Types of Naval Officers

in Martinique, twenty-eight to twenty. In short, Rodney saw at Tobago only the one French detachment; Hood saw therein the definition of the enemy's purpose, the necessity laid on them to fly to the aid of their exposed division, and the chance to anticipate them, -- to gain an advantage first, and to beat them afterwards.

Rodney's tentative and inadequate action was not improbably induced partly by the "extreme want of water," which he reported in his dispatches; and this again was due to failure to prepare adequately during the period of respite foreseen by Hood, but unnoted by his own preoccupied mind. The result is instructive. Drake fell in with the main body of the French, and of course had to retire, -- fortunate in regaining his commander-in-chief unmolested. De Grasse's movement had become known in Barbados, and as soon as Drake appeared Rodney sailed with the fleet, but upon arriving off Tobago, on June 5th, learned that it had surrendered on the 2d. Its fall he duly attributed to local neglect and cowardice; but evidently the presence of the British fleet might have had some effect. He then returned to Barbados, and during the passage the hostile fleets sighted each other on the 9th, -- twenty British to twenty-three French; but Rodney was unwilling to engage lest he might be entangled with the foul ground about Grenada. As that island was then in the enemy's hands, he could get no anchorage there, and so might be