Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  Cochrane was less critical. He accompanied Keith ashore and had the opportunity to meet Nelson. Cochrane was a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant and his experience of action was limited to some minor engagements while serving on his uncle’s frigate on the east coast of North America. Nelson was forty-one: he had made his name in one fleet action and achieved international celebrity following his victory at the Battle of the Nile; he had fought several lesser actions, and risked his life by leading shore parties against heavy odds – he had lost the sight of one eye at the siege of Calvi in Corsica and had suffered the amputation of his right arm following the disastrous attack on Santa Cruz, Tenerife, in 1797. A head wound at the Battle of the Nile had left him in great pain and to many observers he now appeared old and exhausted. But for Cochrane he was a heroic figure and in a memorable passage in his autobiography he acknowledged his debt to Britain’s most famous admiral:

  It was never my good fortune to serve under his Lordship, either at that or any subsequent period. During our stay at Palermo, I had, however, opportunities of personal conversation with him, and from one of his frequent injunctions, ‘Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them,’ I subsequently had reason to consider myself indebted for successful attacks under apparently difficult circumstances. The impression left on my mind during these opportunities of association with Nelson was that of his being an embodiment of dashing courage, which would not take much trouble to circumvent an enemy, but being confronted with one would regard victory so much a matter of course as hardly to deem the chance of defeat worth consideration.31

  Nelson was indirectly responsible for Cochrane getting the promotion and the independent command that he was impatiently waiting for. On 19 February 1800 a squadron under Nelson’s command was sailing off the north-west coast of Malta when enemy ships were sighted on the horizon. They proved to be a storeship loaded with troops and supplies for the relief of the French garrison at Malta, and her escort which consisted of the 74-gun ship Généreux, three frigates and a corvette. The storeship and one of the frigates surrendered but the Généreux fled north towards Sicily. After a chase of more than six hours Nelson caught up with her and captured her.32 She was escorted to the Sicilian port of Syracuse by two of the ships in Nelson’s squadron.

  The capture of the Généreux and the need to find a British commander for her enabled Lord Keith to make a series of promotions. The one which directly affected Cochrane was the promotion of Jahleel Brenton to the rank of post-captain and his appointment to a 74-gun ship. Brenton was currently commanding a diminutive warship of 14 guns called the Speedy in which he had distinguished himself in a number of actions against Spanish gunboats. On 20 February Lord Keith promoted Cochrane to the command of the Speedy, which, when the appointment had been approved by the Admiralty, would lead to his promotion from lieutenant to that of master and commander.33 However, before Brenton or Cochrane were able to take up their new commands Lord Keith had other tasks for them. Brenton was ordered to take the Speedy to Leghorn with despatches, and Cochrane was ‘required and directed to take upon yourself the acting command of the French ship Genereux’ and to sail her to Minorca for repairs and a refit at Port Mahon.34

  To be given temporary command of a valuable prize was an opportunity for Cochrane to prove himself but it was also a considerable challenge: he had to make a seven-hundred-mile voyage in a 74-gun ship with a prize crew which was partly made up of sick and invalided men hastily drafted from other ships in the squadron, and partly by local seamen; in addition he had to take with him sixty-three French prisoners with no more than eleven marines to guard them and keep order among the motley crew; and he had to face the unpredictable weather of a Mediterranean winter. He took up his role as acting captain on 20 February and was joined by his eighteen-year-old younger brother Archibald who was signed on as midshipman.35 They spent a busy week in the harbour at Syracuse carrying out repairs to the rigging, taking on provisions and transporting prisoners to and fro. On 2 March, with a light westerly breeze, they weighed and made sail.36

