Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  This is the last of the seven letters from Kate to Lord Auckland written around this time. There can be no doubt that she fell in love with him but we do not have his letters to her, and although his gifts indicate that he was very fond of her we cannot be certain that they had a physical love affair. What is certain is that Kate remained loyal to Cochrane. She stayed with him for another twelve years, and bore him two more children.19 Lord Auckland was nine years younger than Cochrane. He was good looking and had been educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, before becoming a barrister and then an MP. On the death of his father in 1814 he had moved to the House of Lords. He was, however, a reluctant politician, being shy and reserved and a notably poor speaker. He never married but lived with two of his eight sisters.20 Whether Cochrane ever knew or suspected his wife’s feelings for Auckland is not known but the two men remained on good terms. Many years later, when Auckland was First Lord of the Admiralty, he was directly responsible for appointing Cochrane to the command of a British squadron.

  For fourteen frustrating months Cochrane waited for his fleet to be assembled. To enable him to have freedom of movement the Greek Committee in London supplied him with a yacht, the schooner Unicorn of 158 tons. This enabled him to sail from Flushing on 8 May 1826 and cross the Channel to Weymouth. He made a secret visit to Galloway’s yard at Greenwich on Sunday 16 May to find that the Perseverance was apparently completed but the other two vessels ‘were filled with pieces of the high-pressure engines, all unfixed, and scattered about in the engine-room and on deck’.21 He boarded the Unicorn at Dartford on 20 May and headed back down the Channel to Falmouth to await the arrival of the Perseverance. When she failed to appear he sailed across the Irish Sea to Bantry Bay to avoid any possibility of the authorities arresting him under the Foreign Enlistment Act. On hearing that Captain Hastings was at last on his way in the Perseverance, Cochrane set a course for the Mediterranean. The Unicorn passed through the Straits of Gibraltar on 26 June and on 12 July dropped anchor in the Sicilian harbour of Messina. Again Cochrane waited in vain. After a visit to Malta he sailed to Marseilles where he met Hobhouse who had the welcome news that one of the American frigates was on its way. He also met Dr Louis-André Gosse, a Swiss member of the French Committee which was supporting the Greek cause. On hearing of Cochrane’s problems Gosse arranged for the brig-of-war Sauveur to be purchased and made available.

  The situation in Greece had been steadily deteriorating. The Turks had taken Missolonghi in April 1826, sacked the town, embarked on an orgy of atrocities, and enslaved thousands of woman and young boys. The fishing port had no particular military significance but it had a symbolic importance because of its association with Lord Byron who had spent the last four months of his life there. He had given large sums of money to the Greek cause and raised a brigade of freedom fighters before dying of fever in April 1824. Of greater significance for the Greek cause was the fall of Athens to the Turks in June 1826. Only the Acropolis on its lofty plateau above the city held out. Some of the Greek inhabitants had taken refuge on the heights among the ruins of the Parthenon and the adjoining temples, and they were bravely defended by a force of 570 soldiers led by a veteran French commander, Colonel Charles Fabvier. What made things worse was that the Greeks were divided among themselves. Sir Richard Church, who had received an invitation from one of the Greek factions to take command of the Greek forces, wrote to Cochrane to warn him, ‘This unhappy country is now divided by absurd and criminal dissensions. I hope, however, that your Lordship’s arrival will have a happy effect, and that they will do everything in their power to be worthy of such a leader.’22

  Not till 17 March 1827 did Cochrane finally sail into the Greek harbour of Poros with two sailing vessels: the Sauveur and the yacht Unicorn. Of his promised fleet only three other vessels were waiting for him: the American-built frigate Hellas of 60 guns; the Hydra, a small corvette; and the steamship Perseverance (now named the Karteria) under the command of Captain Hastings. This was not the sort of fleet he had been hoping for but his presence alone was worth a great deal. Indeed, his arrival seems to have had an extraordinary effect on the unruly and warring Greek parties. George Finlay, who was serving as a volunteer on the staff of General Thomas Gordon, and later wrote The History of the Greek Revolution, was much impressed by the way in which Cochrane assessed the situation and took command. ‘His influence became suddenly unbounded, and faction was for a moment silenced. All parties agreed to think only of the nation’s interests.’23 On 7 April the leaders of the various Greek parties met in a lemon grove at Damala, a village on the mainland opposite Poros town. Count John Capodistrias (Ioannis Kapodistrias) was elected as President of the National Assembly. Although born in Corfu he had been out of the country for many years and had served as foreign minister of Russia under Tsar Alexander. According to Finlay the early meetings of the National Assembly were tumultuous but ‘the authority of Lord Cochrane over all parties prevented an open rupture’. On 18 April the Assembly formally agreed to the appointment of Sir Richard Church as commanding general of the Greek army, and the appointment of Cochrane as commanding admiral of the Greek navy. The current naval commander, Admiral Miaoulis, a brave but elderly sea captain from Hydra who had achieved some success in local naval actions, was happy to serve under Cochrane.24

