On January 7th, the West India trade parted company off Cape Finisterre, and the next day began the wonderful good fortune for which Rodney’s last command was distinguished.  It is no disparagement to his merit to say that in this he was, to use Ball’s phrase about Nelson, “a heaven-born admiral.”  A Spanish convoy of twenty-two sail, seven of which were ships of war, the rest laden with supplies for Cadiz, were sighted at daylight of the 8th, and all taken; not one escaped.  Twelve loaded with provisions were turned into the British convoy, and went on with it to feed the Gibraltar garrison.  A prince of the blood-royal, afterwards King William IV., was with the fleet as a midshipman.  One of the prizes being a line-of-battle ship, Rodney had an opportunity to show appositely his courtliness of breeding.  “I have named her the Prince William, in respect to His Royal Highness, in whose presence she had the honor to be taken.”

Repeated intelligence had reached the admiral that a Spanish division was cruising off Cape St. Vincent.  Therefore, when it was sighted at 1 P.M. of January 16th, a week after the capture of the convoy, he was prepared for the event.  A brief attempt to form line was quickly succeeded by the signal for a general chase, the ships to engage to leeward as they came up with the enemy, who, by taking flight to the southeast, showed the intention to escape into Cadiz.  The wind was blowing strong from the westward, giving a lee shore and shoals to the British fleet in the approaching long hours of a wintry night; but opportunity was winging by, with which neither Rodney nor the Navy could afford to trifle.  He was already laid up with an attack of the gout that continued to harass him throughout this command, and the decision to continue the chase was only reached after a discussion between him and his captain, the mention of which is transmitted by Sir Gilbert Blane, the surgeon of the ship, who was present professionally.  The merit of the resolution must remain with the man who bore the responsibility of the event; but that he reached it at such a moment only after consultation with another, to whom current gossip attributed the chief desert, must be coupled with the plausible claim afterwards advanced for Sir Charles Douglas, that he suggested the breaking of the enemy’s line on April 12th.  Taken together, they indicate at least a common contemporary professional estimate of Rodney’s temperament.  No such anecdote is transmitted of Hawke.  The battle of Cape St. Vincent, therefore, is not that most characteristic of Rodney’s genius.  Judged by his career at large, it is exceptional; yet of all his actions it is the one in which merit and success most conspicuously met.  Nor does it at all detract from his credit that the enemy was much inferior in numbers; eleven to twenty-one.  As in Hawke’s pursuit of Conflans, with which this engagement is worthy to be classed, what was that night dared, rightly and brilliantly dared, was the dangers of the deep, not of the foe.  The prey was seized out of the jaws of disaster.