  The wind increased steadily during their second day at sea. They took in two reefs but the main topsail split when they were hit by a squall. Two days later they were hit by strong gales and driving rain. By close reefing the topsails and getting down the topgallant yards Cochrane weathered the storm and the wind died to a light breeze. On 9 March they ran into another storm. As the ship rolled and pitched in the rising seas a sudden squall carried away the mizen topmast and the head of the mizen mast. A few hours later another squall split the foresail. This was bad enough but Cochrane was concerned that he might lose the masts: the rigging had been set up so badly that the shrouds were alternately strained almost to breaking point and then loosely drooping as the masts jerked from side to side. They survived another day of rough weather and as soon as it moderated Cochrane got the crew to set up the lower rigging properly and had a new mizen topmast made to replace the missing one. They had a scare on 11 March when a strange warship was sighted. They cleared the ship for action but she proved to be a Portuguese ship of the line and therefore no threat to Cochrane’s hard-pressed men.

  Fifteen days after leaving the coast of Sicily, they sighted the distant outline of Minorca on the horizon. With light airs and a calm sea they rounded La Mola, the rocky headland at the harbour mouth, and made the signal for a pilot. On the afternoon of 17 March, with the pilot to guide them, they sailed past the battlements of Fort Charles and the round gun towers on the slopes overlooking the narrow entrance and entered the magnificent harbour of Port Mahon. Four miles of deep, sheltered water slowly opened up ahead of them. They passed a few local fishing boats, their lateen sails barely filled by the evening breeze, and sailed past a small island used for quarantine purposes and a larger one with a handsome line of buildings surmounted by a bell tower; this was the naval hospital which had been founded by the British back in 1712. Rounding a bend in the harbour, they saw ahead of them the town of Mahon, a dense cluster of houses with red pantile roofs climbing up the steep hillside and dominated by the grey stone walls of the cathedral. They dropped anchor among the warships and merchant ships which were moored in the great expanse of calm water at the far end of the harbour. The dockyard lay across the water from the town and in the days following their arrival they sent the sails, the spare spars and the gunner’s stores to the yard. The French prisoners were taken off and rowed across to the Courageuse, a French frigate captured the year before and now used as a prison ship.

  The voyage had been a demanding test of Cochrane’s seamanship and leadership skills.37 Two of the wounded men in the crew had died while they were at sea, and he had flogged two seamen with twelve lashes each for drunkenness, but he had brought a ship of the line safely into port. Moreover, the assignment had probably saved his life. During his absence the Queen Charlotte had caught fire and blown up while anchored off Leghorn. Early in the morning of 17 March, while Lord Keith was engaged in discussions ashore, a fire had broken out among some hay under the half-deck of the flagship. The flames had rapidly engulfed the boats on the booms and spread to the rigging. All attempts to put out the fire had failed and after raging for four hours it reached the after magazine. The ship had exploded and sunk with the loss of 636 men. Lord Keith had rounded up as many local boats as he could but there was little they could do to help. He wrote to his sister, ‘the boats are returned with the sad tidings that not more than 150 will be saved’.38 On the day after the explosion Captain Brenton and the Speedy arrived at Leghorn. A picture, apparently drawn at the time by an artist who was an eyewitness, shows the Speedy approaching the wreckage of the Queen Charlotte and lowering a boat from her stern davits. In the foreground the crew of another boat are depicted searching for survivors among the shattered remains of masts, sails and spars.

  A warship entering the harbour of Port Mahon, Minorca. The town and cathedral are just visible beyond the moored vessels in the middle distance.

  The wreckage of the Queen Charlotte
at Leghorn in March 1800, with a brig sloop, possibly the Speedy, lowering a boat.

