Cochrane (45 page)

At the moment, however, he pulled himself up and began to climb the side of the
Esmeralda
once more. This time, he contrived to level his pistol and shoot down the sentry before the man could use his unwieldy musket again. The sentry on the far side of the boat turned and fired, Cochrane returning the fire at once with his pistol and killing the man outright. Then he broke the silence by turning to the boat-crew behind him and shouting, "Up, my lads! She's ours!"

As it proved, this was an extremely optimistic view of the situation. The Spanish crew had been sleeping at their guns, ready to defend the
Esmeralda
at a moment's notice. Even with Cochrane's seamen and marines, swarming on to the deck at every point, the defence was by no means overwhelmed. The Spanish commander withdrew his men to the forecastle, from which they swept the deck of the frigate with musket fire. Cochrane and Guise, struggling through the battle from opposite sides of the ship, met in the middle of the deck and, briefly forgetting their dislike of one another, exchanged congratulations. Hardly had this happened when a shot from the defenders of the forecastle hit Cochrane in the thigh. The bullet had evidently gone through the fleshy part and he contented himself with binding a handkerchief round his leg. Limping to the quarter-deck, he stood on one leg, perched on a gun, and laid the injured leg on the hammock netting. From this point of vantage, he directed the attack on the forecastle.

On board the
Esmeralda,
the fight was going in his favour, but its outcome might well be decided by the powerful batteries ashore, or even by the Spanish gun-boats. As the Spaniards in the forecastle were pressed harder, the first signs of a rout appeared, several of their sailors diving into the harbour and swimming for safety. The sound of pistol and musket fire dwindled and died, as Captain Coig the Spanish commander surrendered to Cochrane. But almost at once, one of the gun-boats sailed in astern of the
Esmeralda
and sent a shot up through the quarter-deck, wounding Coig himself.

With his customary foresight, Cochrane had ordered several men of his party to make for the rigging of the
Esmeralda
as soon as they boarded her, and to prepare for sailing. He now hailed the foretop and the maintop, and discovered that all was in order. "No British man-of-war's crew could have excelled this minute attention to orders," he wrote of his Chilean seamen.

Having seized the
Esmeralda,
for the loss of eleven men killed and thirty wounded, Cochrane now faced the hazardous business of sailing her out of Callao under the three hundred guns of the shore-batteries and the assorted artillery of the block-ships. Varying estimates of the time taken to capture the frigate from the moment of boarding put it at between fifteen and seventeen minutes. None the less, it was ample time for the guns of Callao to open up in a general bombardment of the darkened harbour. Rather oddly, Cochrane was paying little attention to the guns. He was studying the outline of the British and American frigates, which were now prudently making for the safety of San Lorenzo and the open sea.

In all the confusion, Cochrane knew there was one certainty. The Spanish would not want to provoke an international incident by sinking an American or British frigate. There must be some prearranged signal which the
Macedonian
and the
Hyperion
were to give in the event of a night attack. He gave orders that lights identical to those of the other two ships were to be hoisted by the
Esmeralda.
As soon as this was done, the shells from the shore-batteries, which had been pitching about the captured frigate, ceased. There was a puzzled but welcome silence.

When hostilities recommenced they were between Cochrane and Captain Guise, who had taken over as commander of the Chileans because of Cochrane's immobility. It had been Cochrane's intention to set the sails of the
Esmeralda
but not to cut the anchor cables until an attempt had been made to capture the Spanish brig
Maypu
and to attack and cut adrift every other ship within reach. At the best, he hoped that every vessel in the harbour of Callao "might either have been captured or burned". But Guise had ordered the cables to be cut at once, obliging the
Esmeralda
to put to sea forthwith, followed by two captured gun-boats. Cochrane confronted him angrily, but Guise replied that the frigate could not have remained because, "the English had broken into her spirit-room and were getting drunk, whilst the Chilenos were disorganized by plundering".

Impartial observers recognised only the superb audacity with which Cochrane had seized the
Esmeralda
under the guns of Callao and sailed her safely to join his squadron. Captain Basil Hall of H.M.S.
Conway,
serving in the Pacific, made amends for the hostility of the
Hyperion
by announcing the extent of Cochrane's victory. The
Esmeralda
had been lying "under the guns of the castle, within a semi-circle of fourteen gun-boats, and a boom of spars chained together". But, more important, the events of that night deprived the Spanish of their last advantage on the Pacific coast.

The loss was a death-blow to the Spanish naval force in that quarter of the world; for, although there were still two Spanish frigates and some smaller vessels in the Pacific, they never afterwards ventured to shew themselves, but left Lord Cochrane undisputed master of the coast.

The cutting out of the
Esmeralda,
remote though it was from English preoccupations, became one of the legends of Cochrane's life. Only H.M.S.
Hyperion
maintained a studied neutrality, tinged with a certain personal hostility towards Cochrane. When one of the
Hyperion's
midshipmen so far forgot himself as to cheer on the attacking force during the fight on the
Esmeralda's
deck, Captain Searle of the English frigate threatened to have him put under arrest if there was any further unseemly enthusiasm of this kind. As a matter of prudence, Searle's threat may have been well-judged. The defenders of Callao could not believe that the
Esmeralda
had been captured without the connivance of one or both of the neutral frigates. On the morning after the incident, the market-boat of the
Macedonian
went ashore as usual for provisions. As soon as it landed, a furious mob fell upon the boat crew and lynched them forthwith.
²⁰

