When Rodney issued the order to cease action on the evening of April 12th, his active life had practically come to an end. He proceeded with his fleet and his prizes to Jamaica, after despatching Hood, somewhat tardily, in pursuit of the scattered French. Hood picked up two liners and a few smaller craft in the Mona Channel between Porto Rico and San Domingo. At Jamaica, Rodney was received with natural and well-deserved enthusiasm by the people whom he had saved from a great danger. He remained at Port Royal till the end of July. The work of refitting the squadron occupied him much, and was not made lighter by the condition of the dockyard, which had fallen into bad order since he had himself been on the station in 1774. He looked forward to exercising his command for some time longer—even to the end of the war. In a letter to his wife he begs her to contradict all reports that he was coming home. If he had wished to return after his victory, he might have done so with credit, for his work was done and his health had again broken down. At Port Royal he was so ill as to be compelled to hand over the command for a time to his second. He still, however, clung to his great office, and in the circumstances he cannot be blamed for being loath to retire in the presence of the enemy.

Had he known what was passing in England while he was breaking up the French fleet it is possible that a request to be relieved might have accompanied the news of his victory in the despatch-box of Lord Cranstoun, who gave up his immediate prospect of a ship in order to be the bearer of good tidings to London. If the two documents had been delivered together he would have scored a double victory over the Ministry. At the very moment that he was pressing the pursuit of the French, his recall was being decided on by the Ministry, and it would have been something to have forestalled them. Lord North had been driven from office in March, and a Whig administration had succeeded. The new Cabinet resolved to recall the Tory admiral, and it is characteristic that the officer they chose to succeed him was Admiral Pigot. Pigot was a man of no distinction, of no experience in the command of fleets, and he had been long on shore; but he had sat for years in the House and had always voted steadily with the Whigs. For these services he was chosen to bear out the laconic order which told Rodney to haul down his flag, and to him it was given to succeed the most brilliantly successful commander of the war.

By one of the most ironical pieces of ill-luck—and the best merited—which ever overtook any Administration, the news of the great victory reached England just after Pigot had sailed. Orders were at once sent off to stop him, but it was too late. He was out of sight of land on his way to the West Indies before the messenger could reach the port. There was nothing for it but to stick to their guns, to retort on their adversaries that the country had heard the news of the recall with indifference however loudly it cried out after receiving the news of the victory (which was perfectly true), and to protest the utmost respect for the Admiral. To do it justice, the Whig Cabinet executed itself with a reasonably good grace. Burke declared in his figurative classical way that if there was a bald spot on the head of the Admiral he would gladly cover it with laurels. A committee which had been appointed to inquire into the miscarriages at St. Eustatius was discharged. It was decided that Rodney should have a barony and another pension of £2000. Sandwich, who being now in Opposition could afford to be generous, declared that a barony was not enough. His own ancestor, the Admiral Montague who helped to restore Charles the Second, and was slain at Solebay, had received an earldom and more money for less than had been done by Rodney. There was truth in his criticism, but the Ministry cannot be accused of niggardly conduct if judged by the standard of the time. Titles were less lavishly given for service then than they had been before or have been since. Hawke, for example, received no title at all for the battle of Quiberon, which relieved the country from the fear of actual invasion. His barony was given him years afterwards. It does not appear that Rodney thought himself shabbily treated. He took his title from Rodney Stoke, but he did not close with the offer of the Duke of Chandos. Lady Rodney did not like the climate of Somerset, and the Admiral himself seems to have had no sentimental feelings in the matter. He was content with Hampshire, which had always been his country-quarters in England.

Rodney left the West Indies in July and reached Bristol, after a stormy passage, in September. His reception at home consoled him, if unmeasured popular applause was a consolation in such a case, for his summary recall. The country had not had many opportunities of welcoming victorious commanders in the course of this war. The good work done (and it had been much) had not been of the brilliant kind, and had too often ended in disaster. In Rodney’s case there was now no doubt. He had taken a Spanish, a Dutch, and a French admiral—the last in the midst of a great fleet and on board the finest three-decker in the world. More liners had struck to him than to any English admiral since the elder Byng scattered the Spaniards off Cape Passaro nearly seventy years before. There was no shadow on this glory, and the nation gave way to one of those bursts of enthusiasm over it and the man who bore it, in which the phlegm of the English melts like “snaw off a dyke.” From the day of his landing at Bristol till he retired from Court surfeited with praise, he was surrounded by cheering crowds; and when the applause died away it left a solid admiration and gratitude which endured to the end.

Rodney survived his triumphant return nearly ten years, but it is to be feared that there was more glory than ease in the end of his life. The lawsuits which sprang out of those unlucky transactions at St. Eustatius followed him almost to the grave—they or their consequences, which were pecuniary embarrassments. His gout too grew upon him, and before the close had begun, according to a not improbable report, to affect his understanding. Much of his time was spent at spas at home or abroad. In 1787, when there was again a prospect of war with France, he volunteered to go on service, in spite of age and infirmities, if the King had need of him. The offer was acknowledged with fitting courtesy by Pitt, but it could not have been considered more than a sign of the veteran’s goodwill. In 1789 he had again to write to Pitt. The King’s first publicly known attack of madness had just occurred, and Rodney had taken what he believed to be the right side for one who was “bred a Royalist”—he had in fact acted with those who wished to give the regency without limitations to the Prince of Wales. Immediately afterwards he was informed that his son, Captain John Rodney, was likely to be refused a guardship appointment as a punishment for his own Parliamentary action. He wrote to the Prime Minister in very natural indignation—and indeed such an act done on such a motive would have been sufficiently ignoble, though perfectly in keeping with the practice of the time. It does not seem, however, that, as a matter of fact, Captain John Rodney ever wanted for commands.

