Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  In February 1810 a House of Commons committee was set up to enquire into the conduct of the Walcheren expedition but the new ministry decided to exclude the public from the meetings to prevent the full extent of military incompetence from coming out into the open. This angered the radicals of Westminster, particularly John Gale Jones, an earnest apothecary who was secretary of a debating society in Covent Garden called the British Forum. He posted hand bills on the walls around Westminister protesting against this infringement of democracy. He was arrested and thrown into Newgate Prison without trial. On 12 March, Sir Francis Burdett stood up in Parliament and denounced his imprisonment as an infringement of Magna Carta. When his motion was defeated Burdett published his speech in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, together with a passionate address to the electors of Westminister. The House of Commons judged this to be a breach of privilege and ordered Burdett to be arrested and sent to the Tower of London.

  There followed several days of disorderly scenes in which Cochrane played an active part. As news of Burdett’s impending arrest spread, a mob of radical sympathisers gathered outside Burdett’s house and pelted any passers-by with mud and garbage if they refused to shout ‘Burdett for ever’. Crowds blocked the approaches to the Tower and violence broke out in Piccadilly, Albemarle Street and St James’s Square. The windows in the houses of Lord Castlereagh, Spencer Perceval and other prominent figures were smashed, and some houses were broken into and vandalised. Bearing in mind the Gordon Riots of 1780 and the more recent horrors of the French Revolution, the government took drastic action. The guns of the Tower of London were mounted and made ready, and the moat was flooded; a battery of artillery was drawn up in Berkeley Square; and the Horse Guards, the Foot Guards and the 15th Light Dragoons were ordered to stand by. Piccadilly was the scene of several cavalry charges by the Horse Guards until some enterprising members of the crowd blocked the road with ladders from a nearby building site.1

  Barricaded in his house, Sir Francis Burdett held several meetings with Francis Place and other radical leaders. Cochrane was present at some of these meetings but on Sunday 8 April he decided it was time for action. He arrived in a coach with a cask of gunpowder and was let into Burdett’s house by the porter. Some writers have asserted that he started to hack away at the front wall of the house with the intention of preparing a man trap along the lines of the one he had devised for the defence of Fort Trinidad. According to Henry Hunt, he did not get that far but simply told Burdett and his friends that he proposed to undermine the foundations of the front wall and deposit the gunpowder there ‘so that he might blow the invaders to the devil’. Burdett was horrified at the proposal and said he had no intention of violently resisting arrest. Hunt tells us, ‘The gallant tar then retired, apparently very much disconcerted, and he was particularly requested to take away with him the cask of gunpowder which he did immediately.’2 Early the next morning the serjeant at arms and his attendants broke into the house through a servant’s window, arrested Burdett and drove him off to the Tower where he remained in custody until parliament was dissolved on 21 June. For the rest of the session Cochrane represented Burdett in Parliament and presented a petition protesting against his imprisonment which was signed by his constituents.

  Not content with identifying himself with the radicals who were now, more than ever, regarded as enemies of the state, Cochrane embarked on a crusade to expose abuses and injustices in the system of naval pensions. In doing so he targeted and angered some of the most influential families in the land. His cause was admirable but his approach was too blunt to have any hope of reforming the system. On 11 May he stood up before a noisy House of Commons and let loose a barage of statistics. His purpose was to compare the pensions of officers (and the widows of officers) who had spent years at sea and risked their lives for their country with men and women who had lived comfortable lives ashore.

  ‘An admiral, worn out in the service, is superannuated at £410 a year, a captain at £210,’ he began, ‘but a clerk of the ticket office retires on £700 a year! The widow of Admiral Sir Andrew Mitchell has one third of the allowance given to the widow of a commissioner of the navy!’ He went on to point out that the thirteen daughters of admirals and captains who had died while on active service received a sum less than Dame Mary Saxton, the widow of a commissioner. Expanding on this theme he listed the case of ‘the brave Sir Samuel Hood, who lost his arm, has only £500, whilst the late Secretary of the Admiralty retires, in full health, on a pension of £1,500 per annum!’ He calculated that the pensions of all the wounded officers of the whole British navy and the wives and children of those killed in action amounted to less that the sinecure of £20,358 paid to Lord Arden.

  ‘Is this justice? Is this the treatment which the officers of the navy deserve at the hands of those who call themselves His Majesty’s Government? Does the country know of this injustice? Will this too be defended? If I express myself with warmth I trust in the indulgence of the House. I cannot suppress my feelings.’ He then launched an attack on the Wellesleys, the powerful family of the Duke of Wellington:

  ‘I find upon examination that the Wellesleys receive from the public £34,729, a sum equal to 426 pairs of lieutenant’s legs, calculated at the rate of allowance of Lieutenant Chambers’ legs. Lord Arden’s sinecure is equal to the value of 1022 captain’s legs. The Marquis of Buckingham’s sinecure alone will maintain the whole ordinary establishment of the victualling department at Chatham, Dover, Gibraltar, Sheerness, Downs, Heligoland, Cork, Malta, Mediterranean, Cape of Good Hope, Rio de Janeiro, and leave £5,460 in the Treasury.’3

  He continued to reel off similar statistics to the amusement of many of those present and the annoyance of others.

