he
strategic situation in that day, and one which will not be wholly
without weight in our own, was the trade-wind, with its accompanying
current. A passage to windward against these obstacles was a long and
serious undertaking even for single ships, much more for larger
bodies. It followed that fleets would go to the western islands only
reluctantly, or when assured that the enemy had taken the same
direction, as Rodney went to Jamaica after the Battle of the Saints,
knowing the French fleet to have gone to Cap Francais. This condition
of the wind made the windward, or eastern, islands points on the
natural lines of communication between Europe and America, as well as
local bases of the naval war, and tied the fleets to them. Hence also
it followed that between the two scenes of operations, between the
continent and the Lesser Antilles, was interposed a wide central
region into which the larger operations of war could not safely be
carried except by a belligerent possessed of great naval superiority,
or unless a decisive advantage had been gained upon one flank. In
1762, when England held all the Windward Islands, with undisputed
superiority at sea, she safely attacked and subdued Havana; but in the
years 1779-1782 the French sea power in America and the French tenure
of the Windward Islands practically balanced her own, leaving the
Spaniards at Havana free to prosecute their designs against Pensacola
and the Bahamas, in the central region mentioned.[233]

Posts like Martinique and Sta. Lucia had therefore for the present war
great strategic advantage over Jamaica, Havana, or others to leeward.
They commanded the latter in virtue of their position, by which the
passage westward could be made so much more quickly than the return;
while the decisive points of the continental struggle were practically
little farther from the one than from the other. This advantage was
shared equally by most of those known as the Lesser Antilles; but the
small island of Barbadoes, being well to windward of all, possessed
peculiar advantages, not only for offensive action, but because it was
defended by the difficulty with which a large fleet could approach it,
even from so near a port as Fort Royal. It will be remembered that the
expedition which finally sat down before St. Kitt's had been intended
for Barbadoes, but could not reach it through the violence of the
trade-wind. Thus Barbadoes, under the conditions of the time, was
peculiarly