  In Port Mahon harbour Cochrane and his prize crew continued to dismantle the Généreux. Discipline among the men was evidently a problem because on 2 April he ordered a seaman to be punished with thirty-six lashes for drunkenness and disobedience, and the following day three more seamen were found drunk and given twenty-four lashes each. Early on the morning of 20 April the Généreux was towed across to the dockyard and moored alongside the wharf so that the damaged mizen mast could be taken out. Later that morning Captain Brenton came on board and took over command of the ship. This released Cochrane from his supervising role on the French prize. On the afternoon of the same day he was rowed out to the Speedy which was lying at anchor among the other vessels opposite the town. The ship’s log for 20 April notes simply, ‘Cloudy weather. Employed receiving water and stores – at 3 Lord Cochrane read his Commission and superseded Captain Brenton.’39 Cochrane had wanted to be given command of a fine corvette of 18 guns and was not impressed by his first inspection of the Speedy but he would soon become very proud of the small, two-masted vessel in which he first made his mark as a coastal raider.

  3

  Commander of the Speedy

  1800–1801

  Cochrane was commander of the Speedy for less than fifteen months and yet in that time he carried out a series of raids on Spanish anchorages, he fought and won a single-ship action against overwhelming odds, and, according to his own account, he captured more than fifty vessels, 122 guns and 534 prisoners. How was it possible for an inexperienced commander to achieve so much in such a short time? Cochrane himself described the Speedy as ‘little more than a burlesque of a vessel of war’ and famously claimed to have been able to walk the deck with her entire broadside of 4-pounder shot contained in the pockets of his coat. If she was so small and lightly armed, how was the Speedy able to cause such destruction and, in particular, how was she able to overcome a vessel more than three times her size? Did Cochrane, reminiscing as an old man in his eighties, embroider and exaggerate the story of his first independent command?

  The documentary evidence is limited but it does confirm the facts set out in Cochrane’s autobiography. When we examine the background to the cruise and the tactics he employed we can see exactly why he was so successful. The principal elements were the ship, the crew and the particular talents which Cochrane brought to the art of warfare at sea.

  The Speedy was what was called a brig sloop. That is to say, she was a two-masted vessel like a coastal brig but she was rated as a sloop on the Navy List because that was the term given to a vessel which was commanded by an officer with the rank of master and commander.1 She had been built in a private yard at Dover and launched in 1782 so she was nearly twenty years old when Cochrane first stepped on board. Her length on the upper deck was seventy-eight feet three inches and her breadth was twenty-five feet eight inches.2 If she sailed into a marina today she would appear rather formidable with her broad wooden decks lined with fourteen guns, her long bowsprit, her heavy, sea-stained sails and her sturdy masts supported by taut and heavily tarred shrouds. Her plans, which have been preserved in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, show her to have had a profile not unlike a naval cutter with a graceful sheer and a steeply raked stern. She was steered by a long tiller rather than a wheel and had cramped accommodation on the lower deck for a crew of eighty or ninety men. The captain had a tiny cabin at the stern and there were individual cabins for one lieutenant, the master, surgeon, purser, gunner, boatswain and carpenter. An iron stove dominated the forward part of the lower deck and the stores of the carpenter, boatswain and steward were crammed into the forepeak. The crew slung their hammocks in the dark and limited space remaining. The headroom throughout the lower deck was barely more than five foot at its maximum and the numerous deck beams reduced it to four foot in many places so that moving around below deck was not easy.

  Cochrane had spent his time as a young officer in ships which would have towered over the Speedy. In 74-gun ships like the Resolution the captain had an elegant cabin with fine furniture and windows opening on to a stern gallery or balcony. The gun deck was more than twice the length of the Speedy and was lined with massive 32-pounder guns capable of reducing a frigate to a dismasted wreck in a matter of minutes. Three-deckers like the Barfleur and the Queen Charlotte were even larger and had crews of more than seven hundred men. It is little wonder that the Speedy must have seemed ridiculously small and lightly armed by comparison.

