home at a most critical moment, losing an exceptional opportunity for striking the enemy, in order to affect the elections in a dockyard town.  Admiral Keppel considered that he had been sacrificed to party feeling; and a very distinguished officer, Barrington, refused to take a fleet, although willing to serve as second, even under a junior.  “Who,” he wrote, “would trust himself in chief command with such a set of scoundrels as are now in office?” Even a quarter of a century later, Earl St. Vincent gave to George III. himself the same reason for declining employment.  After eliciting from him an unfavorable opinion as to the discipline and efficiency of the Channel Fleet, the king asked, “Where such evils exist, does Lord St. Vincent feel justified in refusing his conspicuous ability to remedy them?” “My life,” replied the old seaman, “is at your Majesty’s disposal, and at that of my country; but my honour is in my own keeping, and I will not expose myself to the risk of losing it by the machinations of this ministry, under which I should hold command.”  To such feelings it was due that Howe, Keppel, and Barrington did not go to sea during the anxious three years that followed the return of the first.  The illustrious Rodney, their only rival, but in himself a host, was the one distinguished naval chief who belonged heart and soul to the party with which Sandwich was identified.

Thus it happened that Rodney’s period of activity during the war of the American Revolution coincided substantially with that of Howe’s retirement.  The same change of administration, in the spring of 1782, that led to the recall of the older man, brought Howe again into service, to replace the mediocrities who for three campaigns had commanded the Channel Fleet, the mainstay of Great Britain’s safety.  Upon it depended not only the protection of the British Islands and of the trade routes converging upon them, but also the occasional revictualling of Gibraltar, now undergoing the third year of the famous siege.  Its operations extended to the North Sea, where the Dutch, now hostile, flanked the road to the Baltic, whence came the naval stores essential to the efficiency of the British fleet; to the Bay of Biscay, intercepting the convoys despatched from France to her navies abroad; and to the Chops of the Channel, where focussed the trade routes from East and West, and where more than once heavy losses had been inflicted upon British commerce by the allies.  All these services received conspicuous and successful illustration during Howe’s brief command, at the hands either of the commander-in-chief or of his subordinates, among whom were the very distinguished Barrington and Kempenfelt.  Howe himself, with twenty-five sail-of-the-line, in July encountered an allied fleet of forty off Scilly.  By an adroit tactical movement, very characteristic of his resolute and adequate presence of mind, he carried his ships between Scilly and Land’s End by night, disappearing before morning from the enemy’s view.  He thus succeeded in meeting to the westward a valuable Jamaica convoy, homeward bound, and taking it under his protection.  The allies being afterwards driven south by a heavy gale, the vessels of war and trade slipped by and reached England safely.  Thus does good luck often give its blessing to good management.