Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  On 22 March, Cochrane attempted a second raid on Callao using an explosion vessel to lead the attack but the vessel was harmlessly sunk by Spanish gunfire and again he was forced to retreat. He decided on a change of tactics. Leaving Admiral Encalada to set up a blockade of Callao, Cochrane embarked on a series of coastal raids in his flagship. For several weeks the O’Higgins roved up and down the coast of Peru, intercepting ships and sending landing parties ashore to plunder towns and distribute propaganda leaflets encouraging the local people to embrace the cause of liberty. A raid on Patavilca yielded $67,000 belonging to the Spanish treasury; the capture of the French brig Gazelle at Guambucho (Guanbacho) yielded cargo and bullion valued at $60,000; the Spanish fortress at Paita was captured; and at Supe a mule train carrying gold and silver bullion worth an estimated $120,000 was ambushed. Cochrane justified these raids by the need to raise money for the Chilean cause and to pay his men, but he was also after prize money and some of his raids, like those of Sir Francis Drake before him, amounted to outright piracy.

  Shortage of supplies had compelled Admiral Encalada to abandon the blockade of Callao and return to Valparaiso and in June 1819 Cochrane also returned and was reunited with his family. Compared with his coastal raids in the Mediterranean his first campaign as commander-in-chief of the Chilean navy had been disappointing to say the least, but the Chilean government was delighted. He had fulfilled the orders given him and entirely justified his appointment. The National Institute of Santiago issued an extravagant eulogy describing his operations at Callao, and the Supreme Director, Bernardo O’Higgins, travelled from Santiago to offer his personal congratulations. Cochrane spent the next three months of the Chilean winter making preparations for a second campaign against Callao. An assistant of William Congreve had arrived to supervise the manufacture of Congreve rockets which, together with fireships, were to play a key role in the attack. Cochrane also persuaded O’Higgins to raise his salary to $10,000 (£2,000) per annum by following the British navy’s practice of increasing an admiral’s income by the provision of an entertainment allowance, or what was called ‘table money’.18

  On 12 September 1819 the squadron headed north and once again anchored in Callao Roads. On the night of 2 October, Cochrane ordered a preliminary attack to test the harbour defences. Rafts for launching the rockets were towed into position by the three brigs and the sleeping seaport was rudely awakened by gunfire and the hissing flare of the few rockets which were successfully ignited. The Spanish were prepared for the attack and retaliated with such a barrage of fire from the shore batteries that the Chilean ships were forced to withdraw. On 6 October the main attack took place, led by a fireship which, as in the action at Basque Roads, was intended to break the protecting boom and cause panic among the anchored Spanish ships. This time the attack was thwarted by a sudden calm which halted the progress of the fireship. Riddled with shot by the Spanish guns she began to sink, and had to be set ablaze prematurely, causing her to explode before she reached the boom. The Congreve rockets were as unpredictable as ever, most of them veering off course and plunging harmlessly into the sea.

  Realising that the forces at his disposal were unable to take the heavily defended seaport, Cochrane turned his attention to easier targets. Captain Guise, with a force of marines led by Colonel Charles, was despatched south to attack Pisco and procure provisions. The attack was successful but Colonel Charles was killed during the action and Major Miller was wounded. Cochrane then led his squadron north to the mouth of the River Guayaquil where, on 28 November, he captured two armed Spanish vessels and took possession of the village of Puna.19 It was around this time that he came up with a bold plan which lay outside the orders given him by Zenteno but would more than compensate for his failures at Callao. With his flagship alone he determined to attack and take the southern stronghold of Valdivia. He sent three of his ships back to Valparaiso with the large number of men who had fallen sick, ordered the remaining ships to keep watch on Callao, and headed south in the O’Higgins.

