Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  They enjoyed light breezes and clear blue skies as they crossed the Bay of Biscay and sailed south along the coast of Portugal, past Cape St Vincent and the Rock of Lisbon. They reached Gibraltar on 30 September, spent a few days anchored in the bay, taking in water, fresh beef and barrels of rum and then headed east into the Mediterranean. They sighted the southern end of Majorca and the mountains of Sardinia and still the light airs continued. The convoy was now reduced to twenty-one sail and some of them were proving so recalcitrant that the Imperieuse had to fire her guns ‘for non compliance with signals’. On 26 October the scattered ships were hit by one of those squalls that come with so little warning in the Mediterranean. Strong winds whipped up the sea and heavy rain drenched the decks. The fore topsail of the Imperieuse was split and had to be unbent and replaced. The next day the wind dropped back to light airs and continued so as they approached their destination. They saw the island of Gozo at 6.00 a.m. on 31 October. Two hours later they were sailing along the northern shore of Malta, and at 10.00 a.m. they moored off the custom house in the great harbour of Valletta. On all sides were the towering ramparts and fortifications built by the Knights of St John during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a defence against the Turks. Anchored among the merchant ships and galleys and lateen-rigged local vessels were six British warships, a reminder to other maritime powers that Malta was now a British possession.

  Having delivered her convoy, taken on water and carried out repairs to her rigging, the Imperieuse headed north to receive further orders from the commanding officer, Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood who was cruising off Palermo. They sailed along the southern coast of Sicily and then north towards Corsica. On 13 November they passed Montecristo. The winds were so light and variable that Cochrane gave the order to heave to. At daylight the next morning they were still drifting on a flat, calm sea when they spotted two strange sails in the distance. The larger vessel appeared to be an armed polacre (a 3-masted vessel with square sails on the mainmast and mizenmast, and a large lateen sail on the foremast); the smaller vessel was a local trading vessel which had been captured by the polacre. The general opinion on board the Imperieuse was that the armed vessel was a Genoese privateer. Cochrane, following his usual practice, ordered the boats to be lowered and sent an armed party led by the Hon. William Napier to investigate. Aged twenty-one, Napier was a powerfully built Scotsman who was rapidly gaining a reputation as an outstanding seaman.2 As he approached the polacre he was surprised to see a Union Jack being hung over her gunwale. This checked the oarsmen in the British boats, but they continued to pull slowly towards the vessel and, when they were close under her stern, Napier hailed her captain. He demanded to know the nationality of the polacre and said that if she was English her captain could have no objection to being boarded by the boats of an English frigate. According to Marryat (whose version differs in some respects from Cochrane’s account) the captain of the polacre, Pasquil Giliano, answered that

  he was a Maltese privateer, but that he would not allow them to come on board; for, although Napier had hailed him in English, and he could perceive the red jackets of the marines in the boats, Giliano had an idea, from the boats being fitted out with iron tholes and grummets, like the French, that they belonged to a ship of that nation. A short parley ensued, at the end of which the captain of the privateer pointed to his boarding nettings triced up, and told them that he was prepared, and if they attempted to board he should defend himself to the last. Napier replied that he must board and Giliano leaped from the poop, telling him he must take the consequences. The answer was a cheer, and a simultaneous dash of the boats to the vessel’s side.3

  A fierce and bloody action followed. Cochrane later informed Collingwood that the crew of the polacre fired a volley of grape shot and musketry ‘in the most barbarous and savage manner, their muskets and blunderbusses being pointed from beneath the netting close to the people’s breasts’.4 Undeterred by the flying musket balls, the British seamen scrambled aboard and laid about them with cutlasses and boarding axes. The polacre had a crew of fifty-two men who put up a hard fight but they were cut down and forced to surrender. Within ten minutes Captain Giliano had been killed and the decks were strewn with dying and wounded men. At noon the boats returned to the Imperieuse laden with casualties: the British had lost two men killed and thirteen wounded; the polacre had suffered the death of her captain and had fifteen men wounded.

