Cochrane
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Your services to your country are recorded among those of the most brilliant of a war signalised by heroic achievements. I will lay before her Majesty the expression of your gratitude, and I can assure you that the Queen has sanctioned with the greatest satisfaction the advice of her ministers.29
The death of Admiral Sir Davige Gould soon created a vacancy in the Order. Victoria placed it at Auckland's disposal with instructions that it should be conferred upon Cochrane. On 25 May, thirty-three years after his degradation by the Prince Regent, he was gazetted for a second time as Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. Prince Albert, as Grand Master of the Order, sent him the warrant at once. Though the installation was some weeks away, Cochrane had been summoned to the Queen's birthday drawing room at St James's on 27 May. The Prince wished him to wear the cross on that occasion. He was also entitled to wear most of his foreign decorations, though his title as Marquess of Maranham was not recognised. Government policy prohibited Royal Navy officers from serving under foreign titles.30
On the warm May afternoon the staircases and anterooms beyond the audience chamber were crowded with the elite of Victorian society - political, military, and naval - waiting to be presented to the sovereign. With her escort of Life Guards, the young Queen appeared in her train of gold-embroidered satin, trimmed with honeysuckle and ornamented with diamonds. Among the plumes of the general staff, Prince Albert attended in the uniform of Field Marshal, as did the Duke of Cambridge, and Wellington. In this company, the tall, stooping figure of the old admiral was presented to the Queen. The Garter installation, at Buckingham Palace on 12 July, made a bizarre sequel. Prince Albert, as Grand Master of the Order, presided in the presence of the Knights Grand Cross and many inferior Crosses. Among the members was the frail figure of the Duke of Wellington. The Duke, who had so summarily dismissed Cochrane's plea for justice, while Prime Minister, that Cochrane felt it would be demeaning to petition him ever again, came slowly across and shook him by the hand, "expressing his satisfaction" at this reinstatement. Even more bizarre was the role of Lord Ellenborough, son of the famous judge, who was now called upon by Prince Albert to act as Cochrane's sponsor. It was not so much an act of reconciliation as poetic justice. The next Lord Ellenborough, in his turn, commented on his father's predicament.
Taken by surprise, he may well have preferred to act as his sponsor to causing an unseemly squabble in, or almost in, the presence of the Throne, and I do not see that any inferences can well be drawn from his conduct.31
To Cochrane, the most heartening thing of all was that he was not required to be knighted on this occasion. Victoria and Albert, at least, had vindicated him by confirming that his knighthood dated from its first conferment in 1809 and that Cochrane had done nothing at any time to forfeit his title.
It had always been his own contention that he could not resume active service so long as his honours were not restored. He had been promoted to Vice-Admiral in 1841 but still remained on half-pay. Now that his conditions were met, there was no reason, in principle, why Cochrane should not resume active service in the Royal Navy at the age of seventy-two. However, he had grown so accustomed to "neglect" of one sort or another that he must have been doubly surprised by a letter from Lord Auckland on 27 December 1847.
I shall shortly have to name a Commander-in-Chief for the North American and West Indian Station. Will you accept the appointment? I shall feel it to be an honour and a pleasure to have named you to it, and I am satisfied that your nomination will be agreeable to her Majesty, as it will be to the country, and, particularly, to the navy.32
He accepted the offer which, in effect, made him admiral of Britain's Atlantic fleet. From other admirals, from Members of Parliament, and from Delane of The Times, letters of congratulation reached him on the news of his appointment. They spoke of the "foul aspersions" against him having been dispelled and of the justice "to the bravery of your lordship as an officer and your goodness and honour as a man". But, gratifying though this might be, there was peace in the Atlantic and no opportunity for Cochrane to exercise the very talents which were now so widely praised. To have held such a command in 1810 would have enabled him to alter the course of the greatest war in history. To hold it in 1847 was merely a matter of courtesy.33
Cochrane remained commander-in-chief from the beginning of 1848 until the spring of 1851. He sailed from Plymouth on his flagship H.M.S. Wellesley on 25 March, and there were, of course, sufficient routine duties to occupy him. The United States was involved in war with Mexico, and Cochrane's ships were to maintain a patrol of the Gulf of Mexico in the hope that this would induce both sides to seek peace under the threat of British intervention. In general, the fleet was occupied with the protection of British fishing interests and the suppression of the slave trade.
