Well I think a fair reading of the situation is that St Eustatius was a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other in that the island was clearly and blatantly involved in supplying contraband to British enemies in contemptuous breach of its neutrality status with some British merchants involved in the trade and joining in making the huge profits such illegal acts enjoyed.
It is somewhat surprising that the British did not go in there earlier with such outrageous activity going on and a charitable view would be to give the British government acknowledgement for at least following the accepted legal formality of waiting until war existed between Holland and Great Britain before they did, which explains but doesn't excuse the frustration vented on the island once it was moved against.
As pointed out in the review Rodney had been on the receiving end of that illegal trade after French ships that had been in battle with Rodney's fleet off Martinique refitted using materials supplied by the island which must have caused much anger at such behaviour in time of war.
Against those facts there is evidence that personal possessions of islanders were illegally confiscated along with clearly obvious materials that were contraband and the fact that the British government did not send out independent legally trained administrators to oversee the confiscations left the military leadership in an invidious position to be called out for personal self enrichment.
All this is covered in a balanced way by Trew as mentioned in the review. Plus Rodney was held accountable in the British courts long after the war by merchants able to submit claims against him and where his position was clearly scrutinised which can't always be said for a lot of other national legal systems at the time, holding their military and political leaders to account.
Personally I think the greater fault that Rodney committed was his abdicating his command of the fleet to Hood whilst he busied himself overseeing the confiscation work instead of delegating it to a junior officer and fulfilling his primary duty of taking the war to the French fleet in the region, which would have also helped to deflect later charges of his own personal self enrichment.
Interestingly, Rodney clearly failed at self enrichment, as the French intercepted the convoy carrying the confiscated materials back to the UK but I am not aware that they returned them to their Dutch allies or contented themselves with ‘looting' them instead. Either way it seems likely that there was no possible route for compensation in the French courts.
As often these situations are often shades of grey rather than black and white.
Thanks for the comment and I hope you enjoy the book.
JJ
snapped some photos of games he didn't get a chance to play in at Council of Five Nations.