  Valdivia, situated five hundred miles south of Valparaiso, was the first port of call for ships rounding Cape Horn from Europe. It was the last stronghold on the coast of Chile which was still in Spanish hands and its capture would be a major coup. It would, however, be a difficult place to mount a surprise attack because, in common with European naval bases like Brest and Portsmouth, it had a large, sheltered anchorage with a narrow entrance which was strongly protected by forts and gun emplacements. The town itself was sixteen miles up the river estuary.

  A chart of the harbour of Valdivia in 1826 showing the numerous forts. Cochrane attacked the Spanish naval base in February 1820.

  Cochrane arrived at Valdivia on the evening of 17 January 1820 with Spanish flags flying from the masts of the O’Higgins to allay the suspicions of the defending garrison. As it happened the Spanish were expecting the arrival of one of their frigates, and so they naturally assumed that Cochrane’s Spanish-built frigate lying off the harbour entrance was the long-awaited ship. Very early the next morning Cochrane had himself rowed around the anchorage in his gig so that he could take soundings of the depth of water and note the position of all the forts and gun emplacements. Soon after his return to the ship a boat came alongside with a pilot accompanied by a Spanish officer and four soldiers. They were promptly made prisoner and from them Cochrane learnt that the Spanish brig Potrillo was due shortly with money for the payment of the Valdivia garrison. On the third day the Potrillo hove in sight and she too was deceived by their Spanish colours. She was captured without a shot being fired and proved to have on board $20,000 in silver and military stores worth some $40,000. Almost as valuable for Cochrane’s purposes were her navigational charts which included an excellent chart of the harbour of Valdivia.20

  Having made his reconnaissance, acquired a local pilot and captured a valuable prize, Cochrane now headed up the coast to obtain reinforcements for his intended raid. On 20 January he anchored at Talcahuano and travelled a few miles inland to the town of Concepción where he met General Freire, the Chilean governor of the province. Freire gave him a hospitable welcome, ‘and after explanation of my plans, placed two hundred and fifty men at my disposal, under the command of a gallant Frenchman, Major Beauchef’.21 Lying in Talcahuano Bay were a Chilean schooner, the Montezuma, and a Brazilian brig, the Intrepido, and these were persuaded to join the expedition.

  On 25 January 1820 the diminutive squadron set sail for Valdivia and under Cochrane’s confident leadership embarked on the most desperate enterprise of his career. In theory an attack on Valdivia with such a small force was suicidal. The place was defended by nearly 2,000 men and, according to the engineer John Miers, was ‘unquestionably the strongest in the whole continent of South America’.22 The fire from the guns of the four principal forts crossed each other and commanded the entrance, the anchorage and the channel leading to the town. Once inside the entrance an attacking force would be a sitting target for more than one hundred of these guns. However, Cochrane had noted that the guns were intended to resist an attack from the sea. He proposed to land a force at night and use the element of surprise to attack the forts and gun batteries from the landward side. It was a tactic which Sir Henry Morgan had employed with spectacular success in 1668 when, with no more than five hundred buccaneers, he had captured Portobello, the strongly defended Spanish treasure port on the northern coast of Panama. As Cochrane explained to Major Miller, ‘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.’23

  The enterprise nearly came to grief before they even sighted their objective. They were lying off the island of Quiriquina
on the night of 29 January in a dead calm. Cochrane had gone to his cabin for a rest, leaving the ship’s only lieutenant in charge with strict orders to wake him if a breeze sprang up. The lieutenant decided that he too would retire and left a midshipman to take his place. A sudden wind caught the ship unawares and the midshipman was unable to prevent her being swept on to a rocky shoal. Cochrane came on deck to find the ship aground with the jib boom entangled among the branches of a tree and fragments of the ship’s false keel floating on the surface of the water. If the swell increased the ship would inevitably break up. A sounding revealed five feet of water in the hold and an attempt to work the pumps showed they were out of order.

