Cochrane (41 page)

Though he was heir to the Earldom of Dundonald, it was little more than a title. His father, who disowned Cochrane to Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, was living on an allowance from Basil Cochrane, the only member of the family whose fortune had borne up well. But scandal and distress gathered about the figure of the old Earl, when he married for the third time
in
1819,
having been a widower for eleven years.

Basil Cochrane had paid his brother an allowance on condition that he lived in lodgings in Shouldham Street, near the Edgware Road, and submitted accounts of all his expenditure. The careful East India merchant had no intention of subsidising either scientific eccentricity or the bottle. When the Earl remarried, and went with his new wife, Anna Maria, to the splendours of Parsons Green, Basil Cochrane cut off their income. He disliked the new Countess, disapproved of marital extravagance, and insisted that unless they separated and the Earl went back to his lodging house, not a penny more would be forthcoming. Lady Dundonald wrote to Lord Melville and the Prince Regent on her husband's behalf, begging a pension for him, assuring the ministry that he had never "interfered in politics, nor is he answerable for Lord Cochrane's conduct, which his father has ever highly disapproved of & condemned". Her letters to Basil Cochrane mingled imprecation and threat with a judicious sense of style. "Oh, Sir! let me conjure you as you hope for Mercy hereafter to take pity on your unfortunate brother and not enforce our separation," she began. But in case Basil was not unduly concerned with the hereafter, she promised that if the present financial crisis lasted much longer, "the whole of the truth & the cause of my separation from my husband must come before the Public, which I do not think will redound to
your advantage".
⁸³

The third Lady Dundonald restored some degree of harmony between the brothers in almost the only way open to her, by dying of a bilious fever soon after. The old Earl, living on donations from his family and from the Royal Literary Fund became an easy joke for pamphleteers. The author of the
Life
of
the Late Thomas Coutts
,
recalled how the great banker had married a domestic servant Elizabeth Starky, known to the youthful Dundonald. The pamphlet described vividly how the young lord and Betty Starky had romped about the wash-tub, sousing one another in the suds and rolling about the floor. The Earl replied angrily in a pamphlet written for him, whose only effect was to promote a second edition of the original canard. The story was denied, the respectability and character of Elizabeth Starky upheld, and the old Earl's dignity defended. "If he is less affluent than Noblemen of the same rank, yet his fortune has not been spent in dissipation; but on the contrary, has been devoted with a long life to the purposes of science."
⁸⁴

The
9th
Earl afterwards withdrew to France, beyond the reach of creditors, living in a Paris lodging with his mistress. He was almost eighty years old by this time but his querulous energy was still not exhausted. If he had chosen exile, that was at least one thing which he now had in common with his heir.

On
2
June
1818,
Cochrane rose to address the House of Commons. He was seconding Burdett's motion in favour of parliamentary reform, and in doing so reminded them of Pitt's warning that if the House did not reform itself, it would be reformed from outside, "with a vengeance". With delight or dismay, according to taste, the members then heard him describe his speech as "probably the last time I shall ever have the honour of addressing the House on any subject". His sentiments on reform were predictable, but the reason which took him from the Commons at last was far more dramatic.
⁸⁵

Cochrane had been approached by Don Jose Alvarez, the Chilean representative in London. Throughout South America, the great territories of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, had risen against the colonial government of Portugal and Spain. In many areas it had been easy enough for the revolutionary armies to seize tracts of land, but the struggle had been frustrated by the Spanish and Portuguese fleets. These still held control of the seas, and they were able to maintain substantial garrisons ashore. Cochrane's supreme ability as a sailor, coupled with his devotion to the cause of liberty in his own country, had impressed the leaders of Chile. Alvarez offered him no less than the command of the naval forces which must be used to win the final liberation of South America. He briefly considered the offer and then undertook a role more improbable than any he had yet played, that of a mercenary admiral.

But Cochrane had a plan that was more bizarre than anything offered him. He knew that when South America was truly independent it would need a man of genius to shape the great new republic of the southern hemisphere. He had no doubt that there was such a man who was then languishing in "humiliating exile in a lone and barren island". Kitty recalled her husband's anger and contempt for "the disgraceful conduct" of Castlereagh and his minions in leaving a colossus of the modern world to rot in captivity. To rescue Napoleon from St Helena and place him on the throne of South America was the coup which Cochrane had in mind. He was "determined at all hazards to outwit the English Government, whose Ministers were full of suspicion against him, believing that he had a plot in view for the rescue of the Royal Exile".
⁸⁶

It is now a matter of historical record that, before Waterloo, Napoleon discussed his future with his commanders and confessed a private ambition to leave France to her own devices and devote himself to creating a great Latin American republic in the south, to rival the United States in the north.

At the beginning of August
1818,
Cochrane, with Kitty and his two sons, Thomas born in
1814
and the five-month-old William, slipped away from the little port of Rye in an open fishing smack, bound for Boulogne and the South American war.

