fleet in the Leeward Islands in 1779 was “
very deplorable” and needed reinforcements, a successful operation against Martinique was “the most to be wished,” because if it were taken, the other French islands would fall and the French would feel the blow so sharply that “it would probably put an end to the war.” Sandwich also was to recommend, in this 1779 memorandum to the King, action against
St. Eustatius, from which the French could supply their West Indies fleet with provisions. If French sea power could be broken in the Caribbean and French islands taken, the full force of the British Navy and Army could be turned upon America and the rebellion put down. While in 1759 the Americans had not yet taken up arms against the mother country, and the letters of the King and the First Lord reflect the strategy of a later situation, they show the overriding importance that the West Indies held in British thinking. Always wanting “bold and manly” efforts and offensive operations to thwart the French instead of the “cautious measures” of his ministers, the King, in October, 1761, the year after he ascended the throne, was happy to approve the appointment of Rodney as Commander-in-Chief at Barbados of the Leeward Island station for the purpose of conducting the naval part of a joint land and sea attack on Martinique. The most populous and flourishing of the French islands, Martinique was the largest island of the chain sometimes called the Windward and sometimes the Leeward group. The nomenclature, as one historian of the region laments, “lacked precision.” Regardless of being nominally grouped with the Leewards, Martinique dominated the windward position. At Fort Royal it had the finest harbor and, as the most flourishing of the French islands, was the capital of the French West Indies and seat of the French Governor-General and the sovereign Council with jurisdiction over all the French Antilles. Barbados, further down the chain and further into the wind, had no good harbor. The English used English Harbor on Antigua, further up the chain from Martinique.
When Rodney on October 21, 1761, taking up his new command, sailed from Plymouth to join the fleet in the West Indies, plans for the attack had already been made, originally by Pitt when First Minister.
Touching at Barbados on November 22, a thirty days’ sail of the westward crossing of the Atlantic, Rodney joined the land forces of General Monckton. Together they reached Martinique on January 7, and the operation, despite the surprising strength of the defense, was a routine West Indian landing. Having “
silenced the forts of the coast,” the fleet anchored in St. Pierre’s Bay with the loss of only one ship, not from enemy gunfire but from striking a reef of rocks. “We have saved all her people, all her stores, and I hope soon to get all her guns,” Rodney reported. The fleet having secured the landing and an excellent harbor, a squadron with two brigades was dispatched to the bay of Petite Anse to take up station there, and another squadron to Grande Anse. When
Captain Hervey of the
Dragon
had silenced the battery, Rodney’s marines and seamen attacked and took possession of the fort. “On January 14th I followed with the whole fleet and army,” having again destroyed the enemy’s batteries on shore. After reconnoitering the coast here, he determined with General Monckton to attack Fort Royal on the 16th. And having “very successfully and with little loss silenced the batteries [which seemed to have registered on this occasion a more than ordinary record of uselessness], I landed General Monckton with the greatest part of his forces by sunset; and so the whole army was on shore a little after daylight next morning, without the loss of a man,” with all necessary supplies, and “all ships and transports anchored as much in safety as this coast will admit of.” Two battalions of marines of 450 men each were then landed and proceeded to ascend the heights from which they proposed to lay siege to the fort. On February 10, Rodney was able to congratulate their Lordships on the surrendering of the important citadel of Fort Royal, which had “given his Majesty’s forces possession of the
noblest and best harbour in these parts.” He has also taken fourteen “of the enemy’s best privateers” and expects many more from other parts of the island to be delivered to him under the terms of the surrender. He is happy to report “the most perfect harmony” between the army and navy, each vying to serve King and country best. A lively account by an infantry officer with the land forces tells how the sailors dragged cannon and the heaviest mortars up the hills to secure the position, “and,” Rodney reported, “the service they did us, both on shore and on the water, is incredible.” Freedom from the miseries of their ships doubtless lent energy to the rugged pulling.
The surrender of Martinique, leaving the Lesser Antilles defenseless, caused the surrender to Rodney’s fleet of three islands, Ste. Lucie lying south of Martinique, St. Vincent, and Grenada at the bottom of the chain. These were valuable stations, on whose “peaceable possession” Rodney congratulated the Admiralty. Ste. Lucie, largest and considered loveliest of the British Windward Islands, which Rodney had long felt to be particularly desirable, abounded in good ports, while the “important island” of Grenada would provide a safe port in the hurricane months and a very strong citadel.