  When he had finished William Wellesley-Pole got to his feet. ‘Lord Cochrane has thought proper to make an attack on the Wellesley family of which I am a member,’ he said, and he proceeded to justify the sinecure which was paid to the head of the family. Wellesley-Pole had until recently been Secretary to the Admiralty Board and he was well aware of Cochrane’s distinguished record as a naval officer. What he had to say next no doubt reflected the views of most of those present in the House: ‘Let me advise him that adherence to the pursuits of his profession, of which he is so great an ornament, will tend more to his honour and to the advantage of his country than a perseverance in the conduct which he has of late adopted, conduct which can only lead him into error, and make him the dupe of those who use the authority of his name to advance their own mischievous purposes.’4

  Further pressure for him to return to sea was applied a few weeks later by Charles Yorke who had recently replaced Lord Mulgrave as First Lord of the Admiralty. Yorke told Cochrane that the Imperieuse was ready for sea and as the current session of parliament was coming to a close, ‘I presume that it is your intention to join her without loss of time’. Cochrane replied that he had not yet completed his parliamentary duties but Yorke insisted that he must know whether or not Cochrane had any intention of joining his ship. ‘I shall be pleased to receive an answer in the affirmative because I should then entertain hopes that your activity and gallantry might be available for public service.’5

  Cochrane had no intention of resuming his naval career at this stage. His plans for the use of explosive ships against Walcheren had been turned down but he wanted to experiment further with incendiary devices. He also had some unfinished business which needed to be resolved in Malta. This arose out of his determination to expose the corrupt dealings of the Prize Courts in the Mediterranean which he believed were charging exorbitant fees at the expense of the captains and crews who had captured enemy vessels.

  Cochrane had a long-standing grudge against the Vice-Admiralty Court at Malta which, in his view, had cheated him out of the prize money due on the King George, the ship he had captured after a hard fight in which two of his men had been killed and a number seriously wounded. Although the ship had been registered as a Maltese privateer, Cochrane had always maintai
ned that it was a pirate and was infuriated that he lost the case and had been charged £600 in legal expenses by the Vice-Admiralty Court at Malta. He had brought up the matter of Admiralty Courts in Parliament on 3 June but had got nowhere and he was determined to obtain first-hand evidence to back up his case. During the winter of 1810–11 he sailed to the Mediterranean in the Julie, the French gunboat he had captured at Cadaques and subsequently bought at Gibraltar for use as a private yacht.6 He sailed her as far as Gibraltar but, fearing she might be mistaken as a warship in the Mediterranean, he took passage on a British brig of war to Sicily where he held meetings with the army commander, General Sir John Stuart, and with Captain Richardson of the Diadem.7 At Messina he carried out a number of experiments with a new form of mortar which he had devised. He also discovered the lethal effects of sulphur dioxide. Sicily was a source of sulphur and when visiting the sulphur mines he noticed that when burnt it produced clouds of sulphur dioxide which killed everything in the immediate vicinity. He could see the potential of this and would later draw up elaborate plans for the use of poison gas as a military weapon.

  From Sicily Cochrane sailed on to Malta and he arrived in the Grand Harbour at Valletta on 20 February 1811.8 Vice-Admiralty Courts had been set up during the course of the seventeenth century in Antigua, Bermuda, Jamaica, Gibraltar, Halifax and elsewhere to deal with piracy, the condemnation (valuation) of prizes, and with other maritime matters which were better handled at a local level than by the High Court of Admiralty in London.9 Their proceedings were governed by various acts of Parliament which determined the composition of the courts and the fees to be charged.10 Many sailors were sceptical about the decisions of some of the courts. Lord Collingwood observed in 1808 that, ‘The Admiralty Court in Gibraltar appears to me to be very oddly constituted, and wants regulation.’11 The court at Malta was certainly irregular. The scale of fees had been drawn up by John Sewell, the judge, and one man, Mr Jackson, acted as both proctor and marshal which was illegal and meant that he employed himself and paid fees to himself. Cochrane’s first action on arriving at Malta was to look for the table of fees which by law should have been on public display in the courtroom. He found it on the back of a door in a room behind the court which the officers used as a robing room.12 He removed it but he was observed folding it up and putting it in his pocket. He was issued with a summons ordering him to return the paper to the court within two days. He ignored the summons and when an attempt was made to arrest him he refused to submit on the basis that the man sent to arrest him had no authority because he was appointed by Jackson who could not act as marshal if he was also the proctor. For several days Cochrane defied the authorities and enjoyed the acclaim and approval of his fellow seamen.

  On 28 February he was apprehended by Mr Stevens, the deputy registrar, outside the Naval Arsenal which he had been visiting with the Navy Commissioner and with Captain Maxwell of the Alceste. Mr Stevens showed him a new warrant and told Cochrane that he was his prisoner. When Cochrane refused to accompany him to the jail, Mr Stevens summoned four Maltese guards who bundled him into an open carriage and took him to the Castellanea Prison where he was accommodated in some comfort and allowed to entertain his naval friends at public expense. On 2 March he was escorted to the court and charged with the theft of the table of fees and with having resisted arrest. Cochrane refused to acknowledge the legality of the proceedings and protested that he had no counsel, that no evidence had been called and that he had not been allowed to cross-examine any witnesses. Judge Sewell sent him back to prison for contempt of court.