  But although brig sloops were among the smallest of the warships on the Navy List they were well suited for the work for which they were designed: providing protection for convoys of merchantmen from marauding gunboats and privateers; disrupting trade by attacking enemy merchant vessels; carrying out reconnaissance and conveying intelligence. The most authentic picture of one of these brig sloops in action is a watercolour by the marine artist and former sea captain Nicholas Pocock. It depicts the Childers, a brig sloop which was almost identical to the Speedy in size, rig and armament.3

  One of the keys to Cochrane’s exploits in the Speedy was that he inherited a brave and disciplined crew. Under her two previous commanders she had defended herself and her convoys against superior odds and her officers had been singled out for praise. In February 1798, under the command of Hugh Downman, the Speedy had beaten off an attack by the Papillon, a fast and powerful French brig, and had sent her fleeing over the horizon. The Speedy lost five men killed and four wounded in the action and her masts and rigging were so badly damaged that she had to put into Lisbon for a refit.

  It was under her next commander, Jahleel Brenton, that the Speedy truly proved her worth. Brenton, who was to play a significant role in Cochrane’s life during the next two years, had an interesting background. He was born in Rhode Island on the eastern seaboard of North America, the eldest son of an American father and an English mother. His father had been a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and on the outbreak of the war with America he had decided to remain loyal to the British cause. In 1780 he had moved with his family to England and he eventually rose to the rank of rear-admiral. His son Jahleel joined the navy in 1781 at the age of eleven and saw a great deal of action in the ensuing years. He was present at the blockade of Toulon, took part in the Battle of Cape St Vincent as first lieutenant of HMS Aigle, and while a lieutenant on board the Ville de Paris, the flagship of Lord St Vincent, he so distinguished himself in a boat attack that the admiral promoted him to the command of the Speedy, a particularly fortunate move, as he later recalled: ‘It was a singular circumstance that I had already served in the Speedy, both as second and first lieutenant; and while talking over expected promotion with my messmates, who were naming the favourite sloops to which they should prefer being appointed, I always named the Speedy.’4

  A detail from a watercolour by Nicholas Pocock showing the brig sloop Childers, which was very similar to Cochrane’s Speedy.

  Brenton joined the Speedy in February 1799, and his first task was to escort a convoy from Lisbon to Cadiz. In the Bay of Gibraltar they were attacked by no fewer than twenty-three Spanish gunboats. Brenton ordered the convoy to close up and strictly preserve their order of sailing. The Speedy then wore round ahead of the convoy and attacked the gunboats with such determination that they sheered away and enabled the convoy to gain the shelter of the bay where St Vincent’s flagship was at anchor. Brenton received the congratulations of St Vincent and the Governor of Gibraltar for his spirited defence of his charges.

  In August, while en route from Port Mahon to Gibraltar, the Speedy, assisted by a local privateer brig, attacked three armed xebecs – three-masted vessels with triangular lateen sails much used by the Barbary corsairs. The xebecs had anchored in a sandy bay and were captured after a fusilade of fire. In his report of the action Brenton wrote, ‘The officers and men under my command behaved in such a manner as would have ensured our success against a more formidable enemy.’5 And in November 17
99 the Speedy and her crew scored a notable victory. They were escorting a transport ship and a merchant brig when they were attacked by a flotilla of enemy vessels as they were approaching Gibraltar. The flotilla consisted of a French privateer of 8 guns, two schooners armed with 24-pounders and ten assorted gunboats. The attackers tried to cut out the transport ship but the Speedy intercepted the attack and enabled the ship to reach her anchorage safely. The enemy vessels then turned their united efforts against the helpless merchant brig. The Speedy bore up through the centre of the attacking vessels and after a heated exchange for three-quarters of an hour she forced them to run for shelter. The Speedy lost two men killed and one wounded, had most of her rigging cut away and was so damaged by shots below the water line that she headed for the anchorage with water up to her lower deck. In his despatch Brenton again gave full credit to his men: ‘I cannot say too much in praise of Lieutenant Parker, Mr Marshal the master, and the remainder of the officers and men under my command; from their spirited exertions, and strict attention to their duties we were enabled to save our convoy and His Majesty’s sloop.’6

  The Speedy, under the command of Captain Jahleel Brenton, attacked by enemy gunboats off Gibraltar in November 1799.