  The first and most urgent task was to relieve the garrison on the Acropolis which was under siege by an army of some 7,000 Turkish soldiers and was rapidly running out of provisions. The Greek forces were gathered around the harbour of Piraeus a few miles south-west of Athens. They could see the distant Acropolis but their path to the summit was blocked by a contingent of Turkish troops who were occupying the monastery of Saint Spiridion. Cochrane may have lacked a classical education but he had been lent a great number of books on Greek history by Hobhouse and during the long wait for his steam fleet there had been plenty of opportunity to read them. He now issued a series of stirring proclamations, quoting Demosthenes, and calling on the Greeks to rise up against the enemy. He produced a large flag of his own devising which depicted the owl of the goddess Athena set against a blue and white background and let it be known among the soldiers in the Greek camps that whoever raised the flag on the summit of the Acropolis would receive $1,000 as a reward for his bravery.

  On the night of 24 April a force of marines, augmented by a thousand men who had been recruited on the island of Hydra, were landed on the shore where they were in a position to attack the monastery from the rear. Thirty more soldiers under the supervision of Cochrane were landed the next day. The watching Turks, seeing an opportunity to drive the landing party back into the sea, left the monastery and the earthworks they had thrown up around its walls, and began advancing down the hillside. Cochrane was quick to take advantage of the situation. ‘He observed a moment when a daring charge would ensure victory to the Greeks, and, cheering on the troops near him, he led them to the attack with nothing but his telescope in his hand. All eyes had been watching his movements, and when he was seen to advance, a shout ran through the Greek army, and a general attack was made simultaneously on all the positions occupied by the Turks…’25 Such was the fury of the attack that the Turks abandoned their earthworks and fled. Three hundred of them took refuge in the monastery and the rest headed towards Athens. The Greeks had lost eight men during the fighting, the Turks sixty.

  Cochrane now ordered the Hellas, which was anchored in the Bay of Phalerum, to open fire on the monastery. The 32-pounders of the powerful frigate flashed and boomed and sent clouds of gun smoke swirling across the bay, and once the range had been established the walls of the monastery began to crumble. The Turks held out for three days but on 28 April they negotiated a surrender. The last successful action of Cochrane’s career as a naval and military commander was marred by what he later described as ‘the most horrid scene I ever beheld’. Karaiskakes, one of the Greek commanders, had agreed that the Turks should be allowed to retire from the monastery with their arms and baggage and
return to their own army. Cochrane had returned to his yacht and was standing on the deck with Gordon and Finlay watching the proceedings through a telescope. As the Turks emerged and made their way through the dense crowd of armed men, Finlay realised what was going to happen.

  ‘All those men will be murdered,’ he said and they watched in horror as the Greeks opened fire. In the massacre which followed two hundred men lost their lives and fewer than seventy escaped to the safety of the Turkish lines. Worse was to follow. Cochrane was determined to follow up the attack on the monastery and rescue the beleaguered soldiers and civilians under siege on the Acropolis. General Church and most of the Greek commanders were reluctant to proceed, knowing only too well the indifferent fighting qualities of their men when faced with Turkish artillery and mounted soldiers armed with scimitars. Impatiently Cochrane bombarded Church with letters: ‘Pray let me know if the army will or will not advance,’ he wrote, and threatened to leave if the men were not embarked and ordered to proceed to Athens. Against his better judgement Church at length agreed to Cochrane’s plan which was to land 3,000 troops at night near Cape Colios, due south of Athens. Under cover of darkness they would cross the open plain which lay between the coast and the city and capture the heights on which stood the Temple of Zeus. This was close to the Acropolis and was a strong position from which to relieve the besieged garrison. The rest of the Greek army were to advance on Athens by a different route and cause a diversion.