Meanwhile Jamaica sent him an urgent call for help against an expected combined French and Spanish attack. Anticipating lucrative prizes from this venture, Rodney prepared to go to the relief of Jamaica on his own responsibility, without orders from England, even though
General Monckton, more submissive to authority, was not willing to detach forces to go with him without instructions from home. Rodney informed the Admiralty of his intention, on the ground that he believed himself “authorized and obliged to succour any of His Majesty’s colonies that may be in danger,” and assuring their Lordships that he had “no other view but the good of His Majesty’s service.” The Admiralty suspected otherwise and, to Rodney’s angry disappointment, orders arrived instructing him not to pursue his design, because a secret expedition was in preparation for which “everything else must give way” and which he must assist by remaining at his station. Sullen at being deprived of an opportunity of the kind from which fellow-admirals had made fortunes, he prepared his fleet to join the forces for the coming action at Havana, fulcrum of Spanish trade. In the successful outcome at Cuba, Admiral Pocock, who commanded the naval force in the attack, did indeed come away with a fortune in prize money, while Rodney in bitterness gained nothing. In his chagrin, he quarreled with General Monckton, with whom he had worked in such “perfect harmony” at Martinique, and now claimed the General had divided the prizes taken there unfairly.
A more general disappointment was felt next year, in the Peace of Paris of 1763, because of Britain’s softheaded yielding by treaty of almost every advantage she had won by arms in the Seven Years’ War. Martinique, jewel of the Antilles so newly won, and its neighbor Guadeloupe and Ste. Lucie were given back to France, in return for France ceding all of Canada with Nova Scotia and Cape Breton and islands of the St. Lawrence. Like England, France put the valuation of the West Indies over that of Canada. She was willing to cede Canada in exchange for retrieving Martinique, Guadeloupe and Ste. Lucie because she believed the loss to Britain of those islands would do more than anything to injure the commerce necessary to Britain’s life, which the French, like King George, believed was vital to her. The exchange was viewed with disgust by the British public as putting concern for the Colonies ahead of the immense wealth and commercial advantage of the Indies. A similar negative view was taken of the arrangements with Spain by which Cuba and the Philippine Islands were restored to Spain in return for her guarantee to Britain of Florida and all Spanish territory east of the Mississippi except New Orleans. As an exchange designed to safeguard the southern colonies, this too was seen as preferring the interest of the American Colonies before every other.
The British public viewed the Seven Years’ War as having been fought to protect the Colonies from French encroachment against which the Colonials were supposed not to have lifted a finger in their own defense. The fact of the Continentals having opened Wolfe’s way through Ticonderoga to Quebec and having launched the first siege of Louisburg and defended their own settlements against French-sponsored Indian attacks was ignored. As the British had emerged from the war in the strongest position and as unquestionably sovereign of the seas, the giveaway at Paris seemed all the more unnecessary. The fact that Britain obtained under the treaty virtually total control of the North American continent was not recognized as any great gain. The government was seen as placing a higher value on a wild uncleared land, thick with brush and trackless forest, than on the ready revenues of sugar and trade, an exchange that seemed absurd to contemporaries. If it meant a dimly grasped potential of America’s future, that was perhaps a first sign of common sense in the enlightened century—and, as such, thoroughly unpopular to the British citizen.
To persons of extra perception, the prospect presented by securing the Colonies from further encroachment by France or Spain was not favorable. When they “no longer required the protection of Great Britain,” “
from that moment,” wrote Rodney’s biographer and son-in-law, admittedly with hindsight, “they may be said to have obtained independence.” He was hurrying history, for eventful years had to pass before a movement for independence took root. But insofar as the Colonies were freed from fear of French and Catholic rule, a turning moment had indeed come. For Rodney, who was promoted to Vice-Admiral of the Blue in October, 1762, the cessation of war meant a period of slowing advancement and frustration and involvement in debt leading to a strange and decisive episode in his life. For the moment, on his return to England after the Peace of Paris, his fortunes progressed quietly, if penuriously, while on half pay, the common fate of all officers and crew of a ship when it was paid off. In recognition of his addition of three valuable islands to the British Empire, he was made a Baronet in January, 1764. In the next year, after being a widower for seven years, he remarried—a lady named Henrietta Clies, about whom very little is told except that in due course she bore him his second son and three daughters. A land post was offered him in November, 1765, as Governor of Greenwich Hospital, a shelter for disabled and indigent seamen and a place affording many openings for jobbery (the contemporary term
for bureaucratic graft). Rodney’s tenure was marked by a notable rebuke to his Vice-Governor for refusing to grant greatcoats to the pensioners in winter, especially as the Vice-Governor wore one himself when sitting by a good fire. His own rule, Rodney said, should be “to render the old men’s lives so comfortable” that younger visitors would say: “ ‘Who would not be a sailor, to live as happy as a prince in his old age!’ ” Greatcoats were accordingly ordered.