  The action proved to be a costly mistake. The polacre was not an enemy vessel but the Maltese privateer King George. Both captains had therefore been at fault. Cochrane had failed to display the British flag on his ship before despatching his boats, and his men had then attacked a vessel operating under a letter of marque. Captain Giliano, an experienced and successful Maltese privateer, had been suspicious of the Imperieuse, a Spanish-built ship flying no colours, with boats that appeared to be French. He had acted on a hunch and lost his life in the process. Cochrane was furious at the unnecessary loss of life. Marryat later observed, ‘I never, at any time, saw Lord Cochrane so much dejected as he was for many days after this affair. He appreciated the value of his men – they had served him in the Pallas, and he could not spare one of them.’5 Cochrane believed at the time, and always maintained, that the polacre was a pirate ship masquerading as a privateer and in his report to Collingwood he stressed that there were only five British subjects in the crew (three Maltese boys, a Gibraltar man and the captain) and the rest were ‘a set of desperate savages’, the renegades of a variety of countries most of which were at war with Britain.

  The case was tried before the Vice-Admiralty Court at Malta in January 1808. The owner of the polacre, James Briasco, lost his vessel which went to the crown. Cochrane was blamed for failing to display his flag and other irregularities and was ordered to pay legal costs. He was so angry at what he saw as the injustice of the proceedings that he wrote a ten-page memorandum which he sent to the Admiralty Board, but his complaints got him nowhere.6 The case confirmed his belief that the Vice-Admiralty Court at Malta was a flagrantly corrupt organisation, and he would later embark on a personal crusade to prove the full extent of the corruption.

  Five days after the action with the King George, privateer, the Imperieuse joined Collingwood’s fleet which was lying off Toulon. Cochrane went aboard the flagship Ocean and met the man who had been Nelson’s second in command at Trafalgar. Cuthbert Collingwood, now aged fifty-seven, had been the lifelong friend of Nelson and had taken over command of the fleet after Nelson’s death. Reserved, modest and deeply conscientious, Collingwood never achieved the public recognition accorded to some of his fellow admirals but he had proved himself brave in action, was unusually humane in his treatment of his men and was a master of strategy and diplomacy.7 It is evident from Cochrane’s writings that he much admired Collingwood and he was determined to impress him and ‘to make every exertion to merit his Lordship’s approbation’. His orders from the commander-in-chief required him to deliver letters to Captain Patrick Campbell of the Unité; to take command of the 22-gun Porcupine and the brig sloop Weazel and to take up a station to the south of Corfu ‘where you will keep a vigilant lookout for any ships or flotilla which may be coming from the Adriatic’ and, on discovering any enemy vessels, ‘you will use your utmost endeavours to destroy them’.8 But first he was ordered to return to Malta so that the wounded and the prisoners captured in the recent battle could be sent ashore. The log of the Imperieuse shows that she moored in Valletta harbour on 29 November; eight wounded men were sent to the hospital and a week later she set sail for the Adriatic. She spent the next two months cruising off Cephalonia and Corfu before returning to Malta on 27 January 1808.

  Cochrane’s description of this Adriatic cruise is curious. In his autobiography he maintained that he intercepted a convoy of enemy merchantmen who were carrying passes issued by Captain Campbell and that Campbell subsequently told Admiral Collingwood that he, Cochrane, was unfit to command a squadron. His inference was that
Campbell hoped to divert attention from his illegal selling of passes by casting aspersions on the officer who had been appointed to succeed him. Cochrane blamed Campbell for depriving him of the only opportunity he had ever had to take command of a British squadron. The facts do not bear out this interpretation. Serious charges were later made against Campbell in Malta for various illegal practices but Campbell had nothing to do with the fact that Cochrane did not get command of the squadron. Collingwood had received news that the enemy were planning to transport troops from Italy to Corfu. He therefore ordered Captain Thomas Harvey, who was senior to Cochrane and was in command of a 64-gun ship, to take over command of a strengthened Adriatic squadron which would be better able to obstruct the enemy troop movements.9

