Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  The newspapers published a detailed account of Cochrane’s arrival. We learn that he was rowed ashore and around ten o’clock he landed at the King’s Sally Port where a crowd which had gathered on the waterfront gave him three cheers which he acknowledged with a polite bow. He walked up the High Street to the George Hotel dressed in a blue undress military coat with a forage cap with gold band and was accompanied by a number of his officers and staff. ‘Time and the elements seem to have had some effect on his Lordship’s person,’ noted The Times correspondent, who thought that he seemed to stoop in his gait and was looking rather pale.32 A number of naval and military officers called to see Cochrane at his hotel which led to rumours that he might be reinstated. ‘It is conjectured by the naval circles that his Lordship’s visit may have connexion with his restoration to the British naval service, of which he was once, and it is hoped again may be, a brilliant ornament.’33 The next morning Cochrane paid a brief visit to London, was reunited with Lady Cochrane and returned with her to Tunbridge Wells where she had been staying with her relations, Mr and Mrs Simpson, since her return from Brazil four months earlier.

  Surprisingly little had changed on the political scene during the seven years that Cochrane had been away. Lord Liverpool was still Prime Minister, George Canning had replaced Castlereagh as Foreign Secretary and Lord Melville was still First Lord of the Admiralty.34 The Duke of Wellington (no friend of Cochrane or the new South American republics) was a member of the Cabinet as Master-General of the Ordnance. King George III had died at Windsor in 1820, almost forgotten since his periodic bouts of insanity had confined him to his royal residences and all his powers had been transferred to his dissolute son. The little-loved and much-derided Prince Regent (who had stripped Cochrane of the Order of the Bath) was now ruling as King George IV. Another five years would pass before Britain had a monarch and a Cabinet sympathetic to Cochrane personally and more in tune with the views of his radical friends like Sir Francis Burdett. Of the admirals who had played a part in his life, Lord St Vincent and Lord Keith had died, Gambier was in his seventies and retired and his uncle Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane was commander-in-chief at Plymouth.

  Little might have changed on the political scene but in the arts and sciences there had been an extraordinary burst of creative activity during Cochrane’s absence. Keats and Shelley had produced their finest work during those years but both had died tragically young: Keats in 1821 of consumption while staying in lodgings in Rome, and Shelley had drowned in 1822 while sailing off the Italian coast near Leghorn. William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb and his friend Coleridge were notably productive during this period. The Waverley novels of Walter Scott were proving hugely popular: Ivanhoe was published in 1819. Jane Austen (born within a few days of Cochrane, it will be recalled) had died at Winchester in 1817, aged forty-one, but her work was now recognised by her fellow writers and by an increasingly wide readership as a major contribution to English literature: Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, her novel in which naval officers feature prominently, were both published in 1818. J.M.W. Turner had continued to dazzle his contemporaries with his luminous landscapes but the period also saw the emergence from obscurity of John Constable: The Hay Wain of 1820 and View on the Stour of 1821 had caused a sensation in the Paris Salon of 1824 and earned him a gold medal.

  Of more significance to Cochrane were recent developments on the scientific front. In 1819 the steamship Savannah arrived in Liverpool having made the crossing from America in twenty-six days. It would be seventy or eighty years before steam finally ousted sail for cargo and passenger-carrying ships across the oceans but the Savannah was a sign of things to come. The early 1820s saw a regular steamboat service operating on the Thames between London and Margate, and steam tugboats were an increasingly familiar sight in British harbours. 1825, the year of Cochrane’s return, also witnessed the opening of the Stockton to Darlington railway with the world’s first passenger steam train hauled by George Stephenson’s Locomotion No. 1. In a few years time Cochrane would design a rotary steam engine and would borrow Stephenson’s most famous locomotive, the Rocket, for trials with his engine. He would also embark on a long-running battle with the Admiralty to convince their Lordships that steam-driven warships were the navy’s future.

