on.

When Rodney was in later years commander-in-chief in the West Indies, he
made his son a post-captain at fifteen; an exercise of official powers
which, though not singular to him, is too characteristic of the man and
the times to be wholly unmentioned. His own promotion, though rapid, was
not too much so for his professional good; but it is likely that
neither that consideration, nor the good of the service, counted for
much alongside of the influence he possessed. He appears, however, to
have justified from the first the favor of his superiors. His employment
was continuous, and in a military point of view he was more fortunate
than Hawke was at the same period of his career. Within two years, when
in command of a forty-gun ship, he fought and took a French privateer of
the same nominal force, and with a crew larger by one hundred than his
own. Thence he was advanced into the _Eagle_, sixty, in which, after
some commerce-destroying more lucrative than glorious, he bore an
extremely honorable part in Hawke's battle with L'Etenduere, already
related. The _Eagle_ was heavily engaged, and was one of the three small
ships that on their own initiative pursued and fought, though
unsuccessfully, the two escaping French vessels. Rodney shared Hawke's
general encomium, that "as far as fell within my notice, the commanders,
their officers, and ships' companies, behaved with the greatest spirit
and resolution." Rodney came under his close observation, for, the
_Eagle's_ "wheel being shot to pieces and all the men at it killed, and
all her braces and bowlines gone," she drove twice on board the
flag-ship. This was before her pursuit of the two fliers.

In the subsequent trial of Captain Fox,--the minutes of which the
present writer has not seen,--it appears, according to the biographer
of Lord Hawke,[6] that it was Captain Saunders's and Captain Rodney's
"sense of being deserted by Fox, and of the two French ships having
escaped through his failure of duty, which forms the chief feature of
the Court-Martial. Rodney especially describes his being exposed to the
fire of four of the enemy's ships, when, as he asserted, Fox's ship
might well have taken off some of it." The incident is very noteworthy,
for it bears the impress of personal character. Intolerance of
dereliction of duty, and uncompromising condemnation of the delinquent,
were ever leading traits in Rodney's course as a commander-in-chief. He
stood over his officers wi