Cochrane was no less exhilarated than his men. If only for another day, he had stopped the advance of the French column into Catalonia. Moreover, as he surveyed the wreckage and the bodies lying outside, he counted over fifty enemy dead to which had to be added the bodies of some who had been carried back in the retreat. His own losses amounted to three, two of them Spaniards and the other being one of his marines. He had surely proved, if proof were needed, that with half a dozen frigates he could not only disrupt the commerce, communications, and military movements of the enemy, he could also inflict losses on them which were out of all proportion to those suffered by his own men. The French column before him had lost fifty or a hundred of their most highly-trained attacking force and were no nearer to Catalonia now than they had been ten days before.
In the midst of the smoke and the carnage of that early morning engagement, however, there had been one incident which illustrated how many of the courtesies of war had survived into the more earnest age of hand grenades and mortars. When the rest of the attacking force had retreated, one French officer, refusing to withdraw until his men were safe, stood with his drawn sword upon the rubble. Cochrane, carrying an ordinary musket, came face to face with him and covered him with the weapon at once. But instead of lowering his sword in token of surrender, the Frenchman flourished it aloft and stood firmly "like a hero to receive the bullet". It was exactly the type of gesture to win Cochrane's admiration. "I never saw a braver or a prouder man," he remarked. Lowering his musket he added that such a man was not born to be shot like a dog and invited the Frenchman to take his leave and make his way back to his own lines. "He bowed as politely as though on parade, and retired just as leisurely."18
Instead of persuading him that he might now retire with honour from Fort Trinidad, Cochrane's success on 30 November increased his determination to hold the position for as long as possible. On 3 December, he actually assumed the offensive and led his men out in an attack on the French infantry, who had dug themselves in on the hillside. This was of less use tactically than in terms of morale. It was evidently the occasion on which he came back from the sortie in company with Midshipman Marryat. While ordering his men to run back for the cover of Fort Trinidad, Cochrane himself "walked leisurely along through a shower of musket-balls". Marryat, who also longed to run with the men, was obliged to walk beside Cochrane at the same "funeral pace". It was a fixed principle with Cochrane, he learnt, that he "never had run away from a Frenchman, and did not intend to begin".
As they walked on, Marryat tried to edge round so that Cochrane was between him and the French muskets. Cochrane noticed this, and as though it were a great joke, ordered Marryat back into position again. "Just drop astern, if you please, and do duty as a breastwork for me." If nothing else, it was the first lesson in supreme self-confidence.19
After so much jubilation there was a sour conclusion to the affair of Fort Trinidad. On the next day, 4 December, the French artillery in the town of Rosas succeeded in opening a breach in the citadel walls which the defenders could not close. The citadel duly surrendered. At the same time, there was a message from the Imperieuse that a gale was blowing up and that the frigate must put to sea. There could be no certainty when, or if, she would be able to bring further supplies or lend military support to her commander in his fortress. The situation was further complicated on 5 December by the withdrawal from battle and the surrender of the Spanish troops in Fort Trinidad. Accepting the inevitable, Cochrane arranged an evacuation of his men.