  The first reaction of the crew was to abandon the ship but the mainland was forty miles away and Cochrane reminded them that it was inhabited by Indians who were likely to torture and kill them. There was no sign of the schooner and the brig. Their lives depended on getting the pumps working. The practical training which Cochrane had received from his first naval instructor, Jack Larmour, saved the day. ‘Our carpenter, who was only one by name, was incompetent to repair them; but having myself some skill in carpentry I took off my coat, and by midnight got them into working order, the water meanwhile gaining on us, though the whole crew were engaged in bailing it out with buckets.’24 With the pumps at last operating they managed to stem the increase of water in the hold and by laying out an anchor they eventually managed to heave the ship off the reef.

  They headed south and when they caught up with the schooner and the brig, Cochrane shifted his flag to the Montezuma, and transferred all the soldiers and marines from the leaking O’Higgins to the two smaller vessels. The powder magazine and most of the ammunition on the flagship had been soaked and rendered useless by the incoming water. This would have been enough to cause most commanders to call off the attack but Cochrane assured his men that they would succeed by the use of bayonets alone. On the afternoon of 3 February the schooner and the brig anchored off Valdivia near the Aguada del Ingles, the only possible landing place outside the harbour. To prevent the defenders from suspecting anything was amiss both vessels were flying Spanish colours, the troops were ordered to remain below deck and the launches which would take the men ashore were lowered on the seaward side of the ships out of sight of the shore. Cochrane sent a Spanish-speaking officer ashore in a boat to ask for a pilot. He was met by a detachment of Spanish soldiers who were not convinced by his story that the two vessels had come from Cape Horn and been separated from their squadron in a storm. At around 4.00 p.m. the guns of Fort Ingles opened fire on the anchored vessels, the shot smashing into the hull of the Intrepido and killing two soldiers. Cochrane ordered the attack to commence at once.

  Major Miller with forty-four marines embarked in the launches and headed for the landing place. There was a heavy swell and they had to contend with thick seaweed clogging the oars as well as a hail of musket balls fired at them from the shore. Miller counted seventy-five enemy soldiers and was nearly killed by one shot which passed through his hat and grazed his head. On landing they attacked the Spaniards with such ferocity that they drove them off and within an hour they had landed three hundred men. By now it was dark and a picked force, led by one of the Spanish soldiers they had captured on their previous visit, climbed a precipitous path from the beach to Fort Ingles on the rocky heights above. On reaching the fort one group caused a noisy diversion by yelling and firing those guns which still had dry powder, while another group crept silently round the back of the fort, uprooted a palisade and used this as a bridge to cross a defensive ditch. Attacked from two sides the Spanish defenders fled towards Fort Carlos whose gates were opened to receive the fugitives. The Chileans poured in after them and, using their bayonets to bloodthirsty effect, they soon captured the fort. The next fort was taken in a similar manner and the attackers moved on to Castle Coral, a formidable structure overlooking the anchorage which should have been able to hold out against such a small force. Shaken by the noise and confusion of the night attack in which a hundred men had been killed and many more taken prisoner, many of the Spanish defenders abandoned their posts and escaped across the harbour in boats, leaving Colonel Hoyos, the commander of the castle, with little option but to surrender to Major Miller. By dawn all the forts on the western side of the harbour were in the hands of the Chileans.

  The schooner Montezuma and the brig Intrepido now entered the harbour. They were fired on by the guns of Fort Niebla on the eastern side of the entrance, but without effect, and they dropped anchor in the deep water near Castle Coral. Cochrane ordered two hundred men to embark on the vessels in preparation for an attack on the eastern forts but while they were doing so the O’Higgins sailed into the harbour. At the sight of a 50-gun ship, which they assumed was bringing reinforcements, the Spanish abandoned the remaining forts and fled towards the town of Valdivia. In fact the O’Higgins was still leaking so badly that Cochrane ordered her to be beached on a mud bank to prevent her sinking.

