anchored
on the 24th of October. His arrival raised the allied force there
assembled to fifty-one sail of the line, besides the ninety-five sugar
and coffee ships which he had convoyed from Haiti. It is significant
of the weakness of Great Britain in the Mediterranean at that time,
that these extremely valuable merchant ships were sent on to Toulon,
instead of to the more convenient Atlantic ports, only five ships of
the line accompanying them past Gibraltar. The French government had
feared to trust them to Brest, even with de Guichen's nineteen sail.

The allied operations in the Windward Islands for the season of
1780 had thus ended in nothing, notwithstanding an incontestable
inferiority of the British to the French alone, of which Rodney
strongly complained. It was, however, contrary to the intentions
of the Admiralty that things so happened. Orders had been sent to
Vice-Admiral Marriot Arbuthnot, at New York, to detach ships to
Rodney; but the vessel carrying them was driven by weather to
the Bahamas, and her captain neglected to notify Arbuthnot of his
whereabouts, or of his dispatches. A detachment of five ships of the
line under Commodore the Hon. Robert Boyle Walsingham was detained
three months in England, wind-bound. They consequently did not join
till July 12th. The dispositions at once made by Rodney afford a very
good illustration of the kind of duties that a British Admiral had
then to discharge. He detailed five ships of the line to remain with
Hotham at Santa Lucia, for the protection of the Windward Islands.
On the 17th, taking with him a large merchant convoy, he put to sea
with the fleet for St. Kitts, where the Leeward Islands "trade" was
collecting for England. On the way he received precise information as
to the route and force of the Franco-Spanish fleet under de Guichen,
of the sickness on board it, and of the dissension between the allies.
From St. Kitts the July "trade" was sent home with two ships of the
line. Three others, he wrote to the Admiralty, would accompany the
September fleet, "and the remainder of the ships on this station,
which are in want of great repair and are not copper-bottomed, shall
proceed with them or with the convoy which their Lordships have been
pleased to order shall sail from hence in October next." If these
arrived before winter, he argued, they would be available by spring as
a reinforcement for the Channel fleet, and would enable the Admiralty
to send him an eq