  Cochrane’s defiance proved increasingly embarrassing for the authorities while his popularity among the British sailors in the port seemed likely to lead to them storming the jail. On the night of 4 March he escaped from the prison by sawing through the bars of his cell and using a rope to lower himself into the street. According to Cochrane the rope and a file were supplied by his servant, Richard Carter, the jailer was made drunk by his naval friends, and a naval gig was standing by in the harbour ready to take him out to the English packet boat which was lying offshore. No doubt his friends did assist his escape but it also seems likely that the authorities colluded in it to avoid further confrontations.

  Cochrane was back in London on 11 April but once again found that his direct but unconventional methods had failed to produce the desired results. Sir William Scott, the Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, received reports of his conduct in Malta and after due consideration the judge and the law officers came to the conclusion that the actions of the Malta court had been justified in the circumstances ‘and that the conduct of the noble Lord was marked throughout by a spirit of contempt which it was the duty of the judge to repress for the vindication of the jurisdiction over which he presides’.13 On 6 June Cochrane initiated a debate in Parliament on the conduct of Vice-Admiralty Courts. To demonstrate the exorbitant fees charged by the Malta court he produced the Proctor’s Bill for the case of the King George privateer. He had pasted the various charges on to a single sheet which he said was six and a quarter fathoms in length. When he unrolled the bill it stretched from one end of the debating chamber to the other and caused considerable hilarity among the members present. It was agreed that the matter should be gone into further but when Cochrane later proposed that a committee should be set up to enquire into the court’s behaviour his motion was defeated. Although Cochrane abandoned this particular crusade his complaints about the corrupt nature of the Malta court were justified by subsequent events. Jackson tried to get his own brother appointed marshal and when this failed a man called Northcott was appointed. He promptly made off with the proceeds of a number of prize sales and was said to be living in Sicily under the name of Smyth.14 A few months later Mr Stevens, the deputy registrar, also absconded with the cash from the sale of a condemned ship.

  In the remaining weeks of the parliamentary session Cochrane turned his attention to the pay and conditions of ordinary seamen and the plight of prisoners of war. A long-standing grievance of seamen, and one of the causes of the fleet mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797, were the long delays they frequently experienced before receiving their pay. This was particularly the case with the crews of ships on foreign service. Cochrane produced examples in Parliament to show that many seamen went for years without payment which was hard enough for the men but even harder for their wives and families. He gave a number of examples to prove his case. Charles Yorke, the First Lord, replied that it was too late in the parliamentary session to go into the points raised, and ‘as to ships being detained so long upon foreign and distant stations, it is much to be regretted but it is often unavoidable’.15

  It was probably Samuel Whitbread who drew Cochrane’s attention to the miserable conditions suffered by prisoners of war. Cochrane paid a visit to Dartmoor where 6,000 prisoners were incarcerated in shocking conditions. On his return to London he stood up in the House of Commons and drew the attention of the members to the state of the prison where he had observed men queuing for hours in the pouring rain to receive inedible food. ‘Consequently one thousand are soaked through in the morning, attending to their breakfast, and one thousand more at dinner. Thus a third are consequently wet, many without a change of clothes.’16 The overcrowding of prisoners at Dartmoor was largely caused by Napoleon’s refused to exchange prisoners of war. Cochrane received support from the small body of committed reformers in the house but with the nation at war against a formidable enemy most of the members were indifferent to the sufferings of the thousands of French prisoners confined in rotten hulks in Portsmouth harbour or in bleak prison buildings on distant moors.

  The year 1811 had proved to be a surprisingly eventful one for Cochrane, even without the excitements that were an essential part of his life as a naval commander. The following year was to prove equally eventful. He devised ambitious plans for attacking enemy harbours by the use of a combination of explosion ships and poison gas.17 He submitted detailed plans to the Prince Regent in
March 1812 and these were considered by a high-level committee chaired by the Duke of York, commander-in-chief of the army, later in the year.

  This was also the year in which Cochrane, at the age of thirty-six, fell in love, apparently for the first time. Although he maintained that he was without a particle of romance in his composition, his courtship and marriage had a romance and a drama that were curiously in keeping with the mood of the times – the Romantic age of Byron, Keats and Sir Walter Scott. In appearance and character the girl he called Kate, Katie or Mouse bore a striking resemblance to the heroines of the poets and writers of his day. She was very young and very pretty with sparkling eyes and an infectious laugh. She seemed to be meek and delicate and feminine but she could also be mischievous and flirtatious and had a resilient and spirited nature. Cochrane adored her from the moment he first set eyes on her to the end of his days. They were often separated for months at a time but their letters are as touching as any love letters can be. ‘My lovely Kate’, he wrote in 1814, ‘Oh my dear soul, you do not know how much I love you…’18 And she later implored him to ‘keep your mind at rest my dearest and most beloved Cochrane and for my sake take care of yourself’.