Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  Instead of heading for Valparaiso, Cochrane sailed north in search of the last two Spanish frigates known to be still at large. He took the squadron as far as Acapulco but when they eventually tracked down the frigate Venganza in the roadstead at Guayaquil they found she had already surrendered to San Martin’s men and was flying the Peruvian flag. The crew of the other frigate had given themselves up at Callao. When Cochrane returned to Callao on 25 April 1822 he was given a cool reception. His former second-in-command, Blanco Encalada, was now on secondment as commander of the Peruvian navy and his seamen were on their guard to prevent Cochrane from attempting to seize another prize. San Martin tried to heal the rift between them by offering Cochrane an estate, and the newly constituted Order of the Sun, and the post of First Admiral of Peru. Cochrane was unrelenting in his response: ‘I will not accept either honours or rewards from a Government constituted in defiance of solemn pledges; nor will I set foot in a country governed not only without law, but contrary to law.’45 And with that he bade farewell to Peru and set sail for Valparaiso.

  18

  Brazil and Beyond

  1822–1825

  On the morning of 2 June 1822 Maria Graham was having breakfast in her cottage in Valparaiso when the child of one of her neighbours came running in and screamed:

  ‘Señora, he is come!

  He is come!’ ‘Who is come, child?’

  ‘Our admiral, our great and good admiral; and if you come to the veranda, you will see the flags in the Almendral.’

  It was cold and raining but when Maria looked out she saw the cheerful red, blue and white colours of the Chilean flag flying from doors and windows across the town. Lying out in the bay were two ships which had not been there the day before. They were the O’Higgins and the Valdivia, ‘and all the inhabitants of the port and suburbs had made haste to display their flags and their joy on Lord Cochrane’s safe return.’1 The sailors had been away for nearly two years and they were welcomed back as heroes. Zenteno, the Minister of Marine, announced that the Supreme Director had ordered that a medal be struck for the officers and men of the squadron, ‘for their gallantry and in proof that Chile rewards the heroes who advocate her cause’.2

  Maria Graham had arrived in Valparaiso five weeks before in the saddest of circumstances. Her husband Thomas Graham, a naval captain who had served as a midshipman with Cochrane in the Thetis, had died during the voyage out. Governor Zenteno arranged for him to be buried in the grounds of the fortress and many people in the town attended the funeral service in the church. Maria had already published books about her travels in India and Italy and would later produce a vivid account of her time in Chile and Brazil.3 She was an accomplished artist as well as a writer and in years to come she would marry the artist Sir Augustus Wall Callcott and, as Lady Callcott, would publish the best-selling children’s book Little Arthur’s History of England. She was now thirty-seven, a woman of striking good looks but subject to frequent illness. She was greatly cheered by Cochrane’s arrival, ‘not only because I want to see him whom I look up to as my natural friend here but because I think he ought to have influence to mend some things, and to prevent others’.4

  Cochrane had gone ashore to see William Hoseason, who was acting as his prize agent and was meant to be handling his financial affairs. Maria Graham walked across the town to Hoseason’s house, ‘and there I found Lord Cochrane. I should say he looks better than when I last saw him in England, although his life of exertion and anxiety has not been such as is in general favourable to the looks.’5 In due course they would see much of each other and became good friends but first Cochrane had to sort out the finances of the squadron. He travelled to Santiago and presented the squadron’s accounts to the authorities; these included his own demands for the prize money he reckoned he was owed for the capture of the Esmeralda. Unfortunately the cost of raising and paying the troops and supplying ships and men for the liberating expedition to Peru had put severe demands on the finances of Chile. There was barely enough money to pay the seamen and no money to carry out much-needed repairs to the warships. However, when the government auditors examined the squadron’s accounts they found so many irregularities that they rejected them, to the annoyance of Cochrane who felt that the accounts should be passed without question in view of his heroic contribution to the cause of independence. The resulting arguments put a strain on Cochrane’s relations with O’Higgins and the government, which were not helped by suspicions in some quarters that he was shipping back to England a fortune in gold and silver. We know from his letters to his brother William that he had come out to America with the hope that he would make his fortune, and there is evidence to show that around this period he was sending home considerable sums of money on British warships.6