  On 1 February 1808 the Imperieuse set sail from Malta. She arrived off the coast of Spain near Barcelona on 10 February and proceeded slowly south. They captured several small vessels and were in the vicinity of Cartagena when they attacked four gunboats. The broadsides of the Imperieuse sank two of the gunboats, a third was captured and the fourth escaped. From the prisoners taken in the action they learnt that a large French privateer was at anchor in the Bay of Almeria. Cochrane decided to cut out the privateer but instead of sending in the frigate’s boats at night he planned a daylight attack.10

  At dawn on 21 February the Imperieuse, flying an American flag, rounded the headland on the eastern side of the great bay and headed for the town of Almeria which could be seen in the distance, lying at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. As they drew closer they could see numerous vessels lying at anchor under the protection of the heavy gun batteries which protected the town and the harbour. In theory a daylight attack was foolhardy because one of the batteries was mounted in a tower overlooking the anchorage and the Imperieuse offered an easy target for its four guns. However, Cochrane had rightly calculated that his boldness in anchoring under the guns, together with the American flag he was flying, would allay any fears that his frigate was an enemy vessel and would enable him to mount a surprise attack. He anchored between the French privateer, L’Orient, and two heavily laden brigs. Springs were made fast to the anchor cables of the Imperieuse which would enable the crew to control the position of the ship and swing her round to bring her guns to bear where needed. The boats were hoisted out and lowered and still there was no sound from the batteries around the bay. The boarding parties, armed with pistols and cutlasses, dropped down into the boats where they found several of the younger midshipmen, including Marryat, who were determined not to miss the action. At a signal from Lieutenant Caulfield, who was leading the cutting-out expedition, the oarsmen dug in their oars and pulled swiftly across the calm water towards the privateer. The crew of the French vessel had evidently been suspicious of the Imperieuse because they were not taken unawares. As the boats approached they let loose a hail of musket fire and began running out their carriage guns. Marryat was in the leading boat with Caulfield and recalled what happened next:

  ‘Half of our boat’s crew were laid beneath the thwarts; the remainder boarded. Caulfield was the first on the vessel’s decks – a volley of musketoons received him and he fell dead with thirteen bullets in his body.’11 Marryat was immediately behind Caulfield and was knocked down by him as he fell and was then trampled over by his shipmates as they rushed on to the deck. He lay ‘fainting with the pressure and nearly suffocated with the blood of my brave leader, on whose breast my face rested, with my hands crossed over the back of my head, to save my skull, if possible, from the heels of my friends and the swords of my enemies’.12 The British boarders showed no mercy to the crew of the privateer but hacked them down on the deck ‘and those who threw themselves into the sea to save their lives were shot as they struggled in the water’.13 The musket shots, and the yells and screams of the men fighting for their lives, alerted the shore batteries to the enemy in their midst. Soon the whole bay was filled with the booming roar of cannon, and the smooth water was rent and splattered by heavy shot. The log of the Imperieuse records that at 8.30 a.m. she opened fire on the town, her crew swinging her round with the springs to bring her guns to bear on one battery after another. The inhabitants of Almeria were so fascinated by the battle taking place in their harbour that large numbers of them lined the shore, at considerable risk of being hit by the guns of the Imperieuse.

