Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  In his autobiography Cochrane gives a colourful description of his encounter with Gambier in the great cabin of the Caledonia. He wrote that he ‘told Lord Gambier that the extraordinary hesitation which had been displayed in attacking ships helplessly on shore, could only have arisen from my being employed in the attack, in preference to senior officers.’21 He maintained that he urged Gambier to send in Admiral Stopford with frigates and other vessels to rectify the situation, because it would be impossible, as matters stood, to prevent a noise being made in England. ‘His Lordship appeared much displeased; and making no remark, I repeated, “My Lord, you have before desired me to speak candidly to you, and I have now used that freedom.” ’22 But according to the evidence of William James, who was Gambier’s secretary, Cochrane said nothing of Gambier’s conduct or misconduct and told the admiral that if the British ships had been despatched in response to his signal he calculated that three or four of them would have been lost.23 Whatever was said, Gambier was impatient for his despatches to be sent on their way. He gave Cochrane written orders to proceed to England with Sir Harry Neale. The following morning, the Imperieuse made sail and stood out to sea. There was a heavy swell in the Bay of Biscay but with strong westerly winds they made rapid progress. In less than a week they sighted the Isle of Wight and on the morning of 21 April they ran through the Needles Passage and dropped anchor among the shipping at Spithead.

  Lord Gambier remained at Basque Roads for two more weeks. The weather for the first week was atrocious with gales and driving rain which hampered further operations against the enemy and gave the French crews time to get three of their ships afloat and safely up the river to Rochefort. The captain of the Indienne, having failed to float his ship, set her alight on 16 April. By the beginning of the second week only the Régulus was still aground in the river near Fouras. The French officer of the Océan, who provided such a useful running commentary on events, noted on 19 April, ‘The enemy continue in the Isle d’Aix road, to the number of 20 sail. They have not made any movement whatever for these three days: which is a thing not at all to be understood, for they might with ease attack the Régulus, and oblige her crew to abandon her.’24

  On 20 and 24 April, Gambier ordered a flotilla of shallow-draft vessels, led by the bomb vessels Aetna and Thunder, to attack the Régulus but they failed to drive off her crew or cause serious damage to the ship. On 29 April the French finally got her afloat and sailed her upriver. The same day Gambier received orders to return to England and he sailed in the Caledonia, leaving Rear-Admiral Stopford, and a much reduced fleet, to keep watch on the enemy’s movements.

  Considering the size of the two fleets involved, and the quantity of shot, shells, rockets and fireships expended during a series of actions spread over two weeks, the net result of the Battle of Basque Roads was disappointing. Five French warships had been burnt and destroyed – two of them set on fire by their French crews to prevent them falling into British hands. An American deserter from the Cassard reported that three other warships were so damaged that they were to be cut down and converted into mortar vessels, and the master of a galliot reported that the frigate Elbe was condemned as a wreck.25 The French had lost 200 men killed and 650 taken prisoner. The British casualties were ten men killed and thirty-seven wounded. If the battle had taken place at the beginning of the French wars it would have been regarded as a triumph on a level with the Battle of the Glorious First of June, but after Nelson’s crushing victories at the Nile and Trafalgar, a mere victory by numbers would not do; nothing less than annihilation could be counted as a victory.

  The bare figures of French losses fail to do justice to the audacity of the Basque Roads action and its effect on French morale. A French officer told his captors that ‘they had now no security from the English in their harbours, and they expected we should next go into Brest and take out their fleet whenever it suited our convenience’.26 Four of the French captains were put on trial. The court martial was held on board the flagship Océan at Rochefort, and exposed the full extent of the panic and confusion caused by the fireship attack and its aftermath. Captain Jean-Baptiste Lafon was found guilty of shamelessly abandoning the Calcutta in the presence of the enemy and was condemned to death. He was shot on the deck of the Océan at 4.00 p.m. on 9 September. Captain Lacaille was sentenced to two years in prison and Captain Proteau to three months. Captain Clément de la Roncière was found not guilty of the loss of the Tonnerre and was acquitted. Many years later, when he was in exile on St Helena, Napoleon was asked his views about Cochrane and the fireship attack. He was scathing about the panic-stricken reactions of the French crews but he also condemned Gambier for failing to support Cochrane as he ought to have done. ‘The terror of the brûlots (fireships) was so great that they actually threw their powder overboard, so that they could have offered very little resistance. The French admiral was an imbécile, but yours was just as bad. I assure you that if Cochrane had been supported he would have taken every one of the ships.’27

