First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [66]
The stench of a ship wafted by an inshore breeze could often tell of its approach before it reached port. Reports of the bad tempers and quarrels of captains and admirals—with the exception of Nelson—are repetitious. John Paul Jones, apart from killing a mutineer who may have deserved death, carried on a furious vendetta with a captain of one of his ships—Landais of the Alliance—whom he accused of betrayal in combat. “His fault finding, nagging and perfectionism coupled with his unpredictable temper made him disliked by many shipmates” is the verdict of his biographer, Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison. Admiral Hyde Parker, commander at Barbados who served on several occasions with Rodney, had a “bitter choleric temper” and was called “Old Vinegar” on account of his harsh manner and speech. Richard Lestock, whose recriminations against his commanding officer, Admiral Mathews, became public after the Battle of Toulon had historic result, was “on malevolent terms” with Mathews from the start. Mathews, who had served at the court of Sardinia, was nicknamed Il Furibondo by the Italians because of his violent temper. Among the French it was the same. Count d’Estaing, active against the British in American waters and against Rodney in the West Indies, is called “brusque and autocratic” and not liked by officers and men, while Admiral de Grasse, the most important of all to the history of America, summoned his captains on deck to administer the “sharpest reproaches” to express his dissatisfaction for their failure to chase and engage the enemy in an encounter off Martinique. He would rather lay down his command, he said, unless they showed better conduct in obeying signals and fulfilling their duties. Rodney’s own notorious outbreak of anger at the errors and failure by his captains in the blundered battle off Martinique in 1780—expressed in his public statement to the Admiralty, the “British flag was not properly supported”—will appear in due time. If that was irascible, it was clearly not a matter of personal temperament. “There is no set of men who understand these matters so ill as sea officers,” lamented Lord Sandwich, suffering from his experience as First Lord of the Admiralty. “For it scarcely ever happens that after an action they do not call the whole world to hear what complaints they have to each other.” Irascibility in the navy was a recognized phenomenon, as attested in the journal of a French officer who, in describing a case of naval non-cooperation, refers casually to “the charming maritime ill-temper.”
More damaging than irascibility to effective management of a warship was the raging political partisanship that divided officers, and obstructed the collective will to win. The furious quarrel of Whig Admiral Keppel and Tory Admiral Palliser, over claims by Palliser of failure in battle by Keppel, carried over into an explosive court-martial that tore the body politic apart, brought angry pro-Keppel mobs in assault on the Admiralty and left permanent animosities in the navy so deep that officers believed each other capable (and perhaps they were) of deliberate errors or failures in combat on purpose to injure a fellow-admiral of the opposite party. These animosities lasted throughout the period of the American war when the administration’s belief in crushing the rebellion by force was the object of the Opposition’s deepest scorn.
Rodney entered the navy at twelve, taken from school at Harrow, where he