Cochrane (56 page)

Even while this discussion was taking place, Lord Lansdowne, now Leader of the House of Lords, was granted an audience by the
Queen in order to present Cochr
ane's case. Victoria listened, and then announced that "with or without the approval of her Privy Councillors, she would confer the next vacant Order of the Bath upon Lord Dundonald".
²⁷

Nor was this all. Cochrane received a private message from Buckingham Palace.

Her Majesty has had conversation as to the justice of some further atonement for the injuries that have been inflicted on me, and.
..
she said it was a subject of regret that such was not in her power; but should the subject be entertained by her advisers, her concurrence should not be wanting.
²⁸

The "atonement" which he had in mind was the repayment of the fine inflicted in
1814,
as well as pay from the time of his dismissal from the navy until his reappointment by William IV. This would involve a reversal of the original verdict, an act beyond Victoria's constitutional power at that time. Yet there was no doubt of the admiration which she and Albert felt for Cochrane and his career. Lord John Russell, as Prime Minister, assured him of this in a letter of
12
May.

Your services to your country are recorded among those of the most brilliant of a war signalised by heroic achievements. I will lay before her Majesty the expression of your gratitude, and I can assure you that the Queen has sanctioned with the greatest satisfaction the advice of her ministers.
²⁹

The death of Admiral Sir Davige Gould soon created a vacancy in the Order. Victoria placed it at Auckland's disposal with instructions that it should be conferred upon Cochrane. On
25
May, thirty-three years after his degradation by the Prince Regent, he was gazetted for a second time as Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. Prince Albert, as Grand Master of the Order, sent him the warrant at once. Though the installation was some weeks away, Cochrane had been summoned to the Queen's birthday drawing room at St James's on
27
May. The Prince wished him to wear the cross on that occasion. He was also entitled to wear most of his foreign decorations, though his title as Marquess of Maranham was not recognised. Government policy prohibited Royal Navy officers from serving under foreign titles.
³⁰

On the warm May afternoon the staircases and anterooms beyond the audience chamber were crowded with the elite of Victorian society - political, military, and naval - waiting to be presented to the sovereign. With her escort of Life Guards, the young Queen appeared in her train of gold-embroidered satin, trimmed with honeysuckle and ornamented with diamonds. Among the plumes of the general staff, Prince Albert attended in the uniform of Field Marshal, as did the Duke of Cambridge, and Wellington. In this company, the tall, stooping figure of the old admiral was presented to the Queen. The Garter installation, at Buckingham Palace on
12
July, made a bizarre sequel. Prince Albert, as Grand Master of the Order, presided in the presence of the Knights Grand Cross and many inferior Crosses. Among the members was the frail figure of the Duke of Wellington. The Duke, who had so summarily dismissed Cochrane's plea for justice, while Prime Minister, that Cochrane felt it would be demeaning to petition him ever again, came slowly across and shook him by the hand, "expressing his satisfaction" at this reinstatement. Even more bizarre was the role of Lord Ellenborough, son of the famous judge, who was now called upon by Prince Albert to act as Cochrane's sponsor. It was not so much an act of reconciliation as poetic justice. The next Lord Ellenborough, in his turn, commented on his father's predicament.

Taken by surprise, he may well have preferred to act as his sponsor to causing an unseemly squabble in, or almost in, the presence of the Throne, and I do not see that any inferences can well be drawn from his conduct.
³¹

To Cochrane, the most heartening thing of all was that he was not required to be knighted on this occasion. Victoria and Albert, at least, had vindicated him by confirming that his knighthood dated from its first conferment in
1809
and that Cochrane had done nothing at any time to forfeit his title.

It had always been his own contention that he could not resume active service so long as his honours were not restored. He had been promoted to Vice-Admiral in
1841
but still remained on half-pay. Now that his conditions were met, there was no reason, in principle, why Cochrane should not resume active service in the Royal Navy at the age of seventy-two. However, he had grown so accustomed to "neglect" of one sort or another that he must have been doubly surprised by a letter from Lord Auckland on
27
December
1847.

I shall shortly have to name a Commander-in-Chief for the North American and West Indian Station. Will you accept the appointment? I shall feel it to be an honour and a pleasure to have named you to it, and I am satisfied that your nomination will be agreeable to her Majesty, as it will be to the country, and, particularly, to the navy.
³²

He accepted the offer which, in effect, made him admiral of Britain's Atlantic fleet. From other admirals, from Members of Parliament, and from Delane of
The
Times,
letters of congratulation reached him on the news of his appointment. They spoke of the "foul aspersions" against him having been dispelled and of the justice "to the bravery of your lordship as an officer and your goodness and honour as a man". But, gratifying though this might be, there was peace in the Atlantic and no opportunity for Cochrane to exercise the very talents which were now so widely praised. To have held such a command in
1810
would have enabled him to alter the course of the greatest war in history. To hold it in
1847
was merely a matter of courtesy.
³³

Cochrane remained commander-in-chief from the beginning of
1848
until the spring of
1851.
He sailed from Plymouth on his flagship H.M.S.
Wellesley
on
25
March, and there were, of course, sufficient routine duties to occupy him. The United States was involved in war with Mexico, and Cochrane's ships were to maintain a patrol of the Gulf of Mexico in the hope that this would induce both sides to seek peace under the threat of British intervention. In general, the fleet was occupied with the protection of British fishing interests and the suppression of the slave trade.

