The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  It was the exploits of another British seaman, in particular, which were at last to grasp the public imagination following the death of Nelson. In a country deprived of statesmen and heroes, an extraordinary Don Quixote of the seas now emerged with as much bravery and glamour as Nelson, yet who was even more wayward, eccentric, unconventional and determined to snub his superiors. Although far too individualistic and not senior enough to be a fleet commander, he was if anything a better seaman than Nelson and shared with him a fearlessness that very nearly made him his equal. Unlike the bourgeois Nelson, this young man was born the elder son of impoverished Scottish aristocrats. While Nelson was sickly and frail, the newcomer was tall, sandy-haired and dashing. His name was Thomas, Lord Cochrane, son of the Earl of Dundonald, an eccentric Scottish inventor and lord of Culross Abbey House on the Firth of Forth.

  At the age of 17 years – much later than Nelson – Cochrane enlisted aboard ship as a midshipman under the command of his uncle, Sir Alexander Cochrane, a distinguished sailor. He had served without seeing action in the North Sea and the Atlantic before transferring to the Mediterranean under Lord Keith, where he had encountered Nelson, who gave him the never forgotten advice: ‘Never mind manoeuvres; always go at ’em.’

  Nelson gave Cochrane his first command, putting him in charge of a disabled French prize which he conveyed safely from Italy to Minorca in the teeth of a gale. Then in 1800 Cochrane was given his first ship: the tiny 158-ton Speedy, a brig equipped with just 14 tiny 4-pound guns and manned by six officers and 84 men. His cabin was no more than four feet high, and the gawking six-foot-two youth had to shave by poking his head through the skylight.

  Cochrane knew he was either being tested by his superiors, or that they had decided quietly to dispose of him as being too independent-minded – he had every reason to suspect the latter. They little realized that the diminutive craft would soon become as famous as its captain. He was asked to convoy a group of merchantmen off Italy. In the brilliant summer sun off Cagliari in Sardinia, with its picturesque, huddled houses, as the Speedy emerged on its first mission, the 25-year-old commander proudly gazed over his ship’s company, which included an energetic and able second-in-command, Lieutenant William Parker, and his brother Archibald, still a midshipman. After several hours sailing across the glittering blue sea, one of his lookouts noticed a boat moving in like a shark to pick off one of the stragglers, a Danish vessel, in the now dispersed convoy.

  Cochrane promptly ordered the Speedy to turn around and caught up with the little French privateer, the 6-gun Intrepid. Firing a warning shot, the Speedy boarded the prize and hauled her in. It had been a battle of the pygmies, secured without bloodshed, but Cochrane’s first day’s fighting had yielded a catch – the first in his career – ‘my first piece of luck’. The long journey to Leghorn proceeded. Four days later five more ‘sharks’ moved in on two stragglers in the convoy and boarded them. Once again Cochrane immediately turned the Speedy about and caught up with the two stricken vessels. The five gunboats made off, but were forced to abandon their prize crews. Arriving a week after in Leghorn, Cochrane delivered one prize and 50 French prisoners to Admiral Keith.

  Cochrane’s tactic was simple: always go on the offensive. The following month he captured three prizes, and then three more in July. To the young commander, zigzagging across those dreamy blue seas at the height of summer, capturing craft with a warning shot and a boarding party, the whole dance seemed unreal and idyllic. He was a man in control of his ship, utterly confident of his sea-faring skills and facing little resistance from the small French privateers. He was fishing minnows, although to the captured merchant ships they must have seemed like predators until they were rescued. The impression of the firefly skimming across the waters was captured in the young commander’s log:

  June 16 – Captured a tartan off Elba. Sent her to Leghorn, in the charge of an officer and four men.

  22. – Off Bastia. Chased a French privateer with a prize in tow. The Frenchman abandoned the prize, a Sardinian vessel laden with oil and wool, and we took possession. Made all sail in chase of the privateer; but on our commencing to fire she ran under the fort of Caprea, where we did not think proper to pursue her. Took prize in tow and on the following day left her at Leghorn, where we found Lord Nelson, and several ships at anchor.