  Of all the ups and downs of Cochrane’s life, the fireship attack at Basque Roads must rank as the high point. It was his greatest single exploit as a naval commander and it brought him honours and international fame. The boldness of the attack on a powerful enemy in an apparently impregnable position was comparable with the exploits of Drake, de Ruyter and Nelson. And yet the action at Basque Roads has come to be regarded as a wasted opportunity, a bungled and confused affair, and has been relegated to little more than a footnote in naval history. There is even confusion about the name of the action which is variously called the Battle of Aix Roads, or the Battle of Basque Roads, or simply Basque Roads, 1809 – the latter is probably the most accurate as it was not a battle in the usual sense of the word. Whatever the name, it became for Cochrane a lasting source of bitterness, largely due to his own handling of the outcome of the action and the resulting court martial of his commander-in-chief, Lord Gambier. Instead of enjoying his triumph he became embroiled in a controversy which made him more enemies among the naval high command. It was to prove one more step on the path to his downfall.

  13

  The Court Martial of Lord Gambier

  1809

  Within five hours of the arrival of the Imperieuse at Spithead the Admiralty had received Lord Gambier’s despatches and the following day, 22 April, The Times published a report which began: ‘GLORIOUS NAVAL EXPLOIT: Yesterday, about two o’clock, Sir Harry Neale, first captain of the Fleet under Lord Gambier, arrived at the Admiralty with an account of the partial destruction of the French fleet in Basque Roads.’ This was followed by a letter from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Mulgrave, announcing that ‘a successful attack was made by frigates, fire-ships, and bomb-vessels on the enemy’s fleet in Basque Roads, under the immediate command of Captain Lord Cochrane, on the night of the 11th inst.’ The text of Gambier’s despatch was printed in its entirety and the newspaper’s editorial comment probably reflected the thoughts of many British people at a low point in the long war with Napoleonic France: ‘We have neither time nor space to comment on the above glorious action; suffice it to say, therefore, it is not only worthy of a place in the annals of the British Navy, but has likewise occurred, like some of our other victories, at a most peculiarly fortunate crisis, namely at the commencement of a fresh Austrian war. It will give spirit to our Allies, and we sincerely hope is a happy indication of a change in the fortunes of our adversaries.’1

  The past six months had brought bad news from the Continent. The Spanish rebellion had prompted Napoleon to take personal charge of the French army in Spain. He had defeated a Spanish force at Trudela, entered Madrid in triumph on 4 December 1808 and then headed north-west with an army of 250,000 men. Sir John Moore, in command of the British Army in Spain, had only 30,000 men at his disposal and had no option but to retreat over the mountains to the coast. He lost 6,000 men during the forced march across the mountains of Galicia in the bitter cold of winter but fought a heroic rearguard action at Coru
nna on 16 January 1809. This gained sufficient time for his exhausted troops to embark on the waiting transport ships and sail for England. Sir John Moore was killed during the action, his death later commemorated in Charles Wolfe’s evocative poem ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna’ which begins, ‘Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, / As his corse to the rampart we hurried.’ Within days Napoleon was back in Paris and by April he was assembling another army to attack Austria.