  There were lighter moments during his last months in Chile. Following his triumphal return to Valparaiso he had been granted four months leave. Early in July he decided to pay a visit to his estate at Quintero and determined to make the journey on board the steamship Rising Sun which had recently arrived from England. He invited along a party which included Don Zenteno and his daughter, three naval captains and other officers from the squadron, and Maria Graham who later noted in her journal ‘It was with no small delight that I set foot on the deck of the first steam-vessel that ever navigated the Pacific.’7 They travelled under steam power for twenty miles and were nearly abreast of Quintero when the engines stopped and a headwind forced them to sail back to Valparaiso.

  Maria Graham later made the journey to Quintero on horseback and was charmed by the beauty of the scenery. The house which Cochrane was having built looked across a green valley with woods and low hills, a freshwater lake swarming with waterfowl, and extensive pastures with grazing cattle. ‘After dinner we walked to the garden, which lies in a beautiful sheltered spot, nearly a league from the house. At the entrance lay several agricultural implements, brought by his Lordship for the purpose of introducing modern improvements into Chile, the country of his adoption.’8 Cochrane had ambitious plans to set up a business in partnership with John Miers, an English engineer. They would raise beef to supply visiting warships, set up die-making machines for producing coins for the government and farm the land using some of the methods he had once discussed with William Cobbett.

  His future plans were thrown off course in November when he received a letter from Antonio Correa da Camera, the Brazilian agent in Buenos Aires, offering him command of the Brazilian navy. Brazil was embarking on a war of independence and the patriot leaders in Rio de Janeiro were aware that seapower would be a key element in the future conflict with the Portuguese forces which still dominated most of the coastal towns and cities. Cochrane was not inclined to take up the Brazilian offer at first but a number of factors led to him changing his mind. The Chilean government had decided that it could not afford and did not need a navy any more. The officers and men were being paid off which meant that Cochrane no longer had an active role to play. On 19 November central Chile was hit by the first of a series of earthquakes of devastating force. Most of the houses and public buildings in Valparaiso were reduced to rubble and the tidal waves which followed the earthquakes caused further damage and loss of life. Cochrane’s house at Quintero was among those destroyed. And following on the heels of the natural disasters came the spectre of civil war. Much of the population was disillusioned by the effects of independence and General Freire, the Governor of Concepción, decided to capitalise on the general mood of discontent. He gathered an army and began a slow march towards Santiago where he intended to supplant O’Higgins and his government. He invited Cochrane to join him but Cochrane’s first loyalty was to O’Higgins and he had no wish to become enmeshed in the internal politics of Chile.

  On 29 November Cochrane wrote and accepted the Brazilian offer and tendered his resignation to the government of Chile. He issued farewell addresses to the Chilean people, to the trading community and to the officers of the Chilean navy and made his preparations for leaving. On
18 January 1823 he went aboard the brig Colonel Allen accompanied by his secretary William Jackson, four British naval officers and Maria Graham – her house had been destroyed by the earthquake and he was concerned about her safety. ‘He could not bear, he said, to leave the unprotected widow of a British officer thus on the beach, a castaway as it were in a ruined town, a country full of civil war.’9 A low-key but moving ceremony took place as Captain Crosbie lowered Cochrane’s flag from the masthead of the schooner Montezuma and presented it to him on the poop deck of the Colonel Allen.

  They sailed around Cape Horn and on 13 March, nearly two months after leaving Valparaiso, they reached Rio de Janeiro. Low clouds and driving rain hid the surrounding backdrop of high-peaked mountains but the lower slopes of the Sugar Loaf Mountain were clearly visible as they entered the great Bay of Guanabara. They passed a number of forts guarding the harbour entrance and dropped anchor among the ships lying off the waterfront of Rio. A port officer came on board and, learning that they had come from Chile, he asked Maria Graham whether she knew Lord Cochrane. ‘When he found his Lordship was actually on board, he flew to his cabin door, and entreated him to kiss his hand; then snatched his hat, and calling to the Captain to do as he would and anchor wherever he pleased without ceremony, jumped over the side to be the first, if possible, to convey to the Emperor the joyful intelligence.’10

