George Brydges Rodney

George Brydges Rodney was a British admiral whose victory at the Saintes in 1782 restored naval supremacy in the Caribbean at the end of the American War of Independence. Born in London in 1718 into a well-connected but impoverished family, he entered the navy at about thirteen and was made post-captain at twenty-four. He distinguished himself in the Seven Years' War, bombarding Le Havre in 1759 and capturing Martinique in 1762, and was made a baronet. He served as Governor of Greenwich Hospital and as a Member of Parliament, and his gambling debts were severe enough that he lived in France for several years to escape his creditors, returning only when a French nobleman lent him the money to settle them. Recalled in 1779, he relieved Gibraltar in January 1780 by defeating a Spanish squadron in the Moonlight Battle off Cape St Vincent, an action fought at night and in heavy weather against the conventions of the day. He seized the Dutch entrepôt of St Eustatius in 1781, where he spent months disposing of the enormous quantity of captured goods — an enterprise that enriched him, distracted him from the campaign that ended at Yorktown, and led to years of litigation. His decisive engagement came on 12 April 1782 near the Îles des Saintes against the Comte de Grasse, who had made Yorktown possible the previous autumn. A shift of wind broke the French line, and Rodney's ships passed through the gaps, doubling on the enemy from both sides. The manoeuvre destroyed the French fleet's cohesion and captured de Grasse and his flagship. He was made a baron and voted a pension. He died in 1792.

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