  The last major battle by the British navy had been back in February 1806 when Sir John Duckworth had defeated a French squadron off the West Indian island of San Domingo. Cochrane’s uncle Alexander, who was commander-in-chief on the Leeward Islands station, had played a key role in the victory. Gambier’s bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, which led to the surrender of the Danish fleet, was a fleet action but not a sea battle in the usual sense of the term. Since then most of Britain’s warships had been occupied with the essential but unrewarding tasks of escorting convoys of merchant ships, safeguarding Britain’s overseas possessions and keeping watch on the French naval bases. The escape of the French squadron from Brest in February 1809 had been an alarming development but Gambier’s despatch from Basque Roads meant that there was no longer an immediate threat to Britain’s West Indian colonies.

  As the news of the fireship attack circulated, a war-weary nation indulged in the sort of celebrations which had not been seen for four years. Bonfires were lit, public buildings illuminated and patriotic ballads hastily compiled, printed and circulated. One such ballad ran:

  We poured in our shot and our rockets like hail

  Till at length that their courage began for to fail,

  Some were taken and destroyed, and some got on shore,

  The rest ran up harbour and would fight no more.

  With the chorus:

  So success to our sailors that sail on the sea,

  Who with COCHRANE undaunted, whenever they’re wanted,

  They’ll fight till they die, or gain victory.2

  The Amphitheatre at Westminster Bridge staged a dramatic performance every night in which the Imperieuse, ‘and her undaunted commander, the brave Lord Cochrane’, was depicted discharging her guns at the panic-stricken enemy while the house shook to repeated applause. It was reported that ‘the attack and burning of the Gallic fleet surpasses anything of the kind ever witnessed’.3 The naval officers who had distinguished themselves at Basque Roads were rewarded with promotions: the commanders of the brig sloops Beagle and Redpole, and the bomb vessels Aetna and Thunder, became post-captains; twelve of the lieutenants who had been in charge of fireships or explosion vessels were promoted to the rank of commander and their crews received £10 each.4 James Wooldridge, who had so courageously guided the leading fireship Mediator on to the boom, and been badly burnt when he and his crew were blown overboard, was singled out for special reward: in addition to promotion to post-captain, he received a gold medal from the king and was given a presentation sword from the Patriotic Fund. Cochrane, who was everywhere recognised as the hero of the action, was made a Knight of the Bath. This was an honour usually reserved for admirals and generals and it had seldom been awarded to naval captains in the past. There were only thirty-six Knights of the Bath at any one time and these included Cochrane’s old enemy Lord St Vincent who had been made a KB when, as captain of the Foudroyant, 80, he had captured a French 74-gun ship in a single-ship action off Brest in 1782.

  Within days of the news of the Basque Roads action reaching London, however, doubts were being expressed about the extent of the damage inflicted on the French fleet. A letter published in The Times on 25 April noted that Lord Cochrane’s signal to the admiral of the fleet indicated that seven of the enemy’s ships were on shore and might be destroyed. ‘The question which hereupon naturally suggests itself to the mind is, “Why then, if seven might be destroyed, were there only four?” ’ It was not long before rumours were going round that Cochrane was critical of the conduct of his commander-in-chief and would be voicing his opinions in the House of Commons. William Wordsworth told his friend Thomas de Quincey that he had not seen the private accounts about Lord Cochrane but his own feeling was that ‘that noble Hero would be greatly disappointed in the result; and I strongly suspected that, if the matter were investigated, heavy blame would be attached to Gambier for not having his ships where they could be brought up in time. Nothing effectual can be done in cases of this sort without considerable risk: excessive caution in such cases is cowardice.’5

  The doubts about Gambier’s conduct were given a more public airing during the court martial of Rear-Admiral Eliab Harvey which was held at Portsmouth on 22 May and was later reported in the newspapers. Most of the proceedings were devoted to Harvey’s outburst on board the Caledonia. The assembled court heard how Harvey had threatened to impeach Gambier for misconduct and bad management and had told Sir Harry Neale and Lord Cochrane that Gambier was unfit to command the fleet; that instead of carrying out a reconnaissance of the enemy’s position he had amused himself mustering the ships’ companies; and that ‘if Lord Nelson had been there he would not have anchored the Fleet in Basque Roads but have dashed at the Enemy at once’.6 The court listened to the evidence and concluded that the charges against Harvey for treating his commanding officer in an insulting manner were proved. He was ordered to be dismissed from His Majesty’s service. He was later to be reinstated on the strength of his past record but he was never again employed at sea.

