Sint Eustatius was, by any conventional measure, insignificant: a volcanic speck of 21 square kilometers in the Leeward Islands, with a garrison of sixty soldiers and a dozen cannon. But geography and neutrality had made it something extraordinary. As a Dutch free port, the island operated outside the trade monopolies that strangled commerce across the Caribbean. During the American Revolution, it became the critical node through which roughly half of all American military supplies passed. Gunpowder, weapons, and communications flowed through its harbor, routed by networks of Dutch and Jewish merchants with ties stretching from Amsterdam to Philadelphia. The British seethed. Lord Stormont declared in Parliament that if Sint Eustatius had sunk into the sea three years earlier, Britain would have already defeated George Washington. Admiral Rodney, watching from afar, vowed to bring this 'Nest of Villains to condign Punishment.'

When Britain declared war on the Dutch Republic in December 1780, Rodney already had his fleet assembled. On January 30, 1781, three thousand troops sailed from Saint Lucia. The main force appeared off Sint Eustatius on February 3, fifteen ships of the line bristling with armament. Governor Johannes de Graaff had not yet received word that war had been declared. Rodney sent a message suggesting bloodless surrender, and de Graaff, facing impossible odds, agreed. By the following day, the neighboring islands of Saint Martin and Saba had also capitulated. The only real engagement took place at sea near Sombrero, where three British warships overtook a convoy of thirty Dutch merchantmen. The lone escort's commander, Rear-Admiral Willem Krul, fought for thirty minutes before ordering his flag lowered as he lay dying. He was buried on Sint Eustatius with full military honors. The Dutch sailors were stripped of their possessions and imprisoned on St. Kitts.

What Rodney found in the harbor stunned him: 130 merchantmen, five American warships, and warehouses bursting with goods worth an estimated three million pounds. He and General Vaughan signed an agreement claiming everything for the Crown, though both expected a handsome personal share. Rather than delegating the inventory, the two officers spent months personally cataloging the treasure. Meanwhile, a French fleet under Admiral de Grasse sailed north unmolested. Rodney had weakened his own squadron by dispatching escorts to guard his prize ships headed for Britain, and his delay in sending reinforcements under Samuel Hood proved catastrophic. Hood arrived at the Chesapeake too late, the French fleet controlled the bay, and Cornwallis was cut off from resupply. The British general surrendered at Yorktown. Some historians argue that Rodney's fixation on Sint Eustatius's wealth directly contributed to Britain's loss of the American colonies.

Rodney's conduct toward the island's inhabitants was brutal, and his treatment of the Jewish community was singled out as especially cruel even by the standards of the era. Ten days after the capture, he ordered 31 Jewish families deported with only 24 hours' notice. He imprisoned all 101 adult Jewish men in the Dutch West India Company's weighing house. He confiscated their warehouses and personal possessions, cutting open the linings of their clothing to search for hidden money. When he suspected more treasure remained, he ordered fresh graves in the Jewish cemetery dug up. This persecution was reserved for the Jews alone; French merchants were permitted to leave with their belongings. Edmund Burke rose in Parliament to condemn what he called 'a cruelty unheard of in Europe for many years,' describing the Jews as 'the links of communication, the mercantile chain, the conductors by which credit was transmitted through the world.' Dutch engravings from the period compared Rodney to Nero and Vaughan to Caligula.

British control of Sint Eustatius lasted barely ten months. On the night of November 26, 1781, fifteen hundred French troops under the Marquis de Bouille landed covertly. The British commandant, Lieutenant Colonel James Cockburn, was captured during a morning ride by soldiers of the Irish Brigade in French service. The garrison, caught at drill, surrendered without significant casualties. Four million livres were seized, including 170,000 belonging to Rodney personally. The funds were distributed to French troops and Dutch colonists. Much of the treasure Rodney had shipped toward Britain was intercepted at sea by a French squadron. The admiral's months of obsessive cataloging had been for nothing. He survived censure in Parliament by a vote along party lines, and his later victory at the Battle of the Saintes earned him a peerage. The Jews and expelled merchants returned to Sint Eustatius, commerce resumed, and the island's population reached its peak in 1790. But the golden age was over.