the line--been wrecked, with
the loss of almost all on board, but the greater part of those which
survived had been dismasted, wholly or in part, as well as injured
in the hull. There were in the West Indies no docking facilities;
under-water damage could be repaired only by careening or
heaving-down. Furthermore, as Barbados, Santa Lucia, and Jamaica,
all had been swept, their supplies were mainly destroyed. Antigua,
it is true, had escaped, the hurricane passing south of St. Kitts;
but Rodney wrote home that no stores for refitting were obtainable
in the Caribbee Islands. He was hoping then that Sir Peter Parker
might supply his needs in part; for when writing from Santa Lucia on
December 10th, two months after the storm, he was still ignorant
that the Jamaica Station had suffered to the full as severely as the
eastern islands. The fact shows not merely the ordinary slowness of
communications in those days, but also the paralysis that fell
upon all movements in consequence of that great disaster. "The
most beautiful island in the world," he said of Barbados, "has the
appearance of a country laid waste by fire and sword."

Hearing that the fortifications at St. Vincent had been almost
destroyed by the hurricane, Rodney, in combination with General
Vaughan, commanding the troops on the station, made an attempt
to reconquer the island, landing there on December 15th; but the
intelligence proved erroneous, and the fleet returned to Santa Lucia.
"I have only nine sail of the line now with me capable of going to
sea," wrote the Admiral on the 22d, "and not one of them has spare
rigging or sails." In the course of January, 1781, he was joined by a
division of eight ships of the line from England, under the command
of Rear-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood,--Nelson's Lord Hood. These, with four
others refitted during that month, not improbably from stores brought
in Hood's convoy of over a hundred sail, raised the disposable force
to twenty-one ships of the line: two 90's, one 80, fifteen 74's, and
three 64's.

On the 27th of January, an express arrived from England, directing the
seizure of the Dutch possessions in the Caribbean, and specifying,
as first to be attacked, St. Eustatius and St. Martin, two small
islands lying within fifty miles north of the British St. Kitts. St.
Eustatius, a rocky patch six miles in length by three in breadth,
had been conspicuous, since the war began, as a great trade centre,
where supplies of all