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moved on to New York, where his hope of reviving unity of purpose and fresh spirit was balked by Clinton’s inertia and by the resentment of the elderly and prickly Admiral Arbuthnot, commander of naval forces in America, at Rodney’s taking precedence as his superior. Arbuthnot at age seventy was another of the relics dragged out from the bottom of the barrel, and was said in one comment to be “destitute of even rudimentary knowledge of naval tactics.” Already on bad terms with Clinton, he quarreled with all the orders issued by Rodney, who found the whole southern coast exposed, with “not a single frigate to be seen from that coast [Carolina] to Sandy Hook,” while the shores were swarming with American privateers. Rodney ordered ships to be stationed off every province, “by which means 13 sail of rebel privateers have been already taken, and the trade of his Majesty’s subjects effectually protected.” A torrent of orders and counterorders flowed between the two Admirals while their angry, if beautifully phrased, complaints of each other, addressed to the First Lord, made no great gain toward the hoped-for unity.

In 1780, with the rebels’ loss of Charleston, the treason of Arnold, and the lack of funds to keep an army in the field, the British had every reason to expect the Americans to give up, and the burdensome war at last to end. Clinton thought Rodney’s arrival in America an additional calamity for the rebels, which, he stated, “has thrown [them] into a consternation” by showing Washington’s “repeated and studied declarations of a second French fleet and reinforcement to be groundless and false,” with the result of spoiling his recruitment, “for under the influence of these invented succours” he had been able to collect large numbers. Washington wanted the addition of a second division of French ships and troops to make an attempt on New York. “Your fortunate arrival upon this coast,” Clinton wrote to Rodney, has “entirely defeated such a plan.… The rebels have grown slack in their augmenting the Washington army which on the contrary has diminished very much by desertion. Thus, Sir, in a defensive view of things your coming on this coast may have proved of the most important consequences.” Clinton regretted that he could offer no encouragement for an attack on the enemy position in Rhode Island, now too strongly fortified. Instead, he thought better of an expedition into Chesapeake Bay, “as to the necessity and importance of which we both agreed,” an interesting proposal at this time that might have changed the course of the war.

It was hardly likely to come. Clinton, who was no fire-eater, preferred to blame the inactivity on the aged incapacity of Admiral Arbuthnot. With a competent admiral, he wrote a friend in England, “all might have been expected from this Campaign, but from this Old Gentleman nothing can: he forgets from hour to hour—he thinks aloud—he will not answer any of my letters.” His heart might be in the right place, “but his head is gone.” To this state the British Navy, in time of need, had reduced itself by the political quarreling that left the quarterdeck to antiques.

Prize money, so often the source of contention, appeared again as a divisive factor, because Rodney’s advent as the superior officer in the naval command in America meant Arbuthnot’s loss of the chief share in the division of prizes. “I am ashamed to mention,” Rodney reported rather sanctimoniously to the Navy Board, “what appears to me the real cause and from whence Mr. Arbuthnot’s Chagrene proceeds, but the proofs are so plain, that prize money is the Occasion.” And he forwarded verifying documents. When submitted to the King, His Majesty adjudicated the Admirals’ quarrel in favor of Rodney, whose conduct, he said, “seems as usual praiseworthy … [and] the insinuation that prize money” was the cause “seems founded.” Although both Clinton and Rodney threatened to resign unless Arbuthnot were withdrawn, the Navy Board made no move, apparently unwilling to make another enemy. Only when Arbuthnot himself offered to resign by reason of