  On 6 February the Montezuma and the Intrepido, with Major Miller’s marines and Major Beauchef and the Chilean troops on board, sailed up the river towards Valdivia. The Intrepido ran aground in the channel and was so badly damaged that she had to be abandoned but this was of little consequence. Before they reached the town a party of local people appeared with a flag of truce and the news that the Governor of Valdivia, Colonel Monoya, had fled. The town was in a state of confusion. The fleeing Spanish soldiers had looted many of the private houses and Cochrane’s first task was to restore order.

  Valdivia was an important military depot so that in addition to capturing the town, the harbour and the fortifications, Cochrane found himself in possession of 10,000 cannon shot, 128 guns, 1,000 hundred-weight of gunpowder, 170,000 musket cartridges, a large quantity of small arms, and the ship Dolores which was later sold for $20,000. That evening he wrote a despatch to Zenteno, the Minister of Marine in Santiago. He described their successful action, assured him that he had restored order in the town, and concluded, ‘At first it was my intention to have destroyed the fortifications, and to have taken the artillery and stores on board; but I could not resolve to leave without defence the safest and most beautiful harbour I have seen in the Pacific, and whose fortifications must have cost more than a million dollars.’25

  The authorities in Santiago had received no word of Cochrane’s movements since mid-January, when he had left Callao, so the news of his astounding victory came as a complete surprise. The universal reaction was one of jubilation. The Supreme Director announced that all the officers and soldiers who had braved the dangers of ‘that noble conquest’ would be awarded distinctive medals in recognition of their gallantry; the National Institute of Santiago and the City Council issued proclamations which praised the achievements of Cochrane and his men; and Zenteno wrote a public letter to Cochrane which stressed the magnitude of the capture of such an impregnable fortress: ‘The memory of that glorious day will occupy the first pages of Chilean history and the name of Your Excellency will be transmitted from generation to generation by the gratitude of our descendants.’26 O’Higgins also ensured that the government rewarded Cochrane in financial terms. His pay was doubled, he received the full amount of prize money owed him and he was given an estate of 20,000 acres along the banks of the River Clara.

  Although he received a hero’s welcome when he returned to Valparaiso on 6 March, Cochrane became convinced that some of the people in power were jealous of his achievements and were plotting against him. He had learnt that Zenteno had remarked in private that the attack on Valdivia was against the orders he had been given and had risked the lives of the patriot forces. This criticism so angered Cochrane that he decided that Zenteno was his bitter opponent, ‘obstructing all my plans for the interests of Chile’. He also came to believe that Zenteno and various ministers wished to dispense with his services altogether. Writing some time later to San Martin he observed that ‘plans and intrigues were set afoot for my dismissal from the Chi
lean service’. The written evidence does not support Cochrane’s suspicions. Zenteno, a former lawyer, was not a very likeable character. In the words of Maria Graham, ‘His manner is cold; but as he is always grave and sententious, and possesses much of the cunning and quickness commonly attributed to his former profession, he passes for clever.’27 He was, however, a dedicated and able administrator. With few staff, and little help from an almost empty treasury and an impoverished people, he had managed to assemble, maintain and supply the Chilean navy. His correspondence with Cochrane was invariably courteous and friendly, and he dealt patiently with his numerous complaints. And there was no question of anyone in the government wishing to dispense with Cochrane’s services. On the contrary, his name, his reputation and his recent exploits were a source of pride, and O’Higgins and his ministers had given him ample proof of their appreciation.

  Given the circumstances of a revolutionary government which was struggling to establish a new and independent state, there were inevitable problems. The most serious as far as Cochrane was concerned was that on his return to Valparaiso he found that the officers and men of the Chilean squadron had not been paid. Many of the foreign seamen had lost patience and were deserting their ships. In April the commissioned officers and warrant officers joined together to present a formal petition for their pay. Cochrane supported their protest and wrote a letter to Zenteno threatening to resign unless the men were paid. By 30 May the government had managed to raise enough money to pay the squadron.