Cochrane (24 page)

Cochrane was no less exhilarated than his men. If only for another day, he had stopped the ad
vance of the French column into
Catalonia. Moreover, as he surveyed the wreckage and the bodies lying outside, he counted over fifty enemy dead to which had to be added the bodies of some who had been carried back in the retreat. His own losses amounted to three, two of them Spaniards and the other being one of his marines. He had surely proved, if proof were needed, that with half a dozen frigates he could not only disrupt the commerce, communications, and military movements of the enemy, he could also inflict losses on them which were out of all proportion to those suffered by his own men. The French column before him had lost fifty or a hundred of their most highly-trained attacking force and were no nearer to Catalonia now than they had been ten days before.

In the midst of the smoke and the carnage of that early morning engagement, however, there had been one incident which illustrated how many of the courtesies of war had survived into the more earnest age of hand grenades and mortars. When the rest of the attacking force had retreated, one French officer, refusing to withdraw until his men were safe, stood with his drawn sword upon the rubble. Cochrane, carrying an ordinary musket, came face to face with him and covered him with the weapon at once. But instead of lowering his sword in token of surrender, the Frenchman flourished it aloft and stood firmly "like a hero to receive the bullet". It was exactly the type of gesture to win Cochrane's admiration. "I never saw a braver or a prouder man," he remarked. Lowering his musket he added that such a man was not born to be shot like a dog and invited the Frenchman to take his leave and make his way back to his own lines. "He bowed as politely as though on parade, and retired just as leisurely."
¹⁸

Instead of persuading him that he might now retire with honour from Fort Trinidad, Cochrane's success on
30
November increased his determination to hold the position for as long as possible. On
3
December, he actually assumed the offensive and led his men out in an attack on the French infantry, who had dug themselves in on the hillside. This was of less use tactically than in terms of morale. It was evidently the occasion on which he came back from the sortie in company with Midshipman Marryat. While ordering his men to run back for the cover of Fort Trinidad, Cochrane himself "walked leisurely along through a shower of musket-balls". Marryat, who also longed to run with the men, was obliged to walk beside Cochrane at the same "funeral pace". It was a fixed principle with Cochrane, he learnt, that he "never had run away from a Frenchman, and did not intend to begin".

As they walked on, Marryat tried to edge round so that Cochrane was between him and the French muskets. Cochrane noticed this, and as though it were a great joke, ordered Marryat back into position again. "Just drop astern, if you please, and do duty as a breastwork for me." If nothing else, it was the first lesson in supreme self-confidence.
¹⁹

After so much jubilation there was a sour conclusion to the affair of Fort Trinidad. On the next day,
4
December, the French artillery in the town of Rosas succeeded in opening a breach in the citadel walls which the defenders could not close. The citadel duly surrendered. At the same time, there was a message from the
Imperieuse
that a gale was blowing up and that the frigate must put to sea. There could be no c
ertainty when, or if, she would
be able to bring further supplies or lend military support to her commander in his fortress. The situation was further complicated on
5
December by the withdrawal from battle and the surrender of the Spanish troops in Fort Trinidad. Accepting the inevitable, Cochrane arranged an evacuation of his men.

The
Fame
and the
Magnificent
anchored in Rosas Bay in response to signals from the
Imperieuse,
the three ships keeping up a steady bombardment of the French positions. Under cover of this, Cochrane withdrew his men from Fort Trinidad on the morning of
5
December and got them down to the beach by means of rope ladders. He also evacuated those other defenders who preferred to sail on the
Imperieuse
rather than to surrender to the French. The last two men to leave Fort Trinidad were Cochrane himself and the gunner of the
Imperieuse.
They set the charges, lit the fuses, and then followed the others down to the beach. One charge failed to go off but as the
Imperieuse
and the accompanying ships sailed out of Rosas Bay, the main tower of Fort Trinidad went skyward in an impressive display of the art of demolition.
²⁰

