Cochrane (42 page)

The attack on Callao was not in itself of much significance. Cochrane had discovered that the two most powerful Spanish frigates, the
Esmeralda
and the
Venganza,
were in the anchorage and he had intended to board and capture them. The
O'Higgins
and the
Lautaro
were to sail in, flying United States colours, and seize the frigates before the deception was discovered. Unfortunately, Callao and its approaches were swathed in fog, which made the attack impossible. Cochrane had to be content with capturing a Spanish gunboat and her crew. Then the fog lifted and revealed the
O'Higgins
and the
Lautaro,
becalmed under the powerful batteries of Callao.

The
Lautaro
contrived to drift clear, leaving Cochrane on the
O'Higgins
to face the combined power of
160
guns in the shore-batteries and
350
more on the Spanish ships which were anchored in a crescent across the bay. During this action, his first thought was for his son, whom he locked into his stern cabin as a precaution. But the five-year-old had no intention of missing such an adventure and found a means of escape by climbing out of the quarter gallery window as the salvoes from Callao howled over the ship. To his father's dismay he appeared on the quarter-deck in the middle of the action. Cochrane had no time to attend to him and the child at once made himself useful by handing powder to the gunners for the quarter-deck guns. It was during this that a Spanish cannon ball hissed across the deck and took off the head of a marine standing close by. Cochrane was sure his son had been hit and stood "spell-bound with agony". But though the dead man's brains had been scattered in his face, the boy ran safely to his father, announcing, "I am not hurt, papa; the shot did not touch me. Jack says, the ball is not made that can kill mamma's boy."

Cochrane gave orders for his son to be carried below but after wails of protest and violent struggles the attempt was abandoned. The
O'Higgins
came through the ordeal undamaged except for the rigging. Cochrane put to sea, landed on the offshore island of San Lorenzo, took the Spanish occupants prisoner and freed thirty-seven Chilean soldiers who had been kept there in chains for eight years. "The joy of the poor fellows at their deliverance, after all hope had fled, can scarcely be conceived," he reported.
⁶

He now began a blockade of Callao, though offering to return the Spanish prisoners to their commander if the liberated Chileans were permitted to rejoin their families. While these negotiations continued, under flag of truce, the Spanish viceroy of Peru, Don Joaquim de la Pezuela, reproached him, as a British nobleman, with having joined a rebel navy. "A British nobleman is a free man," replied Cochrane sternly, "and therefore has a right to adopt any country which is endeavouring to re-establish the rights of aggrieved humanity." He added that the Duke de San Carlos, Spanish ambassador in London, had approached him on behalf of Ferdinand VII and had offered him an admiral's command in the Spanish navy. He had refused it, and had joined the Chileans instead. As the news spread among the crews at Callao and they learnt who their adversary was, memories of the
Speedy
and the Mediterranean war of
1801-1808
were revived. Cochrane learnt that he had a new nickname among them, not intended as flattery but which pleased him well: El Diablo. More than two hundred years before, Sir Francis Drake had raided Callao and earned the title of El Dracone. After Cochrane's death, his son Thomas wrote, "Drake the Dragon and Cochrane the Devil were kinsmen in noble hatred, and noble punishment, of Spanish wrongdoing."
⁷

It was June
1819
before he returned to Valparaiso, the six months' cruise having been spent in raiding Spanish supply depots ashore, seizing currency intended to pay the Spanish troops, and intercepting ships at sea. At Huacho, the Spanish garrison hardly fired a shot before retreating and leaving supplies behind them. Cochrane's reputation had spread down the coast and he found, increasingly, that his enemies rarely bothered to contest the issue. His marines landed at Patavilca and seized
70,000
dollars belonging to the Spanish treasury. Five days later they boarded the brig
Gazelle
and took
60,000
more. On
16
June, the
O'Higgins
dropped anchor off Valparaiso and Cochrane went ashore to a hero's welcome.

The ships were refitted after their long cruise. It was not until September that Cochrane paid a return visit to Callao. Since his first attack, the Spanish had built a substantial boom across the harbour, sturdy enough to require an explosion ship to dislodge it. Cochrane contented himself with attacking the port by using rockets and a fire-ship, then he turned his attention to a more formidable enterprise.

Just as Callao was the great Spanish base to the north of Valparaiso, so Valdivia was the military stronghold to the south. Englishmen who saw it were apt to regard it as the equivalent of the rock of Gibraltar in terms of the Pacific coast of South America. It was also much closer to Valparaiso than Callao happened to be. If the infant republic of O'Higgins was to be crushed, the blow was more likely to be aimed at Santiago by a Spanish army using Valdivia as its base.

There was an equally urgent reason for attempting a spectacular coup against Spain. Though the Chilean republic had bought an American-built corvette, the
28
-gun
Independencia,
following Cochrane's arrival, little or nothing was being spent on the armament of the navy. Cochrane had offered to surrender all his prize money to pay for the cost of rockets for attacking Spanish-held ports. The offer was refused and money was saved on their manufacture by making the Spanish prisoners undertake it. The consequence, as Cochrane found before Callao, was that many rockets were utterly ineffective. In almost every respect, the navy of the new republic was ill-equipped. A dramatic victory over the Spanish at sea might persuade O'Higgins and San Martin of the unrealised power which the little fleet put at their disposal.

The chances of a successful attack on Valdivia were diminished when the Chilean government declined to supply Cochrane with troops for an assault. It might have been possible, of course, to have attacked the base using only the crew of the
O'Higgins,
since Cochrane intended to make the attempt with the flagship alone, but it was hard to find trained men.

