Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  Both sides were ready for a pause in the hostilities. Britain in particular needed a breathing space. The country was facing a financial crisis and food shortages and no longer had allies on the Continent. William Pitt, a resolute and courageous war leader, had been replaced back in February by the dull and humdrum Addington, the former Speaker of the House of Commons. Addington represented those interests weary of the war and during the autumn of 1801 he initiated negotiations for a peace with France. The preliminaries were concluded on 1 October 1801 and a formal peace treaty was signed at Amiens on 27 March 1802.

  Readers of C.S. Forester’s novels will recall the effect of the Peace of Amiens on Lieutenant Hornblower and his friend Lieutenant Bush. In common with hundreds of other naval officers they find themselves out of work and on half-pay. Bush is on a ship in the Caribbean when he hears the news. The crew of his ship cheer wildly because for them it means the end of harsh naval discipline and a return to their homes. But for Bush it means the end of a life he enjoyed. ‘He tried to think of a winter’s day in England, with nothing to do. No ship to handle… No, he simply could not imagine it, and he left off trying.’7 Back in England he meets Hornblower who is starving and having to spend his days playing whist in the Long Rooms at Portsmouth in order to pay for his lodgings.

  For Cochrane the peace also meant unemployment and half-pay. It was one more setback in a series of setbacks he had experienced from the moment of his capture by the French. He had assumed that his taking of the Gamo would be rapidly rewarded by promotion to post-captain. Unfortunately the news of the capture of the Speedy reached London before the news of the Gamo action and he had to wait three months for the promotion to take place. Cochrane’s father wrote a long letter to Lord St Vincent complaining about the delay and expressing his surprise and disappointment ‘on finding several masters and commanders on the Mediterranean station – his juniors long before, and for several months after, the taking of the Gamo – now placed before him on that list’.8 St Vincent wrote back to Lord Dundonald explaining the reasons for the delay. He acknowledged that the capture of the Gamo reflected the highest degree of credit on Cochrane and his officers and crew, but he went on to say:

  ‘The first account of that brilliant action reached the Admiralty very early in the month of August, previously to which intelligence had been received of the capture of the Speedy, by which Lord Cochrane was made prisoner; and until his exchange could be effected, and the necessary inquiry into the cause and circumstances of the loss of that sloop had taken place, it was impossible for the Board, consistently with its usual forms, to mark the approbation of his Lordship’s conduct. Lord Cochrane was promoted to the rank of post-captain on the 8th of August, the day on which the sentence of acquittal for the loss of the Speedy was received, which was all that could under existing circumstances be done.’9

  This was a perfectly reasonable explanation but for Cochrane, impatient for advancement and currently without a ship to command, the three months’ delay was critical because, in the interim period, ten of his rival officers had been advanced to post-captain and would therefore always be senior to him on the captain’s list. Cochrane subsequently came to believe that the delay was caused by some sinister influence at work and in his autobiography he laid the blame at the door of Lord St Vincent for this and other setbacks.

  John Jervis, Earl of St Vincent, had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty by Addington in February 1801. He had impressive credentials as a fighting captain and admiral. He had played a key role in Wolfe’s capture of Quebec in 1759; he had been knighted in 1782 after a single-ship action in which he had captured a French 74-gun ship; he had led a British expedition to the West Indies where he had taken and looted Martinique, St Lucia and Guadeloupe. As commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet he had led a British fleet to victory off Cape St Vincent and then blockaded the Spanish fleet in the harbour of Cadiz. Appointed to the command of the Channel Fleet in April 1800 he had instituted a close blockade of Brest and imposed a fiercely demanding regime on officers who were having to patrol a notoriously dangerous stretch of coast in all weathers. He was much admired by brilliant and ruthless commanders like Nelson but was feared and resented by those junior admirals and captains that he bullied and treated with contempt. He was a dangerous man to cross and made more dangerous as far as Cochrane was concerned because he had a deep-seated prejudice against Scotsmen.10

  St Vincent, like all his predecessors as First Lord of the Admiralty, was besieged by letters and personal approaches from naval colleagues, politicians, and members of aristocratic families who wanted him to find ships for their sons, brothers or nephews. But, as he wrote to Lord Keith, ‘The list of Post Captains and Commanders so far exceeds that of ships and sloops, I cannot, consistently with what is due to the public and to the incredible number of meritorious persons of those classes upon half pay, promote except upon very extraordinary occasions, such as that of Lord Cochrane and Captain Dundas, who have the rank of Post Captain.’11 In 1800 only 40 per cent of commanders had ships or active commissions, and more than half the captains listed were out of work and on half-pay.