The reception awaiting Cochrane on his return from this cruise was varied. He had, predictably, become a hero of the Spanish war of liberation. The story of how he had rescued the Spanish flag from the ditch, under the fire of the French, was told as an illustration of his valour. "This gallant Englishman," said the
Gerona Gazette,
repeating the story, "has been entitled to the admiration and gratitude of this country from the first moment of its political resurrection." At home, the
Naval Gazette
reported the story enthusiastically, assuring its readers that with a mere "handful of men
...
Lord Cochrane made the most astonishing exertions".
²¹

The enthusiasm of the Admiralty was, predictably, more muted. In reply to Collingwood's account of the action of Fort Trinidad and the prodigious damage done to the French for the loss of three men, they sent a reprimand to Cochrane for excessive use of powder and shot. They also showed evident dislike of his excessive use of the
Imperieuse,
which was apt to require more in repairs and maintenance than ships which kept out of harm's way. Cochrane observed bitterly that captains who avoided combat and brought ships home unblemished were rewarded with pensions of
£1000
or
£1500
a year by Admiralty placemen. He himself received nothing for thirty years and then, through the intervention of the Earl of Minto, was at length granted the ordinary good service pension.
²²

The "res angusta domi" of childhood, as well as the fierce sensitivity of his pride had left him acutely sensitive to financial injustice and the thought that he was being made a fool of by its agency. His action at Fort Trinidad had been at the expense of scouring the Mediterranean for prizes. It was not in the least inconsistent with the figure of the public hero that he should demand some practical reward for this sacrifice. His superiors might call on him to shed his blood or lay down his fife for his country, but they must not expect to pick his pockets. It was a belief latent in the minds of most serving officers and their men, though in Cochrane's case the circumstances of his life caused him to hold it with a certain bizarre prominence. It would have been simple to condemn him as grasping and materialistic, but this would hardly explain the acts of generosity attributed to him throughout his life. Though he had need of money, as a post-captain, his care for it was essentially the manifestation of his sense of pride and justice.

However, his correspondence and despatches began to show another and more urgent preoccupation. He was convinced that he had the key to Britain's victory in the war against Napoleon and that the recent exploits of the
Imperieuse
showed that he had mastered its use. He had shown what could be done on the French coast and in eastern Spain. The same could be done on the Atlantic coast, with a few frigates and their marines assisting the Spanish to impede or block French military operations. Best of all, a small military force, supported by frigates, should be landed on the ill-defended French islands of the Bay of Biscay. From there, such operations might be carried out against the west coast of mainland France as would make it impossible for Napoleon to maintain an army in Portugal or in Spain. By contrast, for Wellington to land in one of the remotest parts of the Iberian peninsula, and to fight a long overland campaign to reach the Pyrenees and enter France was a military absurdity. By making it impossible for the French to supply or reinforce their troops, and by putting them at the mercy of the guerrillas in consequence, the tide of war might be turned quickly and spectacularly. As Cochrane later wrote, "neither the Peninsular War, nor its enormous cost to the nation, from
1809
onwards, would ever have been heard of".
²³

This was no mere eccentricity on Cochrane's part. In England, the
Naval Chronicle,
echoing the view of the
Morning Chronicle
and the non-ministerial press, was an advocate of this new strategy.

Seeing what Lord Cochrane
has
done with his single ship upon the French shores, we may easily conceive, what he would have achieved if he had been entrusted with a sufficient squadron of ships, and a few thousand military, hovering along the whole extent of the French coast, which it would take a considerable portion of the army of France to defend.
²⁴

After his eventful cruises of the summer and autumn of
1808,
Cochrane received orders to bring the
Imperieuse
back to England early in
1809.
He had asked for leave to return, in any case, so that he might bring his plan for attacking the Biscay islands before the Board of Admiralty. In bringing him home, their Lordships had recognised their need of him, but it was not quite for the purpose he supposed. When the
Imperieuse
dropped anchor off Plymouth, Cochrane was greeted by news of impending naval disaster.

