ADMIRAL ROUS. 109 



eleven houi's she remained fast on the rocks, and when at last she 

 floated off, it was with the loss of her keel and " forefoot," with a 

 sprung mainmast and foremast, and what was worst of all, with a 

 split rudder, scarcely a quarter of it being left with which to steer 

 the vessel. In this fearfully crippled and dilapidated state Captain 

 Rous sailed his ship home, and reached Spithead in twenty days, 

 having run the 1,500 miles practically without a rudder, and with a 

 leak which made two feet of water an hour. All through that terrible 

 voyage the captain never once lost heart or hope, and by tlie splendid 

 example of his own dauntless courage and indomitable spirits, in- 

 spired the crew with resolution and energy equal to the appalling 

 task before them. It was strange that such a notable feat of sea- 

 manship should not have elicited some generous recognition from 

 the Admiralty. But it did not, and there can be no doubt that the 

 coldness with which Rous was treated by the authorities at Whitehall 

 galled his proud spirit, and led him in the following year, 1836, to 

 retire altogether from the Navy. From that moment the turf, to 

 which he had always been passionately attached, claimed him for its 

 own. It was really only a return to an old love, for, as early as 

 1821, the Admiral had evinced his partiality for racing by starting a 

 small stud in company with his brother, the Earl of Stradbroke. His 

 naval duties, however, prevented him from paying much attention to 

 sport on land till 1830, though he still owned and ran a few horses ; 

 but from that year till the death of the Duke of Bedford, in 1844, 

 his name appears off and on in the Calendar pretty frequently. 

 There is nothing, however, in his racing career worthy of notice. 

 He won a fair share of small races and a good many matches, but 

 his name is not associated with any of the great prizes of the tuif. 

 In 1838 he was elected a steward of the Jockey Club, and in 1841 

 was returned to Parliament as one of the members for Westminstei', 

 as representative of which constituency he sat for live years in the 

 House of Commons. In 1846 he retired definitely from politics, and 

 devoted himself entirely to his duties as a steward of the Jockey 

 Club, of which body he was from the first the ruling spirit. He 

 found the club seriously embarrassed financially, and at once applied 

 his keen and shrewd intelligence to putting the governing body of 

 the turf right in its exchequer. How thoroughly he succeeded in that 

 Augean labour may be gathered from the fact that the revenue of 

 Newmarket, which, when he first took office, was barely ^3,000 per 

 annum, had in 1875 grown to :4'18,000! But it is as the great 

 handicapper that he will be best remembered, and in that capacity 

 liis labours were something stupendous. How often was he to be 

 seen, field-glass in hand, in the early morning watching the trainers' 

 strings at Newmarket, to see if there were any shirking of work going 

 on with a view to tempting him into bestowing a lenient impost ! 

 With what an eagle-eye he would detect the pulling of a horse in 

 a race with the same end in view ! And though occasionally some 

 industrious owner succeeded in hoodwinking one who, from his own 



