Cochrane (17 page)

The calculated insolence, with which Croker announced that Cochrane was henceforth not a friend of his, infuriated his companion. Cochrane had hardly time to congratulate him ironically on his newfound patrons and the quality of their wine when Croker turned on his heel and walked away, the hungry placeman whose enemies described his Irish origin as "of low birth" and the man himself as having "no principles". Chief among his new friends and patrons was the Wellesley family. It was his assiduous service to them which was to win him the appointment of First Secretary to the Admiralty in
1810,
in succession to Wellington's brother. He was an implacable agent of official reprisals against Cochrane. Among those shadowy figures who made up the office of the Admiralty was another of Cochrane's acquaintances, the young Lord Palmerston. Palmerston had devoted himself consistently to politics and parliament since he and Cochrane studied under Dugald Stewart at Edinburgh. But unlike most of Stewart's pupils, Palmerston had embraced the Tory cause. He was rewarded in April
1807
when Portland appointed him a junior Lord of the Admiralty at the age of twenty-two.
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As for parliament itself, the House of Commons was not due to begin the business of the new government until after Christmas. Autumn sittings were still unpopular and, as late as
1820,
on the famous occasion of the Queen's trial, Creevey reported the "rage" of the House of Lords at being compelled to attend in October. "It interferes with everything - pheasant shooting, Newmarket, &c, &c." But when the new year came, there was still to be no chance for Cochrane to make his mark in the House of Commons. Instead, there came the demand from George III that the Whig government should not attempt to restore civil rights to Catholics. Once he had dismissed them from office, in favour of the minority Tory party, there was no means of continuing parliamentary business effectively until yet another election had been held. Before it took place, the Admiralty tried to remove Cochrane from parliamentary politics by ordering him to sea again.
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The new command was the frigate
Imperieuse,
whose captain he was to be for three years. Carrying thirty-eight guns, she had been the Spanish warship
Medea
until captured by the Royal Navy in
1804.
Larger and faster than the
Pallas,
she was
1046
tons, carrying three hundred men who included thirty-five Royal Marines. Most of the
Pallas's
crew transferred to her, with one new arrival whose popular fame was to eclipse even that of Cochrane. He was a young midshipman, Frederick Marryat, who was to be the celebrated novelist Captain Marryat.

Marryat kept a private journal of life on the
Imperieuse,
confirming much that Cochrane independently recorded, and also assessing his commander's character. Cochrane ruled by the degree of discipline needed for the safety of his ship in war. He was not morally opposed to hanging or flogging. The log of the
Imperieuse
shows, for example, one sentence of thirty-six lashes for drunkenness carried out on
7
January
1809,
and three of twelve lashes each for "negligence". However, these are to be compared with the homicidal military discipline of a thousand lashes against which Cobbett and others were campaigning. To his contemporaries, Cochrane's true humanity was in never sacrificing his men to his own glory. "I never knew any one so careful of the lives of his ship's company as Lord Cochrane," Marryat wrote, "or any one who calculated so closely the risks attending any expedition. Many of the most brilliant achievements were performed without the loss of a single life, so well did he calculate the chances; and one half the merit which he deserves for what he did accomplish has never been awarded him, merely because, in the official despatches there has not been a long list of killed and wounded to please the appetite of the English public."
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On occasion, Cochrane subordinated sentiment to seamanship to a degree which surprised the young Marryat. During a gale, one of the marines on the deck of the
Imperieuse
was swept overboard and carried out of reach of any rope which might be thrown. But the men on the deck of the frigate could see him, his head rising with each wave and they began instinctively to lower a boat. Before they could complete the lowering, Cochrane saw them and shouted from the quarterdeck, "Hold fast!" The men stopped and watched the marine being carried further and deeper into the storm. Cochrane walked forward from the quarterdeck, obviously distressed and muttering to himself, "Poor fellow!" The drowning man at last raised his hands and then disappeared under the waves. Marryat and some of the others were dismayed that Cochrane had called back the willing rescuers. It was the master's mate, the Hon. William Napier, cousin to the assorted and illustrious Napiers of Victoria's reign, who took Marryat aside and explained what had happened. Napier had considerable experience of ships' boats in various weather conditions. He knew, and Cochrane knew better, that to have lowered the boat in such a sea would have meant the loss of a score of lives instead of one. What they witnessed was one of the infinite human tragedies at sea, in the face of which men were almost powerless to aid one another.
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In the case of the
Imperieuse,
the Admiralty and its flag officers seemed determined to augment these tragedies as soon as possible. On
17
November
1806,
the frigate was lying half-laden at Plymouth. Indeed, her rudder was being adjusted and was still not hung in position properly. However, Cochrane received an order via Admiral Young, the port commander, that he was to put to sea at once.

Protests against such impossibilities were unavailing. Work on the rudder was quickly completed and the
Imperieuse
sailed with a lighter carrying provisions lashed to one side, a second lighter carrying ordnance stores lashed to the other, and a third lighter, filled with the ship's gunpowder, being towed astern. Worst of all, no delay had been permitted in order that the guns should be made fast and the quarterdeck carronades mounted on their slides. In the event of a storm, the savage weight of the bronze cannon might have been sent crashing from one side of the ship to the other.

Cochrane's attempt to delay the sailing of his ship in this condition had been answered, in Marryat's account, by the admiral enforcing the order by firing "gun after gun" as the signal that he must put to sea at once. There was no reason for this, no emergency which required the
Imperieuse
to guard the Western Approaches within the next few hours, the enforcement was merely a matter of satisfying the Admiralty.