  Unaware of St Vincent’s problems, Cochrane embarked on a campaign to promote his first lieutenant, William Parker, a man of conspicuous bravery who had led a number of successful boat attacks and had been severely wounded during the boarding and taking of the Gamo. While still in Gibraltar, Cochrane had written to St Vincent on Parker’s behalf. He had received no reply to the letter but on his return to England he sent a second letter and then a third which produced a cool response from St Vincent. He was told that his application could not be entertained because ‘it was unusual to promote two officers for such a service – besides which, the small number of men killed on board the Speedy did not warrant the application’. This prompted Cochrane to write to St Vincent pointing out that, although only three men were killed on board the Speedy, his Lordship’s own promotion to an earldom followed a battle in which only one man was killed on his own flagship, ‘so that there were more casualties in my sloop than in his line-of-battle ship’. Cochrane may have imagined that his achievements in the Speedy and his status as an aristocrat provided him with immunity from the likely repercussions of such a letter. There is no evidence to suggest that it resulted in Cochrane being placed on the black list of the Admiralty, as he imagined, but it did not endear him to St Vincent who later wrote to Admiral Markham, ‘Did you ever read such a madly arrogant paragraph as that in Lord Cochrane’s public letter, where he lugs in Lieutenant Parker for the avowed purpose of attacking me, his commander-in-chief?’12

  Having failed to persuade St Vincent to promote Lieutenant Parker, Cochrane turned his attention to the Admiralty Board. Writing from 14 Old Cavendish Street, London, on 17 May 1802 he again put the case for the deserving Parker, only to be informed that it was not proper for naval officers to correspond with their Lordships. Nothing dismayed, he wrote to Evan Nepean, the Secretary of the Admiralty. This produced a final rebuff from Nepean who wrote to say that their Lordships had nothing to communicate to him.

  While Cochrane was waging war on the Admiralty, the people of London were going about their usual business in a lighter mood than usual. Fears about Napoleon’s threat of invasion were temporarily dispelled by the recently signed Peace of Amiens. When King George III, and the queen and princesses arrived at Somerset House on 1 May to view the pictures in the Royal Academy exhibition a crowd of between two and three thousand people gathered outside and greeted them with loud huzzas and cries of, ‘God bless your Majesty! Your Majesty and the Peace for ever!’13

  Among the pictures on view at the Academy the marine paintings were prominent, reflecting the nation’s pride in the exploits of her seamen. Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg, who in previous years had exhibited dramatic portrayals of the Battle of the Glorious First of June and the Battle of the Nile, was showing The Cutting out of the French Corvette La Chevrette by English Sailors, a vivid depiction of
a fierce boarding action which had recently taken place off the Normandy coast. Turner was represented by a vigorously rendered sea piece entitled Ships Bearing up for Anchorage. He had exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy at the age of fifteen, and was now recognised as an artist of exceptional gifts and promise. He was among a number of British artists who took advantage of the peace during the summer of 1802 to travel to Paris to view the amazing collection of paintings and sculptures which Napoleon had looted from Italy.

  The stolen art treasures on display in the Louvre were by no means the only attraction. Many English people were intensely curious to see the changes which had taken place in France during the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Throughout the year there was a constant procession of packet boats and yachts crossing the Channel laden with English tourists. Lord Egremont, who had commissioned Turner’s latest sea piece and was to become his greatest patron, sailed from Shoreham in Sussex in the schooner Lark with a party of fifty-three ladies and gentlemen and spent three weeks in Paris.