  25. – Quitted Leghorn, and on the 26th were again off Bastia, in chase of a ship which ran for that place, and anchored under a fort three miles to the southward. Made at and brought her away. Proved to be the Spanish letter of marque Assuncion, of ten guns and thirty-three men, bound from Tunis to Barcelona. On taking possession, five gunboats left Bastia in chase of us; took the prize in tow, and kept up a running fight with the gunboats till after midnight, when they left us.

  29. – Cast off the prize in chase of a French privateer off Sardinia. On commencing our fire she set all sail and ran off. Returned and took the prize in tow; and the 4th of July anchored with her in Port Mahon.

  July 9. – Off Cape Sebastian. Gave chase to two Spanish ships standing along shore. They anchored under the protection of the forts. Saw another vessel lying just within range of the forts; – out boats and cut her out, the forts firing on the boats without inflicting damage.

  July 19. – Off Caprea. Several French privateers in sight. Chased, and on the following morning captured one, the Constitution, of one gun and nineteen men. Whilst we were securing the privateer, a prize which she had taken made sail in the direction of Gorgona and escaped.

  27. – Off Planosa, in chase of a privateer. On the following morning saw three others lying in a small creek. On making preparations to cut them out, a military force made its appearance, and commenced a heavy fire of musketry, to which it would have answered no purpose to reply. Fired several broadsides at one of the privateers, and sunk her.

  31. – Off Porto Ferraio in chase of a French privateer, with a prize in tow. The Frenchman abandoned his prize, of which we took possession, and whilst so doing the privateer got away.

  August 3. – Anchored with our prizes in Leghorn Roads, where we found Lord Keith in the Minotaur.

  For the commander of the Speedy, life must never have seemed so intoxicating. Keith ordered Cochrane to the west, to attack enemy ships off the coast of Spain, a more serious commission. For the Speedy, if it got into trouble, would have no support within striking distance from the British fleet, and there were more likely to be large enemy warships about. But the young commander jumped at the chance, as it gave him a perfect opportunity to improvise and close with the enemy. Left to his own devices, he adopted an unusual and intelligent tactic – the first real sign that he was not some ordinary if brave young lieutenant, but a commander of real intelligence and ability. He kept well away from the Spanish coast by day, then moved in by night to attack vulnerable and unsuspecting ships. This required total command and respect of his crew, as well as immensely skilful seamanship, for the dangers of running aground were multiplied at night.

  He struck again and again, picking off prizes without resistance; and as he did so, his reputation grew not only among the British public but also the enemy. The mighty Spanish fleet was increasingly irritated at this gadfly operating off its coast. It was time to swat the insect. But audacity was not the 25-year-old commander’s only virtue: now for the first time he was to deploy another exceptional skill: deception. As Cochrane buzzed about harassing Spanish merchantmen, he fought no real engagement. Instead, showing superb sailing skills, mostly at night, he seized his prizes. But the risks were always present. He had his men repaint the Speedy in the colours of a Danish ship, the Clomer, which he had observed in the area. He recruited a Dane and dressed him up as an officer; he was preparing the ground for the inevitable Spanish counterattack.

  In the blustery, cold winter of that year, on 21 December, he was intrigued that a group of gunboats twice made out of Barcelona to attack him, and then turned tail, challenging him to give chase. This he did. Soon a huge ship appeared. As
he approached, broadside, the ship’s portholes suddenly opened to reveal that it was bristling with cannon. The trap was deliberate: the Spaniards had caught the fly. They had reckoned without his indifference to intimidation or brazen resourcefulness. He immediately ran up a Danish flag, as he watched this large Spanish frigate lowering a boatload of men to board him. Cochrane ordered his Danish crewman to parley with them, saying that they were a Danish ship coming from Algeria.

  The Spanish boat continued towards them, unbelieving – and then Cochrane raised the yellow flag of quarantine. The Dane explained that the plague was rampant in Algeria (which was true), and that there were cases aboard. The Spanish party was aghast. If this was true, any Spaniard climbing aboard was liable to die. The boat rowed back to the mother ship, preferring to give the Dane the benefit of the doubt. The young lieutenant had bluffed his way through by a whisker. Cochrane wrote afterwards:

  By some of my officers blame was cast on me for not attacking the frigate after she had been put off her guard by our false colours, as her hands – being then employed at their ordinary avocations in the rigging and elsewhere – presented a prominent mark for our shot. There is no doubt but that we might have poured in a murderous fire before the crew could have recovered from their confusion, and perhaps have taken her, but feeling averse to so cruel a destruction of human life, I chose to refrain from an attack, which might not, even with that advantage in our favour, have been successful.

