officials of the Maltese and other Admiralty Courts. It was always my aim to serve my country before my own interests; and in this case I judged it better to do so where the service could be most effectual.' SERVICES IN THE BAY OF BISCAY-STRUGGLE WITH LORD GAMBIER: 1809. On arriving in England, instead of being allowed to resume parliamentary duties, Cochrane had a new service at sea marked out for him. A large French fleet, intended to operate against the British West India Islands, was blockaded by Lord Gambier in the Bay of Biscay. The Admiralty consulted Cochrane on the practicability of wholly destroying that fleet by means of fire-ships. He sketched a scheme which he thought would be effective, and the Admiralty accepted it; but it placed him in an anomalous position. He went out to join Gambier's fleet, ostensibly to command the fire-ships and explosion-ships which were to blow up the French fleet. It was a miserable arrangement; for all the admirals and captains in Gambier's fleet construed it into an indignity, that a new-comer should thus be placed over them in an enterprise of a daring and noteworthy kind. Cochrane had not sought the duty, and was thus, without his own intention or wish, placed on an unpleasant footing with other officers. Gambier was in the habit of distributing religious tracts among his crew. Cochrane injudiciously, as he afterwards admitted, sent some of these tracts to William Cobbett, who was a personal friend of his among the Radicals, together with sundry comments on the discipline and organisation of Gambier's ships. The use which Cobbett made of this information did not improve the state of matters between Cochrane and those around him. Proceeding with his duty of destroying, or endeavouring to destroy, the Brest fleet, Cochrane had an explosion-ship fitted under his own direction. The floor of the vessel was rendered as firm as possible, by means of logs placed in close contact, into every crevice of which other substances were firmly wedged, so as to afford the greatest amount of resistance to the explosion. On this foundation were placed a large number of spirit and water casks, into which 1500 barrels of powder were emptied. These casks were set on end, and the whole bound round with hempen cables, so as to resemble a gigantic mortar, thus causing the explosion to take an upward course. In addition to the powder-casks were placed several hundred shells, and over these again nearly 3000 hand-grenades; the whole, by means of wedges and sand, being compressed as nearly as possible into a solid The explosion-vessels were simply naval mines, the effect of which depended quite as much on their novelty as engines of war as upon their destructiveness. It was calculated that, mass. independently of any mischief they might do, they would cause such an amount of terror as to induce the enemy to run their ships ashore, as the only way to avoid them and save their crews.' Armed with such dreadful engines of mischief, Gambier's fleet prepared to attack the French. Cochrane wished to attack on the 10th of April, directly the fire-ships were ready, and before the French became aware of their character; but Gambier insisted on delay; and the French were thus enabled to make defensive arrangements. Their fleet, under Admiral Allemand, was in Aix Roads, and consisted of 10 ships of the line, 4 frigates, and a store-ship. Allemand took in as much sail as possible, to avoid feeding the flame; and armed seventy-three boats and launches, whose duty would be to board and tow off the British fire-ships as they arrived. The frigates were placed half a mile in front of the line-of-battle ships; and a boom of great timbers, nearly half a mile in length, and presenting a right angle in the middle, was in front of the frigates. The islands of Aix, Oleron, &c., near the coast off Rochefort, aided by their fortifications the defence of the fleet. The British fleet was very large, consisting of II ships of the line, 7 frigates, 5 gun-brig sloops, 6 gun-brigs, 3 smaller vessels, and 23 fire-ships and explosion-vessels. Many an English sailor said, then and afterwards, that Nelson would have undertaken the work with a much smaller force than this; for it was larger than Allemand's, irrespective of the fire-ships and explosion-vessels. The momentous attack was not followed with the hoped-for results. Cochrane, in an undaunted manner, fired off one of the explosionships with his own hand, when very near the French in a dark night, rowing out hastily in an open boat to get away before the fuse had reached the combustibles. For a moment, the sky was red with the lurid glare arising from the simultaneous ignition of 1500 barrels of powder. On this gigantic flash subsiding, the air seemed alive with shells, grenades, rockets, and masses of timber, the wreck of the shattered vessel; whilst