Cochrane (55 page)

Cochrane was far from having invented the first steamship or even having supervised its construction. But in the case of the
Rising
Star,
built for Chile, he was able to claim that this steamship with its retractable paddle was among the first to cross the Atlantic and that he was responsible for its design. During the reign of William IV and the earlier years of Victoria, he turned his attention to the problem of devising a rotary engine, capable of turning a ship's paddle or propeller directly, to replace the old reciprocating engines with their simple backward and forward movement. He fitted out a little steamboat of his own, on the Thames, as a floating laboratory.

By
1834
h
e
was
already urging his invention on Sir James Graham, as First Lord of the Admiralty. Both Graham and his successor, the Earl of Minto, were sympathetic. In
1839,
th
e
Secretary to the Admiralty, Sir John Barrow, wrote to Cochrane:

I am commanded to acquaint your lordship that the opinions received of your revolving engine are favourable to the principle, and that it has not been stated that there are any insurmountable obstacles to its practical execution.
¹³

But novelty did not commend itself to the officials of the Admiralty in general. In
1842,
Cochrane was still trying to persuade another First Lord, the Earl of Haddington, that the Royal Navy must exploit the power of steam if its ships were to remain a match for the newer and heavier American frigates or the latest warships launched by France. He was also concerned that Royal Navy officers would continue to think in terms of blockades and the tactics of the Napoleonic wars, which were entirely outmoded by steam.

A couple of heavy line-of-battle ships, suddenly fitted, on the outbreak of war, with adequate steam-power, would decide the successful result of a general action; and I am assured that I could show your lordship how to fit a steam-ship which, in scouring the Channel or ranging the coast, could take or destroy every steam-ship belonging to France that came within view.
¹⁴

Haddington visited him at Portsmouth in August to inspect the work on which Cochrane had already spent
£16,000
of his own money. The First Lord ordered a small steamship, the
Firefly
to be put at Cochrane's disposal. The experiments were so successful that the Admiralty decided to order the building of a frigate on the lines of Cochrane's suggestions. By the beginning of
1843
he had also patented another of his inventions, one of the earliest ship's propellers. Yet even some more sympathetic of his patrons, like Lord Minto, saw only a need for "occasional steam power" to assist the sails. A speed of five knots, to aid a ship in getting into or out of battle, or off a lee shore, was considered sufficient. Minto could not see why Cochrane should "wish to steam the
Vanguard
or the
Queen
at the rate of ten miles an hour".
¹⁵

However, during
1844
and
1845
he was much occupied with the new steam frigate being built according to his plans and which was launched as H.M.S.
Janus
at the end of
1845.
In the main, she was a success, though there were the usual deficiencies and delays which customarily seemed to try Cochrane's patience, and that patience was somewhat shorter now chat he had reached his seventieth birthday.

But while much of his time was taken up by practical questions of design, or the improved construction of boilers, or other technical matters, he was obsessed as ever by the need for England to prepare for war on the basis of his own "secret plans", which he had first submitted to the Prince Regent a quarter of a century before. While William IV was still on the throne, Cochrane had gone down to

Brighton and in another audience at the Royal Pavilion tried to persuade the King of the value of his plans for gas attacks and saturation bombardment. He had not, of course, used them in Greece or South America because he had promised the Prince Regent that they would never be employed except in the service of his own country. William listened, agreed that the plans had "value", and praised Cochrane's "honourable conduct in keeping his secret so long and under such inducements to an opposite course".
¹⁶

Nothing more happened, and Cochrane took the matter up with his friend Lord Lansdowne who held office in Lord Grey's government as President of the Council. But four years later, Lansdowne would still promise only to press the plans on the government "if the occasion arises, which I sincerely hope it will not". At that time, in
1838,
the potential enemy was Russia, whose growing influence in Afghanistan was seen as a challenge to British ambitions in India. But Russia, in Lansdowne's view, would "yield to remonstrance", and there would be no need of the secret weapons. The truth was that men like William IV and his ministers accepted that war was an inevitable occurrence between great nations but even in war there were certain notions of decorum and civilisation which ought to be observed. Other men, like Wellington, had expressed the sceptical view that "two could play" at Cochrane's game. Cochrane answered this in a letter to Lord Minto on
3
August
1840.
¹⁷

Your lordship will perceive, that "although two can play at the game", the one who first understands it can alone be successful. In the event of war, I beg to offer my endeavours to place the navy of France under your control, or at once effectually to annihilate it.
¹⁸

"I shall bear your offer in mind," Minto replied coolly, "but there is not the slightest chance of war."
¹⁹

In
1846,
Cochrane's friend Lord Auckland became First Lord of the Admiralty, the post which he had held briefly in
1834.
During the intervening period he had been Governor-General of India and was well aware that, contrary to Minto's placid assumption, Victorian England had a very good chance of being involved in one sort of war or another. His own experience had been of the Afghan war of
1838-1842
and the ill-fated British march on Cabul to thwart Russian ambitions in Afghanistan. It hardly required a tremendous feat of imagination to foresee the war with Russia which broke out in the following decade.