  Meanwhile the merry chase continued

  He stayed in Malta to see in the New Year on friendly territory. He dressed up, as a jape, in the clothes of an ordinary seaman for a fancy dress ball, but was blocked by a group of status-conscious French royalist officers. Cochrane may have been drunk, unusually for him, and he lashed out at one of them. Although it was quickly clear that Cochrane was the audacious young British lieutenant making a name for himself off the coast of Spain, the Frenchman demanded satisfaction. The two of them went through the absurdities of a duel, Cochrane wounding the other in the leg and being himself hit in the ribs. But the experience shook him: ‘It was a lesson to me in future, never to do anything in frolic which might give even unintentional offence.’ It was a narrow escape for the immature young man but it also showed him the dangers of taking life too lightly, and losing his temper.

  A couple of months later he pursued a French brig into Tunis harbour, violating its neutrality and plundering its cargo of ammunition but setting its crew free. Taking his prize back to Port Mahon in mid-March 1801, he realized he was being shadowed by a large Spanish frigate. Knowing he was no match for her, he flew before the wind at such speed that a sail fell from the mast. As he raced on through the night, he thought he had lost her. But in the grey of the morning he saw that the pursuer was still on his heels, although out of range. He pressed on through the next day, while the frigate, steadily closed on him. By nightfall it was almost within range and Cochrane’s crew was exhausted. In a last attempt to escape, Cochrane instructed the ship’s carpenter to secure a lantern to the top of a barrel and lower it from the stern, changing direction the moment the barrel was bobbing in his wake. The Spanish frigate bore down on the barrel, all eyes on the single light glowing in the dark, and found that the Speedy had disappeared.

  It was inevitable, however, that, sooner or later, the daring 25-year-old would be caught. On 5 May 1801, came the reckoning. Almost insolently close to Barcelona, Cochrane set off in pursuit of a group of small Spanish gunboats, capturing one and then returning for another among the fishing ships clustered near the harbour the following morning. From behind those ships there suddenly emerged one of the most powerful Spanish frigates. The gunboats had been deliberately sent out as a decoy to lure Cochrane in. It was the Gamo, four times the size of the Speedy, carrying 319 men with 32 guns – 22 12-pounders, eight 8-pounders and two 24-pound carronades (capable of firing a huge amount of grapeshot). The Speedy, by contrast, had just 54 men, half of its complement because so many had been sent off to crew prizes. Its pathetic firepower of 14 4-pounders could inflict only minimal damage at 50 yards, and none at all at 100 yards.

  Cochrane had three possible courses of action. He could surrender, he could make a break for it and run, although the Gamo would overtake him and was already nearly within range; or he could commit apparent suicide and engage the monster. In what was to become one of the classics of naval engagement he chose the latter course. He sailed straight towards the Gamo, placing himself within range of the guns, although his own were still out of range. The Gamo, astonished, fired a warning shot. Cochrane ran up the American flag to gain time. The Spanish captain, Francisco de Torres, already amazed by the Speedy’s decision to approach him, was thrown momentarily into confusion. The decision was made not to open fire, partly because the Spaniards knew that the little ship could not escape.

  The Speedy, which was to windward of the Gamo, made the perfect target, and was within range. Cochrane’s objective was to get around to the other side, where the hull was low and the guns would be aiming into the sea. The Spaniard’s hesitation permitted him to do just that, and he ran up the British flag. The result was an immediate broadside from the Spaniard which, as he expected, fell short of the Speedy and into the sea. The next British move was more startling still: the Speedy moved straight towards the side of the Gamo as the other ship rolled back with the sea and reloaded its guns, to get so close that the next broadside would fire harmlessly overhead. It was a matter of seamanship, the movement of the sea itself, and split-second timing: a few seconds too late, and the Speedy would have faced a devastating broadside. He succeeded, and the spars of the Speedy locked with those of the Gamo. Another large Spanish broadside belched forth, passing over the smaller ship’s decks, which were ten feet below those of the Gamo, the shot falling harmlessly into the sea beyond.

