noted is not a palpable trait of covetousness,--if such it were,
--but the limitation to activity occasioned by preoccupation with a
realized, but imperfect, success. The comparatively crude impression of
greediness, produced by apparent absorption in a mere money gain, has
prevented the perception of this more important and decisive element in
Rodney's official character, revealed at St. Eustatius and confirmed on
the evening of the 12th of April. What he had won, he had won; what more
he might and should do, he would not see, nor would he risk.

His discontent with his junior flag-officers in the West Indies, and the
peculiar demoralization of professional tone at the moment, had made it
difficult for the Admiralty to provide him a satisfactory second in
command. In order to do this, they had "to make a promotion," as the
phrase went; that is, in order to get the man wanted, the seniors on the
captains' list were promoted down to and including him. The choice had
fallen on Sir Samuel Hood,--in later days Nelson's honored Lord
Hood,--than which none could have been happier in respect of capacity.
It has been truly said that he was as able as Rodney, and more
energetic; but even this falls short of his merit. He had an element of
professional--as distinguished from personal--daring, and an imaginative
faculty that penetrated the extreme possibilities of a situation,
quickened by the resolve, in which Rodney was deficient, to have all or
nothing; and these invaluable traits were balanced by the sound and
accurate judgment of a thorough seaman, without which imagination lures
to disaster. The man who as a junior formed the idea of seizing De
Grasse's anchorage in the Chesapeake in 1781, to effect the relief of
Cornwallis, and who in 1782, when momentarily in chief command,
illustrated the idea by actual performance under similar conditions in
the West Indies, rose to heights of conception and of achievement for
which we have no equivalent in Rodney's career. Unfortunately for him,
though thus mighty in act, opportunity for great results never came to
him. The hour never met the man.

Hood with eight ships-of-the-line and a large convoy arrived on the
station in January, 1781, and was at St. Eustatius with the
commander-in-chief when Rodney received a report, which proved to be
false, that eight to ten French ships-of-the-line, with a numerous
supply-fleet, had been sighted in European waters evidently bound for
the West