to Captain Luttrell of the navy for 2,000l. The statement was published, as a matter of common notoriety, in the 'Evening Post' of 30 Jan.-2 Feb., and repeated in the issue of 13-16 Feb., to say that it remained uncontradicted. On this second attack, Sandwich indicted Miller, the printer of the 'Evening Post,' for libel. The case was tried before Lord Mansfield on 8 July 1773, when Captain Luttrell gave evidence that he had been asked if he would give the 2,000l. for the vacant commissionership. It was supposed that the offer came virtually from Miss Ray, Sandwich's mistress ; but evidence of agency was wanting, and Miller was cast in heavy damages (The Evidence in the Trial, 1773 ; Gent. Mag. 1773, p. 346).
Five years later, Captain Thomas Baillie [q. v.], after vainly trying to get the abuses at Greenwich remedied, published a very uncompromising account of them. Baillie was tried for libelling Sandwich's tools and mercenary place-holders, and was fully acquitted, though deprived by Sandwich of his office and refused all employment in the navy. On the other hand a committee of the House of Lords appointed to examine into the state of the hospital reported, on 7 June 1779, that the book contained 'a groundless and malicious misrepresentation of the conduct of the Earl of Sandwich and others, the commissioners, &c. of Greenwich Hospital.'
In 1783, when attention was called to abuses in the public offices, Mr. Pitt stated in the House of Commons that though it bad been officially declared that no fees were received by the navy office, it appeared that very considerable sums were received by the officers under the name of 'gifts' (17 June, Parl. Hist. xxiii. 949). Exact inquiry disclosed wholesale robbery rather than peculation. The accounts showed a deficit of about three hundred thousand pounds of bread in 1780, besides beef, pork, and other provisions. It was shown that the contract price of bread was more than 4s. per cwt. above the market price, and that the bread actually supplied was 4s. per cwt. inferior to the contract ; that the men in charge of the storehouses kept hogs in them, and fed them on serviceable biscuit ; that stores of different kinds and in large quantities had been taken out of the yards not for the private use of the officers, but for sale, and that everywhere intimidation or guilty complicity had kept the knowledge of these abominations secret (Parliamentary Report, 1783-4). The dockyards had been sinks of iniquity before that time, and were so after it [cf. Jervis, John, Earl of St. Vincent], but at no time were they so utterly bad as during the war of American independence.
It is not to be supposed that Sandwich had any knowledge of, still less any direct part in, these evil transactions; but they were the direct outcome of his procedure, and of his assigning the charge of departments and of stores to men without a single qualification beyond their votes or their command of votes. It is not therefore to be wondered at that when war with France broke out in 1778 the number of ships in the navy was inadequate, and that of what there were many were not seaworthy; that the naval storehouses were empty ; that the ships sent to America under Admiral John Byron [q. v.] were rigged with twice-laid rope ; that it was only with the greatest difficulty and after most vexatious delay that Keppel got to sea with a fleet still numerically inferior to that under D'Orvilliers, and that on his return to Ply mouth after the indecisive action of 27 July there were neither masts, nor spars, nor rope for the necessary refitting [see Keppel, Augustus, Viscount]. This was at the very beginning of the war, but the same want of ships and of stores continued throughout. In 1779, when Spain became the ally of France, the English were everywhere outnumbered. At home, when the allied fleet invaded the Channel, the English fleet, of barely half the numbers of the enemy, could only draw back to Spithead ; while in the West Indies, Barrington at St. Lucia in December 1778, and Byron at Granada or St. Kitts in July 1779, were opposed by vastly superior forces. Captain Mahan has rightly spoken of 'the military difficulty of England's position in this great and unequal war,' and has criticised her policy in 'awaiting attacks, which the enemies, superior in every case, could make at their own choice and their own time' (Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 392-3). He has perhaps not allowed sufficient weight to the degradation of the navy under such a chief. In the terrible deficiency of numbers any rotten hulk that could float was made to do duty as a ship of war. The worn-out 70-gun ship Northumberland, converted into the Leviathan store-ship, had guns put on board her, and formed part of Howe's line of defence at Sandy Hook in 1778. She foundered in the West Indies in 1780 [see James, Bartholomew]. The Terrible sank after the battle off the Chesapeake, 5 Sept. 1781, not so much from the actual damage she had received, as from her decayed condition, and the Royal George went down in still water at Spithead in consequence of a great piece of her bottom falling out. Several of the