  At midnight on 6 May the Greek troops were landed on the shore ‘in a clear moonlight and in the most perfect order,’ according to Dr Gosse who was acting as Commissary-General of the Greek navy. The Hellas was anchored nearby to provide covering fire if necessary. An advance party of picked men crossed the plain unopposed and reached the planned rendezvous but, instead of following them, the remainder proceeded to dig themselves in near the shore. When Gosse went to find out why the soldiers providing the diversion were not moving he came across one commander who was smoking his pipe on the beach and refused to move until he was paid. At dawn the Turkish cavalry appeared. They cut down the advance party who had begun to retreat and then swept across the plain towards the men on the beach who fled in panic towards the water. At least seven hundred men were killed in the resulting slaughter, 240 were taken prisoner and the remainder of the Greek army fled as the Turkish artillery in the foothills opened fire on the plain. Cochrane managed to wade out to where Gosse was waiting in a boat and, grabbing the oars, he rowed them back to the Hellas. The guns of the frigate were directed at the Turkish artillery and the boats were sent ashore to evacuate the survivors but the overall result was a disastrous and costly defeat which many blamed on Cochrane.26 A month later, on 5 June, the garrison on the Acropolis surrendered to the Turks.

  Increasingly disillusioned by the Greek troops and by the failure of his efforts on land, Cochrane decided to concentrate on naval actions. He had sent Captain Hastings with the steamship Karteria and five smaller vessels to intercept and capture the ships which were supplying the Turkish army, and Hastings had proved conspicuously successful at this, but when Cochrane set sail in the Hellas he failed dismally. His first attempt to capture two Turkish frigates was frustrated by his largely Greek crew who either ignored his commands or proved hopelessly ineffective at gunnery. After a few weeks of cruising he noted that, ‘the frequent mutinies or resistance to authority, and the numerous instances in which I have been obliged to return to port, or abstain from going to sea, are recorded in the logbook of the Hellas, together with the disgraceful conduct of the crew in stripping and robbing prisoners, and their want of coolness in the presence of the enemy…’.27

  The next failure was on a grand scale and was a parody of his heroic action at Basque Roads. On 11 June 1827 he gathered an assortment of ships off Cape Saint Antonio on the south-east coast of the Peloponnese with the aim of launching a fireship attack on the harbour of Alexandria. The Egyptian port was the base for the fleet of Ibrahim Pasha and was the principal source of all supplies to the Turkish forces operating in Greece. Cochrane had at his disposal the frigate Hellas, the corvette Sauveur, eight vessels converted into fireships and fourteen armed brigs – many of which were manned by crews more accustomed to making piratical attacks on unarmed merchantmen than confronting an armed enemy. After a slow crossing they sighted the distant towers of Alexandria at five o’clock on the morning of 15 June. In an attempt to inspire his men Cochrane issued another of his rousing proclamations, which began, ‘Brave officers and seamen, one decisive blow and Greece is free…’28 Unfortunately only enough volunteers could be found to man two of the fireships. On the night of 16 June, with the Hellas and Sauveur flying Austrian flags, Cochrane led his squadron towards the entrance of the port. One of the fireships was successfully manoeuvred alongside an Egyptian warship and set it alight. This so alarmed the remaining ships in the harbour that they hastily weighed anchor and headed for the open sea. The sight of the enemy fleet advancing towards them caused such panic among the ships of the Greek squadron that most of them fled. Cochrane abandoned his intention of seizing the port and set off in pursuit of the enemy but after eighty miles he gave up the chase.

  For the next three months the Hellas cruised on her own along the western coast of the Greek mainland, intercepting the occasional merchantman or pirate and making an unsuccessful attempt to capture a coastal fort. Meanwhile, the governments of Britain, France and Russia had belatedly decided to intervene in the conflict. Representatives of the three countries met in London in July 1827 and signed a treaty, the short-term aim of which was to secure an armistice in the war. The long-term aim was to ensure that Greece achieved independence and internal self-government but under the nominal sovereignty of Turkey. A deadline of one month was set for the armistice and to make sure that it was enforced the three powers despatched squadrons to Greece.

