First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [105]
The prizes from Cape St. Vincent were sent back to His Majesty while Rodney himself, with four ships, set course for the Caribbean and his Leeward Island post at Ste. Lucie. He arrived in the same week that a French fleet under the Comte de Guichen came into Fort Royal at Martinique, intending with France’s revived naval powers to bring the war to the West Indies.
In this stage of the conflict, England was at a disadvantage that had not been so in the Seven Years’ War. Now she was militarily bogged down in war against the Colonies in North America, which drew strength away from support of the navy, while the reverse was true of her enemy. France, after the Peace of Paris, was relieved of continental war, which before 1763 had drawn her major strength to the army, keeping her maritime effort weak, but since then she had been pouring men and supplies, training and ship-building into the strong navy by which she hoped to prevail over Britain. In 1778, when France formally declared war, she had 75 to 80 ships of the line and 50 frigates, ships that were newer, better designed and faster than the British. Spain added 60 more of the line, although, like Italy in World War I, Spain’s uncertain will to fight made her as an ally as much a hindrance as help. Against the Bourbon allies, Britain had 69 ships of the line of which only 35 were seaworthy and 11 were in American waters, far from parity with the combined fleets of France and Spain.
Aggressive French designs on the Leeward Islands were to bring Rodney within a few months of his triumph at Gibraltar to the most disappointing battle of his career. Happily, to balance the blow, although it never obliterated the sting, great good fortune met him at Ste. Lucie when he returned to the Antilles after Gibraltar in March, 1780. The good news was a letter of congratulations from Lord Sandwich officially informing him that the King had conferred on him an annual pension of £2,000 and, more important, that after his death the pension would continue in the form of annual payments of £500 to his widow, £1,000 to his eldest son and £100 each to his other son and four daughters “to continue during each of their respective lives.” Relieving him of his worst anxieties for his family, the award also removes from history the force of the frequent argument that the money of St. Eustatius afterward bewitched Rodney into forgetting his duty at sea. The pension gave him ease of mind, he wrote to his wife rather too confidently. “All I want is to pay off my debts as soon as possible … Let me be clear of all demands, and our income will be more than sufficient to live as we ought, and to save money.” It was not to be that easy, for in the end the several lawsuits brought against him by the merchants of St. Eustatius and St. Kitts whose goods he had confiscated were to keep him in financial need for the rest of his life. That distress, however, could not be foreseen to spoil his newfound good fortune. At first notice, the pension reawakened the old yearning for membership in the one Club above all others, the House of Commons. Not yet informed of his election for Westminster, he raised the question with Lord George Germain. “To be out of Parliament,” he wrote, “is to be out of the world, and my heart is set upon being in.” And to Sandwich he confessed the same desire, writing that “the happy situation in my affairs” would not only discharge his debts but be sufficient “to spare a sum of money if necessary to bring me into Parliament.”
While he was en route from Gibraltar, news had been learned from escaped British sailors who had been prisoners in Brest that a strong French squadron of 15 to 20 sail of the line, with transports carrying 15,000 troops, had sailed for the West Indies. The object, after picking up one or two extra sail at Fort Royal, was