  Prince Pedro, who had recently become the constitutional emperor of Brazil, was the son of the King of Portugal. When Napoleon’s armies had invaded Portugal in 1807 and the Portuguese royal family had fled to Brazil, he had been nine years old. He was now twenty-three and had the intelligence and courage which his father conspicuously lacked. He was a gifted musician and a fine horseman, and he would prove a capable leader during the conflicts of the next few years. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 his father had returned to Portugal: after eight prosperous years as the capital of the Portuguese empire with the same rights and freedoms as the mother country, Brazil reverted to its former, downtrodden status as a colony. Prince Pedro had remained in Rio and had been persuaded to lead a rebellion which led to him making his historic declaration on 7 September 1822, ‘Independence or Death!’ The next stage was to confront and overcome the Portuguese forces which were dominant in the northern regions of Brazil. The guiding spirit behind the independence movement was José Bonifácio de Andrada, a distinguished scholar and former scientist who was now Chief Minister. It was he and his Minister of Marine who had created a Brazilian navy by commandeering all the Portuguese warships stationed at Rio de Janeiro. They partially solved the problem of manning the navy by recruiting sailors from North America and Britain but they still had to rely on a considerable number of Portuguese seamen of questionable loyalty.

  Within hours of his arrival in Rio, Cochrane was introduced to Prince Pedro and his Chief Minister, and the following day he was rowed out in the company of the young emperor to see the ships which would be under his command. There was one ship of the line, three frigates, two corvettes, three brigs and a number of schooners. The ship of the line was a two-decker of 64 guns named the Pedro Primiero. She had recently undergone a refit in the dockyard and after some initial disappointments would prove a powerful weapon in Cochrane’s hands. Having inspected the fleet, Cochrane entered into negotiations on his pay and conditions with the Minister of Marine. He was in a strong position and exploited it ruthlessly. There were already two admirals in the Brazilian navy and, because he was determined that he should have clear authority over them, the rank of First Admiral was specially created for him. He rejected the pay he was offered and insisted on being paid the same as he had received in Chile. Recent research has shown that he named a considerably higher figure than he was actually paid in Chile.11 The sum of $17,960 per annum which was finally agreed upon was three times more than any other Brazilian flag officer and considerably more than he would have received as a British admiral. The worst interpretation that can be put on his behaviour is that he was dishonest and avaricious. In his defence it could be argued that he was aware of his formidable talents and outstanding record and, as a mercenary for hire, he demanded what he considered he was worth.

  On the morning of 1 April 1823, barely two weeks after his arrival in Rio, Cochrane put to sea with the only four ships which were ready to sail. A fifth would follow later. He would be away for the next seven months and the actions of his squadron during that time would play a crucial part in securing the independence of Brazil. Maria Graham was with the crowd gathered on the waterfront to cheer the men on their way. She observed that as the guns of the fort began thundering out a salute, the sun broke through from behind the clouds and a brilliant yellow light illuminated the ships so that ‘they seemed to swim in a sea of glory’.12 Unfortunately their first encounter with the Portuguese fleet was anything but glorious. They headed north and sighted the coast of Bahia on 3 May. The following morning they were confronted by the distant sails of the enemy. On learning of Cochrane’s approach, no fewer than eleven warships, including five frigates and one 74-gun ship, had set sail from Salvador and were bearing down on the five ships of the Brazilian squadron.13 Following Nelson’s advice, ‘Never mind manoeuvres, always go at them’, Cochrane headed straight for the centre of the advancing line. His flagship cut through the Portuguese line firing sporadically as she did so. His powerful ship failed to inflict any damage on the enemy and when he signalled to his other ships to attack the four Portuguese vessels he had detached from the main fleet, they ignored his signal. Heavily outnumbered as he was, Cochrane had no option but to call off the action and retreat to the harbour of Morro de São Paulo. It transpired that on his own ship some of the Portuguese seamen were preventing the powder from the magazine reaching the guns. In his despatch to the Chief Minister, Cochrane explained his problems with the crews and pointed out the numerous defects in his ships (rotten sails, defective cartridges and mortars) but he remained positive. ‘I am aware of the difficulties under which a new government labours and am ready to do all in my power under the circumstances.’14