the water was strewn with spars, shaken out of the boom.' In other quarters, however, the operations had not been very successful; of more than twenty fire-ships, only four reached the enemy's position, and not one did any damage. Cochrane bitterly complained of the way in which those fire-ships were handled; and then as bitterly complained that Gambier, who was with the fleet fourteen miles out at sea, did not come in to attack the French when their panic began at the explosion-ship. Cochrane telegraphed to Gambier over and over again, as soon as daylight came, by means of flag-signals, that most of the French ships could easily be captured. From this time ensued a series of cross-purposes. Gambier did not capture or destroy the French fleet, which Cochrane asserted could easily be done; and Cochrane was sent by his superior with dispatches to England, as if to get rid of him as a troublesome person. Fifty-one years after this occurrence, Captain Hutchinson, who had been lieutenant of the Valiant at the time, wrote to the Earl of Dundonald, to confirm the earl's statements as to the events of the day, and to relate certain anecdotes which had come under his personal notice. The French fleet, it appears, was in a panic when Cochrane commenced his attack. They ran their ships on shore, and escaped in a. fright. The French government afterwards admitted this to have been the case. 'There was one man, however,' Hutchinson said, 'who did remain when all the remainder of the crew had quitted. This was a quarter-master on board the Ocean, who, indignant at the cowardly desertion of the ships, hid himself when the crews were ordered to quit; and this was the salvation of that three-decker and two other ships, in an extraordinary way. A little midshipman belonging to one of our smaller vessels (I believe a brig) had been sent in a jolly-boat that night with a message to another ship, and having delivered it, instead of returning immediately to his own vessel, he proposed to his men to go and look at the French ships from which the crews had been seen to flee. His men of course were willing, and they approached cautiously very near to the three-decker (the night being very dark) before they could observe any stir on board or around her. They were then suddenly hailed by the quarter-master before mentioned with a loud "Qui vive?" (Who goes there?). Of course the poor little midshipman took it for granted that the ship was occupied by more than one man; and he hastily retreated, glad to escape capture himself. Had he known the truth, that little midshipman, with his jolly-boat and four men, might have taken possession of a three-decker and two seventy-fours!'* Now occurred a crisis in Lord Cochrane's professional life. The ministers proposed a vote of thanks to Lord Gambier. Lord Cochrane threatened, as member for Westminster, to oppose it, on the ground that Gambier had effected nothing to deserve thanks, and that he had neglected to destroy the French fleet in Aix Roads. Lord Mulgrave tried to dissuade him from this, as a course inconsistent in a naval officer; but Cochrane contended that, as a member of the House of Commons, he had rights and duties which overrode all professional considerations, and which he would honestly use without regard to the personal consequences to himself. As soon as this intention became known, Lord Gambier demanded a courtmartial. Two months elapsed before the court was held; but at length it commenced on the 26th July 1809, on board the Gladiator, *The Autobiography which Lord Cochrane lived to write, in his green old age as Earl of Dundonald, was the means of bringing to light many such curious anecdotes as the above, which would else have possibly been lost to the world. After the publication of the first volume in 1860, he received numerous communications from aged naval officers: many of which, including the above, were printed in the second volume. Half a century had not blunted the memory of the veterans. at Portsmouth. The court-martial, after a nine days' trial, acquitted Lord Gambier; but it was six months later before the vote of thanks was moved and carried in the Commons. Few things are more remarkable than the immense space of time which elapsed before Lord Cochrane was placed right with the public on this and other subjects. Had he not lived to a patriarchal age, he would not have had the pleasure of seeing justice rendered to himself. Certain charts, concerning which we need not weary the reader, were necessary to prove whether Gambier or Cochrane was more in the right concerning the famous affair in the Aix Roads. These charts were in the possession of the Admiralty; but for more than half a century he was not permitted to have a sight of them; when they did come to light, they supported the assertions which he had made in 1809. Writing as a white-haired