Cochrane himself took the opportunity of reporting to Lord Auckland on various matters which caught his attention. The convict hulks should be removed from Bermuda, the defences and the dockyards of the island reorganised, proper drainage and water supplies provided. Despite his appointment to the new command, Cochrane gave the impression of a man looking about him with increasing frustration for something to do. It was in vain that Auckland assured him that even the most routine class of duties "is not without interest, and carries credit as it is performed with justice and exactness".34
The two men exchanged letters frequently during the first year of Cochrane's command, Auckland sending news of Chartism in England and revolution in Europe. It was on 1 January 1849 that Admiral Dundas, assistant to the First Lord, wrote to Cochrane, "It is with great regret I have to inform you of the death of Lord Auckland, after a few hours' illness." The new First Lord was Sir Francis Baring, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose interest was less in the proposals and improvements suggested by Cochrane than in the making of economies wherever possible. Cochrane turned his attention to observing and noting the topography and industry of the Canadian Atlantic coast, the geology of Bermuda, and the disposition of the inhabitants of the West Indies. His journal contained a mass of observations on his travels, from Nova Scotia to Trinidad. It was in Trinidad that he saw something which impressed him more than almost any other sight during his period as commander-in-chief.35
Near La Brea was the famous "Pitch Lake", a bituminous expanse some three miles in circumference. The surface was a waxy brown, though Cochrane noted from the corrugations in it that the bitumen below the surface was "still on the move". His first thought was that it might in some way be used as fuel for steamships. "Our vessels would be supplied when an enemy would be almost deprived of the use of steam in these seas." Though this bitumen had been tried in laying London pavements, it had gone out of fashion and remained unexploited. Cochrane, finding too little employment under Sir Francis Baring, seized on its possibilities. He devised new uses for it and took out patents accordingly. In 1851 he was granted a patent for the use of bitumen in constructing sewers, tunnels, columns, and capitals. In 1852 there followed patents for its use in insulating wire, and in 1853 for producing a substitute for expensive gums and for laying pipes below ground. Nor was this all. He proposed to use bitumen as the basis for a grand scheme to end the pollution of the Thames. Embankments, their stones set in waterproof bitumen, were to be built out to narrow the river between Vauxhall and London Bridge. The aim would be to create a deeper and faster-flowing river which would sweep the pollution out to sea. Sewers were to be laid, running beneath the docks themselves, and were to be watertight subterranean tunnels whose pavement stones would, once again, be made waterproof by bitumen.36
As might be expected of Cochrane, he dealt speedily with the argument that the abolition of slavery in the West Indies had merely brought poverty to those who might otherwise have worked contentedly in servitude. There was no doubt, when he visited Jamaica, that most of those on the island were living in poverty. But the answer was simple. When he inspected the Customs House, he discovered that much of the island's food was imported and subje
ct to a high rate of duty. Moreover, the sugar plantations employed fewer workers since emancipation, so that there was now a reservoir of surplus and unemployed labour. At the same time, the government held tracts of potentially productive land which it declined to let anyone work. The answer, in Cochrane's view, was simple enough. Let the land be given or leased to the unemployed, so that enough food might be produced to feed the starving and, indeed, to make the island self-sufficient. Even here there was a major difficulty. So many taxes were payable on the transfer of land that even workers who could afford to buy land were unable to pay the taxes as well.
Is it reasonable to instruct the negroes in their rights as men, and open their minds to the humble ambition of acquiring spots of land, and then throw every impediment possible in the way of its gratification? I perceive by the imposts and expenses on the transfer of small properties, that a barrier almost insurmountable is raised to their acquisition by the coloured population.37
The unreasonableness of the situation was a primary cause of the so-called Jamaica Mutiny, five years after Cochrane's death, in which the unrest of the native population was put down with punitive zeal by the British army.