  He decided to cut his losses and to put the best officers and men into three of his ships and rely on these to carry out a plan which was as audacious as anything he had devised in the past. He intended to blockade Salvador and then attack the harbour and the assembled fleet with the assistance of fireships. The city had been under siege from the land by patriot forces for nearly a year and was therefore dependent on supplies coming in by sea. When Cochrane began intercepting vessels bound for the harbour the inhabitants of San Salvador faced an increasingly desperate situation. After blockading the coast for three weeks Cochrane decided to make a reconnaissance raid to test the defences. On the night of 12 June, while the Portuguese commanders were distracted by a ball which was being held in the town, he sailed the Pedro Primiero, accompanied by two other ships of his squadron, into the Bay of Bahia towards the anchored fleet.15 Unfortunately the wind dropped and they found themselves becalmed under the guns of the forts and in the presence of the Portuguese warships. Cochrane had taken account of the tides when planning the raid so he used the ebb tide, and skilful seamanship, to drift back to the open sea. The news that the Brazilian flagship had sailed into their midst and that a fireship attack was being planned caused consternation among the Portuguese leaders. Under pressure from the inhabitants who were now suffering severe hardship from the shortage of food, General Madeira de Melo, the Governor of Salvador, ordered the evacuation of the city. On 2 July an armada of seventeen warships and seventy-five transports and merchantmen loaded with Portuguese citizens, troops and the contents of the arsenal, headed out to sea. Within hours of their departure an advanced detachment of Brazilian soldiers entered Salvador and hoisted the flag of independent Brazil over the city.

  What happened next was a rout on a scale not unlike that of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Spread out across the ocean the Portuguese warships seemed incapable of defending themselves and their convoy from the persistent attacks
of the tiny Brazilian squadron. While Cochrane used his flagship to mount hit-and-run attacks on the warships, his other four vessels concentrated on the helpless transports. Within a week sixteen ships and more than 2,000 troops had been captured. ‘I have the honour to inform you,’ he wrote in a despatch to the Minister of Marine in Rio, ‘that half the enemy’s army, their colours, ammunition, stores and baggage have been taken. We are still in pursuit, and shall endeavour to intercept the remainder of the troops, and shall then look after the ships of war…’16 Cochrane made most of his attacks on the warships at night. At three in the morning of 16 July he crowded on sail, swept alongside one of the frigates and fired a broadside at close range. While tacking to give them the other broadside the mainsail split in two and he decided to abandon the chase. He ordered Captain Taylor in the 38-gun frigate Niteroi to continue the pursuit of the remains of the convoy. Taylor followed the ships across the Atlantic to Portugal and in the sea lanes off the mouth of the Tagus he captured or destroyed more than a dozen merchantmen.

  After carrying out running repairs Cochrane headed for São Luis, the capital of the province of Maranhão. The town was situated in the steamy atmosphere of the equator a few hundred miles from the mouth of the River Amazon. He now proceeded to put in effect one of the boldest acts of deception that he had ever attempted. On 26 July he sighted the town and headed for the anchorage, flying British colours to fool the inhabitants into thinking that the Pedro Primiero was a British ship coming to help the Portuguese cause.17 This convinced the authorities who sent out a brig with despatches to welcome them. When the brig’s captain stepped on board the Pedro Primiero he was astonished to find himself surrounded by British and American sailors in the service of the rebel emperor. With the town now in range of his guns Cochrane replaced the British colours with the Brazilian flag and sent the captain ashore with a message to the commandant informing him that the province of Bahia had been liberated and that the Pedro Primiero was the forerunner of a mighty fleet of warships and transports full of troops which had come ‘to liberate Maranhão from foreign oppression and to allow the people to choose their system of government’.18 Of course there was no Brazilian fleet in the vicinity but the commandant was not to know that.