old man in 1860, he said that, in 1859 and 1860, he had applied to two successive First Lords of the Admiralty, Sir John Pakington and the Duke of Somerset, for permission to inspect charts at the Admiralty; that the permission had been courteously given; that he there found the evidence for which he had been applying half a century in vain ; and then he added: 'It will in the present day be difficult to credit the existence of such practices and evil influences of party-spirit in past times, as could permit an administration, even for the purpose of preserving the prestige of a government, to claim as a glorious victory a neglect of duty which, to use the mildest terms, was both a naval and a national dishonour.' To return to the events of 1809. From this time forward,' said the Earl of Dundonald in 1860-that is, from the date when Lord Gambier was acquitted by the court-martial-'I never trod the deck of a British ship-of-war at sea, as her commander, till thirty-nine years afterwards, when I was appointed by her present Most Gracious Majesty to command the West India squadron.' Thirty-nine years of enforced absence from British sea-life for such a man! It was almost tantamount to taking away from him the very air he breathed. Cochrane was evidently much out of favour in official quarters; and he made another attempt to agitate for naval reform in the House of Commons. When a vote of thanks to Gambier was proposed, in April 1810, Cochrane moved as an amendment that the minutes of the court-martial should be produced, in order to shew that the acquittal was contrary to the evidence; but the House rejected the amendment, and passed the vote of thanks. MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS: 1809-1813. Just about that time, a military and naval expedition to Walcheren was much talked of, to capture and destroy the French fleet in the Scheldt, and to destroy Bonaparte's arsenals at Flushing, Antwerp, and Termeuge. It was to be one of the largest armaments ever sent forth from England, and was to be commanded by the Earl of Chatham and Sir Richard Strachan.* If this were the proper place, we might notice one of the most disastrous and humiliating defeats ever borne by Englishmen, through the incompetence of their rulers and commanders; but we have only to do with it so far as concerned Lord Cochrane. He sketched a plan for destroying the enemy's works and fleets, and sent it to the Admiralty; but not only was his plan refused; he himself was forbidden to join the expedition, the Impérieuse being placed under another officer. Forty thousand troops, 35 sail-of-the-line, 23 frigates, and nearly 200 smaller vessels, made a miserable business of the Walcheren expedition. What would have been the result had Cochrane joined it, cannot of course be said, though the probability is that he would have fallen again into disfavour by commenting freely on the incapacity of his superiors. Deprived of active duties at sea, Cochrane entered the arena of politics. He joined Sir Francis Burdett and Major Cartwright in the advocacy of parliamentary reform, and became an extreme Radical, according to the views of those days—although he lived to see such radicalism recognised and advocated by large majorities in the House of Commons. This is one of the many matters on which the venerable Earl of Dundonald lived to see justice done to the dashing and impetuous Lord Cochrane-the same man under two different aspects, fifty years apart. He succeeded on one occasion in inducing the House to inquire into the misdoings of the several Admiralty Courts. On another occasion he defended the privilege of liberty of speech, which had been placed in danger by the committal of Sir Francis Burdett to the Tower. On a third occasion he attacked the monstrous system on which pensions were given, not according to merit, but according to parliamentary influence. The pensions given to meritorious officers who had lost limbs in the service, were as nothing compared to those given in other ways. There were, too, sinecure offices in those days which now we look at with astonishment. Lords Arden, Camden, and Buckingham all held sinecure posts which brought them in more than £20,000 a year each. Cochrane's mode of stating these facts, in a speech in the House on the 11th of May 1810, was amusing as well as startling: '32 flag-officers, 22 captains, 50 lieutenants, 180 masters, 36 surgeons, 23 pursers, 91 boatswains, 97 gunners, 202 carpenters, and 41 cooks, in all 774 persons, cost the country £4028 less than the net proceeds of the sinecures of Lords Arden, Camden, and Buckingham. All * A pungent satire on these two officers, relating to their dilatory and ill-organised proceedings, was put forth by a witty writer of the period : 'The Earl of Chatham, with sword drawn, Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.' |