First Salute - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [80]
Active in commerce-destroying aboard the Eagle, Captain Rodney was not present at Toulon, where he might have supplied the needed vigorous action that he was to show in the second Battle of Finisterre three years later in October, 1747, and the earlier fight off Brest. That year Rodney was with a squadron under Admiral Hawke which the British had dispatched to cruise the Atlantic in search of French trade convoys. In the first engagement, Rodney’s unit under Commodore Thomas Fox fell upon four French warships escorting some 150 merchant sail coming from Santo Domingo, heavily loaded with sugar, coffee, indigo and other goods of the West Indies. During two days of chasing the widely dispersed convoy, Rodney took six ships, escorted his prizes home and put back to sea. He had rejoined Hawke when orders came to attack an outward-bound convoy of 250 French merchantmen, escorted by nine ships of the line. When the English intercepted the French in the waters off Finisterre in Spain, the westernmost point of Europe, there was nothing passive or negligent in the battle that followed. The French Admiral l’Etenduère, in order to give the ships he was escorting a chance to escape, placed himself between them and the English and fought for six hours, inspiring in his captains a fighting spirit as determined as if they were carrying the Dauphin himself on board. The French suffered terrible damages. On the 70-gun Neptune, seven officers and 300 men were killed before she was given up. Rodney fought for an hour against the more powerful Neptune and a second Frenchman on his other side, until, disabled by a broadside that destroyed the steering wheel and tore sails and rigging, the Eagle drifted clear. Despite heroic resistance, six of the French warships had surrendered by evening. Only two escaped, pursued into the night by Rodney—who, after some repairs, was eager for further action—and by two other ships of the English fleet. The convoyed French merchantmen escaped.
Rodney’s captures raised him another rung in reputation, especially as the spirit shown at Finisterre helped to dispel the cloud of shame of the Toulon courts-martial and more especially as the English loot amounted to over £300,000, paraded, this time through London, for the customary delight of the citizens.
As the begetter of this happy fortune for the government, Rodney was taken up by the Pelhams—Henry Pelham, the First Minister, and his brother the Duke of Newcastle, who were the two ruling patrons of “place.” By them he was made a protégé of the governing party, and supplied with that equipment felt to be a necessity as the path to personal advancement by every man of ambition—a seat in Parliament. He was presented by Admiral Anson, overall commander of the fleet at Finisterre, to King George II, who was much impressed by Rodney’s youth, remarking, as attendant courtiers hastened to take note, that he had “not before imagine[d] that he had so young a man a captain in his navy,” to which Lord Anson replied, “I wish your Majesty had one hundred more such captains, to the terror of your Majesty’s enemies.”
“We wish so too, my lord,” replied the King with ready repartee.
As disciples of Robert Walpole, the Pelhams wanted an end of the war, and after the rich haul at Finisterre, fighting was nominally brought to a close at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. The peace treaty exchanged various territories, but was in reality only a temporary truce which resolved nothing in the struggle for colonial supremacy, because the powers were reluctant to negotiate carefully for fear of prolonging the war. The boundaries of Canada and Nova Scotia and the rights of trade and navigation vis-à-vis Spain were left unsettled, and belligerence continued in the West Indies and North America.
The next year, in 1749, with the smile of royal favor Rodney was named Captain of the Rainbow, carrying with it command of the Newfoundland station and title as Governor. In 1753, he married a sister of the Earl of Northampton, and even before taking on this domestic status he assumed what