LITMIR.BIZ

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all was the chief naval officer on the station. So completely were the Fisheries considered as the colony that the Governor only stayed there during the season to protect them. For the rest of the year he was doing convoy work, out and home, or was lying in the Longreach. He had a regular round specified to him with much precision by My Lords. In spring he was to drop down to the Downs with his own ship and any others put under his command. From thence he was to proceed down Channel looking in at Pool, Weymouth, Topsham, Plymouth, and Falmouth. Sailing from this port he was to make the best of his way to the Banks of Newfoundland with the Fishing Fleet, “And in regard it has been represented to us that pirate ships did formerly lurk about the Banks of Newfoundland and infest the ships fishing on that coast, you are never to make any unnecessary stay in port, nor suffer the Boston (she was another vessel under his command) to do so, but keep diligently cruising at sea, and so employ both ships as may most effectually keep the pirates from those parts and protect the trade and His Majesty’s subjects.” Here follow many instructions as to his duties in those parts touching the assistance to be given to the Fishery Admirals in keeping order, the care to be shown in excluding foreign interlopers, and the vigilance to be exercised in preventing the desertion of English sailors. It was not intended that the Fishery Fleet should limit the supply of men for His Majesty’s Navy by carrying emigrants to New England. Therefore Captain Rodney was to see that all ships brought back the complement they took out “except in case of death,” when some reasonable latitude would be allowed. On October 1st Rodney was to collect his charge, now fully laden with stock-fish for the Peninsula and the Mediterranean, and was to convoy them to Cadiz, whence after a stay of not more than ten or twelve days he was to see them and such other merchant ships as put themselves under his protection to their respective parts “as high as Livorno.” After a stay of not more than twenty days he was to return by Barcelona, Majorca, Minorca, Alicante, and Cadiz. From thence, after another delay limited to twelve days, he was to make his way, providing for the Lisbon and Oporto trade in person or by deputy, to the Downs, “giving us an account by all opportunities of your proceedings.” From the Downs he would come up to the Thames, and there remain, unless ordered to convoy His Majesty from Harwich, till such time as he had to sail for the Banks again.

      This routine is worth recording for the illustration it affords of the conditions under which trade was formerly carried on, and the contrast it presents to the freedom and safety of the seas in our times. It was also distinctly service, and Rodney, who served his apprenticeship in it under Medley, must have known what work there was in it before taking the billet. He did not therefore use his influence to shirk work. For the rest the post was a good one—an all-round cruise and a winter in England being much to be preferred to three consecutive years of a foreign station. At a later period the experience must have been invaluable to Rodney. When nearly twenty years later he sailed to relieve Gibraltar, he must have found the value of the practice he had had in taking convoys in and out of the Mediterranean.

      In 1751 the regular round was relieved for him by a little piece of surveying service. The Trinity House had in that year before them Mr. William Otton and one Peter Ham his mate, sent by the Admiralty with a circumstantial story of discovery. It was to the effect that on March 4th, 1749, these two mariners in their bark the St. Paul did discover an island in Latitude 49° 40´ N. and Longitude 24° 30´ west of the Lizard. They saw it clearly, and were prepared to swear that it was six or seven leagues long, lying S.S.E. and N.N.W., with a little flat island at the east point of it. Also they swore that there was a great surf, and that one point of the island was as high as Dunnose. On cross-examination it appeared that Mr. Otton and Peter Ham did not cast the lead. The Trinity House did not much believe these mariners who came from a far country, but it thought the matter might be looked into, and so the Admiralty instructed the commander of the Newfoundland convoy, on whose route the supposed island lay, to look into it. Rodney did, and had to report that the alleged island was not there—being either an invention of Mr. Otton and Peter Ham of the St. Paul, or some Cape Flyaway seen in a haze, which had solidified in their imaginations between 1749 and 1751. Marryat was sent into the Atlantic on a similar wild goose chase long afterwards, which facts show how long it was before the ocean was so thoroughly surveyed as to make it appear impossible that an undiscovered island should lie between Cape Finisterre and Cape Race on the very track of the American trade.

      At all times during this commission there was a possibility that Rodney might have more serious work to do than the protecting fishermen from lurking pirates, or assisting Fishery Admirals. The peace with France never really extended either to America or India. In both there was incessant underhand hostility, flaming now and then into actual fighting. On the North American continent, all along the frontier of New England and Nova Scotia, there was almost avowed war from the first. Newfoundland was then to us a kind of outpost against the French in Canada, and it was part of Rodney’s duty to keep an eye on their agents, who were everywhere pushing, intriguing, insulting, in the style which provoked the great storm of the Seven Years’ War. When Rodney first took command of the Newfoundland station he was warned by Sandwich to be on the outlook for the French aggression, which His Majesty’s Ministers already expected on the very day after signing the Peace. The letter is worded honourably for Rodney. Sandwich speaks of him as one who can be trusted to act with judgment, and does not need precise instructions. His reputation must therefore have been well established at headquarters as a capable officer. The warning was not unnecessary, for in 1751 Rodney had to despatch Captain Francis William Drake (the brother of the Samuel Francis Drake who was to lead his van on the yet distant April 12th, 1782—Drakes both of them of the blood of the Elizabethan) to look into the proceedings of a French schooner reported to have turned up at Trepassey Bay just below Cape Race. She “was mounted with 14 carriage-guns besides a number of swivels. Man’d with upwards of fifty men ‘she’ had put into that port, and erected tents on shore, carrying with them a number of muskets, cuttlasses, and ammunition, giving no other account of themselves than that they were come to survey that part of the island, as likewise the harbour of Trepassey, to know whether their draughts in that respect were correct; the said schooner carrying a light in the night as if she expected other vessels.”

      The storm did not break in Rodney’s time, however. Mysterious French schooners turned up with carriaged-guns and swivels, showing menacing lights, but they vanished away again. French agents came and went on the border, intriguing, vapouring, now and then murdering, maintaining French influence in the usual way, till the measure was full, and they were swept for ever from the country they could neither use themselves nor would let others till in peace. Strange it is, and a poor proof of our wisdom, that they still retain those fishing rights on the coast of Newfoundland which it was part of Rodney’s duty to see that they did not exceed.

      The remnants—stained and tattered—of a letter-book kept by Rodney during his command of the Rainbow, and still preserved by his descendants, show him at work doing his duty as naval officer in peace very much as his successors do to-day. He has to report on Dr. Knight’s “Magnetic bars,” and to test a quick-firing brass gun, as we test and experiment now. Touches here and there show that the Admiralty administration was not of the best—complaints, for instance, that the men’s clothes are worn out, so much so as to leave them in absolute need of cover from the weather. Again, the food was but poor, to judge by the frequent orders for survey, and by the condemnation of beef, bread, and beer (for it was not till long after that rum became the standard drink of the navy) which followed the surveys. Sailors of both services, naval and merchant, will grumble at their food on small provocation, and condemn it on trifling evidence; but one does not gather that Rodney was too easily disposed to allow this weakness its way. The Rainbow’s stores, when condemned as bad, were bad, we may be sure. He appears at all times to have been careful of the health of his men, knowing that their efficiency depended on it, being moreover naturally a gentleman, and therefore anxious that the humbler folk dependent on him should be comfortable according to the modest standard of their place.

      It is a little detail not without interest that Rodney must have worn his first uniform on this commission. Though we had had a regular corps of naval officers since the beginning of the reign of Charles the Second, when the first list was formed by James, then Duke of York (whose merits as an administrator have never had full justice done them), no uniform was ordered till 1749. Officers dressed as they pleased, with a preference for red for show, and

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