As soon as the frigate was out of sight of land, Cochrane gave the order to heave to while the loading was completed and the guns secured. The gunpowder was the last thing to be brought on board and, as Cochrane remarked, if a French warship had approached at this point, she could have taken the
Imperieuse
with little difficulty. "We could not have fired a shot in return," he noted bitterly.
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Though the rigging was not properly set, the frigate was otherwise now in a state to proceed. The weather closed in and the sea began to rise under a freshening breeze. Then, with the rigging set and sails shortened, the
Imperieuse
struggled towards the mouth of the Channel on her way to the Biscay hunting grounds. The cloud was thick and it was impossible to judge her exact position from observation. Of course, she must have drifted some distance while hove to, but the compass was enough to take her clear of any danger.

The night of
19
November was "so dark that you could not distinguish any object, however close," Marryat recorded. Worse still, the storm had risen to a full gale, the wind squealing and snapping at rigging and canvas. Just before dawn, the ship's company were still asleep on the lower deck when they were almost hurled from their hammocks by a series of violent shocks and there was a loud grating and rending sound. Courageous though they might be, there was a cry of terror from the men, in the certain knowledge that the frigate had struck rocks, far from help and in a murderous sea.

Midshipman Marryat was in his berth, deep in the ship's hull where he and his companions shared the orlop deck with the closelypacked hammocks of the crew. In his journal he noted down the sights and sounds as the frigate hit the rocks.

The cry of terror which ran through the lower decks; the grating of the keel as she was forced in; the violence of the shocks which convulsed the frame of the vessel; the hurrying up of the ship's company without their clothes; and then the enormous waves which again bore her up. . . . will never be effaced from my memory.
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As the half-dressed or naked men scrambled out on to the deck in the light of the winter dawn, the largest wave of all drove into the stern of the frigate and, as Marryat and the others felt, "carried her clean over the reef". The grating of the timbers on rocks as she was driven forward rang hideously above the storm, but at least she was in deeper water and Cochrane at once ordered the lowering of the anchors. The
Imperieuse
was now "surrounded by rocks, some of them as high out of the water as her lower yards and close to her". She was miles off course, trapped by the notorious rocks off Ushant.
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There was no leisure to investigate the error in navigation until later. Cochrane ordered the ship's carpenter to survey the hull and see what damage had been done. It soon appeared that the vessel and her crew had been luckier than anyone dared to hope. The impact of the rock had been taken by the false keel, which had been torn off in the collision, but the hull itself was sound. The company of the
Imperieuse
escaped death by the very narrowest of margins.

The immediate danger was past, since the frigate was now held in deeper water by three anchors, but the only way out was through the rocks by which she was surrounded. It was a painstaking business as Cochrane took the frigate forward, yard by yard, the leadsman in the bows singing out the depth by his line. Not until
3
p.m. that afternoon was the
Imperieuse
clear of the reefs.

Even though it had been impossible to determine the distance which the frigate might have drifted while hove to, or to check her position by observation, no captain would have risked steering a course likely to bring him within the rocks of Ushant, the most notorious and carefully-avoided hazard of its sort. How had it happened? A careful examination revealed the answer. Iron round the compass binnacle, which had taken the
Pallas
off course during convoy duty, had nearly destroyed the
Imperieuse.
The compass had not been accurate within
30
degrees and Cochrane was completely deceived as to his position.
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He signalled the Admiralty, asking that he should be court-martialled for hazarding his ship. He did not, of course, believe that he had done any such thing but he longed for some court of inquiry at which the conduct of the Admiralty itself, and Sir William Young as their representative at Plymouth, could be brought under public scrutiny. Young Frederick Marryat had already given his opinion on the escape of the frigate. "How nearly were the lives of a fine ship's company, and of Lord Cochrane and his officers, sacrificed in this instance to the despotism." The Admiralty knew full well that it could expect three hundred eager witnesses for the defence and decided, on this occasion, to avoid all inquiry into Cochrane's conduct.
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During the rest of the winter, the
Imperieuse
was assigned to the blockading squadron in the Bay of Biscay, though once again being allowed considerable independence of action. On
19
December, Cochrane arrived off Les Sables d'Olonne and took two prizes in the same day. He sailed south to the Gironde, and there took another vessel in the river estuary on
31
December. During this cruise off the western coast of France, Midshipman Marryat noted his impressions of the ship's routine. There was no leisure for men whose eyes were fixed upon the prizes and spoils of war. Raiding parties and crews to "cut out" or board French ships were organised so frequently that "the boats were hardly secured on the booms than they were cast loose and out again". Cochrane moved his frigate rapidly from one point to another, day or night, and his men learnt to make the best of "the hasty sleep, snatched at all hours". Cochrane's "coolness and courage" was an example to all on board, fortified by their sense of superior fighting ability in consequence of the regular gunnery practice, which gave a "beautiful precision" to the frigate's firepower. Marryat recalled frequent experiences of falling asleep exhausted in his cot after one encounter, only to wake with the guns above him roaring out a broadside as Cochrane opened fire on yet another French vessel or coastal fort. After so much cannonading, the gun-deck of the
Imperieuse
seemed to reek perpetually with smoke. Officers and men found "the powder so burnt into our faces that years could not remove it". And, most vividly of all, Marryat remembered the courage of Cochrane "inoculating the whole of the ship's company". Writing long after, the great novelist confessed, "when memory sweeps along' those years of excitement even now, my pulse beats more quickly with the reminiscence."
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