Cochrane (51 page)

By the following month, it was clear that Cochrane would have to go ahead of the steamships and frigates if they were not ready. Despite his dream of arriving with a new and powerful fleet, the military situation had deteriorated so far that his presence in command of a single vessel would be welcome. On
13
April, the Greek deputies in London assured him: "We may with truth assert that your lordship is regarded by all classes of our countrymen as a Messiah, who is to come to their deliverance." Nine days later, Missolonghi fell to Ibrahim's army after a siege which had lasted twelve months. Cochrane put to sea from Flushing in his little schooner, the
Unicorn,
and slipped across the Channel to Weymouth. He went to London and spent a day inspecting the steamships. The
Perseverance
was virtually completed. The contractor promised that the
Enterprise
and the
Irresistible
would be ready in a fortnight and the three remaining ships within a month.
²⁸

On this understanding, Cochrane sailed at once in the
Unicorn,
waiting in Bantry Bay only until he received a message that his second-in-command, Captain Frank Abney Hastings, had set sail with the
Perseverance.
Hastings had served on the
Neptune
at Trafalgar, was dismissed the service in
1819
for challenging a superior officer to a duel, and had joined the Greeks in
1822.
Following the arrangements which had been made, Cochrane sailed to Messina, which he reached on
12
July, and waited there for the rest of his fleet. He waited in vain. In place of the ships he received a letter from the contractors for the Greek loan. The builder, whom they now described as "the evil genius that pursues us everywhere", had still not completed the vessels, "his presumption is only equalled by his incompetency".
²⁹

Cochrane was dismayed by this. He protested that with the ships which had been ordered he would win the war for Greece within six months. Without them, he could do little. The Turks were now assisted not only by the Egyptian fleet but by other naval forces from Algiers. Cochrane and his schooner were becoming an object of derision even to English chroniclers of the war, notably to the contemporary historian George Finlay.

He had been wandering about the Mediterranean in a fine English yacht, purchased for him out of the proceeds of the loan in order to accelerate his arrival in Greece, ever since the month of June
1826.
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In fact, he retraced his steps as far as Marseille, where he superintended the purchase and fitting out of a French corvette, the
Sauveur
his one and only warship. With this and with his schooner he arrived at the island of Poros on
19
March
1827.
It was not until October that the first of his steamships, the
Perseverance,
arrived in Greek waters. Yet even during the months of frustration, he had not been entirely idle. Among the letters he wrote was one addressed to his new enemy, Mohammed Ali of Egypt, in which, with sublime impudence, he denounced the Pasha for "employing foreigners in your military and naval service" and for keeping his barbarian subjects in "wretched hovels" compared with the noble buildings of Greece. But among the insults, Cochrane also offered a hope of political salvation. Predictably in advance of his time, on this occasion by a mere half century, Cochrane suggested that Mohammed Ali might earn the thanks of all men by abandoning his system of slavery and building a Suez canal. The world would stand in grateful awe, while "distant oceans would unite, and the extremities of the globe approach at your command".
³¹

But as Cochrane passed the picturesque islands and caught his first distant view of the Acropolis, now besieged by Ibrahim's army, he faced sterner and more immediate realities. The major fortresses of Greece had fallen and though the situation might be turned to advantage by cutting the sea routes to Alexandria and Constantinople, the odds were against him. The
Perseverance
had at last arrived from England, to be renamed the
Karteria.
The first of the two
60
-gun frigates from America, the
Hellas,
had also arrived, though with the departure of the American crew which had brought her from New York, Cochrane was hard pressed to man the powerful ship. In general, he calculated that Admiral Miaoulis's fleet of some fifty coasting brigs and similar vessels faced a Turco-Egyptian battle squadron
135
strong. The object of steamships, as Cochrane had explained, was the speed with which they could intercept one after another of the enemy's supply convoys, and their use in "towing fire-vessels and explosion-vessels by night into ports and places where the hostile squadrons anchor on the shores of Greece". With his steamships and a few small gun-boats he offered to clear the Turks and Egyptians from the Peloponnese "in a few weeks". It was not to be. Instead, it was the Egyptians who were "purchasing steam-vessels and hiring transports under neutral flags". The ships brought provisions to Ibrahim, and returned to Alexandria laden with cargoes of women and children taken as slaves.
³²

The unity of the Greeks themselves had been further shaken by the emergence of new factions, including a "French" party led by Colonel Fabvier, now defending the Acropolis, and an "English" faction under Mavrocordatos which regarded Britain as its protector. Sir Richard Church greeted Cochrane with a brief but trenchant note.

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.
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Cochrane certainly intended that this should be the case. From Hydra on
21
March he issued a challenge to the entire nation, by quoting to them the example arid words of Demosthenes, since "it would be unpardonable presumption in me to address to you other than his own words". The stern call to duty, though in the improbable intonation of a Scottish aristocrat, rang with perfect aptness on the occasion.