As for Cochrane's tour of duty, Sir Francis Baring wrote to him on the last day of 1850 informing him that Sir George Seymour had been appointed as his successor. It was not an unreasonable decision. Cochrane had held his command for two years and he was now seventy-five years old. Whatever the faults of the Admiralty, they could hardly be blamed for the peaceful and uneventful nature of his duty. Accordingly, he accepted the orders given him, sailing from Halifax on 14 May 1851 and arriving at Portsmouth at the beginning of June.
The summer of 1851, with the Crystal Palace rising as a monument to national self-congratulation among the trees of Hyde Park, appeared to set the seal of international agreement on peace and industry as the two goals of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The mood of peace and his own advancing age would have seemed to offer little hope to Cochrane of active service in the future. But the mood was deceptive and British public opinion on matters of war and peace had rarely been so volatile.
Even by the time that Lord Aberdeen succeeded as Prime Minister, in December 1852, whatever euphoria had survived the summer of the exhibition was dispersed by the "Eastern Question". Almost half a century earlier, in his meeting with Napoleon at Tilsit, Czar Alexander had laid claim to Turkey as falling within the Russian sphere of influence. In January and February 1853, his successor, Nicholas, argued with the British ambassador, Sir Hamilton Seymour, that the Turkish Empire was disintegrating. "We must come to an understanding," he insisted. The proposal was that Britain should take Cyprus and Egypt, leaving Russia free to dispose of the rest of the Turkish Empire.
On the one hand, Aberdeen's government was alarmed at the prospect of Russian expansion to the Adriatic and into the Middle East. On the other hand, they regarded themselves as men of peace, deterred from a major conflict by their memories of the slaughter which some of them had seen with their own eyes at Leipzig or Waterloo. In July 1853, however, Russia invaded the Turkish Danubian provinces. On 30 November, her warships sank the Black Sea squadron of the Turkish fleet without warning and at point-blank range.
Public opinion in Britain and France turned towards war. A British ultimatum of 27 February 1854 demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from the occupied provinces of Turkey. There was no reply. On 28 March, Britain and France declared war on Russia. Their first military aim was to reinforce the Turks by way of the Dardanelles. From this there developed the strategy of invading the Crimea, seizing the port and arsenal of Sebastopol, and holding it as a hostage for Russian compliance with British and French demands. In the early spring of 1854, as the Scots Guards and a host of other famous regiments marched through London, Portsmouth, and the dockyard towns, en route for the troopships that would carry them to Scutari or Varna, Cochrane turned his attention to the naval war against Russia.
By now, of course, he was one of the very few surviving commanders who had seen active service against the French in 1793-1815. More to the point, his mind was sharp and his ideas as logically organised as they had ever been. Even before the declaration of war in 1854, it was evident that the British military plan would involve equipping and maintaining an army of some 20,000 men in a location which, by the sailing time of most ships, would be six or eight weeks away. The Russians need only resume a defensive position in order to wear down the allies by a policy of attrition. Accordingly, Cochrane wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty, offering his secret plans as the means of devastating the Russian defences at Sebastopol or Cronstadt, in the Baltic, and winning the war with less effort and infinitely less loss of life than must otherwise be the case.
The First Lord in Aberdeen's cabinet was Sir James Graham, who had held the same post in 1834 and had been sympathetic towards Cochrane's plans for the development of steamships in the navy. But in 1853, when war had not even been declared, he declined to consider the use of the secret weapons. By February 1854, war was inevitable and the Aberdeen cabinet had to discuss the appointment of a commander-in-chief of the Baltic fleet. Britain and Russia recalled ambassadors on 7 February and the cabinet met the next day. The question was whether to appoint Cochrane to the important command and the discussion was reported by the First Lord to the Queen in his letter of the following day.