San Martin wrote to Cochrane himself and to the Minister of Marine, praising the capture of the
Esmeralda.
But San Martin was careful not to allow credit for the liberation of Peru to be given to anyone but himself. "This glory was reserved for the Liberating Army," he insisted. While San Martin remained idle, Cochrane intensified his blockade, until the Spaniards at Callao sensed that their stronghold had become their prison. Within a month of the
Esmeralda
incident,
650
Spanish troops followed by forty of their officers, deserted to the Chilean cause. Three months later, San Martin had still done nothing to effect the capture of Lima. Cochrane volunteered to make the attack himself, in March
1821,
with half of the troops at San Martin's disposal. The offer was rejected by San Martin, whose purpose in avoiding battle now seemed to Cochrane to suggest a careful preservation of his army for the internal power struggle which must follow independence.
²¹

It now became evident to me that the army had been kept inert for the purpose of preserving it entire to further the ambitious views of the General, and that, with the whole force now at Lima, the inhabitants were completely at the mercy of their pretended liberator, but in reality their conqueror.
²²

Having persuaded San Martin to give him
600
troops, out of
4200,
Cochrane embarked on coastal raids between Callao and Arica. Isolated by land and sea, Lima surrendered after three months of this harassment, on
6
July. Peruvian independence was declared on
28
July.

In addition to his other preoccupations, Cochrane also had to contend with a bitter dispute over the captured
Esmeralda
which had been put under the command of the troublesome Captain Guise. When the ship was incorporated into the Chilean fleet, her name was changed to the
Valdivia,
to commemorate the victory of the previous year. Unfortunately, Valdivia itself was the name of one of the Spanish conquerors of Chile, which led the officers to protest to Captain Guise in a strongly worded petition over the renaming of their ship. San Martin had been principally responsible for the choice of name but Cochrane was the target of their criticism. They had had no part in the victory at Valdivia and saw no reason why their ship should commemorate Cochrane's glory.

Cochrane ordered a court-martial on the rebellious officers of the new
Valdivia,
who were convicted and dismissed the service. As he was preparing to attack Callao, Cochrane sent orders to Guise to take part in the assault. Guise, indignant at the dismissal of his officers, replied by resigning his command. He was followed by Captain Spry, who resigned the captaincy of the
Galvarino
in sympathy. Cochrane court-martialled Spry, who was convicted and dismissed from his command. Both Guise and Spry went indignantly to San Martin and complained of Cochrane. San Martin consoled Spry by making him his naval adjutant. He sent Guise to the
O'Higgins
to patch up an agreement with Cochrane, but after several argumentative interviews nothing was accomplished. Guise sat out the rest of the campaign at San Martin's headquarters. The lesson drawn from the incident, by all but Cochrane's most determined admirers, was that he showed himself less adept as a general commander than as the piratical captain of a single vessel. Guise and Spry were not the easiest of men to deal with but nor, in many respects, was Cochrane himself.
²³

During the aftermath of the courts-martial, before the fall of Lima, the British frigate H.M.S.
Andromache
dropped anchor off Callao. On board her was Kitty, who had come to see Cochrane before leaving South America for England. In its own way, her life had been quite eventful during their separation. She had been busy at Valparaiso "where she diligently employed herself in promoting objects essential to the welfare of the squadron". Later she had gone to live in a country house at Quillota. She also survived two attempts at assassination.
²⁴

The first of these occurred at Quillota, where a Spanish agent, assuming that Kitty would know of any secret plans made by her husband, broke into the house and made his way to her room. He confronted her with "instant death if she would not divulge the secret orders". Apparently, the only document of the least significance was a paper lying on the table in the room. She snatched this up at once and there followed a determined struggle with the intruder for possession of it. The man was armed with a stiletto but though he managed to use it once, she suffered only a single superficial cut before the noise attracted the servants and the man was overpowered. The republican regime condemned him to death "without the last offices of the Catholic religion".
²⁵

On the night preceding the execution, she was woken by a loud wailing outside her window. This dirge had been set up by the wife of the condemned man who sought "her Ladyship's intercession" to allow her husband confession and absolution before his death. Kitty, personally, was prepared to forgive the man entirely and on the next morning she found herself in the bizarre situation of pleading for the life of her would-be murderer, while the Chilean authorities remained in favour of despatching him. After some argument they agreed reluctantly that the death sentence should be commuted to one of perpetual banishment.
²⁶

The seriousness of the second attempt on her life might be doubted, certainly so far as any political motive was concerned. In October
1820,
after Cochrane and San Martin had left for the campaign in Peru, she undertook a journey across the Andes to Mendoza, carrying confidential despatches with her. Even in October, some of the passes were already blocked by snow. On
12
October, she and her attendants arrived at the Ponte del Inca,
15,000
feet up, to find that further progress was impossible until the snow was cleared. She remained at a
casucha,
built as an emergency shelter, where the only bed was a length of dried bullock's hide. Cochrane spoke proudly of her as having endured "a degree of suffering which few ladies would be willing to encounter". It was while riding up a narrow path with a vertiginous drop on one side, just beyond the
casucha,
that Kitty was confronted by a soldier of the Spanish force who "disputed the path with her" in such a manner as to suggest that he was about to throw her over the edge. Happily, there was a Chilean soldier with the party, Pedro Flores, who galloped forward and struck the attacker "a violent blow across the face", which drove him into headlong retreat. Cochrane swore it had been "another premeditated attempt on Lady Cochrane's life", but there is at least some doubt of that.
²⁷