On the 6th October, Wright again sailed to join Codrington at Antigua, and a plan was laid for attacking the French island of Guadaloupe. It is to be noted that Wright’s crews having been sorely diminished by sickness, he had been compelled to press sailors from the merchant ships at Barbadoes. While the English squadron was collected for the purpose of attacking St. Christopher, the French privateers sailing from Hispaniola, Martinique and Guadaloupe, had been very busy. They were known to have captured numbers of our merchant ships, and the trade was threatened with ruin. Some of them cruised at their ease within sight of the shore at Barbadoes, taking the small vessels employed to bring from Virginia the bacon and maize which were the provisions needed for the negro slaves. There was even danger of famine. At Antigua, Wright was called off by orders to sail for England, and did actually come back as far as Barbadoes. Here, however, counter-orders were sent him to remain, and promises of reinforcements. In January of 1691 store ships, and one man-of-war, reached him. This addition to his force, small as it was, was yet welcome, for he had been compelled to detach vessels on convoy service, doubtless in answer to the loud outcries of the merchants. In February he again joined Codrington, and the scheme of attacking Guadaloupe was resumed. On the 27th of that month, Marie Galante, a little outlying island just south of Guadaloupe, was raided with the usual details of plunder and arson. Then a landing was effected on Guadaloupe, but in May these unworthy operations were brought to an end by the report that a French squadron had reached Martinique from Europe, and was coming on. At once the troops were re-embarked, not without signs of panic, and a council of war decided to return to Barbadoes. Wright and Codrington had come to open quarrel. At Barbadoes the naval chiefs health broke down. He resigned his command, and sailed for home. Some of the ships followed him with a convoy. Others remained in the West Indies.
Wright, who left Barbadoes amid a chorus of jeers and accusations of cowardice, may fairly be considered to have had hard measure. He was never again employed at sea, though he held some dock-yard posts. There is nothing to show that he was a man to rise above adverse circumstances, but the bare narrative of the events of the cruise given above is his best excuse. Let us look at the facts, bearing meanwhile in mind that what is to be said of them applies in different degrees, but always to some extent, to every expedition we sent to the West Indies from the beginning of the war in 1689 down to the peace of Utrecht. In the first place the material force given to the commander was inadequate to the work he had to do. It was not sufficient to capture the principal French posts, yet he was ordered to make attacks on the enemy’s territory. The inevitable result was that, while he had his ships concentrated for miserable burning and plundering raids, the French privateers cruised unchecked. The blame for this rests mainly on the Government. It repeated in the West Indies the very mistake of ordering attacks on coast towns with insufficient forces, which as we have seen it was also making in the Channel. Then these material forces, too weak in themselves to begin with, suffered from causes serious enough to have paralysed greater powers. It was a brutal and greedy generation, callously indifferent to the well-being of the men. The younger Hawkins, and Lancaster—the captain of the East India Company—had shown how to keep crews healthy on long voyages even in the tropics. We had the example of the Dutch to guide us. Yet the chiefs of the navy allowed their men to rot from scurvy and perish by fever, not from want of knowledge, which they could have acquired at once if they had looked for it, but from mere hardness of heart and selfishness. The destruction of life by disease in our fleets was everywhere great, and in the West Indies it was enormous. Of the superior officers who sailed with Admiral Nevill in 1696-1697 only one captain lived to return home. The pestiferous squalor of the lower deck avenged the sailors. At the close of Captain R. Wilmot’s expedition of 1695 one vessel was lost on the reefs of Florida, from sheer want of men to handle her sails. The sailors followed the example set them, and were affected by the spirit of their time. They found consolation for the hardships of life afloat in excesses on shore. Burchett assures us that the harbours of the West Indies were more fatal to the men than the sea.