  19

  A Greek Fiasco

  1825–1828

  After spending a few weeks in Tunbridge Wells with his wife’s relations, Cochrane took Kate on an extended visit to Scotland. Although he had seen very little of his native land since he had joined the navy and, when not at sea, had spent most of his time in London or Hampshire, he always regarded Scotland as his home. Many years later Kate would recall, ‘He gloried in being a Scotchman; he said it was the pride of his life, and he used after his dinner, when he was drinking his wine, and so on, always to bring in something about Scotland – his dear Scotland – the days of his youth…’1

  They followed the route they had taken thirteen years before. The horses were changed at Carlisle and as their carriage passed through the village of Annan he turned to Kate and said, ‘My love, this is the place where we plighted our troth. This is where we were married. Where you were mine.’2 They did not stop in the village but headed for Fife and the friends and relations he had not seen for so many years. ‘I was most kindly received by them all, by Sir Robert Preston, and by all the friends and relations,’ Kate remembered fondly. ‘Great hospitality was shown us, and the greatest kindness.’3 They stayed for a while with Sir Robert Preston who had bought Culross Abbey from Cochrane’s father and who lived at Valleyfield on the adjoining estate. There is no doubt that one of the driving forces behind Cochrane’s pursuance of prize money and his determination to make a fortune in South America was his hope that he would one day be able to buy back his childhood home at Culross or, failing that, to acquire a fine house or castle in the Scottish lowlands. According to Kate he particularly had his eye on Blair Castle, the magnificent home of the Dukes of Atholl: ‘He said that with the first money he could save in South America he would buy Blair Castle.’4 But Blair Castle was out of his reach and Sir Robert was not prepared to sell Culross. It was left to a later generation of the Dundonald family to acquire a family seat in Scotland.

  They remained in Scotland for nearly three months. They saw Lord and Lady Napier, and Lady Maxwell, visited Castle Craig and stayed for a while at a hotel in Edinburgh.5 In October they attended the theatre and received a standing ovation from the audience when a reference was made to South America. Walter Scott was present and was so impressed by the occasion that he was inspired to write a poem which was largely devoted to praising the beauty of Lady Cochrane. He described her pure brow and her dark locks and praised her for the love, strength and constancy she had shown during the wars she had lived through.

  Even now, as through the air the plaudits rung,

  I marked the smiles that in her features came;

  She caught the word that fell from every tongue,

  And her eye brightened at her Cochrane’s name;

  And brighter yet became her bright eyes’ blaze;

  It was his country, and she felt the praise.6

  During this period in Scotland Cochrane was also engaged in more prosaic matters. In particular he carried on a lengthy correspondence with Manuel Gameiro Pessoa, the Brazilian agent in London. The crew of the Piranga needed to be paid and the agent arranged for their pay and prize money to be settled. Less easily solved was Cochrane’s position as First Admiral of the Brazilian navy. Was he planning to return to Rio de Janeiro with the Piranga and, if so, when? Cochrane prevaricated, sending a number of polite but evasive replies to the agent’s increasingly urgent letters. He was reluctant to resign his Brazilian post because he did not wish to lose the payment of his salary or his pension, but he was now under increasing pressure from the Greek Committee in London to take command of the Greek navy and help in the liberation of Greece from Turkish rule. After several months of correspondence the Minister of Marine in Ri
o de Janeiro had no alternative but to dismiss him from the Brazilian navy.

  Cochrane had received unofficial overtures to help the Greek cause while he was still in Chile and it had been one of the reasons why he had been doubtful of offering his services to Brazil. In his letter accepting the post of Admiral of the Brazilian navy he had written, ‘I confess however that I had not hitherto directed my attention to the Brazils; considering that the struggle for the liberties of Greece – the most oppressed of modern states – afforded the fairest opportunity for enterprise and exertion.’7 The movement for Greek independence had attracted the support of liberal-minded people throughout western Europe, and committees had been set up to raise money for the Greek cause in London, Paris, Vienna and elsewhere. Prominent on the London Committee were Sir Francis Burdett and John Cam Hobhouse, who had succeeded Cochrane as Member of Parliament for Westminster. Hobhouse was a close friend of Lord Byron who had been a passionate advocate of Greek independence for many years. Byron had travelled to Greece in January 1824 and was preparing to take part in the fighting when he contracted fever. His death in April 1824 attracted widespread attention and gained more adherents for the cause.