The Fame and the Magnificent anchored in Rosas Bay in response to signals from the Imperieuse, the three ships keeping up a steady bombardment of the French positions. Under cover of this, Cochrane withdrew his men from Fort Trinidad on the morning of 5 December and got them down to the beach by means of rope ladders. He also evacuated those other defenders who preferred to sail on the Imperieuse rather than to surrender to the French. The last two men to leave Fort Trinidad were Cochrane himself and the gunner of the Imperieuse. They set the charges, lit the fuses, and then followed the others down to the beach. One charge failed to go off but as the Imperieuse and the accompanying ships sailed out of Rosas Bay, the main tower of Fort Trinidad went skyward in an impressive display of the art of demolition.20
The reception awaiting Cochrane on his return from this cruise was varied. He had, predictably, become a hero of the Spanish war of liberation. The story of how he had rescued the Spanish flag from the ditch, under the fire of the French, was told as an illustration of his valour. "This gallant Englishman," said the Gerona Gazette, repeating the story, "has been entitled to the admiration and gratitude of this country from the first moment of its political resurrection." At home, the Naval Gazette reported the story enthusiastically, assuring its readers that with a mere "handful of men... Lord Cochrane made the most astonishing exertions".21
The enthusiasm of the Admiralty was, predictably, more muted. In reply to Collingwood's account of the action of Fort Trinidad and the prodigious damage done to the French for the loss of three men, they sent a reprimand to Cochrane for excessive use of powder and shot. They also showed evident dislike of his excessive use of the Imperieuse, which was apt to require more in repairs and maintenance than ships which kept out of harm's way. Cochrane observed bitterly that captains who avoided combat and brought ships home unblemished were rewarded with pensions of £1000 or £1500 a year by Admiralty placemen. He himself received nothing for thirty years and then, through the intervention of the Earl of Minto, was at length granted the ordinary good service pension.22
The "res angusta domi" of childhood, as well as the fierce sensitivity of his pride had left him acutely sensitive to financial injustice and the thought that he was being made a fool of by its agency. His action at Fort Trinidad had been at the expense of scouring the Mediterranean for prizes. It was not in the least inconsistent with the figure of the public hero that he should demand some practical reward for this sacrifice. His superiors might call on him to shed his blood or lay down his fife for his country, but they must not expect to pick his pockets. It was a belief latent in the minds of most serving officers and their men, though in Cochrane's case the circumstances of his life caused him to hold it with a certain bizarre prominence. It would have been simple to condemn him as grasping and materialistic, but this would hardly explain the acts of generosity attributed to him throughout his life. Though he had need of money, as a post-captain, his care for it was essentially the manifestation of his sense of pride and justice.
However, his correspondence and despatches began to show another and more urgent preoccupation. He was convinced that he had the key to Britain's victory in the war against Napoleon and that the recent exploits of the Imperieuse showed that he had mastered its use. He had shown what could be done on the French coast and in eastern Spain. The same could be done on the Atlantic coast, with a few frigates and their marines assisting the Spanish to impede or block French military operations. Best of all, a small military force, supported by frigates, should be landed on the ill-defended French islands of the Bay of Biscay. From there, such operations might be carried out against the west coast of mainland France as would make it impossible for Napoleon to maintain an army in Portugal or in Spain. By contrast, for Wellington to land in one of the remotest parts of the Iberian peninsula, and to fight a long overland campaign to reach the Pyrenees and enter France was a military absurdity. By making it impossible for the French to supply or reinforce their troops, and by putting them at the mercy of the guerrillas in consequence, the tide of war might be turned quickly and spectacularly. As Cochrane later wrote, "neither the Peninsular War, nor its enormous cost to the nation, from 1809 onwards, would ever have been heard of".23
This was no mere eccentricity on Cochrane's part. In England, the Naval Chronicle, echoing the view of the Morning Chronicle and the non-ministerial press, was an advocate of this new strategy.
Seeing what Lord Cochrane has done with his single ship upon the French shores,
we may easily conceive, what he would have achieved if he had been entrusted with a sufficient squadron of ships, and a few thousand military, hovering along the whole extent of the French coast, which it would take a considerable portion of the army of France to defend.24
After his eventful cruises of the summer and autumn of 1808, Cochrane received orders to bring the Imperieuse back to England early in 1809. He had asked for leave to return, in any case, so that he might bring his plan for attacking the Biscay islands before the Board of Admiralty. In bringing him home, their Lordships had recognised their need of him, but it was not quite for the purpose he supposed. When the Imperieuse dropped anchor off Plymouth, Cochrane was greeted by news of impending naval disaster.