The Admiral died on May 23rd, 1792, in his eldest son’s house, the corner house of Prince’s Street and Hanover Square, of gout. He had fainted with pain, and when he revived for a moment Sir Walter Farquhar, his doctor, asked him if he did not feel better, to which he replied, “I am very ill indeed,” and so “expired without a sigh or a struggle.”

If we look, as it is fair to look, to the importance of the great victory which he won in 1782, there can be no difficulty in assigning Rodney his place among English admirals. He ranks next to Blake and to Nelson. From the time that the admiral of the Commonwealth defeated Tromp in the three days’ battle which raged from Portland to Calais, no victory of equally vital consequence had been won. Until Trafalgar, which finally ruined Napoleon’s efforts to cross us at sea, no such other was to be won. It may even, in a sense, be said with accuracy that of the two the fight off Dominica was more important than Trafalgar. If Villeneuve had never left Cadiz, the immense superiority of the English fleet would not have been diminished in the least. Napoleon had broken up the camp at Boulogne and marched into Germany before Trafalgar was fought. He had renounced his intention of invading England already; and Trafalgar, though a magnificent victory, was valuable rather as proving to us and to the world that England was safe than as adding to our existing safety. Moreover, it may be very reasonably doubted whether, without the encouraging example set by Rodney, our admirals of the Revolutionary War would have manoeuvred as boldly as they did. The influence of that day is felt at once if we pass from any of the battles fought before it to Howe’s victory on June 1st. Howe was by nature a circumspect man. He had expressly stated after reading Clerk of Eldin that, though it was all very ingenious, he for his part meant to keep to the old way. Yet, as a matter of fact, he departed widely from the old way, and won such a victory as would not have been possible if he had stuck to it. The deduction that he was led by the example of Rodney is irresistible. Indeed the battle of April 12th was a turning-point in the history of naval warfare. From that time forward we hear nothing more of the pedantic old fighting orders. Admirals manoeuvred to beat the enemy, and not to keep their own line intact.

A man who commanded on so great an occasion must for ever receive his share of honour. Yet the devil’s advocate asks whether the occasion was not greater than the man, and it cannot be denied that he has a case. As Rodney himself said afterwards, with rare honesty and self-knowledge, the victory was largely won by accident. It was not thought out and done on a plan. His orders show that the Admiral meant to fight on the old method. He departed from it because the wind had disordered the enemy for him. He did not deliberately break the enemy up as Howe did on June 1st, as Nelson did at Trafalgar. He himself never showed any particular pride in his great victory. Whatever evidence there is goes to prove that he wished to be judged, not by the battle he won, but by the plan he laid to defeat Guichen on April 17th, 1780. That battle, he felt, would have been won by headpiece and not by luck. It was a very just distinction, and Rodney’s glory will not be really affected if he is judged by the test he preferred. The plan of battle for the 17th was a good one, and shows that he was a tactician, though it also shows his limitations. As a tactician his glory is that he endeavoured to use the old tactics with intelligence. But he was not an innovator.

As a commander he ranks much higher. He could take the great line, looking to what was for the best when the war was considered as a whole. His watch was vigilant; his pursuit was close. He could select from among the objects to be attained the most important, and could refuse to be drawn off by the less vital. His measures were not uniformly well taken, and for one interval of his life his spirit was dimmed; but, on the whole, he was an energetic leader, differing in kind from such a man as Arbuthnot, and in degree from such an officer as Hughes, the very valiant, very tough, but, alas! very commonplace admiral who was pitted against Souffren in the East Indies. Perhaps the most really honourable to him of all his feats was the destruction of Langara’s squadron. He had an overwhelming superiority of numbers, no doubt, but the determination to pursue through the night and the storm on to a lee shore, the resolution to run the risk for a sufficient object, were worthy of his old leader Hawke—and more than that no man can say.

Personally Rodney was a very complete example of that aristocracy which governed England through the eighteenth century—with much selfishness and much corruption, no doubt, yet in the main with a high spirit, with foresight, with statesmanship, and with glory. It would be absurd to say that he was indifferent to place or money. He desired them both, and avowed the desire frankly. He was not, in a favourite modern phrase, sympathetic. There was about him a certain irritable promptitude to assert his own dignity, and one gathers that he rather enjoyed inspiring fear. Yet, like many men who are proud in place and office, he was kind to those who were dependent on him—to his children, to his wife, and to such friends as Gilbert Blane. He had that sense of the becoming in manners which rarely fails an aristocracy. Whatever he may have said to Douglas or of Hood in private, he gave them their praise before the world in full measure. But the great redeeming quality in Rodney and in all that aristocratic class to which he belonged was this, that they did combine with their self-seeking a very high public spirit. They would intrigue for place, and would in matters of detail allow the interest of “the connection” to go before the good of the State; but when they spoke for their country to the foreigner, then they thought only of the greatness of England. For that greatness Rodney fought and would willingly have died. For it, and at a time of dire need, he, at the head of a force he helped to perfect, did a very great thing. For that his name should never be forgotten by Englishmen.

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