The War of Wars (79 page)

Another spectacular joint action followed. At noon on 9 June the
Speedy
attacked a 20-gun xebec accompanied by three gunboats escorting a Spanish convoy. For several hours the ships fired broadsides at each other, until a 12-gun felucca and two more gunboats arrived from Valencia to reinforce the Spaniards. But the
Speedy
gained the upper hand, sinking the xebec and, eventually, all four gunboats. By now the
Speedy
had used up 1,200 shot and the
Kingfisher
had also almost run out of ammunition. Extreme measures were required to finish the action, and Captain Pulling ordered his ship to close on the fort, whose defenders promptly fled, while the
Speedy
sailed straight at the felucca and the other gunboats, which also turned tail. Three merchantmen were captured, three sunk, and four driven on shore, where they were protected by Spanish troops.

The legendary career of the plucky little
Speedy
was brought to an end, fittingly, in one of its most glorious actions. To Cochrane’s fury, in the summer of 1801 he was assigned to act as convoy to the mail packet that ran between the British naval base of Port Mahon in Minorca and Gibraltar. The packet ship was barely seaworthy and the mail was transferred to the
Speedy
as soon as the two ships were out of port, and then back aboard the packet as they approached Gibraltar, to give the impression the packet had carried the mail all the way. Impatient and frustrated, Cochrane cruised along the coast, keeping an eye out for
possible prizes. He soon spotted some small merchant ships near Alicante, and got close. The Spaniards ran them aground. Cochrane could not disembark to capture them where they lay beached so he fired his cannon at them to set them on fire. One happened to be carrying oil, which blazed fiercely through the night, to Cochrane’s satisfaction.

But the flames attracted the attention of three French battleships also heading for the Straits of Gibraltar. Cochrane’s lookouts spotted the topsails on the horizon the following morning. Cochrane concluded that they must be Spanish treasure ships. He had made a fatal mistake. As he sailed towards them, it gradually became apparent that they were the pride of the French fleet: the
Indomitable
, the
Dessaix
and the
Formidable
were fast closing on the
Speedy
, which was trapped between them and the shore.

Faced with such odds, any other commander would have surrendered at once. Once they came within range, a single broadside by any one of them would be enough to sink the
Speedy
. But Cochrane was determined to make a break for it, believing, as with the
Gamo
, in the surprise of so bold a policy on his enemies. He put on all possible sail, dumped his little guns overboard, as well as all other surplus weight. He then began to tack as the ships approached so as to ensure that he was never broadside to them. The French guns in bow and stern managed to damage his rigging, but his bobbing and weaving prevented them concentrating their fire. He suddenly made a break for it between the
Dessaix
and the
Formidable
. The astonished French, who had expected the
Speedy
to flee at their approach, managed to let off a single broadside as the little ship sped past, but missed. The
Speedy
made it out into the open sea.

For a moment it seemed Cochrane had succeeded. But as repeated shots from the Frenchman’s bows ripped into the
Speedy
’s canvas, the little ship began to slow and the
Dessaix
caught up after an hour, at last overhauling it. As Cochrane reported:

At this short distance she let fly at us a complete broadside of round and grape, the object evidently being to sink us at a blow, in retaliation for thus attempting to slip past, though almost without
hope of escape. Fortunately for us, in yawing to bring her broadside to bear, the rapidity with which she answered her helm carried her a little too far, and her round shot plunged in the water under our bows, or the discharge must have sunk us; the scattered grape, however, took effect in the rigging, cutting up a great part of it, riddling the sails, and doing material damage to the masts and yards, though not a man was hurt. To have delayed for another broadside would have been to expose all on board to certain destruction, and as further effort to escape was impotent, the Speedy’s colours were hauled down.

He was rowed aboard the
Dessaix
and offered his sword to Palliere. ‘I will not accept the sword of an officer who has for so many hours struggled against impossibility’, the Frenchman told him chivalrously, in exultation at having at last brought to an end the career of the legendary terror of the Spanish coast and its commander. Cochrane was treated with full courtesy on the remainder of the trip to anchorage at Algeciras near Gibraltar.