Its architect was Admiral Lord Gambier, an evangelist in a cocked hat, who had been commanding the blockade of the French battle-fleet at Brest. St Vincent described him privately as "a compound of paper and packthread". The poet Thomas Hood, in his "Ode to Admiral Gambier, G.C.B.", mocked his opposition to drink in all its forms.

OH! Admiral Gam I dare not mention
bier,

In such a temperate ear;

Oh! Admiral Gam an Admiral of the Blue,

Of course, to read the Navy List aright,

For strictly shunning wine of either hue,

You can't be Admiral of the Red or White.
²⁵

Gambier, round-faced, smooth-shaven and earnest, had been preoccupied with the salvation of his crews. When high winds and a strong sea carried the blockade force from its position briefly, Rear-Admiral Willaumez seized the opportunity. In a matter of hours, the naval might of France was at sea, ready to fall upon the fat prey of England's West India convoys. The size of the threatened calamity, and the political influence of the West India merchants, allowed no leisure for the gratification of personal hatreds at that moment. There was only one man with the experience and resource to retrieve the situation. Through their clenched teeth, the ministry and its placemen admitted as much. At Plymouth, Cochrane found a letter awaiting him from Johnstone Hope, Second Lord of the Admiralty, describing the disaster. He had not even had time to step ashore before the semaphore of the flag officer commanding the Plymouth station began to telegraph the
Imperieuse
with the message which had been signalled urgently from London. Cochrane was to report immediately to Whitehall.

5

In the Face of the Enemy

The
extent of the threatened naval reverse was clear at a glance. By
21
February, Gambier had been blown off station in a westerly gale. At dawn that day the French squadron of eight battleships and accompanying frigates slipped its moorings and, under the command of Rear-Admiral Willaumez, glided away from the Brest anchorage in a fresh north-east wind. By
9
a.m. the last of
the ships had rounded the Vendre
e rock and the entire squadron stood out to sea in line of battle. Willaumez carried regiments of troops and provisions for an Atlantic voyage. The first target might be the British convoys but the ultimate destination was the French West Indian base at Martinique.

H.M.S.
Revenge
sighted the French ships off the coast of southern Brittany within a few hours of their escape, but she soon lost them again. The next sighting was by Commodore Beresford, commanding H.M.S.
Theseus
and three other
74
-gun ships. Beresford was blockading a smaller French group of three ships of the line plus frigates in the port of Lorient. It was on the following afternoon, as the winter light began to fail that he saw Willaumez's squadron and formed his four ships into line of battle with the
Theseus
at their head. By
6
p.m. he had lost contact with the enemy. During this diversion, three French ships of the line and their five frigates escaped from his own blockade.

Gambier and the Admiralty remained in comfortable ignorance of the eleven French battleships and their frigates now at large in the Bay of Biscay. They represented a powerful striking force which could remain supremely elusive. Royal Navy captains did not need to be reminded that it had taken Nelson over six months to bring Villeneuve to battle in
1805.
Unlike Villeneuve, Willaumez had the advantage of starting in the vast spaces of the Atlantic.

So far as Gambier and the Channel Fleet were concerned, the French ships were nowhere to be found. Gambier detached a squadron of his own, in the hope that Willaumez was running for the Mediterranean. The squadron made a voyage to Madeira and back without a sight of the enemy.

On
23
February, H.M.S.
Caesar,
flying the flag of Rear-Admiral Stopford, passed an agreeable day taking on stores, including five live bullocks, brought out from England by the supply frigate
Emerald.
The
Caesar
was one of four ships keeping up a blockade on the few French warships in the port of Rochefort, almost at the midpoint of the Biscay coast. She was anchored at a discree
t distance from the tip of the Ile de Ré
, which sheltered the northern flank of the approach to Roc
hefort and La Rochelle, as the Il
e d'Oleron sheltered the south. The outer anchorage was known as the Basque Roads. Further in, among the shoals and smaller islands of Aix and Madame were the so-called Aix Roads. These offered a natural anchorage and a good defensive position, which had become important to the French fleet and was therefore blockaded as a matter of routine.