  The combined Turkish and Egyptian fleets were now anchored in the great bay of Navarino on the west coast of Greece and in October the three allied fleets gathered outside the narrow entrance to the bay. The British squadron was commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Codrington who had instructions to enforce the armistice and prevent reinforcements reaching the enemy. Realising that a lengthy blockade was not practical he decided to enter the bay and by midday on 20 October the two opposing fleets were facing each other. It was an impressive sight. The allies had twenty-six warships between them, including twelve ships of the line and eight frigates; the enemy had sixty-five warships with seven ships of the line and fifteen frigates. Codrington had no instructions to secure the armistice by force and there was some attempt to parley but it only needed a minor incident to provoke a full-scale battle. At 2.30 p.m. a boat from HMS Dartmouth was fired on, and soon a general engagement was under way. For three hours there was a murderous bombardment at close range. The superior gunnery of the allies reduced the enemy to a tangled and smoking mass of dismasted, burning and sinking ships. By dawn the next day only fifteen enemy ships remained afloat. Turkish and Egyptian casualties were reckoned at between 4,000 and 8,000 dead and wounded.29

  The news of the Battle of Navarino, the last major fleet action to be fought under sail, was received with mixed reactions in Britain where it was memorably described as ‘an untoward event’ by sources within the Cabinet. Prince William, the king’s sailor brother, considered it a splendid victory and insisted that Codrington be awarded the Order of the Bath, but the government was concerned about the likely repercussions of the unplanned act of aggression. In fact the destruction of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets hastened the end of the Balkan conflict and, although there were to be many disagreements about territorial boundaries, Britain, France and Russia agreed to recognise the independence of Greece in February 1830.

  Cochrane had been in Poros on the other side of the mainland when the crucial sea battle took place and some days later he wrote to Dr Gosse, ‘If you have heard the result of the battle of Navarino pray inform us, we are quite ignorant of everything but
that a terrible fight did take place.’30 On 27 October he sailed to Chios in order to provide support to a Greek force which was planning to recapture the island from the Turks, but on 2 November he received a letter signed by the three allied commanders demanding a cessation of all hostilities. The letter warned that all Greek vessels, armed for war, found beyond twelve miles from the shores of continental Greece, would be destroyed.31 The British government had never approved of Cochrane’s presence in Greece and it was now clear that he and his ships were regarded as pirates and a threat to the peace of the region. His protests were in vain and were not helped by the fact that most of the captains and crews of the ships which had briefly formed the Greek navy had returned to their usual occupation of preying on defenceless merchant ships. He wrote a long letter to Capodistrias, the Greek president, complaining about the conduct of his Greek crews and informing him that he was returning to England to recruit seamen: ‘Sober, steady men can be obtained from the northern nations, who will do their duty, and, since precept is useless, teach the Greeks by example. Then piracy may cease and commerce may flourish.’32

  He handed over command of the Hellas to Admiral Miaoulis and on 10 January 1828 he left Poros in the schooner Unicorn. He arrived at Portsmouth on 11 February but when he met the members of the Greek Committee in London he found them disillusioned by the internal quarrels and unpatriotic conduct of the Greeks. The Foreign Enlistment Act prevented him recruiting seamen and his attempts to bypass this proved fruitless. The remaining steam vessels in which he had placed such faith were still in an unfinished state in Galloway’s yard. He travelled to Paris to meet up with his wife and family, and had an unsatisfactory meeting with the French Philhellenic Committee. His position was becoming impossible and was affecting his health. ‘I am very low, and do not feel at all well,’ he wrote on 24 March. ‘I cannot free myself from the oppression of spirits occasioned by seeing everything in the lamentable state in which all must continue in Greece, unless some effectual steps are taken to put an end to the intrigues and rivalships headed by unprincipled chiefs and backed by their savage followers.’33 To make matters worse Sir Francis Burdett forwarded a letter to him written by one of the Greek deputies who had originally recruited him in London. He was informed that by leaving Greece he had broken his contract and he must repay the sum of £37,000, a demand he indignantly rejected.