7

The
Devil's
Admiral

T
he
wars of independence in Latin America had been in progress since
1794,
in one form or another. Francisco Miranda, the Venezuelan leader, had been encouraged in his rebellion by Pitt and, more directly, by Cochrane's own uncle Alexander while in command of the West Indies squadron. When Miranda was defeated in
1812
and taken to Spain as a prisoner, leadership of the struggle passed to Simon Bolivar. By
1815
a powerful Spanish army under General Morillo had been despatched to meet the threat of Bolivar and his insurgents. At first, the Spaniards had been successful, driving the rebels from the mainland and forcing Bolivar to seek refuge in Jamaica. But within a year Bolivar returned, crossing from Trinidad to the northern coast of South America and leading his army in triumph through the surrounding territories. Under his command, the independent republics of Colombia and Bolivia had been established.

The essential problem of the South American wars had been repeatedly illustrated. The Spanish army could not police the hinterland of the great continent effectively and, to that extent, was at the mercy of the insurgents who could choose their time and place to strike. But the Spanish navy held command of the sea and was well able to supply and support the major coastal garrisons at such places as Callao or Valdivia. So long as these bases of power remained, total independence would be difficult to achieve.

On the Pacific coast, Chile and Peru illustrated this dilemma with more than usual vividness. Since both countries were shaped as long coastal belts, the Spanish garrisons were maintained by sea and the battlefleet was able to move more quickly and effectively than any army which relied upon the uncertain roads. The Spanish held Peru easily by virtue of a large garrison at Lima, reinforced through their naval base of Callao a few miles away. Only in Chile had there been a convincing attempt to win independence west of the Andes.

SOUTH AMERICA, 1818-1825

The movement for self-government was the work of those of European descent as much as of the native South Americans. It had begun in this form in Chile in
1810
and had come under the leadership of General Bernardo O'Higgins, whose Irish father had been Spanish viceroy of Peru. By
1814
O'Higgins and his army were beset by Spaniards on the one hand and the rivalry of other patriots, the Carreras brothers, on the other. During that autumn the Carreras brothers, by withholding their support, allowed O'Higgins to be defeated by the Spaniards. He and the survivors of the defeat fell back on the town of Rancagua near the foothills of the Andes. There followed a memorable two days' battle, in which the powerful Spanish army fought, house by house, to take the town until the little band of survivors, O'Higgins himself wounded, made their last stand in an open square. When this resistance was about to collapse, O'Higgins formed up all who were still alive into a phalanx to charge the Spanish, cut a way through, and reach the open country. He and his men escaped and, acting as escort to a refugee column of women, children, and old men, crossed the Andes to the comparative safety of Mendoza, some
200
miles inland from Valparaiso.

The dramatic, and indeed cinematic, quality of the defence of Rancagua caught the imagination of Europe to Chile's advantage. In
1817,
O'Higgins and Jose de San Martin defeated the Spanish at Chacabuco Pass, thirty miles from Santiago and entered the capital. O'Higgins was named as director of the new republic. However, the freedom of Chile would be only a brief illusion so long as the Spanish fleet and the Spanish garrisons remai
ned. Hence the departure of Jose
Alvarez for London to raise money and seek assistance. After being enthusiastically received by Burdett and other sympathisers, he had sought out Cochrane and offered him the great command.

By August
1818,
Cochrane and Kitty were at Boulogne, prepared for their voyage to Valparaiso, via St Helena. It was intended to undertake this by a steamship, the
Rising Star,
which was being built at Deptford for the Chilean navy. Cochrane had arranged for his brother William to raise most of the
£20,000
needed for the ship. There had, of course, been steamships since the
Comet
of
1812,
but the appearance of an armed steamer on the Pacific coast was calculated to spread dismay among the captains of the Spanish fleet, if she could be got there quickly.

But work on the
Rising Star
progressed too slowly. At the urgent request of the Chileans, Cochrane and his wife embarked at Boulogne on
15
August on a conventional sailing ship, the
Rose.
The first part of the voyage, as Kitty recalled, was undertaken "with the intention of making for St Helena, begging for an interview, and ascertaining His Majesty's wishes as regarded placing him on the throne of South America". The Chilean deputies on board the
Rose
had made no objection to this route. But while the sailing ship cruised through the South Atlantic she was overtaken by news that the Spanish army had recovered from its setback and was preparing to strike from Valdivia in the south against Santiago. There was to be no diversion to St Helena, the captain was under orders to make for Valparaiso with all speed. Cochrane could hardly object to this, since his Napoleonic dream was unlikely to be fulfilled if Spanish control over Chile was totally re-established. He postponed the greater plan, but did not abandon it.