Lord Dundonald is seventy-nine years of age; and though his energies and faculties are unbroken, and though, with his accustomed courage, he volunteers for the Service, yet, on the whole, there is reason to apprehend that he might deeply commit the Force under his command in some desperate enterprise, where the chance of success would not countervail the risk of failure and of the fatal consequences, which might ensue. Age has not abated the adventurous spirit of this gallant officer, which no authority could restrain; and being uncontrollable it might lead to most unfortunate results. The Cabinet, on the most careful review of the entire question, decided that the appointment of Lord Dundonald was not expedient.38
There could hardly be a more splendid testimonial to Cochrane in old age than the fears which he inspired in Aberdeen and his ministers. His triumphs, in far more desperate enterprises, echoed through the history of half a dozen countries in the earlier nineteenth century: the Gamo, Fort Trinidad, the Basque Roads, Valdivia, the Esmeralda, and Maranham. Instead of the "risk of failure" in another such coup, thousands of men were condemned to misery and death by disease in the long siege of Sebastopol. By a quirk of the official mind, to lose 10,000 or 20,000 men in this way was a routine misfortune. To lose 5000 in action was both a defeat and a national humiliation.
Having missed the Baltic command, Cochrane pressed on with the campaign to have his secret weapons used in one form or another. He wrote to Sir James Graham on 22 July 1854, pointing out that because the allies would not be able to invade the Crimea, let alone take Sebastopol, until they had secured the Danubian provinces, the seizure of Cronstadt in the Baltic was the one swift defeat which could be inflicted on the Czar. Under cover of the clouds of gas from his "stink vessels", the port and its armament would be seized, so that "the maritime defences of Cronstadt, however strong against ordinary means of attack, may be captured, and their red-hot shot and incendiary missiles, prepared for the destruction of our ships, turned on those they protect". In its audacity, and its impudent use of the Russians' own weapons to destroy them, the plan had the unmistakable cast of Cochrane's thinking. He could not, of course, be given command of the Baltic fleet, since that had now gone to Sir Charles Napier. But he asked "unreservedly" to be allowed to accompany the attack, under the command of Napier and his deputy. "Personal acquaintance with Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Napier and Rear-Admiral Chads warrants my conviction that no feeling of rivalry could exist, save in the zealous performance of the service."39
Graham replied cautiously that, "The Cabinet, unaided, can form no judgment in this matter." Would Cochrane allow his plans to be put before a secret
committee under Admiral Sir Thomas Byam Martin, with Sir William Parker, Admiral Berkeley, and Sir John Burgoyne as its other members? He replied at once, agreeing to accept the committee and its decision, which was communicated to him by Graham on 15 August 1854. The army was still disembarking in Turkey and the extent of the disasters which it was to experience in the following winter were, as yet, nowhere prefigured. Under the "present circumstances", therefore, the committee had decided that it would be "inexpedient" to use the secret weapons against Cronstadt. But the members did not absolutely rule out their use at any stage of the war, and the blow was judiciously softened for Cochrane himself, as the First Lord explained.
They do full justice to your lordship, and they expressly state that, if such an enterprise were to be undertaken, it could not be confided to fitter or abler hands than yours; for your professional career has been distinguished by remarkable instances of skill and courage, in all of which you have been the foremost to lead the way, and by your personal heroism you have gained an honourable celebrity in the naval history of this country.40
Cochrane noted merely that the secret committee had not expressed any doubt of the "practicability" of his plans. Sir Charles Napier was left to attack Cronstadt unsuccessfully with conventional weapons and to return to England in the autumn with the reputation of failure gathering about him. Cochrane came at once to his defence, intimating to the Morning Post that the weapons allowed to Napier were no match for the Russian defences. "There is but one means to place these parties on an equal footing, and that I confidentially laid before the Government." In addition, he wrote again to the First Lord on 11 November, by which time the allied losses at the Alma, Balaclava, and Inkerman caused a sober reassessment of the Crimean campaign. There was, Cochrane conceded, a popular prejudice against elderly admirals.