out of Fort Royal and to learn from the master that he belonged to a fleet commanded by Count de Grasse, that it consisted of 25 sail of the line and nearly 200 merchant ships collected from the different French islands and that it was reportedly bound for Santo Domingo. Rodney sent a warning notice to Admiral Graves in New York, now commander of British naval forces in America, saying that a French fleet of 28* of the line had appeared at Martinique and that “a part” of the fleet is reported to be destined for North America. He believes it will sail “in a short time,” though he cannot learn whether it will call on the way at Cap-Frančais in Santo Domingo. “I shall keep as good a lookout as possible on their motions by which my own shall be regulated,” he wrote. He added that Admiral Hood, with 14 sail of the line and 5 frigates, will be ordered to follow the French to the coast of Virginia and proceed along the coast to the Capes of the Delaware, and from thence to Sandy Hook to place himself under Graves’s orders. Graves should station cruisers at the Capes of the Delaware to keep watch for Hood, he told him, “so that they may combine their forces to intercept the French who are coming from the West Indies.” He adds that Graves may depend upon his squadron being reinforced, “should the enemy bend their forces that way.” To Germain in London, Rodney promises to “watch the enemy like a lynx” and to Arbuthnot in New York he promises to “send you every reinforcement in my power.” His expectation and plan, as he specifically describes it in a separate letter to the Earl of Carlisle at this time, was not to allow the enemy [de Grasse] to take advantage “of superiority on the coast of America,” but rather for Hood “to arrive on that coast before the French squadron from Cape Frančois” and to effect a junction with the English already there [namely, with Graves] “to defeat the enemy and all their projects.” At the same time, Rodney sent a convoy of five liners and five frigates to accompany the trade to Jamaica, with orders to Sir Peter Parker, the commander there, to dispatch the ships at once to North America where, together with Hood’s, they would give the British in America a clear naval superiority and provide Graves with the promised reinforcement. Rodney assumed, as did everyone else, that de Grasse would divide his fleet. Sir Peter Parker, for whatever reason, did not carry out his orders.
Rodney took French intervention more seriously, telling Hood that if he saw the French ships, to “please acquaint me thereof with all the despatch possible … this being of the utmost importance.” Appearing to have been the only one who realized in advance how definitive de Grasse’s intervention might be, he felt he must go himself in pursuit, and before leaving on August 1, he wrote to his wife, “The enemy when they leave these seas will go to America. Wherever they go I will watch their motions and certainly attack them if they give me a proper opportunity. The fate of England may depend upon the event.”
The warning notice to Graves, and his other dispatches of the same days, show Rodney in possession of the whole picture, identifying the place, the problem and a plan of appropriate action. Dealing with slower minds, Rodney was not content to leave Graves with anything less than precise instructions. In a supplementary despatch of July 31, he put his finger on just what might be expected. Repeating the intelligence he had learned that de Grasse was sailing for America, he added that he had sent Hood to the Capes of Virginia, “where I am persuaded the French intend making their grand effort” (italics added). This was no magic vision. Rodney had learned of the pilots who had joined de Grasse at Cap-Frančais, and he drew the natural inference (not always a normal practice) that if de Grasse had asked for pilots for the Chesapeake, that was doubtless where he intended to go.
Unfortunately for the British, Rodney’s warning notice to Graves went undelivered, in one of those quirks of war that inspired Clausewitz a century later to make