In his official report Rodney gave much credit to his officers for the St. Vincent affair.  “The gallant behaviour of the admirals, captains, officers and men, I had the honour to command, was conspicuous; they seemed animated with the same spirit, and were eager to exert themselves with the utmost zeal.”  Here also, however, he was biding his time for obvious reasons; for to his wife he writes, “I have done them all like honour, but it is because I would not have the world believe that there were officers slack in their duty.  Without a thorough change in naval affairs, the discipline of our navy will be lost.  I could say much, but will not.  You will hear of it from themselves;” that is, probably, by their mutual recriminations.  Such indulgent envelopment of good and bad alike in a common mantle of commendation is far from unexampled; but it rarely fails to return to plague its authors, as has been seen in instances more recent than that of Rodney.  He clearly had told Sandwich the same in private letters, for the First Lord writes him, “I fear the picture you give of the faction in your fleet is too well drawn.  Time and moderation will by degrees get the better of this bane of discipline.  I exceedingly applaud your resolution to shut your ears against the illiberal language of your officers, who are inclined to arraign each other’s conduct.”  In this two things are to be remarked:  first, the evident and undeniable existence of serious cause of complaint, which was preparing Rodney for the stern self-assertion soon to be shown; and, second, that such imputations are frequent with him, while he seems in turn to have had a capacity for eliciting insubordination of feeling, though he can repress the act.  It is a question of personal temperament, which explains more than his relations with other men.  Hawke and Nelson find rare fault with those beneath them; for their own spirit takes possession of their subordinates.  Such difference of spirit reveals itself in more ways than one in the active life of a military community.

If there was joy in England over Rodney’s achievement, still more and more sympathetic was the exultation of those who in the isolation of Gibraltar’s Rock, rarely seeing their country’s flag save on their own flagstaff, witnessed and shared the triumph of his entrance there with his train of prizes.  The ships of war and transports forming the convoy did not indeed appear in one body, but in groups, being dispersed by the light airs, and swept eastward by the in-drag of the current from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean; but the presence of the great fleet, and the prestige of its recent victory, secured the practical immunity of merchant vessels during its stay.  Of the first to come in, on January 15th, an eye-witness wrote, “A ship with the British flag entering the Bay was so uncommon a sight that almost the whole garrison were assembled at the southward to welcome her in; but words are insufficient to describe