When they reached Algeciras, Cochrane was informed of the approach of a squadron of six British warships of 74 guns each under the command of Admiral Sir John Saumarez. Palliere asked him whether they would attack. Cochrane replied: ‘An attack will certainly be made, and before night both the French and British ships will be at Gibraltar, where it will give me great pleasure to make you and your officers a return for the kindness I have experienced on board the
Dessaix
.’

The French commander ordered his ships to move closer to the protection of the Spanish batteries but, in their haste, the three ships ran aground. As the two men had breakfast the following day a cannonball smashed into the cabin, spraying them with glass from a shattered wine bin nearby. They ran on deck to witness several marines being cut down by intense British fire. Cochrane, not wishing to be killed by his own side, discreetly withdrew to a safe place. He recounted what happened next:

The Hannibal, having with the others forged past the enemy, gallantly filled and tacked with a view to get between the French ships and the shore, being evidently unaware of their having been hauled aground. The consequence was that she ran upon a shoal, and remained fast, nearly bow on to the broadsides of the French line-of-battle ships, which with the shore batteries and several gunboats opened upon her a concentrated fire. This, from her position, she was unable to return. The result was that her guns were speedily dismounted, her rigging shot away, and a third of her crew killed or wounded; Captain Ferris, who commanded her, having now no alternative but to strike his colours – though not before he had displayed an amount of endurance which excited the admiration of the enemy.

A circumstance now occurred which is entitled to rank amongst the curiosities of war. On the French taking possession of the Hannibal, they had neglected to provide themselves with their national ensign, and either from necessity or bravado rehoisted the English flag upside down. This being a well-known signal of distress, was so understood by the authorities at Gibraltar, who, manning all government and other boats with dockyard artificers and seamen, sent them, as it was mistakenly considered, to the assistance of the Hannibal.

On the approach of the launches I was summoned on deck by the captain of the Dessaix, who seemed doubtful what measures to adopt as regarded the boats now approaching to board the Hannibal, and asked my opinion as to whether they would attempt to retake the ship. As there could be no doubt in my mind about the nature of their mission or its result, it was evident that if they were allowed to board, nothing could prevent the seizure of the whole. My advice, therefore, to Captain Palliere was to warn them off by a shot – hoping they would thereby be driven back and saved from capture. Captain Palliere seemed at first inclined to take the advice, but on reflection – either doubting its sincerity, or seeing the real state of the case – he decided to capture the whole by permitting them to board unmolested. Thus boat by boat was captured until all the artificers necessary for the repair of the British squadron, and nearly all the sailors at that time in Gibraltar, were taken prisoners!

The British sent a boat under a flag of truce to suggest an exchange of prisoners. Palliere refused, but he did agree to parole the young British lieutenant. Cochrane returned to a hero’s welcome at Gibraltar.

It was still a moment of extreme danger and anxiety for the British garrison on the Rock. A Spanish flotilla of six warships was on its way to rescue the three French craft. Saumarez, with just five ships, sailed into the attack as night fell. In the ensuing confusion two of the biggest Spanish warships of 112 guns started firing and destroyed each other, in two spectacular night explosions as their magazines went up, giving the British victory. Cochrane watched the whole show along with the garrison at Gibraltar.

A few days later Cochrane was formally court-martialled for the loss of the
Speedy
. Such court-martials, with all their ceremony and pomp, automatically took place on the loss of a ship. Cochrane was acquitted with honour. The same day Cochrane was promoted to post-captain, reflecting his achievement at last in capturing the
Gamo
– but the appointment was not backdated, so he was left at the bottom of the seniority list, well below many undistinguished colleagues of his own age and with no chance at all of being given a command in view of the huge surplus of officers to ships.