The crews for the most part consisted of
cholos,
or native peasants, whom it was difficult to shape into good seamen, though they fought gallantly when well led. The officers were nearly all English or North American, this being a redeeming feature, but very few of them possessed the tact to bring up the men to anything like a seaman-like standard.
⁸

Despite this, Cochrane sailed in the
O'Higgins,
taking with him Major William Miller, the fellow mercenary who was commander of the Chilean marines. With his habitual coolness, Cochrane hoisted Spanish colours at the mast of the
O'Higgins,
dropped anchor off Valdivia on
18
January
1820,
and signalled for a pilot. The trick succeeded because, as Cochrane knew, by reports from the Atlantic coast, where the ships had touched, Valdivia awaited two battleships and a new frigate from Spain. He also heard that one of the battleships had proved unseaworthy and was still on the Atlantic coast. The other battleship had foundered off Cape Horn, and the new frigate was sheltering in the Guayaquil river to escape his own squadron. It was that frigate, the
Prueba,
which the
O'Higgins
successfully impersonated. The Spanish commander sent out a boat with a pilot, an officer, and four soldiers, all of whom were made prisoner as soon as they stepped on deck. They were then persuaded, as Cochrane put it, that it was "conducive to their interests to supply all the information demanded". The pilot took the
O'Higgins
into the navigation channels of Valdivia, enabling Cochrane to map the approaches to the harbour and the position of all the forts.

The Spaniards on shore were puzzled to see what they took to be the
Prueba
turn and head for the horizon once more. Cochrane had now discovered from his prisoners that another ship was expected soon, the
18
-gun sloop
Potrillo
with
20,000
dollars on board, that being the pay of the Valdivia garrison. Three days later, the sloop was hailed by a friendly warship under Spanish colours. When the captain at last realised that he had been boarded by the
O'Higgins,
it was too late to offer any resistance. Without firing a shot, Cochrane captured the sloop,
20,000
dollars, and a set of extremely valuable despatches detailing Spanish plans and troop movements.
⁹

It was now clear that in southern Chile the Spaniards had enlisted the most savage of the Indian tribes on their side to attack and destroy settlements within the area loyal to the new republic. Accordingly, Cochrane sailed farther south still, to Concepcion, where he repeated his request for troops to attack Valdivia. Governor Freire listened and then agreed to lend him
250
men. If Valdivia could be taken and its province subdued, the Indian threat might largely be removed.

The attacking force sailed again on
25
January, the
O'Higgins
now accompanied by the schooner
Montezuma
with troops on board and the brig
Intrepido.
But the entire expedition almost ended in disaster on the night of
29
January, when the
O'Higgins
was some forty miles out to sea and not within sight of either the brig or the schooner. Cochrane had retired to his cabin and was sleeping, having left the lieutenant of the watch in charge of the flagship. Presently the lieutenant also decided to turn in, taking advantage of Cochrane's absence to hand over his duties to a midshipman.

Though the ship was far out to sea, there were numerous reefs and half-submerged shoals, which had made Cochrane leave orders with the lieutenant to call him at once if a breeze sprang up. But either the orders were not passed on to the midshipman or else he neglected them. The wind gathered strength and a sudden squall blew the ship's prow round. As the midshipman gave his commands, in an effort to bring her back on course, there was a jarring thud deep below the keel and the
O'Higgins
bucked and grated on a sharp ledge of rock.

The story of the
Pallas
off Ushant seemed likely to be repeated, though this time there was no hope of the sea lifting the ship clear. Instead, the surges were hammering her against the rock on which she was lodged. It was now in the small hours of a hazy morning and, unlike the men of the
Pallas,
the first thought of the crew of the
O'Higgins
was to take to the boats.

Cochrane arrived on deck, "half-dressed" according to his secretary W. B. Stevenson, and found that the ship was aground on a reef, which boasted a few trees, and that "the jib-boom was entangled among the branches". More ominous, the surface of the ocean was littered with fragments of the false keel and of the ship's "sheathing". First, Cochrane warned the ship's company that the boats would hold only a quarter of them, and that they were too far from land to attempt such a voyage in any case. If they reached the nearest shore, they would find nothing but "torture and inevitable death at the hands of the Indians". There had been stories enough of this at Concepcion and his warning had a sobering effect.

He ordered a kedge anchor to be carried out astern and securely lodged. By using the hawser it was then possible to heave the
O'Higgins
clear. However, she was leaking badly with three feet of water in the hold already, though the depth was not increasing as rapidly as might have been feared. For another thirty-six hours the flagship continued on course, the men at the pumps working to keep the flood in check. But the ship's carpenter was an unskilled member of the crew who had no idea of how to maintain the pumps. While the seamen seized buckets to bail out the ship, the depth increased to five feet and then seven, flooding the powder magazine. The carpenter and most of the Chilean crew had been peasants or agricultural labourers, to whom the mechanics of a ship's pumps remained a complete mystery. The European and American officers were more familiar with the pumps as such, but the technicalities of such devices had always been considered below the dignity of a gentleman to investigate.

It was left to Cochrane, as admiral, to prove the worth of the apprenticeship he had served to Jack Larmour on the
Thetis,
almost thirty years before. While his men formed a chain to use the buckets for baling he now stripped off his coat and went below to use such "skill in carpentry" as he possessed. It was uncomfortably evident that unless the pumps could be put back into working order, the
O'Higgins
and her crew were doomed. At its present rate, the sea would overwhelm the ship in a few hours. He worked until midnight and succeeded in repairing the pumps sufficiently for use. The men who had been bailing turned their energies to pumping. The level of water in the hold steadied, and then began to fall.