Elphinstone kept ahead of the fleet, and led us through very well.”  This service is claimed to the credit of Rodney’s foresight by his biographer.  This may very well be, though more particular inquiry and demonstration by his letters would be necessary to establish specific orders beyond the general instructions given by him.  It is, however, safe to say that such particularity and minuteness of detail would be entirely in keeping with the tenor of his course at this period.  His correspondence bears the stamp of a mind comprehensive as well as exact; grasping all matters with breadth of view in their mutual relations, yet with the details at his fingers’ ends.  The certainty of his touch is as obvious as the activity of his thought.

In accordance with the spirit of his instructions, Rodney went in person to Martinique, the spot named by him as best for the rendezvous, there to superintend the preparations; to sow the seed for a harvest in which he was to have no share.  Incidental mention reveals that the sending of the ships-of-the-line with Douglas had reduced him to three for his own command; and also that Moncton, having now superior authority to do so, found himself able to spare troops for Jamaica, which were afloat in transports by the time Pocock came.  In the same letter the admiral frankly admits his anxiety for his station, under the circumstances of the big detachment he had made; a significant avowal, which enhances the merit of his spontaneous action by all the credit due to one who endures a well-weighed danger for an adequate end.

The despatch of Pocock’s expedition, which resulted in the fall of Havana, August 13, 1762, practically terminated Rodney’s active service in the Seven Years War.  In a career marked by unusual professional good fortune in many ways, the one singular mischance was that he reached a foremost position too late in life.  When he returned to England in August, 1763, he was in his full prime, and his conduct of affairs entrusted to him had given clear assurance of capacity for great things.  The same evidence is to be found in his letters, which, as studies of official character and competency, repay a close perusal.  But now fifteen years of peace were to elapse before a maritime war again broke out, and the fifteen years between forty-five and sixty tell sorely upon the physical stamina which need to underlie the mental and moral forces of a great commander.  St. Vincent himself staggered under the load, and Rodney was not a St. Vincent in the stern self-discipline that had braced the latter for old age.  He had not borne the yoke in his youth, and from this time forward he fought a losing fight with money troubles, which his self-controlled contemporary, after one bitter experience, had shaken off his shoulders forever.