  The Greek War of Independence, like so much in the history of the Balkans, was riven by local conflicts and ethnic and religious hatreds, and it was marked by numerous atrocities. Underground protests against the oppressive Turkish rule had come out into the open in March 1821 when Bishop Germanos of Patras had hoisted the Greek flag over the monastery of Agias Lavras. Fighting had broken out in the Peloponnese with bands of freedom fighters attacking Turkish garrisons and the homes of Turks. This culminated in the massacre at Tripolitsa (Tripolis) when more than 8,000 Turkish men, women and children were killed. On 13 January 1822 Greek independence was proclaimed at Epidaurus. The Turks retaliated in April with the notorious massacre of Chios when Turkish soldiers slaughtered some 25,000 inhabitants of the island, raped thousands of women and enslaved those women and children who escaped the slaughter. In the words of a contemporary historian of the conflict, ‘The massacre of Chios excited just indignation in all the Christian countries. It also opened the eyes of statesmen to the fact that the struggle between the Turks and the Greeks was a war of extermination.’8 But although most of Britain’s ruling class had received a classical education and had a natural sympathy for the nation which had produced Aristotle, Plato and Pericles, the British government was determined to remain neutral in the conflict. Canning, the Foreign Secretary, was aware that Russia had a long-standing interest in the Balkans, and was particularly anxious to maintain the balance of power in Europe.

  Sultan Mahmoud, the ruler of the Turkish empire, had called on the help of Mohamed Ali, Pasha of Egypt. The Arabs, led by Mohamed Ali’s son Ibrahim Pasha, had assembled a fleet and invaded the Peloponnese in February 1825. By the autumn of that year many of the Greek strongholds had fallen and Athens was under threat. It was at this stage that Cochrane was formally invited by the Greek National Assembly to take up the command of the Greek navy.9 Just as in Chile and Brazil there was a realisation that seapower would play a key role in the outcome of the war. Captain Frank Hastings, a naval officer who had fought at Trafalgar and was now in active service in Greek waters, had told Byron in 1823 that ‘Greece cannot obtain any decisive advantage over the Turks without a decided maritime superiority; for it is necessary to prevent them from relieving their fortresses and supplying their armies by sea’.10

  Cochrane put a high price on his services. He demanded a salary of £57,000 of which £37,000 was to be paid in advance and the remaining £20,000 when Greece was freed. He also wanted a fleet of steam warships. The original idea for using steamships had come from Captain Hastings who had gone to Greece in April 1822 as a volunteer. He realised that in the tideless and relatively sheltered waters of the Greek islands, steam-powered vessels could be extremely effective against sailing vessels becalmed in light airs. Cochrane was enthusiastic but while Hastings thought it would be quicker to buy and adapt existing steam vessels Cochrane insisted that new ships should be specially constructed. It was eventually agreed that six armed steamships were to be built in England by Gordon and Brent at a cost of £25,000 each, and fitted with engines by Alexander Galloway; and two heavy sailing frigates were to be built in the United States at a cost of £75,000 each.11 Cochrane’s mistake was to entrust the construction of the steam engines to Galloway who had already proved his incompetence over the construction of the Rising Star. Moreover, his son was in the employment of the enemy, Mohamed Ali of Egypt, so he had every reason to delay the contract. The outcome was a fiasco. One steamship, the Perseverance, which had been ordered by Captain Hastings back in March 1825, eventually reached the Mediterranean in the summer of 1826, when her boilers burst. Following repairs she arrived at the ancient port of Nafplion on the south-east coast of Greece on 14 September 1826. The other five vessels were meant to be fitted out with steam engines in two and half months after the order had been placed in August 1825. One vessel, the Enterprise, took fourteen months to complete, produced endless problems during sea trials, and did not arrive in Greece until September 1827, too late to be of any use to Cochrane. Of the remaining steam vessels, two of them reached Greece in the autumn of 1828 after the naval war was over; the other two were never completed. The construction of the two heavy frigates in America was a saga of corruption and delays: costs escalated to such an extent that one of the vessels had to be sold to the United States navy in order to pay for the other vessel which, against all the odds, did reach Greece in time to be of some service.12