Cochrane’s naval uncle, Alexander, and his father lobbied the crotchety old St Vincent on his behalf. This proved counterproductive. ‘The Cochranes are not to be trusted out of sight’, he thundered. ‘They are all mad, romantic, money-getting and not truth-telling’. When he was told he must give young Cochrane a ship, St Vincent retorted, ‘The First Lord of the Admiralty knows no must’. As another remarked, ‘It became almost a point of etiquette with the Earl not to make [Cochrane] a captain’. To Cochrane’s former commander, Admiral Keith, St Vincent wrote more reasonably ‘It is unusual to promote two officers [Cochrane and Parker] for such a service – besides which, the small number of killed on board the
Speedy
does not warrant the application’.

Cochrane, a captain without a command, was made doubly redundant by the short outbreak of peace between France and Britain as a result of the Treaty of Amiens, and returned to Britain, where he visited his father whose second marriage to the wealthy Mrs Raymond
had given Culross a few more years’ lease of life. Astonishingly, he decided to cross the Firth of Forth to go and study moral philosophy at Edinburgh under a famous pedagogue, Dugald Stewart. Cochrane was nothing if not a man of paradox, and high intelligence and deep thoughtfulness underlay the popular image of a half-crazed warrior.

In March, 1803, war was renewed between Britain and France, and Cochrane promptly and predictably applied for command of a ship. He was promptly and predictably fobbed off. He then compiled a list of all the ships under construction and sent it to the Admiralty. St Vincent replied huffily that they had all already been allocated to other commanders. Cochrane took a coach down to London to see personally the crotchety First Lord. Once again the old disciplinarian, after refusing to see him for several days, stonewalled him. The incensed young officer played his last and only card, threatening to resign the service. The First Lord looked at him with icy thoughtfulness and told him that after all there was a ship available at Plymouth. Cochrane was exultant, and travelled down on the first available coach. When he arrived at the great dockyard and saw her, his first words were, ‘she will sail like a haystack!’ HMS
Arab
was a converted collier, a sluggish flat-bottomed hulk with neither speed nor manoeuvrability. He had been outwitted by St Vincent once again.

As soon as Cochrane took to sea with her, he discovered that her greatest problem was that she would not sail against the wind. Ordered to Boulogne, he found it impossible to return: ‘With a fair wind, it was not difficult to get off Boulogne, but to get back with the same wind was – in such a craft – all but impossible. Our only way of effecting this was by watching the tide, to drift off as well as we could. A gale of wind anywhere from N.E. to N.W. would infallibly have driven us on shore on the French coast: her employment in such a service could only result in our loss by shipwreck on the French coast.’

In a thunderous rage, whether by accident or design, when Cochrane managed to struggle back across the Channel, he intercepted an American merchant ship, the
Chatham
, on its way to Amsterdam, informing its startled and indignant captain that there was a British blockade of the River Texel. This was news as much to the Admiralty as to the Americans. Cochrane was promptly ordered north to protect
the Shetland fishing fleet, which was odd, as the Shetlands had no fishing fleet to protect. He was in effect in exile for nearly 14 months aboard a wallowing and useless tub, far away from any action.

Fate is nothing if not ironic, even capricious. Cochrane had secured his initial advancement largely through the connections of his aristocratic, if impoverished family. He had then made his name through superb seamanship and captaincy, excoriating those of lesser talents who had ascended through favouritism, and been obstructed every step of the way. The man who had most come to hate him, Earl St Vincent, despised Cochrane for his aristocratic hauteur and for his general lack of respect for authority. Now, with the accession of a new Tory government under William Pitt, a political supporter of his, Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville, was appointed in St Vincent’s place. Melville was political jobbery and corruption personified.

As a Scot he took notice of the incestuous lobbying of Scottish families, in particular the Duke of Hamilton, on behalf of young Cochrane, whose fortunes took a remarkable new twist: he was appointed to be commander of the
Pallas
, a brand new 667-ton frigate of 38 guns – 12 of them 24-pounders, 26 of them 12-pounders – with a crew of over 200. Cochrane, bemused by this astonishing change in his fortunes, was forced to resort to the pressgang to recruit his crew (his old one on the
Speedy
had been dispersed) and he was ordered to attack enemy convoys crossing the Atlantic.