The wild coastline of Tierra del Fuego, the penguin colonies on the rocks and the albatrosses floating over the ship, offered a novel distraction for Cochrane as the
Rose
struggled to round Cape Horn against a stiff westerly. The rain drove hard against the lumbering merchantman, and the snow flurries obscured even the bleak rocks of the cape. After three days, the wind changed and the
Rose
rounded the Horn. The snow and ice gave way to a gentle coolness, sea and hills almost suggesting to the passengers the Highlands of Scotland. At length, on
28
November, they landed in the mild cloudy climate of Valparaiso.

At this stage in its development, Valparaiso consisted of a semicircle of principal buildings, following the curve of the bay, built on a narrow strip of land between the sea and the foot of the precipitous hills enclosing the town. With its road to the nearby capital of Santiago, it was the most important and most cosmopolitan of the Chilean ports. There was a large English colony, including merchants, mercenaries, and Royal Navy officers from several ships of the Pacific squadron. H.M.S.
Andromache
and H.M.S.
Blossom
soon organised rival cricket teams and found a sufficiently large stretch of level ground for their pitch, on a promontory jutting out into the Pacific. A cricket club was founded, its members accepting with equanimity that their ground was also used from time to time as a race course. The club met twice a week for dinner in a marquee. While boasting no talents as a cricketer, Cochrane was accepted in Chilean society readily. Among the Royal Navy officers, he was on the whole admired by junior ranks and, rather predictably, suspected by their seniors.
¹

Picnics and outings, grand balls or
receptions, held at Santiago or
Valparaiso, made this an agreeable landfall. John Miller, brother of Major William Miller, mercenary commander of the Chilean marines, recalled, "The two presiding
belles
were Lady Cochrane and Mrs Commodore Blanco, both young, fascinating, and highly gifted." Englishmen were much taken with the beauty of mulatto girls, their dark abundant hair falling to their shoulders "adorned with jessamine and other flowers". On warm Pacific evenings the girls filled their hair with jessamine buds, "which in the course of an hour will open, and present the appearance of a bushy powdered wig".
²

Dinners and receptions were held in honour of the Cochranes by the Governor of Valparaiso and others. Cochrane returned the compliment on St Andrew's Day, at a banquet over which he presided in the full costume of a Scottish chief, as William Miller recalled.

Extraordinary good cheer was followed by toasts drank with uncommon enthusiasm in extraordinary good wine. No one escaped its enlivening influence. St Andrew was voted the patron saint of champaign, and many curious adventures of that night have furnished the subject of some still remembered anecdotes.
³

Having established amicable relations so easily, Cochrane turned to the business of war. The Chilean commander, Blanco Encalada, had resigned his supremacy in favour of Cochrane, who was now appointed "Vice-Admiral of Chile, and Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces of the Republic". Those forces consisted of seven ships, either captured from the Spanish or bought from England. The flagship, pertinently named the
O'Higgins,
was a
50
-gun vessel taken from the Spaniards. The
San Martin
and the
Lautaro
were old East India ships with
56
and
44
guns respectively. There were four smaller ships, boasting between
14
and
20
guns each, the
Galvarino,
the
Chacabuco,
the
Aracauno,
and the
Puyrredon.
The
Galvarino
had formerly been H.M.S.
Hecate,
an
18
-gun sloop. She had been bought out of the navy by two captains, Guise and Spry, who had sailed her to Valparaiso and sold her to the Chileans. These two officers, bent on advancement through Chilean employment, were to be Cochrane's worst enemies in the whole war. Their simple and unambiguous slogan was "two commodores and no Cochrane". Their general sentiments were soon shared by Captain Worcester, a United States captain also serving in the Chilean navy.
⁴

Against Cochrane's force, the Spaniards had fourteen ships and twenty-eight gun-boats. The most formidable of these were the heavily armed, purpose-built frigates, particularly the
44
-gun
Esmeralda.
In any normal circumstances they should have been more than a match for Cochrane but this was not the sort of consideration by which he was discouraged.

He decided to start making trouble for the Spanish by sailing north to the adjoining coast of Peru, a territory more securely under their control than Chile had ever been. His destination was the naval stronghold of Callao, the key to the nearby capital of Lima. He took his four largest ships, the
O'Higgins, San Martin, Lautaro,
and
Chacabuco.
Many members of the crews were European or American mercenaries but there was also a leavening of Chilean conscripts, including men like Jose de San Martin, who had been a chieftain of banditti and was marched on board directly from the condemned cell. He shared both the name and the disposition of the commander of the Chilean army.

Far more alarming was an incident involving Tom Cochrane, his father's five-year-old son and heir. Having taken leave of her husband, Kitty had just been ferried ashore when the final gun boomed out from the
O'Higgins
to summon all hands for sailing. To her consternation, she saw an excited mob of citizens escorting the last members of the crew to the beach, with little Thomas Cochrane riding shoulder-high and calling shrilly, "Viva la patria!" Before she could reach them, the members of the crew and the child were in a rowing boat, heading for the ship, which was already getting under way. There was no alternative for Cochrane but to take the child on the voyage, the sailors cutting him out a set of clothes and dressing him as an infant midshipman.
⁵