[
381]
that day, tired of the Keppels and the Palisers, the
mutinous and the incompetent, put in command of the expedition that was to relieve
Gibraltar and rule the seas of the
West Indies. One of the king's younger sons served on board his fleet as midshipman.
He took his squadron to sea on the twenty-ninth of December, 1779.
On the eighth of January, 1780,
he captured seven vessels of war and fifteen sail of merchantmen.
On the sixteenth, he encountered off
Cape St. Vincent, the Spanish squadron of Languara, very inferior to his own, and easily took or destroyed a great part of it. Having victualled the garrison of
Gibraltar, and relieved Minorca, on the thirteenth
of February he set sail for the
West Indies.
At St. Lucie he received letters from his wife, saying: ‘Everybody is beyond measure delighted as well as astonished at your success;’ from his daughter: “Everybody almost adores you, and every mouth is full of your praise; come back when you have done some more things in that part of the world you are in now.”
The thanks of both houses of parliament reached
him at
Barbadoes.
In April and May,
Rodney had twice or thrice encounters with the French fleet of
Admiral Guichen, and with such success that in a grateful mood the British parliament thanked him once more.
Yet he did not obtain a decided superiority in the West Indian seas, and he reported to the admiralty as the reason, that his flag had not been properly supported by some of his officers.
With indifference to neutral rights, he sent frigates to seize or destroy all American vessels in St. Eustatius.
In June, he received a check by a Junc-