  Charles Lamb was thrilled to receive a letter from his friend Thomas Manning who had travelled to Paris earlier in the year. ‘It seemed to give me a learned importance which placed me above all who had not Parisian correspondents,’ he wrote back. ‘Have you seen a man guillotined yet? Is it as good as a hanging? Are the women all painted, and the men all monkeys?’14 Like everybody else Charles Lamb wanted to know exactly what Napoleon looked like. Manning told him that the First Consul had a godlike face, but that was not enough for Lamb. ‘What God does he most represent, Mars, Bacchus or Apollo?… Our London prints represent him gloomy and sulky, like an angry Jupiter.’15 Fanny Burney, the author of the much acclaimed novel Evelina, saw Napoleon at a military review in the grounds of the Tuileries and was able to give her father a detailed description. She was deeply impressed by his pale and melancholy features, not at all like the warrior she had expected: ‘… he has by no means the look to be expected from Bonaparte, but rather that of a profoundly studious and contemplative man’.16

  Cochrane was not only out of work and on half-pay. He was also at the bottom of the captains’ list which meant that he had little or no chance of being given command of a ship. He therefore made an interesting decision. He had already determined to enter Parliament when the opportunity arose but he was aware that his ‘desultory and imperfect education’ was likely to prove a hindrance to his ambitions. He decided to return to Scotland and enrol as a student at the University of Edinburgh, first in the Ethics and then in the Chemistry Faculty.

  The University of Edinburgh, where Cochrane enrolled as a student following the Peace of Amiens in 1802. From Modern Athens! or Edinburgh in the 19th Century, a book of engravings based on drawings by Thomas H. Shepherd.

  Edinburgh in the early 1800s was enjoying a remarkable upsurge in the arts and sciences. The designs of the Scottish architects James Craig and Robert Adam had transformed the medieval city and created a magnificent series of spacious squares, elegant classical terraces and fine public buildings in the New Town alongside Princes Street. Scottish education in schools and universities was considered by many to be the best in the world – the Scottish novelist Tobias Smollett remarked ‘Every peasant was a scholar.’ The capital city basked in the recent achievements of Scots who included men as various as the poet Robert Burns, the philosopher David Hume, the economist Adam Smith and the engineer James Watt.

  At twenty-seven Cochrane was much older than his fellow students and he made few acquaintances, ‘preferring secluded lodgings and study without interruption to the gaiety of my contemporaries’.17 Among the lectures which he attended were those given by Dugald Stewart, one of the most influential teachers of his day. Stewart was Professor of Moral Philosophy and numbered among his students Walter Scott, Lord Palmerston and Henry Brougham, the future Lord Chancellor. He had visited France in the summers of 1788 and 1789 and his subsequent support for the republican aims of the Revolution caused him to be regarded in some quarters as a dangerous radical. His teachings no doubt influenced Cochrane’s later decision to stand for Parliament as an independent candidate and a radical.

  George Street, Edinburgh, looking west towards St George’s Church, which was designed by the Scottish architect Robert Adam. Engraving after the drawing by Thomas H. Shepherd, published in 1820.

  The Peace of Amiens proved no more than a temporary lull in the hostilities between Britain and France. Napoleon was determined to make France powerful and respected on land and sea, and already had visions of the French Republic becoming an empire, with himself as emperor rather than First Consul. During the year of peace following the Peace of Amiens he annexed Elba and Piedmont, and failed to evacuate French troops from Holland as had been agreed under the terms of the treaty. Early in March 1803 he renewed his preparations for the invasion of Britain by ordering his Minister of Marine to arrange for the building of fifty gunboats and one hundred landing craft to add to those already assembled in the French ports. British politicians of all parties became increasingly resentful of his aggressive policies and on 8 March the king, in his speech from the throne, informed the House of Commons that ‘as very considerable military preparations are carrying on in the ports of France and Holland, he has judged it expedient to adopt additional measure of precaution for the security of his dominions’.18 Attempts to find a compromise that would prevent a renewal of hostilities failed and on 18 May 1803 Britain formally declared war on France.

