David Cordingly - Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander

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COCHRANE

The Real Master and Commander

DAVID CORDINGLY

BLOOMSBURY

For Bill Swainson

'He was tall and commanding in person, lively and winning in manner, prompt in counsel, and daring but cool in action. Endowed by nature both with strength of character and military genius, versed in naval science both by study and experience, and acquainted with seamen in every clime and country, nothing but an untimely restlessness of disposition, and a too strongly expressed contempt for mediocrity and conventional rules, prevented his becoming one of Britain's naval heroes.'

Description of Lord Cochrane in Greece at the age of fifty-two, by George Finlay

'Cool calculation would make it appear that the attempt to take Valdivia is madness. This is one reason why the Spaniards will hardly believe us in earnest, even when we commence; and you will see that a bold onset, and a little perseverance afterwards, will give a complete triumph; for operations unexpected by the enemy are, when well executed, almost certain to succeed, whatever may be the odds; and success will preserve the enterprise from the imputation of rashness.'

Lord Cochrane to Major Miller before the taking of the fortified naval base of Valdivia in Chile

'A British nobleman is a free man, capable of judging between right and wrong, and at liberty to adopt a country and a cause which aim at restoring the rights of oppressed human nature.'

Lord Cochrane to Don Joaquim de la Pezuela, the Spanish Viceroy of Peru

CONTENTS

This book is based to a large extent on the Admiralty collections in the National Archives at Kew, and on the Dundonald papers in the National Archives of Scotland. I am grateful to Douglas, Earl of Dundonald, for granting me access to the family papers, for the loan of colour transparencies of many of the family pictures, and for helpful discussions about his famous ancestor whose turbulent life he views with a keen but notably impartial interest. I am also indebted to some of the earlier biographies of Cochrane, particularly those by Christopher Lloyd, Ian Grimble and Donald Thomas. Grimble helped the fourteenth earl to catalogue the family papers and his book is a valuable source of quotations which he patiently extracted from the mass of often scarcely legible letters.

My greatest debt is to two more recent biographers. I am most grateful to John Sugden for his help and advice and for his masterly Ph.D. thesis, which covers Cochrane's life up to 1818 and is a model of detailed research and sober analysis. I have also been heavily reliant on Brian Vale's pioneering publications on Cochrane's activities in South America and would like to thank him for sharing his thoughts and for lending me some of his unpublished material. I am also indebted to the Rt. Hon. Sir Anthony Evans, former Lord Justice of Appeal, who has examined the papers relating to the Stock Exchange fraud of 1814 and has given me the benefit of his legal opinion on the controversial trial which caused such a stir at the time and has continued to provoke dissenting opinions to this day. My thanks to him and his wife Caroline for their kindness and hospitality on many occasions. Thanks also to my friend John English, who invited me to sail with him two summers ago and with whom I spent an enjoyable week sailing from Majorca around the island of Minorca to the great harbour of Port Mahon-the starting point for Cochrane's (and Jack Aubrey's) first cruise as master and commander.

I would also like to thank John Batchelor for his excellent cutaway drawing of the Imperieuse, Norman Swales for drawing up the lines of the Speedy so beautifully, John Gilkes for his fine maps, and all those people who have answered my queries and supplied me with information or whose books I have plundered for information, especially Ian Cashmore, Robert Gardiner, Brian Lavery, Pieter van der Merwe, Roger Knight and Richard Woodman, as well as the staff of the British Library, the Essex Record Office, the Guildhall Library, the London Library, the National Archives of Scotland, the National Library of Scotland, the National Maritime Museum and the Newspaper Library at Colindale. I am most grateful to Nicholas Blake for painstakingly checking my draft text for historical and maritime errors but would stress that I am responsible for any errors that remain.

The staff of Bloomsbury, my publishers, have been unfailingly helpful and a pleasure to work with: I am particularly grateful to Bill Swainson for his constant support and wise advice but would also like to thank Emily Sweet and Polly Napper, both of whom have contributed to producing a book which, in my view at least, is an extremely handsome production. Above all my thanks go to my wife Shirley, who has helped me sort out my thoughts on numerous occasions, has once again put other things on hold while the writing was in progress, and has accompanied me on travels which have taken us from Edinburgh and Hampshire to Chile and Brazil in the tracks of Lord Cochrane.

And finally two notes on unrelated matters. Previous biographers have persisted in calling Cochrane's wife Kitty. I have been unable to find any evidence for this and the current earl believes that it was a later member of the family who was called Kitty and not the woman that Cochrane himself invariably called Kate. Lastly I must acknowledge my debt to G. A. Henty, that once popular author of patriotic stories for boys. Fans of Henty will note that I have borrowed part of the title of one of his historical novels for the title of this book.

D.C.
Brighton, Sussex. April 2007

First colour plates

William Cochrane, the first Earl of Dundonald. (Courtesy of the Earl of Dundonald)

Thomas Cochrane's father Archibald, the ninth Earl of Dundonald. (Courtesy of the Earl of Dundonald )

Thomas Cochrane as a boy. (Courtesy of the Earl of Dundonald)

The confluence of the Thames and Medway, 1808, by J.M.W. Turner. ( Tate, London, 2007)

The harbour and town of Lerwick, by J. C. Schetky. ( National Maritime Museum, London)

A British squadron off Valetta during the blockade of Malta, by Rev. Cooper Willyams. ( National Maritime Museum, London)

Lord St Vincent as First Lord of the Admiralty. ( National Maritime Museum, London)

A portrait of Admiral Lord Keith by William Owen. ( National Maritime Museum, London)

The Rock of Gibraltar viewed from the ruins of Fort St Philip. ( National Maritime Museum, London)

The capture of the Spanish El Gamo by the British sloop Speedy, 6 May 1801, by Clarkson Stanfield. (V&A Images, Victoria and Albert Museum)

A detail from a panoramic view of the royal dockyard at Plymouth, by Nicholas Pocock. ( National Maritime Museum, London)

A watercolour by J.M.W. Turner of Plymouth, looking across the shipping in the Cattewater towards the Citadel. (V&A Images, Victoria and Albert Museum)

Black and white plates

The boarding and taking of the Spanish xebec frigate El Gamo by His Majesty's sloop Speedy. Engraving after the picture by Nicholas Pocock. ( National Maritime Museum, London)

Boats being launched from the Thames during the action off Gibraltar on 12 July 1801, by Pierre Ozanne. ( National Maritime Museum, London)

A portrait of Cochrane's uncle, Admiral the Hon. Sir Alexander Cochrane, by Sir William Beechey. ( National Maritime Museum, London)

A portrait of the gallant Captain Jahleel Brenton. ( National Maritime Museum, London