  Having insisted that the steamships were essential to his campaign, Cochrane did not intend to arrive in Greece without them. However, he could not remain in England to hurry along their construction because he received ominous news from his lawyer friend, Henry Brougham. On 8 November 1825, Cochrane wrote to Sir Francis Burdett to inform him, ‘My life is rendered so inquiet by the constant fear of prosecution under the Foreign Enlistment Act which Brougham has given his opinion may be put in force against me, even for my services in Brazil, that I have resolved to place myself on the other side of the water without delay, and tomorrow morning I make the attempt by steamboat from the Tower.’13 He sailed to Boulogne where he was joined a week later by Kate and their four-year-old daughter Lizzie and Arthur, the latest addition to the family, who was just over a year old. The eldest boys, Tom and Horace, were at school and followed some time later.

  In the period between her return from Brazil and her departure to France, Kate had become friendly with George Eden, who had inherited the title of Lord Auckland in 1810 when his eldest brother, William, had drowned in the Thames. Kate had met him during her visits to London in 1824 while Cochrane was still in Brazil. Her occasional letters to him during that period are friendly but formal, thanking him for his kindness, and giving him news of her family and their future plans.14 But on 16 November 1825, shortly before leaving for France, she dashed off an anguished letter to him which indicates that he had become rather more than a friend.

  ‘I have only a moment to say God bless you,’ she wrote. She told him that she was leaving, perhaps for ever.

  My heart is almost broken. However when the Greeks are free, think of my glory and forget all the anguish you have seen me suffer. I ask you to write to me sometimes and to look with kind feeling on the little remembrance you have of me. The ring shall be a happiness to me, I will always love you for what has passed, but I cannot expect you to continue the same feeling for me for I shall be too long absent and too far distant. Yet I should grieve to know another had my place.

  Farewell dearest may you be more happy than

  your wretched unhappy

  but affectionate Katherine.15

  After spending six weeks in France, Cochrane and Kate and their family had to leave the country because the French government intended to prosecute Cochrane for the seizure of a French brig in the Pacific while he was commanding the Chilean navy. On 23 December
they travelled to Brussels where they took up residence. From Brussels, on 17 April 1826, Kate wrote another letter to Lord Auckland: ‘If thinking of you could convince you of my unchanged affection I can assure you, you have not been absent from my thoughts for one single instant since I last parted from you in Brook Street, how long, how painfully long it has been since I heard from you.’ She told him that she was leaving Brussels soon to go to Switzerland for a few months; ‘That done I proceed to Florence and then to Genoa and after that God alone can tell. I would make any sacrifice to see you again but I fear it is next to impossible.’16

  A few days later, on 22 April, Cochrane wrote to Auckland explaining that he would be proceeding on his mission in a few days but, because he was worried about the nature of the service, ‘I have felt it right to make some arrangements relative to Lady Cochrane and my children which you will greatly oblige us if you will see fulfilled. Lady Cochrane had strengthened this hope by reading to me part of your last very friendly letter, in which you offer to render any service in your power.’17 Kate’s next letter to Auckland makes it clear that he has agreed to become a trustee for the children in the event of anything happening to Cochrane – who is evidently far more concerned about the outcome of the Greek campaign than he has been before embarking on similar exploits in the past.

  ‘My husband left me last Saturday morning,’ Kate wrote, ‘and was more uneasy than I ever before knew him to be – I love the little buttons you sent me, and I always wear them night and day; and until I die I shall continue to do so – I hope to hear from you whenever you have an idle moment and you will tell me about yourself – and not about commercial speculations all that is very good but you are dearer to me than all the commerce in the world. You may blush at my folly but you cannot blame me if I speak the truth.’18