At
10
p.m., having taken on stores, the guns of the
Caesar
were run out for some belated gunnery practice, followed by small-arms drill. During this, the sky to the north-west was suddenly lit by the flare of signal rockets fired by another blockader, H.M.S.
Amazon.
The
Caesar
got under way immediately and joined her ally, in time to discover that a large French fleet was heading for the Basque
Roads and the anchorage of the Il
e d'Aix. Willaumez, having mustered all the ships from Brest and Lorient was now preparing to add those at Rochefort to his fleet. Fully supplied and manned, the entire force might then sail for Martinique.

Stopford made no attempt to engage a group of such size, judging it more important to get word to the Channel Fleet. He sent the frigate
Naiad
to "proceed with all haste", bearing the news to Gambier and their Lordships of the Admiralty. There was hardly any need to add that an anchorage as extensive and irregular as the Basque Roads would be extremely difficult to blockade. If the French could give Gambier the slip at Brest, they could probably leave their anchorage in Aix Roads as soon as they wished. To attack them there would be extremely hazardous. Indeed, there were few Royal Navy captains who had been so foolhardy as to risk raiding that stretch of enemy coast. But the
Pallas
and the
Imperieuse
had given their commander considerable experience of it. So it was that Lord Mulgrave sent for Cochrane, as a matter of extreme urgency.
¹

The interview in the First Lord's room at the Admiralty was a bizarre one by any standard. From his ornate apartments, beyond whose windows the milkmaids tended the cattle which grazed St James's Park, Mulgrave was apt to rule his unseen ships as though they were part of his estates. He was no naval strategist, though he had been Colonel of the
31st
Foot. In private he liked to think of himself as a patron of the arts, collecting Rembrandt and Titian, commissioning Wilkie to paint such genre pieces as "Rent Day" and "Sunday Morning", and having his portrait painted, with a certain inevitability, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Mulgrave had not enjoyed a political career of much distinction. He had been a nondescript Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from
1805
until
1806
and had gone out of office with the Tories. When they came back, Portland made him First Lord of the Admiralty in
1807.
In appearance and behaviour he was, as Benjamin Haydon remarked, "high Tory and complete John Bull". During a period when the news of the war seemed to be invariably discouraging, he also had the undoubted gift of dismissing catastrophes as though they were mere inconveniences. The Walcheren disasters he spoke of as "adverse winds and unfavourable weather", in the tone of one whose garden party had been rained upon.
²

It was impossible to imagine a man who had less in common with Cochrane. Yet Mulgrave greeted him with great frankness and a certain bonhomie. Their Lordships, he announced, were most concerned about the Basque Roads. They feared and expected that "the French fleet might slip out again". Blockade being a doubtful preventative, they had decided that the French ships should "forthwith be destroyed". No one, of course, had been able to suggest how this admirable strategy was to be implemented. Willaumez was in an excellent defensive position, and there
were soldiers and guns on the Il
e d'Aix. A man of enterprise and daring might, perhaps, risk an attack with fire-ships.

"However," sai
d Mulgrave, "there is Lord Gambi
er's letter."

And he duly handed over to Cochrane the "most secret" despatch of
11
March, as though it had been the bill of fare in a hostelry. Cochrane read it. He was dismayed to find that Gambier had a pious objection to fire-ships and weapons of a similar nature on the ground that they were "a horrible mode of warfare". To use them in the Basque Roads, he added, would be "hazardous, if not desperate". All the same, their Lordships had set their hearts upon fire-ships as being the only devices which stood the least chance of success. One after another, the senior officers whom they approached had refused to have anything to do with the scheme. At last, swallowing their pride, they had sent for the one man who was ruthless enough, and mad enough, to attempt it. Cochrane was
offered the command of the fire
ships and of the attack on the French fleet.
³

As Mulgrave explained, the Admiralty Board and the ministers had worked out carefully the possible consequences.