  The fly seemed merely to have closed with the spider and was easy prey. But Cochrane had made his preparations: like a boxer grappling with his larger opponent at close quarters, preventing him landing a punch, he had ordered his cannon to be ‘treble-shotted’ and ‘elevated’ – aiming upwards as far as possible. With the swell tilting his ship sideways so that it aimed up into the Gamo, he was able to fire straight up into the other’s gun-deck looming overhead. He was lucky: the captain, de Torres, was killed in this first devastating broadside from below, which did remarkable damage for such small guns at point blank range. The little ship was still too close for the Gamo’s broadsides to harm it. As Cochrane put it later: ‘From the height of the frigate out of the water the whole of her shot must necessarily go over our heads, while our guns, being elevated, would blow up her main deck.’

  The two ships now engaged in a bizarre pas de deux. Cochrane spotted Spanish marines assembling and preparing to board the little ship beneath her; he veered away just far enough to prevent this, but not so far as to bring the ship into a position where the Spanish could bring their guns to bear. Then he returned to inflict a further upwards broadside. This happened three times during the course of an hour. One slip would bring about a collision, or result in boarding, or would have permitted the Spaniards to fire a devastating volley.

  Cochrane in the smaller ship had the advantage of much greater manoeuvrability. But he was locked in: if he bolted, he would be picked off easily. Once again, attack seemed the only option available to him, even against a ship with six times as many men. He told his crew that the Spaniards would give them no quarter if they won, and ordered several to blacken their faces in preparation for boarding. The Speedy moved forward to the Gamo’s bows and, cutlasses in mouth as though in some old pirate story, some 20 of its men, including the young Archibald Cochrane, climbed up onto the Spanish ship.

  As his advance party scaled the bows, he and Parker led the rest of his men from the back of the Speedy onto the middle section of the Gamo. Only the ship’s doctor was left to steer the Speedy. By that time the Spaniards were confused and demoralized, and were uncertain of what to do about the vicio
us little ship attacking them in defiance of all naval convention and common sense. Cochrane wrote of the first sortie:

  The greater portion of the Spaniard’s crew was prepared to repel boarders in that direction, but stood for a few moments as it were transfixed to the deck by the apparition of so many diabolical-looking figures emerging from the white smoke of the bow guns; whilst our other men, who boarded by the waist, rushed on them from behind, before they could recover from their surprise at the unexpected phenomenon.

  Minutes later, more were attacking them from behind. In the confusion they could not know how heavily they outnumbered the British attackers. Cochrane yelled at Dr Guthrie, who had been left in charge of the Speedy, to send in the next wave of attackers – although, of course, there was no one left on board. The startled Guthrie yelled back that he would. The Spanish officers heard and believed that another boarding party was on its way. They had been lured into a trap, believing the Speedy to be a small ship with a regular crew: instead it seemed crammed with attackers.

  Cochrane yelled at one of his men to lower the Spanish colours, which, with remarkable coolness and skill, he did. The leaderless Spaniards, confused and demoralized, took this to be an order to surrender. The battle was over. Fifteen Spaniards, including the captain, had been killed and 41 wounded; just three British seamen had been killed and 18 wounded, one of them the valiant Parker, slashed in his leg and wounded by a musket shot. Cochrane could not yet pause. Before the Spaniards could realize that fewer than a sixth of their number had taken them prisoner, the fighting captain ordered them into the hold and had the two most powerful guns on the ship, the carronades, trained down upon them and manned by British sailors with burning fuses. Cochrane appointed Archibald to command the giant prize, which the little Speedy proudly led into Minorca.

  The fight between the Speedy and the Gamo was the first of Cochrane’s great naval feats. There had been no luck involved, and no piracy in taking on a much larger and more heavily armed vessel. Cochrane had shown a dazzling array of talents as a commander: the first and most important was that his crew were now so accustomed to his natural leadership that they had no hesitation in obeying him when he ordered apparently suicidal tactics. Their behaviour was of men acting perfectly in co-ordination as a team.