Cochrane (14 page)

The appointment occurred just in time. Though St Vincent was out of office, the work of his Commission continued with the appearance of a ioth Report. Lord Melville was accused of "malversation", as it was quaintly termed, or embezzlement on a grand scale, as Treasurer of the Navy. The crimes alleged against him covered a period as far back as
1782.
He was obliged to resign as First Lord and was impeached before the House of Lords on a motion of the Commons. A year later, he was acquitted, though this would have been too late to do Cochrane any good.
²²

The
Pallas
was precisely the "rakish" craft of which he had dreamed. She was
667
tons with thirteen guns in a graceful curving line on each side of her main deck, as well as half a dozen chase-guns. But despite this, there was no rush of volunteers to serve under Cochrane. It was a long time since men had heard of any prizes taken by him and they had no intention of going to sea with a booby who had forgotten that war was, in the first place, a matter of cash. Having no better alternative, Cochrane resorted to the press gang. When two constables got in the way, his men beat them up in a running fight. A summons was issued for Cochrane's arrest on charges of assault. In turn, Cochrane brought an action against the Mayor of Plymouth for assault upon men employed in the King's service. He lost the case.

But when the
Pallas
sailed out of Plymouth on the grey winter sea of
21
January
1805,
the mood of the conscripted men began to change. As compensation for his exile in the
Arab,
Melville had allowed Cochrane to cruise for several weeks off the Azores before joining convoy duty in the Atlantic. During those few weeks, the plunder of the trade between Cadiz and the West Indies was to be his for the taking. As the captured vessels, under prize crews from the
Pallas,
dropped anchor in the Hamoaze, the papers reported Cochrane's new wealth with pop-eyed incredulity.

February
24
- Came in the
Caroline
from Havannah with sugar and logwood, captured off the coast of Spain by the
Pallas,
Captain Lord Cochrane. The
Pallas
was in pursuit of another with a very valuable cargo when the
Caroline
left. . . .

March
7
- Came in a rich Spanish prize with jewels, gold, silver, ingots, and a valuable cargo, taken by the
Pallas,
Captain Lord Cochrane. Another Spanish ship, the
Fortuna,
from Vera Cruz, has been taken by the
Pallas,
laden with mahogany and logwood. She had
432 000
dollars on board, but has not yet arrived.

March
23
- Came in a most beautiful letter-of-marque of fourteen guns, said to be a very rich and valuable prize to the
Pallas,
Captain Lord Cochrane.
²³

In warmer waters off the Azores and the Spanish coast, Cochrane was displaying the same mixture of audacity, initiative, and humanity which had characterised his Mediterranean exploits. On
15
February, the
Pallas
captured the Spanish merchantman
Fortuna,
homeward bound for Corunna. In great distress, the rather elderly Spanish captain and his partner came aboard the
Pallas.
Both men had lost everything when their first ship had been taken by a British cruiser in
1779.
They had built up their fortunes slowly and were now about to lose them for the second time. Cochrane consulted his officers, who agreed that each of the two men should be handed five thousand dollars of the cargo which the
Fortuna
was carrying. As a matter of democracy, Cochrane then ordered the bosun to pipe all hands. Addressing the crew, he described what had happened and his proposal to return the sums of money to the two elderly Spaniards. By this stage of the voyage, the crew were happy to do whatever their golden-fingered commander suggested. They shouted, "Aye, aye, my lord. With all our hearts," and roared out three cheers for their captives.
²⁴

Not all the prizes were brought home. On one captured ship Cochrane found some promising bales, which when cut open contained merely a collection of Papal bulls, destined for what he called "the Mexican sin market". They consisted of dispensations for eating meat on Fridays and "indulgences for peccadilloes of all kinds with the price affixed". Supply had exceeded demand, however, and they were being returned to Spain. Since there would be still less demand for them in the sin markets of England, Cochrane ordered his men to throw them overboard.
²⁵

By the end of March, the
Pallas
had sent home four captured vessels with prize crews on board and was herself heavily weighed down by plunder. As the laden frigate prepared to turn for home the sea off the Azores was covered by a low heat-mist, the mastheads of the
Pallas
standing clear of it. Though Cochrane could see nothing from the quarterdeck, the look-out suddenly called out, reporting the maintopgallant masts of three ships of the line closing upon the
Pallas.
Cochrane altered course immediately but, as he strained to make out the shapes of the approaching battleships through the bright dazzle of the haze he identified them clearly as French. The weeks of happy plundering had come to an end.

The situation was closely akin to the ultimate fate of the
Speedy.
While it was true that the
Pallas
was a frigate rather than a brig, she was no match for a battleship, let alone for three. Moreover, as she altered course, the wind freshened and a heavy sea began to run. The ports were closed across her main-deck guns, which were otherwise under water, and even the guns of the quarterdeck, where Cochrane stood, dipped into the waves as the frigate heeled over in the rising sea. The heavy surges also made it impossible for the three battleships to use their guns at this stage, but they were coming up fast on the
Pallas.

To hoist more sail in the face of the storm was contrary to most rules of safety, but it was Cochrane's only chance of getting clear. He ordered the
Pallas's
hawsers to be got to the mastheads and hove taut, securing the masts as firmly as possible, and then for every stitch of canvas to be spread. The lumbering frigate ploughed into the sea which burst in plumes of spray over her bows as the forecastle plunged underwater and sent the waves sluicing back along the deck as it rose again. But still the battleships were gaining and, looking back, Cochrane logged several yellow flashes of the priming pans as the French gunners tried unavailingly to get a steady aim at their target.