"You see," he remarked breezily to Cochrane, "that Lord Gambier will not take upon himself the responsibility of attack, and the Admiralty is not disposed to bear the
onus
of failure by means of an attack by fire-ships, however desirous they may be that such attack should be made."
⁴

Portland's government was already in difficulty over the French escape from Brest and the other Biscay ports. If the entire enemy fleet were now to break out of the Basque Roads and fall upon the West India trade, the ministry might well not survive. By attacking with fire-ships, however, the ministers stood to gain popularity if the assault succeeded. If it failed, they could wish for no better scapegoat than Cochrane.

It was, of course, open to Cochrane to refuse to have anything to do with the venture. He had hardly been back a week from a long and arduous tour of duty in the Mediterranean and he was, in truth, exhausted. But he knew quite well that if he declined absolutely, he would be marked as the "hero" whose courage failed when he was offered the command of a desperate venture in the hour of his country's need. He handed back Gambier's despatch to Mulgrave and dismissed the idea of conventional fire-ships.

"If any such attempt were made," he told the First Lord, "the result would in all probability be, that the fire-ships would be boarded by the numerous row-boats on guard - the crews murdered, - and the vessels turned in a harmless direction."

In that case, it seemed to Lord Mulgrave, there was nothing to be done. He was astonished when Cochrane, having dismissed the idea of an attack by fire-ships, added with hardly a pause: "But if together with the fire-ships, a plan were combined which I will propose for your Lordship's consideration, it would not be difficult to sink or scatter the guard-boats, and afterwards destroy the enemy's squadron."

Such was the urgency of the situation that Cochrane was required at once to set down his plan, which called for an initial assault by some of his own specially-constructed "explosion vessels". Mulgrave took it to another room where the Board of Admiralty had been sitting waiting to receive it. He returned after a short while and informed Cochrane that the plan had been unanimously approved.

"Will you undertake to put it in execution?"

Cochrane had already prepared his refusal. He was exhausted to the point of sickness by his Mediterranean duties. Moreover, as he made clear to Mulgrave, he could imagine the jealousy and vindictive-ness of senior officers at the Basque Roads when they discovered that a junior captain had been put in charge of the attack on the French fleet. Mulgrave protested that most of these men had been given their chance and had refused it. But Cochrane remained firm and Mulgrave undertook to "reconsider the matter, and endeavour to find someone else to put it in execution".
⁵

The next day, Cochrane was summoned to the First Lord's room at the Admiralty again. This time, all Mulgrave's joviality had gone.

"My Lord," he said coolly, "you must go. The Board cannot listen to further refusal or delay. Rejoin your frigate at once. I will make you all right with Lord Gambier."

At every objection to the attitude of his seniors, Mulgrave continued to soothe Cochrane's anxieties.

"Make yourself easy about the jealous feeling of senior officers," he repeated confidently, "I will so manage it with Lord Gambier that the
amour propre
of the fleet shall be satisfied."

Still under protest, Cochrane withdrew. As a matter of self protection he wrote the First Lord a letter, stating his reservations in obeying the Board's command. Almost at once he received a reply from Mulgrave, congratulating him on his patriotic spirit and then adding in a brisk and businesslike postscript, "I think the sooner you go to Plymouth the better."
⁶

While the formalities of Admiralty etiquette were observed and Cochrane was manoeuvred into a position where he could no longer refuse the command, the situation in the Basque Roads was growing critical. It was not merely that the French fleet might break out before the fire-ships were prepared, but rather that Gambier was now beginning to have doubts as to whether an attack could be mounted. His despatch on n March spoke of the French shore defences as being no impediment, but by
26
March he was convinced that any warship coming close to the enemy fleet would be "raked by the hot shot" from the batteries which he had previously considered to be "no obstacle".
⁷

The
Imperieuse
arrived in the Basque Roads, where Cochrane found that the captain of every other ship was his senior. He had with him a private letter from Wellesley-Pole, Wellington's brother and First Secretary to the Admiralty, to Lord Gambier. Circumspectly, Wellesley-Pole described Cochrane's command of the attack as "conducting" it "under your lordship's directions". Since Gambier and his ships were to be nine miles out to sea, his "direction" of the operation might seem problematical.
⁸