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By Root 886 0

was considerably deeper. Lost too was the more important prize of St. Eustatius itself. It was recaptured by the French in November, 1781, a month after the British loss of America at Yorktown. Rodney and General Vaughan had determined to make its defenses impregnable “to secure this important conquest to Great Britain that she might avail herself of all its riches as atonement for the injuries it has done her.” With some savagery, he writes that he and Vaughan will leave the island “instead of the greatest emporium upon earth, a mere desert and only known by report, yet, this rock … has done England more harm than all the arms of her most potent enemies and alone supported the infamous American rebellion.…” Regarding his own expectations, he writes, “If my great convoy of prizes arrive safely in England, I shall be happy as, exclusive of satisfying all debts, something will be left for my dear children.” Concern and affection for his two daughters and his sons repeats itself in his letters as one of the more sympathetic aspects of his character. “My chief anxiety,” he wrote to his wife after his ill-fated convoy had sailed for home, “is that neither yourself nor my dear girls shall ever again be necessitous nor be under obligations to others.” The humiliations of penury, however much of his own making, sound their painful note in this letter.

Believing he had left the captured island a Gibraltar of the West Indies, with land forces on guard and repaired fortifications, Rodney sailed to Antigua and then to Barbados. When St. Eustatius was retaken by the French six months later, they found the place in ashes, empty of population. Though rebuilt and repopulated during the French occupation, it never regained its former extravagant prosperity.

THE uneven career that brought Rodney to St. Eustatius and determined what he did there began with his entry into the Royal Navy at the age of twelve. He was the son of an old county family settled since the 13th century in Somersetshire, where they held the estate of Stoke Rodney. In the twenty generations leading down to the Admiral, his ancestors served in various military and diplomatic positions of no outstanding distinction, but fulfilling the duty expected of the landed gentry of England and establishing a record, as was said of them, of a family of greater antiquity than fame. In the process, they acquired a ducal connection in the person of James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos, who came into possession of Stoke Rodney through the marriage into the Brydges family of a daughter and heiress of an early Rodney. Chandos was a familiar at the court of George I and together with the King stood as joint godfathers to the Rodneys’ son, who was endowed with both their names, George and Brydges. Chandos’ grandson, who sueceeded as third Duke in the period of Rodney’s maturity, remained a loyal adherent of the Hanovers and a supporter of George III and of his American policy until about 1780, when the policy’s futility became obvious enough to move the Duke gradually into opposition. He was evidently not a man impervious to change but rather one able to allow realities to penetrate. Though not belonging to one of the great Whig ruling families, Rodney could qualify as a young gentleman of “excellent connections.” Connections were the key to “place” in 18th century society, meaning a remunerative post in the official world, and “place” was of the essence, especially for a younger son, which Rodney remained until his older brother died, when the younger was about twenty.

Personal characteristics were both an aid and a drawback to his career. Slight and elegant in figure, he was more than handsome; if the portrait by Joshua Reynolds, painted at forty-two when Rodney was already a widower and a father of three, does not lie, he was frankly beautiful. With a strong sensual mouth, a broad brow and impressively large dark eyes, the face was youthful and seductive and would surely have promoted his amorous pursuits, of which the busy diarist, Sir William Wraxall, makes a point. “Two passions