il, who, after De Grasse's surrender, made the signal for the
ships to rally round his flag, found only ten with him next morning,
and was not joined by any more before the 14th. During the following
days five more joined him at intervals.[218] With these he went to the
rendezvous at Cap Francais, where he found others, bringing the whole
number who repaired thither to twenty. The five remaining, of those
that had been in the action, fled to Curacoa, six hundred miles
distant, and did not rejoin until May. The "body of twenty-six ships,"
therefore, had no existence in fact; on the contrary, the French fleet
was very badly broken up, and several of its ships isolated. As
regards the crippled condition, there seems no reason to think the
English had suffered more, but rather less, than their enemy; and a
curious statement, bearing upon this, appears in a letter from Sir
Gilbert Blane:--

"It was with difficulty we could make the French officers
believe that the returns of killed and wounded, made by our
ships to the admiral, were true; and one of them flatly
contradicted me, saying we always gave the world a false account
of our loss. I then walked with him over the decks of the
'Formidable,' and bid him remark what number of shot-holes there
were, and _also how little her rigging had suffered_, and asked
if that degree of damage was likely to be connected with the
loss of more than fourteen men, which was our number killed, and
_the greatest of any in the fleet_, except the 'Royal Oak' and
'Monarch.' He ... owned our fire must have been much better kept
up and directed than theirs."[219]

There can remain little doubt, therefore, that the advantage was not
followed up with all possible vigor. Not till five days after the
battle was Hood's division sent toward San Domingo, where they picked
up in the Mona Passage the "Jason" and the "Caton," which had
separated before the battle and were on their way to Cap Francais.
These, and two small vessels with them, were the sole after-fruits of
the victory. Under the conditions of England's war this cautious
failure is a serious blot on Rodney's military reputation, and goes
far to fix his place among successful admirals. He had saved Jamaica
for the time; but he had not, having the opportunity, crushed the
French fleet. He too, like De Grasse, had allowed the immediate
objective to blind him to the general military situation, and