Admirals de Grasse & Rodney

Visitors to Grasse can see the statue of the Admiral de Grasse outside his ancestral home in Bar sur Loup, as well as the duplicate on Cours Honoré Cresp, and Americans in particular will know that his naval victory over the British in Chesapeake Bay in 1781 effectively ended the War of Independence by forcing Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.

'You have been the arbiter of the war' - George Washington

Grasse has a small museum, almost an afterthought in fact, dedicated to the Admiral in what looks rather like a cellar of the Villa Fragonard below the Cours – Le Musée de la Marine Amiral de Grasse. One way or another, it’s always been closed when I’ve tried to visit, but I finally went a few days ago.

It’s quite interesting: if you like models of fighting ships! But one of the exhibits explains how the Admiral – François-Joseph-Paul de Grasse du Bar, no less – complained bitterly to a military court about the behaviour of his subordinates after losing a subsequent battle against the British. This was in 1782 and is known as the Battle of the Saintes.

Now when I was a teenager and first became interested in such places, I knew there were at least three pubs around Nottingham called Admiral Rodney, one of them at Wollaton, close to where I lived and quite convenient for a pint or three. A plaque in the pub explained that the admiral was most famous for winning the battle of the Saintes in the West Indies. But at the time I had no idea that his opponent was the Admiral de Grasse.

Admiral George Rodney was the Royal Navy’s pre-eminent commander in the later eighteenth century before the Napoleonic Wars. Before and during the Seven Years War between Britain and France, he had not only fought many successful battles but had obtained a great deal of prize money (from the sale of captured ships). Ironically, however, at the end of the war in 1763, he spent all that he had and more on failed attempts to achieve political success and eventually took refuge from his creditors by moving to, of all places, Paris, in 1774.

Only when war with France started again in 1778 could he return to active naval command, having been bailed out financially by an eminent French general, Marshal Biron. The story goes that at a dinner with him, Rodney said that he was unable to return to Britain, and Biron, graciously but perhaps a little too arrogantly told him ‘Monsieur, les Français ne veulent pas se prévaloir des obstacles qui vous empêchent’ (‘Sir, the French do not want to take advantage of the obstacles that prevent you’).

Rodney was subsequently very successful in battles off the Iberian coast and in the Caribbean, but at the time of the Battle of Chesapeake Bay, he was, perhaps quite luckily for the Admiral de Grasse, in Britain on sick leave.

Model of de Grasse's flagship 'Ville de Paris' at Chesapeake Bay and the Saintes in the Musée

In April 1782, however, he was back, preventing a French capture of Jamaica by winning the battle of the Saintes against de Grasse. He did so by initiating a novel tactic, in which, instead of each fleet lining up in parallel with each other and simply blasting away, he sailed in between two enemy ships, thus ‘breaking the line’. Naval historians are divided on how deliberate this was – it may well have been simply because of a change in the wind – but the same tactic was employed by Nelson to devastating effect at Trafalgar. Rodney returned to England to a peerage and an ample pension which augmented the wealth which he had accumulated while in command.

The National Portrait Gallery describes this portrait of him as ‘a crude copy of the original Reynolds’, but I rather suspect it betrays the truth about a distinctly avaricious man.

Poor François-Joseph-Paul, however, was captured at the battle, having lost seven large ships in all, including his own, the Ville de Paris, and was taken to London. He arrived back in Paris in August 1782 and at a much disputed and controversial court martial blamed his immediate subordinates for his defeat. He even wrote to Rodney, asking him to justify his claims!

He was eventually acquitted, but public (i.e. aristocratic, of course) opinion was against him and Louis XVI refused his request for a meeting, so ending his naval career.

Both de Grasse and Rodney have always been commemorated. The last HMS Rodney took part in the sinking of the Bismarck in 1941 (although the battleship Hood, named after Admiral Samuel Hood, who was Rodney's subordinate at the Saintes, was destroyed in the same action). There are still over fifty pubs in England named after Rodney, and there is a monument in, for some reason, Wales, called Admiral Rodney's Pillar.

Admiral Rodney pub, Wollaton, Nottingham

Both the French and US navies have had warships named after de Grasse: the USS Comte de Grasse was a destroyer whose crew took part in ceremonies in 1982 in Bar and Grasse to commemorate the anniversary of the battle of Chesapeake Bay and there have been three French naval ships named for de Grasse. And SS de Grasse was a French transatlantic steamer, between the wars (though it was built in Belfast!).

Perhaps most significant of all, France's rightful pride in de Grasse can be seen in his image appearing on stamps (one imagines the most English people's reaction if there was a stamp for Admiral Rodney would be 'who?'), such as on this first day cover from 1972.