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Updated: June 2, 2025
Eustatius and Saba, remnants of the once great Dutch power in the West Indies. Statia, as the first island is generally called, is a decadent spot, its commerce fallen to nothing, the warehouses along the sea-front of its only town, in ruins.
Rodney, having escaped the great hurricane of October, 1780, by his absence, returned to the West Indies later in the year, and soon after heard of the war between England and Holland; which, proceeding from causes which will be mentioned later, was declared December 20, 1780. The admiral at once seized the Dutch islands of St. Eustatius and St.
Rodney had spent a large part of his life dodging creditors, and it was due to the generous loan of a French gentleman in Paris that he did not drag out the years of this war in the Bastille for debt. When Holland entered the war he saw an opportunity to make a fortune by seizing the island of St. Eustatius, which had been the chief depot in the West Indies for smuggling contraband into America.
They were all in the van on the southern tack. The Russell, having several shot between wind and water, was with difficulty kept afloat, the water rising over the platform of the magazine. Hood sent her off at nightfall to St. Eustatius, where she arrived on the 4th of May, bringing Rodney the first news of the action, and of the numbers of the French reinforcement.
Eustatius and Saba, went in April 1666 with a company of buccaneers to the assistance of Governor Watts of St. Kitts against the French. In the rather shameful defence of the English part of the island Morgan's buccaneers were the only English who displayed any courage or discipline, and most of them were killed or wounded, Colonel Morgan himself being shot in both legs.
The comparatively crude impression of greediness, produced by apparent absorption in a mere money gain, has prevented the perception of this more important and decisive element in Rodney's official character, revealed at St. Eustatius and confirmed on the evening of the 12th of April. What he had won, he had won; what more he might and should do, he would not see, nor would he risk.
The buccaneers enrolled in Colonel Morgan's expedition proved to be troublesome allies. Before their departure from Jamaica most of them mutinied, and refused to sail until promised by Morgan that the plunder should be equally divided. On 17th July, however, the expedition made its rendezvous at Montserrat, and on the 23rd arrived before St. Eustatius.
His present perplexities, in their successive phases, can be seen throughout to be the result of sticking to St. Eustatius, not only physically, but mentally. And so it was with what followed. On reaching Barbados again, he had to report that the French were back in Martinique, and now twenty-eight through the arming of the ships en flûte.
The fishing fleets dared not put out to sea. In 1780 more than 2000 vessels passed through the Sound, in 1781 only eleven. On February 3 St Eustatius surrendered to Admiral Rodney, when one hundred and thirty merchantmen together with immense stores fell into the hands of the captors.
Kitts for his ill-starred dash upon the Spanish Main. And when the French in later years made their periodical descents upon the Dutch stations on Tobago, Curaçao and St. Eustatius, they always found in their island colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe buccaneers enough and more, eager to fill their ships.
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