  According to Marryat the fight on the privateer was over in eight minutes. The British seamen who had boarded her cut her anchor cable, set some sail and steered her between the Imperieuse and the nearest gun battery. The two merchant brigs were also captured by the men in the boats. Around mid-morning the wind died and for a while the Imperieuse and her three prizes were becalmed and at the mercy of the shore batteries. The privateer was hit but not seriously damaged and fortunately a light breeze sprang up. The Imperieuse, now flying the British flag, weighed anchor and, accompanied by her three prizes, sailed slowly out of range of the batteries. She had suffered unusually heavy casualties: in addition to the death of Lieutenant Caulfield, one man had been shot in the mouth, his jawbone broken in pieces; one man had been severely shot in the arm and another in the hand ‘it is supposed will lose the use of it’; three men had been badly wounded by shot in the back; and four men had received serious head wounds, which would prove fatal for one of them.14 Two days later they dropped anchor in the Bay of Gibraltar. When he received Cochrane’s report of the action Collingwood was generous in his praise: ‘Your Lordship’s vigilance and zeal in the public service has always been exemplary and the attack of the enemy on the 22nd under circumstances so critical is a brilliant instance of it – highly honourable to all engaged in it, and will be gratifying to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.’15 They remained at Gibraltar for three weeks. Cochrane arranged for the body of Lieutenant Caulfield to be taken ashore and buried with full military honours. When they returned to the ship the crew were instructed to give the Imperieuse an overhaul. They stripped out and replaced the decayed rigging; they restowed and cleaned the hold; and they worked over the ship from stem to stern, closely supervised by Cochrane who had learnt every trade on board from his early days under the instruction of Lieutenant Jack Larmour. When they set sail on 5 March the ship was looking at her most beautiful with freshly painted topsides, blackened yards and tarred rigging, polished brass, scrubbed decks and sails expertly set and trimmed. They passed Europa Point with a fair wind and headed east along the Spanish coast. Marryat was surprised to find that when they were sixty miles from the Rock of Gibraltar they could still see the distinct outline like a blue cloud on the horizon. They sailed close along the shore passing the numerous bays and beaches of the Costa del Sol with the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada rising up behind, their lower slopes covered with vines.16

  For the next six weeks they prowled around the coasts of Majorca and Minorca. Every strange ship was intercepted and boarded and, if they were French or Spanish, they were captured and despatched to Gibraltar with a prize crew on board. They observed and noted the Spanish warships in the harbour of Port Mahon, and fired on the army barracks at Ciudadella. Crossing over to Majorca they spent several days at anchor in the sheltered waters of Alcudia Bay while the boats went ashore to find fresh water. The water proved to be unfit for use but the boat’s crews returned with several sheep, bullocks and pigs. Before leaving the bay they destroyed a tower and dismounted its guns. From Majorca they headed north-west to the Catalonian coast of Spain and on 27 April they sighted the town of Palamos. They headed inshore and sailed south, past the old port of Blanes with its hilltop castle, until they came to the River Tordera. They anchored off the estuary, sent the boats in and were able to fill up the casks with twenty-six tons of clean, fresh water before the local militia arrived. When they opened fire with muskets on the sailors ashore, Cochrane ordered one of the guns of the Imperieuse to fire round shot at the soldiers who beat a hasty retreat into the woods. From the River Tordera to Cartagena they carried out a series of coastal raids, capturing a
number of vessels in the process. They returned to Gibraltar on 30 May 1808 accompanied by a flotilla of prizes.

  On 11 June 1808 Lord Collingwood sent the Admiralty a detailed list of vessels captured by British ships on the Mediterranean station during the period from 1 October 1807 to 4 April 1808. Since no major action involving line-of-battle ships had taken place in the area during that period the British ships on the list were frigates, sixth-rates or brig sloops. Most of them had captured two or three vessels; a few had captured four or five; the brig sloop Grasshopper had captured ten vessels, and the Unité, under the command of the energetic Captain Campbell, had captured eleven. During the same period Cochrane’s Imperieuse had captured twenty-nine vessels including four ships, eight brigs, two sloops and a variety of Mediterranean craft such as xebecs, settees and feluccas.17

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  During the last few months of 1807 and the early part of 1808 events were taking place in Spain and Portugal which would have a profound effect on the war in Europe. Napoleon’s plans to invade Britain had been thwarted by the failure of the French navy to arrive in the English Channel and provide protection for the landing craft and transports he had assembled at Boulogne and several other ports. The Battle of Trafalgar had decimated his fleet and underlined Britain’s command of the seas. Napoleon therefore determined to mount an indirect attack on the most stubborn of his enemies and destroy her by economic warfare. In November 1806 he issued the Berlin Decrees which forbade all those countries under French control from trading with Britain. Following his defeat of the Russians at the Battle of Friedland on 14 June 1807, the subsequent Treaty of Tilsit, and the Milan Decrees of November and December 1807, he endeavoured to impose an economic blockade which extended across Europe from the Bay of Biscay to the Urals.