First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [107]
More restrained in his official report to the Admiralty, Rodney felt compelled to inform their Lordships, “with concern inexpressible mixed with indignation,” that the British flag “was not properly supported.” Even that was too much for the Admiralty, which deleted this passage from publication of the report in the Gazette. Rodney’s private charges of outright disobedience quickly circulated, raising an unwanted prospect, after the Keppel disruptions, of more courts-martial. Sandwich promised the “shame and punishment” of those “who have robbed you of the glory of destroying a considerable part of the naval force of France.” Rodney, loath to reopen further damage to the navy by pressing for a public inquiry, chose rather to warn his officers that no rank would screen from his wrath anyone who disobeyed signals, and that if necessary he would use frigates as messengers to ensure compliance.
In the bitterness of being deprived of his great chance that “in all probability,” as he believed, would have been “fatal to the naval power of the enemy,” Rodney was determined that the French should not get away. Guichen, his opponent, had retreated to a base at Guadeloupe and would be sure, Rodney felt, to make an early effort to regain the shelter of Fort Royal, where Rodney, despite his own damaged ships, intended to keep guard and force him again to battle. Guichen, however, holding the windward position, was not to be lured from his advantage. When sighted again some fifteen miles off Martinique in the strait between Guadeloupe and Ste. Lucie, he could have initiated action if he had wished, but avoidance was rather the French game. Intent on conserving their vessels under the French doctrine of seeking strategic results without tactical risks, the French took evasive action, the more so as they recognized in Rodney’s actions an opponent ready to adopt unexpected battle movements that they thought best to avoid. In fickle winds, each admiral engaged in trying to outmaneuver the other. Guichen, with expert seamanship, managed to put himself in position either to enter Fort Royal or attack Ste. Lucie, while Rodney’s endeavor was to gain the wind in order to bring him to combat before Guichen could do either. To carry out his threat of closer command over his captains, he shifted his flag to a frigate. He believed they were “thunderstruck” by this resolution. “My eye was more to be dreaded than the enemy’s cannon.… It is inconceivable,” he told Sandwich afterward, “in what awe it kept them.” He was never shy in appreciation of his own efforts. Not content, he informed his captains more directly of the nature of command. “The painful task of thinking,” he told them, “belongs to me. You need only obey orders implicitly without question.”
For fourteen days and nights, with cannon loaded and slow match lighted, the opponents maneuvered for position, so near to each other that “neither officers nor men could be said to have had sleep.… The greatness of the object,” Rodney wrote to Sandwich, “enabled my mind to support what my strength of body was scarce equal to.” He did not go to bed during the fourteen days and nights: Only “when the fleet was in perfect order, I stole now and then an hour’s sleep upon the cabin floor.” Rodney liked to dramatize himself; in fact, when his ship was stripped for action, his furniture would be stored in the hold and his cabin transformed into an extension of the gun deck.
Further endeavors during the next six weeks to bring the French to action were unavailing.
Despite his own damaged ships with top masts shattered and leaking hulls, Rodney persisted