Cochrane himself took the opportunity of reporting to Lord Auckland on various matters which caught his attention. The convict hulks should be removed from Bermuda, the defences and the dockyards of the island reorganised, proper drainage and water supplies provided. Despite his appointment to the new command, Cochrane gave the impression of a man looking about him with increasing frustration for something to do. It was in vain that Auckland assured him that even the most routine class of duties "is not without interest, and carries credit as it is performed with justice and exactness".
³⁴

The two men exchanged letters frequently during the first year of Cochrane's command, Auckland sending news of Chartism in England and revolution in Europe. It was on
1
January
1849
that Admiral Dundas, assistant to the First Lord, wrote to Cochrane, "It is with great regret I have to inform you of the death of Lord Auckland, after a few hours' illness." The new First Lord was Sir Francis Baring, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose interest was less in the proposals and improvements suggested by Cochrane than in the making of economies wherever possible. Cochrane turned his attention to observing and noting the topography and industry of the Canadian Atlantic coast, the geology of Bermuda, and the disposition of the inhabitants of the West Indies. His journal contained a mass of observations on his travels, from Nova Scotia to Trinidad. It was in Trinidad that he saw something which impressed him more than almost any other sight during his period as commander-in-chief.
³⁵

Near La Brea was the famous "Pitch Lake", a bituminous expanse some three miles in circumference. The surface was a waxy brown, though Cochrane noted from the corrugations in it that the bitumen below the surface was "still on the move". His first thought was that it might in some way be used as fuel for steamships. "Our vessels would be supplied when an enemy would be almost deprived of the use of steam in these seas." Though this bitumen had been tried in laying London pavements, it had gone out of fashion and remained unexploited. Cochrane, finding too little employment under Sir Francis Baring, seized on its possibilities. He devised new uses for it and took out patents accordingly. In
1851
he was granted a patent for the use of bitumen in constructing sewers, tunnels, columns, and capitals. In
1852
there followed patents for its use in insulating wire, and in
1853
for producing a substitute for expensive gums and for laying pipes below ground. Nor was this all. He proposed to use bitumen as the basis for a grand scheme to end the pollution of the Thames. Embankments, their stones set in waterproof bitumen, were to be built out to narrow the river between Vauxhall and London Bridge. The aim would be to create a deeper and faster-flowing river which would sweep the pollution out to sea. Sewers were to be laid, running beneath the docks themselves, and were to be watertight subterranean tunnels whose pavement stones would, once again, be made waterproof by bitumen.
³⁶

As might be expected of Cochrane, he dealt speedily with the argument that the abolition of slavery in the West Indies had merely brought poverty to those who might otherwise have worked contentedly in servitude. There was no doubt, when he visited Jamaica, that most of those on the island were living in poverty. But the answer was simple. When he inspected the Customs House, he discovered that much of the island's food was imported and subject to a high rate of duty. Moreover, the sugar plantations employed fewer workers since emancipation, so that there was now a reservoir of surplus and unemployed labour. At the same time, the government held tracts of potentially productive land which it declined to let anyone work. The answer, in Cochrane's view, was simple enough. Let the land be given or leased to the unemployed, so that enough food might be produced to feed the starving and, indeed, to make the island self-sufficient. Even here there was a major difficulty. So many taxes were payable on the transfer of land that even workers who could afford to buy land were unable to pay the taxes as well.

Is it reasonable to instruct the negroes in their rights as men, and open their minds to the humble ambition of acquiring spots of land, and then throw every impediment possible in the way of its gratification? I perceive by the imposts and expenses on the transfer of small properties, that a barrier almost insurmountable is raised to their acquisition by the coloured population.
³⁷

The unreasonableness of the situation was a primary cause of the so-called Jamaica Mutiny, five years after Cochrane's death, in which the unrest of the native population was put down with punitive zeal by the British army.

As for Cochrane's tour of duty, Sir Francis Baring wrote to him on the last day of
1850
informing him that Sir George Seymour had been appointed as his successor. It was not an unreasonable decision. Cochrane had held his command for two years and he was now seventy-five years old. Whatever the faults of the Admiralty, they could hardly be blamed for the peaceful and uneventful nature of his duty. Accordingly, he accepted the orders given him, sailing from Halifax on
14
May
1851
and arriving at Portsmouth at the beginning of June.

The summer of
1851,
with the Crystal Palace rising as a monument to national self-congratulation among the trees of Hyde Park, appeared to set the seal of international agreement on peace and industry as the two goals of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The mood of peace and his own advancing age would have seemed to offer little hope to Cochrane of active service in the future. But the mood was deceptive and British public opinion on matters of war and peace had rarely been so volatile.

Even by the time that Lord Aberdeen succeeded as Prime Minister, in December
1852,
whatever euphoria had survived the summer of the exhibition was dispersed by the "Eastern Question". Almost half a century earlier, in his meeting with Napoleon at Tilsit, Czar Alexander had laid claim to Turkey as falling within the Russian sphere of influence. In January and February
1853,
his successor, Nicholas, argued with the British ambassador, Sir Hamilton Seymour, that the Turkish Empire was disintegrating. "We must come to an understanding," he insisted. The proposal was that Britain should take Cyprus and Egypt, leaving Russia free to dispose of the rest of the Turkish Empire.

On the one hand, Aberdeen's government was alarmed at the prospect of Russian expansion to the Adriatic and into the Middle East. On the other hand, they regarded themselves as men of peace, deterred from a major conflict by their memories of the slaughter which some of them had seen with their own eyes at Leipzig or Waterloo. In July
1853,
however, Russia invaded the Turkish Danubian provinces. On
30
November, her warships sank the Black Sea squadron of the Turkish fleet without warning and at point-blank range.