As de Guichen had taken the whole French homeward merchant fleet from Martinique to Cap Francois and as the height of the hurricane season was near, Rodney reasoned that but a small French force would remain in Haiti, and consequently that Jamaica would not require all the British fleet to save it from any possible attack.  He therefore sent thither ten sail of the line, notifying Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Parker that they were not merely to defend the island, but to enable him to send home its great trade in reasonable security.

These things being done by July 31st, Rodney, reasoning that the allies had practically abandoned all enterprises in the West Indies for that year, and that a hurricane might at any moment overtake the fleet at its anchors, possibly making for it a lee shore, went to sea, to cruise with the fleet off Barbuda.  His mind, however, was inclined already to go to the continent, whither he inferred, correctly but mistakenly, that the greater part of de Guichen’s fleet would go, because it should.  His purpose was confirmed by information from an American vessel that a French squadron of seven ships of the line, convoying six thousand troops, had anchored in Narragansett Bay on the 12th of July.  He started at once for the coast of South Carolina, where he communicated with the army in Charleston, and thence, “sweeping the southern coast of America,” anchored with fourteen ships of the line at Sandy Hook, on the 14th of September, unexpected and unwelcome to friends and foes alike.

Vice-Admiral Arbuthnot, being junior to Rodney, showed plainly and with insubordination his wrath at this intrusion into his command, which superseded his authority and divided the prize-money of a lucrative station.  This, however, was a detail.  To Washington, Rodney’s coming was a deathblow to the hopes raised by the arrival of the French division at Newport, which he had expected to see reinforced by de Guichen.  Actually, the departure of the latter made immaterial Rodney’s appearance on the scene; but this Washington did not know then.  As it was, Rodney’s force joined to Arbuthnot’s constituted a fleet of over twenty sail of the line, before which, vigorously used, there can be little doubt that the French squadron in Newport must have fallen.  But Rodney, though he had shown great energy in the West Indies, and unusual resolution in quitting his own station for a more remote service, was sixty-two, and suffered from gout.  “The sudden change of climate makes it necessary for me to go on shore for some short time,” he wrote; and although he added that his illness was “not of such a nature as shall cause one moment’s delay in his Majesty’s service,” he probably lost a chance at Rhode Island.  He did not overlook the matter, it is true; but he decided upon the information of Arbuthnot and Sir Henry Clinton, and did not inspect the ground himself.  Nothing of consequence came of his visit; and on the 16th of November he sailed again for the West Indies, taking with him only nine sail of the line.