Its architect was Admiral Lord Gambier, an evangelist in a cocked hat, who had been commanding the blockade of the French battle-fleet at Brest. St Vincent described him privately as "a compound of paper and packthread". The poet Thomas Hood, in his "Ode to Admiral Gambier, G.C.B.", mocked his opposition to drink in all its forms.
OH! Admiral Gam I dare not mention bier,
In such a temperate ear;
Oh! Admiral Gam an Admiral of the Blue,
Of course, to read the Navy List aright,
For strictly shunning wine of either hue,
You can't be Admiral of the Red or White.25
Gambier, round-faced, smooth-shaven and earnest, had been preoccupied with the salvation of his crews. When high winds and a strong sea carried the blockade force from its position briefly, Rear-Admiral Willaumez seized the opportunity. In a matter of hours, the naval might of France was at sea, ready to fall upon the fat prey of England's West India convoys. The size of the threatened calamity, and the political influence of the West India merchants, allowed no leisure for the gratification of personal hatreds at that moment. There was only one man with the experience and resource to retrieve the situation. Through their clenched teeth, the ministry and its placemen admitted as much. At Plymouth, Cochrane found a letter awaiting him from Johnstone Hope, Second Lord of the Admiralty, describing the disaster. He had not even had time to step ashore before the semaphore of the flag officer commanding the Plymouth station began to telegraph the Imperieuse with the message which had been signalled urgently from London. Cochrane was to report immediately to Whitehall.
5
In the Face of the Enemy
THE extent of the threatened naval reverse was clear at a glance. By 21 February, Gambier had been blown off station in a westerly gale. At dawn that day the French squadron of eight battleships and accompanying frigates slipped its moorings and, under the command of Rear-Admiral Willaumez, glided away from the Brest anchorage in a fresh north-east wind. By 9 a.m. the last of the ships had rounded the Vendree rock and the entire squadron stood out to sea in line of battle. Willaumez carried regiments of troops and provisions for an Atlantic voyage. The first target might be the British convoys but the ultimate destination was the French West Indian base at Martinique.
H.M.S. Revenge sighted the French ships off the coast of southern Brittany within a few hours of their escape, but she soon lost them again. The next sighting was by Commodore Beresford, commanding H.M.S. Theseus and three other 74-gun ships. Beresford was blockading a smaller French group of three ships of the line plus frigates in the port of Lorient. It was on the following afternoon, as the winter light began to fail that he saw Willaumez's squadron and formed his four ships into line of battle with the Theseus at their head. By 6 p.m. he had lost contact with the enemy. During this diversion, three French ships of the line and their five frigates escaped from his own blockade.
Gambier and the Admiralty remained in comfortable ignorance of the eleven French battleships and their frigates now at large in the Bay of Biscay. They represented a powerful striking force which could remain supremely elusive. Royal Navy captains did not need to be reminded that it had taken Nelson over six months to bring Villeneuve to battle in 1805. Unlike Villeneuve, Willaumez had the advantage of starting in the vast spaces of the Atlantic.
So far as Gambier and the Channel Fleet were concerned, the French ships were nowhere to be found. Gambier detached a squadron of his own, in the hope that Willaumez was running for the Mediterranean. The squadron made a voyage to Madeira and back without a sight of the enemy.
On 23 February, H.M.S. Caesar, flying the flag of Rear-Admiral Stopford, passed an agreeable day taking on stores, including five live bullocks, brought out from England by the supply frigate Emerald. The Caesar was one of four ships keeping up a blockade on the few French warships in the port of Rochefort, almost at the midpoint of the Biscay coast. She was anchored at a discreet distance from the tip of the Ile de Ré, which sheltered the northern flank of the approach to Rochefort and La Rochelle, as the Ile d'Oleron sheltered the south. The outer anchorage was known as the Basque Roads. Further in, among the shoals and smaller islands of Aix and Madame were the so-called Aix Roads. These offered a natural anchorage and a good defensive position, which had become important to the French fleet and was therefore blockaded as a matter of routine.
