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By Root 855 0

fearful wreckage that would greet him in the islands, nor of the tremendous fuss the home government was then making over their quarrel with the Dutch and the perfidy of Amsterdam in negotiating a treaty of commerce and amity with the rebels. He reached Barbados on December 6 to find a scene of devastation from one end of the Leewards to the other, as if some avenging army had passed through, bent on ruin. For once the wrecker had been no human enemy but an October hurricane, the most terrible in memory. A tidal wave raised by a titanic wind starting on October 9 had flooded Jamaica; then, blowing with ferocious force through the next day and night, the winds tore off the roofs of Ste. Lucie, beached and destroyed ships at anchor. With relentless sheets of rain and thunder and lightning, the storm roared through the night until 8 a.m., blasting house walls and windows, lifting cattle off the ground and the bodies of men to rooftops, crushing houses to rubble while the cries of the helpless people trapped in the ruins could not be heard through the crash of the elements and tumble of walls. Trees were torn up by the roots and the bark stripped from their trunks by the violence of the wind. The part of Rodney’s fleet that had been storm-scattered outside New York had come in, “dreadfully crippled,” while eight out of the twelve of his warships at Barbados were a total loss and only ten members of their crews saved; 400 inhabitants of Barbados were killed. Water sources and food, never plentiful on the islands, were reduced to dangerous scarcity; care and shelter for the homeless, repair of roads, wells, homes and every facility mounted to an overpowering burden, on ships of the fleet no less than on the towns. Supposing the ruin to have made no exception of forts and shore batteries, the British chose this moment, two months after the hurricane, to declare their war on the Dutch, with accompanying orders to Rodney to seize St. Eustatius and such other islands as they believed would be unable to offer resistance.

Receiving the orders at sea off Barbados on January 27, 1781, Rodney immediately prepared his ships for attack on St. Eustatius and coordinated measures with General Vaughan. He was ready to sail in three days and to appear on February 3 below Fort Orange, where, just over four years before, the Andrew Doria had received the fort’s salute to the flag of the Continental Congress. Rodney’s rampage of confiscations and evictions executed by Vaughan’s soldiers followed, leading to the accusations of Burke and Fox and to satisfaction in Tory quarters. Recording a report that 6,900 hogsheads of tobacco valued at £36,000 were stored in Eustatian warehouses before Rodney came, Captain Frederick MacKenzie—the most observant and active diarist on Clinton’s staff—gloated, “The loss of one half of it is enough to ruin all the rebel merchants in America.”

Rodney’s successful seizure of the island confirmed his value in the otherwise shaky company of the navy. Whether to restrain or strengthen him, the Admiralty sent him a vigorous second in command, Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, who had once served as midshipman under Rodney during his early convoy duty in the Mediterranean and had been with him again as a captain in the burning of invasion boats at Havre. From service in two campaigns and acquaintance over a period of forty years, they knew each other well—perhaps too well, with some of the disrespect familiarity is said to breed. They were now joined in the critical mission to stop de Grasse from crossing the ocean to reinforce the Americans. Mutual confidence would have been useful, but relations were, at best, ambivalent.

On being offered the post under his old chief, Hood at first wrote to the Admiralty asking to refuse, and two days later wrote again hoping it was not too late to change his mind. On his side, Rodney wrote to say, “I know no-one whatsoever that I should have wished in preference to my old friend Sir Samuel Hood.” That seemed unequivocal. But in private he is reported by one of his staff to have grumbled, “They