Until there was a lull in the storm, it would be difficult for the French to take advantage of their broadsides, but the battleships drew level with the
Pallas
one on either bow at a distance of less than half a mile, while the third was more remote. Their guns were in position and they had only to wait for the sea to grow calmer in order to confront Cochrane with the choice of annihilation or surrender. For the time being, the storm was Cochrane's ally as the four ships plunged along with sails taut under the full force of the gale. In the two months of the cruise he had trained his men to perfection to do things which some of them saw little use in. He now ordered them to man the rigging and, at a given signal, to haul down every sail at precisely the same moment. As he gave the signal, the helm of the
Pallas
was to be put hard over and the frigate turned across the path of the storm. The effect of this manoeuvre, and of the lowering of sails, was that she was "suddenly brought up" and, as Cochrane felt, "shook from stem to stern".

The three French battleships, with the wind in their sails, shot past at full speed, quite unprepared for anything of this kind. Indeed, they were several miles farther on before they could shorten sail or trim on the opposite tack. Meanwhile it was the
Pallas
which spread full sail and again set off in the opposite direction at a speed of more than thirteen knots. But the French captains brought their ships round at last and the chase was resumed grimly. They pursued the frigate for the remainder of the day and the night that followed. But the history of the
Speedy
was destined to be repeated, in one respect at least. As dawn broke, the three great ships found themselves closing in on a ballasted cask with a lantern bobbing upon it. All around them otherwise, there stretched a vast and empty sea.
²⁶

On
3
April, in the Western Approaches, the
Pallas
was sighted by H.M.S.
Brilliant
making for Plymouth under full sail. Two days later, as the citizens lined the Hamoaze to satisfy their curiosity, she sailed gracefully in and dropped anchor. As a symbol of victory, and of Cochrane's innate sense of showmanship, three captured candlesticks had been lashed triumphantly to the masthead of the
Pallas.
They were each five feet tall and made of solid gold.

Cochrane never needed a press gang again. His own share of the prize money from the cruise of the
Pallas
was said to have been
£75,000.
If this was the case, even the humblest and most reluctant member of the crew was now likely to have more money in his pocket than he had ever seen in his life before. But there was, as usual, bitterness over Cochrane's rewards. Sir William Young, the admiral commanding at Plymouth, was awarded half of Cochrane's prize money, on the grounds that he had copied out the orders for the sailing of the
Pallas
after they had come from the Admiralty. He was thus technically in command of the operation.
²⁷

Cochrane's anger was kept private for the time being, since he wanted a rapid favour from Admiral Young, leave of absence to stand as a parliamentary candidate in the coming election. One moving spirit in the matter was his scapegrace uncle, Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone, who had frequent occasion to record such journeys as, "On my return to town yesterday, from a visit to my nephew, Lord Cochrane, at Plymouth
..."
Cochrane-Johnstone had already bought his seat in parliament for the rotten borough of Grampound, thus enjoying immunity from arrest for his habitual refusal to pay his creditors. But two Members of Parliament in the family would offer opportunities for financial adventure beyond even his dreams.
²⁸

Cochrane saw the matter differently. The man who precipitated him into active politics was William Cobbett, the stalwart farmer's son, ex-sergeant-major, and former enemy of revolution who had now turned against the corruption of parliamentary life. Cobbett appealed for an honest man to contest the most corrupt borough in England at the coming election. The borough was Honiton and the man who answered the appeal was Cochrane. The challenge of the impossible was no less invigorating, in its way, than when the
Speedy
had engaged the
Gamo.

Cochrane-Johnstone went to the Admiralty to press for his nephew's leave of absence. Apart from the election there was the matter of what Cobbett euphemistically described as "some business between them", by which the uncle no doubt hoped to induce his nephew to invest part of the prize money in certain "speculations". The three unlikely campaigners in Honiton were, therefore, Cochrane, his devious uncle, and the forthright Radical hero, William Cobbett.
²⁹

The
Gamo
had been easy by comparison. Honitonians regarded their votes as part of their property. A man who wanted them must pay the price. They accused Cobbett and Cochrane of trying to bankrupt them by destroying the system of electoral bribery. "They tell you/' Cobbett reported, "flatly and plainly, that the money, which they obtain for their votes, is absolutely necessary to enable them to live; that, without it, they could not
pay their rents]
and that, from election to election, the poor men run up scores at the shops, and are trusted by the shopkeepers
expressly upon the credit of the proceeds of the ensuing election.
¹
'
They assured him that he and Cochrane "had their
hearts",
but that the ministerial candidate, Bradshaw, who was paying five guineas a time, had their votes.
³⁰

Cochrane left Plymouth and arrived in Honiton on
8
June
1805
for the election hustings. The
Naval Chronicle
approved of his arrival "in a true seaman-like style, accompanied by two lieutenants and one midshipman in full dress, in one carriage . . . followed by another, containing the boat's crew, new rigged and prepared for action". On the platform, amid rival flags and bunting, he was supported by Cobbett and Cochrane-Johnstone.
³¹