uivalent number for the winter work on his station.

As de Guichen had taken the whole French homeward merchant fleet from
Martinique to Cap Francois and as the height of the hurricane season
was near, Rodney reasoned that but a small French force would remain
in Haiti, and consequently that Jamaica would not require all the
British fleet to save it from any possible attack. He therefore sent
thither ten sail of the line, notifying Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Parker
that they were not merely to defend the island, but to enable him to
send home its great trade in reasonable security.

These things being done by July 31st, Rodney, reasoning that the
allies had practically abandoned all enterprises in the West Indies
for that year, and that a hurricane might at any moment overtake the
fleet at its anchors, possibly making for it a lee shore, went to sea,
to cruise with the fleet off Barbuda. His mind, however, was inclined
already to go to the continent, whither he inferred, correctly but
mistakenly, that the greater part of de Guichen's fleet would go,
because it should. His purpose was confirmed by information from an
American vessel that a French squadron of seven ships of the line,
convoying six thousand troops, had anchored in Narragansett Bay on
the 12th of July. He started at once for the coast of South Carolina,
where he communicated with the army in Charleston, and thence,
"sweeping the southern coast of America," anchored with fourteen ships
of the line at Sandy Hook, on the 14th of September, unexpected and
unwelcome to friends and foes alike.

Vice-Admiral Arbuthnot, being junior to Rodney, showed plainly and
with insubordination his wrath at this intrusion into his command,
which superseded his authority and divided the prize-money of a
lucrative station. This, however, was a detail. To Washington,
Rodney's coming was a deathblow to the hopes raised by the arrival
of the French division at Newport, which he had expected to see
reinforced by de Guichen. Actually, the departure of the latter made
immaterial Rodney's appearance on the scene; but this Washington
did not know then. As it was, Rodney's force joined to Arbuthnot's
constituted a fleet of over twenty sail of the line, before which,
vigorously used, there can be little doubt that the French squadron in
Newport must have fallen. But Rodney, though he had shown great energy
in the West Indies, and unusual resolution in quitting his own station
for a more re