superior.  “It is a very mortifying circumstance to relate to you, Sir, that the French fleet which you put to flight on the 12th went through the Mona Channel on the 18th, only the day before I was in it."[131] A further proof of the utility of pursuit, here hinted at, is to be found in the fact that Rodney, starting six days later than de Vaudreuil, reached Jamaica, April 28th, only three days after the French got into Cap Francois.  He had therefore gained three days in a fortnight’s run.  What might not have been done by an untiring chase!  But a remark recorded by Hood summed up the frame of mind which dominated Rodney:  “I lamented to Sir George on the 13th that the signal for a general chase was not made when that for the line was hauled down and that he did not continue to pursue so as to keep sight of the enemy all night, to which he only answered, ’Come, we have done very handsomely as it is.’"[132]

Rodney stayed at Jamaica until the 10th of July, when Admiral Hugh Pigot arrived from England to supersede him.  This change was consequent upon the fall of Lord North’s ministry, in March, 1782, and had been decided before the news of the victory could reach England.  Admiral Keppel now became the head of the Admiralty.  Rodney sailed for home from Port Royal on the 22d of July; and with his departure the war in the West Indies and North America may be said to have ended.  Pigot started almost immediately for New York, and remained in North American waters until the end of October, when he returned to Barbados, first having detached Hood with thirteen ships of the line from the main fleet, to cruise off Cap Francois.  It is of interest to note that at this time Hood took with him from New York the frigate Albemarle, 28, then commanded by Nelson, who had been serving on the North American station.  These various movements were dictated by those of the enemy, either actually made or supposed to be in contemplation; for it was an inevitable part of the ill-effects of Rodney’s most imperfect success, that the British fleet was thenceforth on the defensive purely, with all the perplexities of him who waits upon the initiative of an opponent.  Nothing came of them all, however, for the war now was but lingering in its death stupor.  The defeat of de Grasse, partial though it was; the abandonment of the enterprise upon Jamaica; the failure of the attack upon Gibraltar; and the success of Howe in re-victualling that fortress,—­these had taken all heart out of the French and Spaniards; while the numerical superiority of the allies, inefficiently though it had been used heretofore, weighed heavily upon the imagination of the British Government, which now had abandoned all hope of subduing its American Colonies.  Upon the conclusion of peace, in 1783, Pigot and Hood returned to England, leaving the Leeward Islands’ Station under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Hughes, an officer remembered by history only through Nelson’s refusing to obey his orders not to enforce the Navigation Acts, in 1785.