Auckland set up a secret committee, consisting of Sir Thomas Hastings, Surveyor-General of the Ordnance, Sir J. F. Burgoyne, and Lieutenant-Colonel J. S. Colquhoun. They considered Cochrane's plans under three headings: camouflage, saturation bombardment, and gas attack. Reporting confidentially to the First Lord on
16
January
1847,
they agreed that the plan for the first of these should be made available to the Admiralty. The bombardment and the gas attack they thought should not even be experimented with. They had no doubt that the weapons concerned would be successful but, if used in war, "It is clear this power could not be retained exclusively by this country." And, in any case, they rejected the weapons inevitably because such devices would not "accord with the feelings and principles of civilised warfare". The details should "remain concealed" in their secret file.
²⁰

There was no more that Cochrane could do at the time, though he warned Auckland that the French appeared to be developing equally "uncivilised weapons" in the form of guns firing shells fast and low, annihilating any ship which attempted to approach and slaughtering her crew. "I submit that, against such batteries as these, the adoption of my plans Nos.
2
and
3
would be perfectly justifiable."
²¹

Apart from improved gunnery, the French were in fact living on the lessons of the Napoleonic naval war. As Cochrane discovered, the basis of their new strategy was to avoid battles between fleets or large squadrons and trust to fast cruisers which would destroy England's commerce. The Prince de Joinville was a leading advocate of this. Cochrane had anticipated them to some extent by advising the Admiralty to think less in terms of battleships and more in terms of smaller faster boats.

"Give me a fast small steamer," he remarked, "with a heavy long-range gun in the bow, and another in the hold to fall back upon, and I would not hesitate to attack the largest ship afloat."
²²

His s
upport for what he called a "m
osquito fleet" was based upon his experience of steamships like the
Karteria
in Greece. Small and manoeuvrable vessels with well-trained crews were the answer, even though they might carry only one or two guns. His recommendation to the Admiralty was simple: "As large a gun as possible, in a vessel as small and swift as possible, and as many of them as you can put upon the sea." Lord Exmouth, who as Sir Edward Pellew was famed as commander of the
Arethusa
and later as the victor in the battle of Algiers, surveyed the plan of Cochrane's war-steamers in
1826
with astonishment.
²³

"Why," he said, "it's not only the Turkish fleet, but all the navies in the world, that you will be able to conquer with such craft as these."
²⁴

Despite all the interest shown in Cochrane's inventions and his secret plans, and despite his rank as flag-officer, he had not been appointed to any command. This was his own doing. In
1839
h
e
had written to Lansdowne and to Lord Melbourne, as Prime Minister, pointing out that though he had received a free pardon, his rank as Knight Commander of the Bath had not been restored to him. If he was now recognised to be innocent of the Stock Exchange fraud, why was this not done ? So long as there was any question of his guilt, he would not hold a command.

He managed to convince himself that on the marriage of Victoria and Albert, in
1840,
his honours would be restored as a royal gesture. But nothing was done. Instead, he was awarded a pension for good and meritorious service, in the following year, at the age of sixty-six. When Peel became Prime Minister, Cochrane took up the matter of the Bath with him. Peel replied to him on
7
November
1844,
reminding him that he had received a pardon and had been restored to the naval list.

Adverting to that circumstance, and to the fact that thirty years have now elapsed since the charges to which the free pardon had reference were the subject of investigation before the proper judicial tribunal of the country, her Majesty's servants cannot consistently with their duty advise the Queen to reopen an inquiry into these charges.
²⁵

But there was now some question, soon raised memorably by Lord Chief Justice Campbell himself, as to whether Ellenborough's court had been proper or judicial in its standards. And, as Cochrane was to discover, his role as hero of the new age had attracted the admiration of the Queen and Prince Albert for his courage and loyalty. With his innate talent for publicity, he duly published a pamphlet in February
1847,
Observations
on
Naval
Affairs,
listing his services to the navy and the evidence of injustice done to him over the Stock Exchange fraud. He had, of course, made similar appeals before but now he made them to contemporaries who regarded the rulers of England in
1814
as morally and politically alien. It happened that in June
1846
Sir Robert Peel's government had resigned over the failure to impose a Coercion Bill to maintain public order in Ireland. When Cochrane made his appeal in the following February, it was to the first specifically Liberal government
under Lord John Russell, an adm
inistration which had every reason to admire Cochrane's beliefs and crusades on behalf of liberty.

Within the cabinet and the Privy Council, opinion was still divided, Cochrane's main supporters being Auckland and Lansdowne. Auckland began to consult senior naval officers, to see what support there was for Cochrane's reinstatement. Sir Thomas Byam Martin, who had been present at Government House, Portsmouth, when the Prince first announced Cochrane's degradation in
1814,
warned Auckland that many officers might oppose full restoration of honours.

"Yes," said the First Lord, "I am aware of such an opinion."

But Auckland went on to praise Cochrane's "great enterprise and talent". In the event of war, it would be "highly desirable" to call upon his services. Martin agreed that the majority opinion would favour full restoration, remarking of Cochrane that "his gallantry, enterprise, and professional intelligence was acknowledged throughout the service".
²⁶