At 10 p.m., having taken on stores, the guns of the Caesar were run out for some belated gunnery practice, followed by small-arms drill. During this, the sky to the north-west was suddenly lit by the flare of signal rockets fired by another blockader, H.M.S. Amazon. The Caesar got under way immediately and joined her ally, in time to discover that a large French fleet was heading for the Basque Roads and the anchorage of the Ile d'Aix. Willaumez, having mustered all the ships from Brest and Lorient was now preparing to add those at Rochefort to his fleet. Fully supplied and manned, the entire force might then sail for Martinique.
Stopford made no attempt to engage a group of such size, judging it more important to get word to the Channel Fleet. He sent the frigate Naiad to "proceed with all haste", bearing the news to Gambier and their Lordships of the Admiralty. There was hardly any need to add that an anchorage as extensive and irregular as the Basque Roads would be extremely difficult to blockade. If the French could give Gambier the slip at Brest, they could probably leave their anchorage in Aix Roads as soon as they wished. To attack them there would be extremely hazardous. Indeed, there were few Royal Navy captains who had been so foolhardy as to risk raiding that stretch of enemy coast. But the Pallas and the Imperieuse had given their commander considerable experience of it. So it was that Lord Mulgrave sent for Cochrane, as a matter of extreme urgency.1
The interview in the First Lord's room at the Admiralty was a bizarre one by any standard. From his ornate apartments, beyond whose windows the milkmaids tended the cattle which grazed St James's Park, Mulgrave was apt to rule his unseen ships as though they were part of his estates. He was no naval strategist, though he had been Colonel of the 31st Foot. In private he liked to think of himself as a patron of the arts, collecting Rembrandt and Titian, commissioning Wilkie to paint such genre pieces as "Rent Day" and "Sunday Morning", and having his portrait painted, with a certain inevitability, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Mulgrave had not enjoyed a political career of much distinction. He had been a nondescript Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1805 until 1806 and had gone out of office with the Tories. When they came back, Portland made him First Lord of the Admiralty in 1807. In appearance and behaviour he was, as Benjamin Haydon remarked, "high Tory and complete John Bull". During a period when the news of the war seemed to be invariably discouraging, he also had the undoubted gift of dismissing catastrophes as though they were mere inconveniences. The Walcheren disasters he spoke of as "adverse winds and unfavourable weather", in the tone of one whose garden party had been rained upon.2
It was impossible to imagine a man who had less in common with Cochrane. Yet Mulgrave greeted him with great frankness and a certain bonhomie. Their Lordships, he announced, were most concerned about the Basque Roads. They feared and expected that "the French fleet might slip out again". Blockade being a doubtful preventative, they had decided that the French ships should "forthwith be destroyed
". No one, of course, had been able to suggest how this admirable strategy was to be implemented. Willaumez was in an excellent defensive position, and there were soldiers and guns on the Ile d'Aix. A man of enterprise and daring might, perhaps, risk an attack with fire-ships.
"However," said Mulgrave, "there is Lord Gambier's letter."
And he duly handed over to Cochrane the "most secret" despatch of 11 March, as though it had been the bill of fare in a hostelry. Cochrane read it. He was dismayed to find that Gambier had a pious objection to fire-ships and weapons of a similar nature on the ground that they were "a horrible mode of warfare". To use them in the Basque Roads, he added, would be "hazardous, if not desperate". All the same, their Lordships had set their hearts upon fire-ships as being the only devices which stood the least chance of success. One after another, the senior officers whom they approached had refused to have anything to do with the scheme. At last, swallowing their pride, they had sent for the one man who was ruthless enough, and mad enough, to attempt it. Cochrane was offered the command of the fireships and of the attack on the French fleet.3
As Mulgrave explained, the Admiralty Board and the ministers had worked out carefully the possible consequences.
Cochrane Page 18