  Harvey’s court martial fuelled the gossip concerning Gambier’s failure to follow up the fireship attack but it was Cochrane who brought matters to a head. On learning from Lord Mulgrave that there was to be a formal vote of thanks given to Gambier in the House of Commons, he warned that in his capacity as a Member of Parliament he would oppose any such proposal. Mulgrave did his best to dissuade him but in vain. The Admiralty wrote to Cochrane demanding to be informed of the grounds of his complaint. Cochrane simply referred the Admiralty Board to the logs and signal books of the fleet but the damage had been done. Gambier had no alternative but to demand a court martial in order to clear his name.

  The court martial was held on board the Gladiator, once a 44-gun ship but now a hulk moored in Portsmouth harbour and the setting for a number of courts martial, including that of Admiral Harvey in May. The proceedings began on 26 July. The charge against Gambier was that on the twelfth day of April, ‘the enemy’s ships being then on shore, and the signal having been made that they could be destroyed, did for a considerable time neglect or delay taking effectual measures for destroying them’.7 All the relevant letters and despatches were produced as evidence, together with the logs and charts of Basque Roads. Cochrane was cross-examined at length but the regulations governing the conduct of courts martial prevented him from questioning any of the other witnesses and excluded him from the court when Gambier’s defence was presented. In addition to Cochrane and Gambier, the court cross-examined sixteen of the captains who had been with the fleet, five of the ships’ masters, the signal lieutenant and signal mate of the Caledonia, and Gambier’s secretary, James Wilkinson. A notable absentee was Captain Frederick Maitland, the Scottish captain of the frigate Emerald which had played a significant part in the action on 12 April. According to several commentators Maitland and his ship were despatched to the Irish station because he was known to be critical of Gambier’s conduct.8

  The President of the court at Gambier’s trial was Admiral Sir Roger Curtis. As commander-in-chief at Portsmouth he was the obvious choice for the role but this was unfortunate for Cochrane because he was a friend of Gambier. Equally unfortunate was the fact that the second most senior officer present was Admiral William Young, another of Gambier’s friends, who had served with him as a Lord of the Admiralty from 1795 to 1801. While port admiral at Plymouth he had ordered the Imperieuse to sea before she was ready and Cochrane had later denounced him in Parliament for endangering his ship and his crew. Young gained his revenge during the court martial b
y subjecting Cochrane to hostile questioning and by frequently interrupting him when he was giving his evidence. The third officer present was Vice-Admiral Sir John Duckworth, a tough and experienced fighting seaman who was not popular among the men he commanded. Three other vice-admirals, a rear-admiral and four senior captains completed the heavyweight panel of naval officers seated in the great cabin of the Gladiator.

  What the court martial had to establish was whether, given the state of the wind and tide and depth of water during the morning of 12 April, Gambier should have sent in his line-of-battle ships sooner, or whether such an action would have resulted in the wanton destruction of the ships. When Cochrane was called in to the great cabin he began by consulting notes he had prepared earlier but these were ruled out of order. Without his notes Cochrane’s answers to many of the questions were confused and long-winded and put him at the mercy of Admiral Young. Asked whether the frigates alone were sufficient to destroy the enemy’s ships between eleven and one o’clock, he replied that when he saw the British fleet weigh and stand towards the enemy and then anchor again he presumed that Gambier had delayed his attack to give the seamen time to have something to eat and drink. Sir Roger Curtis told him this was not an answer to his question.