As it happened, Rodney not only took the responsibility of stripping his own station to the verge of bareness in favor of the general interest, but in so doing he came very near traversing, unwittingly, the plans of the general government by his local action, laudable and proper as that certainly was.  He was, however, professionally lucky to a proverb, and escaped this mischance by a hair’s breadth.  The purposed detachment had already started for Jamaica, and he was accompanying it in person, when there joined him on March 25th, off the island of St. Kitt’s, not far from Antigua, a frigate bearing Admiralty despatches of February 5th.  These required him to desist from any enterprises he might have in hand, in order to give his undivided attention to the local preparations for an expedition, as yet secret, which was shortly to arrive on his station, under the command of Admiral Pocock, with ultimate destination against Havana.

To be thus arrested at the very outset of a movement from which he naturally expected distinction was a bitter disappointment to Rodney.  Several years later, in 1771, he wrote to Sandwich, who was not the First Lord when Pocock was sent out, “I had the misfortune of being superseded in the command of a successful fleet, entrusted to my care in the West Indies, at the very time I had sailed on another expedition against the enemy’s squadron at Santo Domingo, and was thereby deprived of pursuing those conquests which so honorably attended upon another, and which secured him such great emoluments,”—­for Havana proved a wealthy prize.  His steps, however, upon this unexpected reversal of his plans, were again characterized by an immediateness, most honorable to his professional character, which showed how thoroughly familiar he was with the whole subject and its possible contingencies, and the consequent readiness of his mind to meet each occasion as it arose; marks, all, of the thoroughly equipped general officer.  The order as to his personal movements being not discretional, was of course absolutely accepted; but his other measures were apparently his own, and were instantaneous.  A vessel was at once sent off to Barbados to notify Admiral Pocock that the best place in the West Indies for his rendezvous was Fort Royal Bay, in the newly acquired Martinique.  The ten sail-of-the-line, accompanied by two large transports from St. Kitt’s, were then sent on to Jamaica to move troops from there to join Pocock; the command of the detachment being now entrusted to Sir James Douglas, who received the further instruction to send back his fastest frigate, with all the intelligence he could gather, directing her to keep in the track Pocock would follow, in order to meet him betimes.  The frigate thus sent, having first made a running survey of the unfrequented passage north of Cuba, by which the expedition was to proceed, joined Pocock, and, by the latter’s report, acted as pilot for the fleet.  “Having taken sketches of the land and cayos on both sides, Captain