  With the navy back on a war footing Cochrane was more likely to be given a command and once again his family and friends began lobbying on his behalf. Lord St Vincent received letters from Cochrane’s father, his naval uncle and the Marquess of Douglas. To the latter St Vincent wrote, ‘I have not forgot Lord Cochrane, but I should not be justified in appointing him to the command of an 18-pounder frigate when there are so many senior captains of great merit without ships of that class. I hope soon to be able to place him in one suitable to his standing on the list.’19 On 5 July he wrote to assure Lord Dundonald that, ‘Lord Cochrane will be employed, but the precise moment cannot be ascertained’.20 No ship materialised so Captain Alexander Cochrane tried a different tack and wrote to his friend John Markham, who was on the Admiralty Board, asking him to remind St Vincent about Lord Cochrane. ‘Many applications have been made in his favour, and promises given, yet he remains on half-pay.’21

  In the autumn of 1803 Cochrane received the news that he had been impatiently waiting for. He was given command of a ship called the Arab and he hurried to Plymouth with high hopes of resuming the glittering career which had been halted so dramatically with the capture of the Speedy. On Saturday 15 October he came on board the Arab, which was in one of the docks of the royal dockyard, and commissioned the ship. In later years Cochrane maintained that his appointment to the Arab was St Vincent’s revenge. He recalled how ‘a dockyard attendant showed me the bare ribs of a collier, which had been purchased into the service’.22 A single glance at her naked timbers showed that she would sail like a haystack, and he described how he had to wait patiently while she was patched up with old timber from broken-up vessels.

  In fact the Arab was not a collier but a former French privateer of 22 guns. Previously called Le Brave, she had been captured by the 36-gun frigate Phoenix in 1798. She was listed as a sixth-rate and was 110 feet in length (some thirty feet longer than the Speedy) and her muster book indicates that she had a complement of 155 men and boys.23 Plans of the ship show her to have had bluff bows but otherwise to have been closer to the hull form of a small warship of the period than the slab-sided, flat-bottomed shape of a British collier. One can only assume that the disappointment Cochrane felt at not being given a frigate, and the unfortunate experiences which marked his year in command of the Arab, left him with such bitter memories that he later blamed the ship, and Lord St Vincent, for what he had to endure.

  The Arab may not have needed the major repairs to her hull that Cochrane’s account suggested but she
did need fitting out for sea. In particular she needed new masts, yards and rigging. The day after Cochrane’s arrival she was hauled alongside the sheer hulk and her lower masts and bowsprit were swung on board and made secure. She was then moored alongside one of the dockyard hulks and a gang of riggers came on board. They set up the lower rigging, hauled up the topmasts and swayed the lower and topmast yards into place. While the riggers sorted out the endless coils of hemp rope, other men from the dockyard loaded the bilges with iron and shingle ballast. After three weeks of heavy labour the dockyard men had completed their work and the remaining preparations were carried out by the ship’s company. There had been a few dozen men on board when Cochrane first arrived and since then a steady stream had joined the ship. They included two lieutenants, the ship’s master, the boatswain, two midshipmen; nine seamen who had been rounded up by a press gang; and twenty-nine seamen and five boys sent across from the Salvador del Mundo.

  On Sunday 6 November Cochrane mustered the ship’s company on deck and read the Articles of War, the somewhat haphazard list of rules and regulations which formed the basis for discipline on board. As the men listened to the familiar litany of crimes and punishments a heavy downpour enveloped the harbour. It was the beginning of a spell of blustery weather which culminated in a day of hard gales with thunder, lightning and heavy rain when they moved the ship from alongside the hulk to moorings downstream. There was still much to do. The guns were brought on board, the sails were bent on the yards, 509 pounds of fresh beef were delivered, and a cutter and jolly boat were sent across from the dockyard. At last on Thursday 8 December, nearly two months after Cochrane’s arrival, a pilot came on board to take them down the harbour and out into Plymouth Sound.24