If you will become your own masters, and cease each expecting to do nothing himself while his neighbour does everything for him, you will then, with God's permission, get back your own, and recover what has been lost, and punish your enemy.
³⁴

The manner of Cochrane's arrival had a salutary effect on the factions. Admiral Miaoulis, who scorned the type of uniform worn by most European naval officers and appeared in the red cap and voluminous blue clothes of his islanders, set the example. Deferring to Cochrane's authority at once, he volunteered to serve under his command as captain of the
Hellas.
Cochrane had already intimated that he would not take up his own command so long as the factions fought one another rather than the army of Ibrahim. This, too, had a sobering influence. On
25
March, he was able to write to Sir Richard Church, "The union of the parties is, I think, now effected."
³⁵

The factions met on neutral ground at Damala, on the coast opposite Poros on
7
April, as a united National Assembly. Having no building large enough for the purpose, the deputies met in the open air, choosing a lemon grove as their site. Enmities among them were not forgotten but they were, at least, suspended sufficiently long for Count Capodistrias, born in Corfu and experienced in the service of Russia, to be elected President of Greece for seven years. He had been offered the leadership of the revolution at its beginning but had mistrusted the factions and, to that extent, was an independent figure.

Capodistrias's election was the sign of unity for which Cochrane had hoped. He withdrew all reservations and, in the same lemon grove, was installed as First Admiral of Greece on
18
April. His speech and his subsequent proclamations promised that, while Greece should be free, he had every intention of "carrying the war into the enemy's country". By land, this would have been impossible but when his fleet was ready, Cochrane proposed to blockade the Dardanelles and put an end to virtually all Turkish maritime trade. It was uncertain just how far he proposed to take the war but there must have been alarm in several European capitals at the size of the conflict he envisaged in prophesying that, "The sacred banner of the Cross" should "once more wave on the dome of Saint Sophia".
³⁶

For the time being, it hardly seemed that the inhabitants of Constantinople needed to concern themselves over these threats. Even before Cochrane could begin naval operations with the ships available to him, his attention was taken up by the most desperate struggle of the war: the siege of Athens. The attack had begun ten months before, in June
1826.
By July, the city was under siege and on
14
August it was stormed by the Arab troops. Defenders and citizens alike withdrew to the Acropolis and held out for four months. Then, in December, Fabvier and Karaiskakes had broken through Ibrahim's besiegers and reinforced the garrison. Fabvier found himself defending the hill with about a thousand troops and several hundred women and children. The Arab force amounted to
7000,
including cavalry and artillery.

Strategy and psychology required equally that the siege should be raised. "The eyes of Europe are turned towards Greece," wrote Cochrane on
14
April
1827,
"and on the success or failure of the measures now to be adopted depends the support of your glorious cause, or its abandonment in despair."
³⁷

To the south of Athens, the Greeks were still in position on either side of the Piraeus. But their intended advance to relieve the Acropolis was blocked by the hill-top convent of Saint Spiridion, which overlooked both camps. Karaiskakes, who now commanded the Greek troops outside Athens, insisted that it must first be taken. He proposed to starve the Turkish defenders into submission but this plan was abandoned when messages were smuggled from Fabvier, warning the relief force that the garrison in the Acropolis could hold out only for a few more days.

By
25
April nothing had been done towards taking Saint Spiridion except for assembling more and more Greek soldiers who seemed to break up rapidly into independent groups, each acknowledging no authority but that of its leader. Cochrane decided that his best expedient was to embark troops by night and land them in the rear of Saint Spiridion so that the strongpoint would be bypassed and the way to Athens would lie open. That afternoon, he was superintending the disembarkation of thirty more soldiers close to the Greek position. The Turks on Saint Spiridion saw this and at once began to hurry down the slope to drive the landing party back into the sea.

The marines under Cochrane's command included a thousand Hydriots who were now led by Major Gordon Urquhart, the detachment being camped on the adjoining shore. At the first sign of the Turkish threat, they hurried to Cochrane's assistance. Instinctively, he chose to turn defence into attack. Waving a telescope as his only weapon, he gathered his men together, formed them up into an orderly detachment, shouted "encouraging words" to them, and then led the assault on the Turkish troops who now stood exposed on the hillside of Saint Spiridion.

The effect of this well-coordinated and resolute attack on the Turks was spectacular. They had experienced nothing like it
before
at the hands of the Greeks, and their
advance guard scattered
and fled. At the head of the assault, Cochrane led his men into
the
earthworks
with which
the defenders of Saint Spiridion had fortified their position,
over-r
unning
them
with
little difficulty. He lost eight men in the course of an hour's engagement. When it was
over,
there were sixty Turkish
bodies
on the hillside and the majority of the
garrison
was in full flight towards Athens. No more than
200
or
300
men held the
building
of Saint Spiridion itself against an army of almost
10,000
Greeks.
³⁸

His little fleet was anchored below in the bay of Phalerum. Cochrane at once ordered the
Hellas,
captained by Admiral Miaoulis, to open a bombardment of the convent. The powerful guns of the frigate delivered one broadside after another, the smoke drifting across the sunlit waters of the bay of Phalerum, stone and debris erupting from the hillside as the shells landed, until Saint Spiridion seem
ed to be "only a mass of ruins'
But the few remaining defenders beat off three Greek infantry assaults. Karaiskakes's men were not keen to try again, their commander writing privately, "We shall not go well with these English. I fear they will ruin us by their impatience."
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