Thomas Cochrane

in lowercase bullet points

Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald

aka THE SEA WOLF (nicknamed by Napoleon)

• born to a broke aristocratic family

• joined the Navy to get some prize money for capturing ships

• instantly got court-martialed for disrespecting his senior officer

• got his first command in a zone with some action after seven years in the Navy

• commanded a vessel with 14 4-pounder guns, all of the balls for a round of which would fit in his pockets

• started (legally) pirating left and right

• flew different flags to confuse people. once pretended his ship was a Danish ship with the plague rampaging on board to avoid getting boarded by the Spanish

• captured a SPANISH FRIGATE. Cochrane had 14 guns and 54 men, and he captured a ship with 32 guns and 309 men, taking ~260 of them prisoner. the feat required excellent maneuvering, painting his crew’s faces black and intentionally lowering the frigate’s Spanish flag to convince its crew they were surrendering

• generally heavily relied on “nobody could possibly be stupid enough to attempt this” tactic to great success

• in 13 months captured over 50 vessels. got captured once by three French battleships, the French commander refused to take Cochrane’s sword because he had evaded them for so long

• got screwed out of the bulk of his prize money by bureaucrats

• with what he got, instead of partying, went to Edinburgh to get a first class education in moral philosophy

• with his next ship, plundered Spanish ships in the Azores for a while. once captured a ship captained by hard workers and returned some of the loot to them. was heavily weighed down by plunder, got chased by Spanish ships, escaped by launching a barrel with a candle on it at night as a decoy

• invented a new convoy lamp. the bureaucrats hated him and refused to buy it for the Navy. he entered it under a fake name into the contest for a new lamp and won it

• became the enemy of all the bureaucrats in the Admiralty who started plotting his downfall

• decided to get elected. went to a very corrupt district where votes were bought for five guineas. campaigned on principles. lost heavily but paid all those who voted for him ten guineas after the fact. next year campaigned on principles again and won. when people came to him for the ten guineas, said “The former gift was for their disinterested conduct in not taking the bribe of five pounds from the agents of my opponent. For me to pay them now would be a violation of my own previously expressed principles”

• attacked corruption mercilessly

• decided to win the war against Napoleon…

• … with one ship at his disposal

• captured a fortress, forced a French general to abandon all of his artillery, and delayed him getting to Barcelona by a month. all with one ship in three days

• single handedly terrorized the French. said “It is wonderful what an amount of terrorism a small frigate is able to inspire on an enemy’s coast”

• captured the enemy naval codes but left some pages half-burned at the scene, so that the French thought that his brutes had burned them

• “Lord Cochrane, during the mont of September 1808, with his single ship, kept the whole coast of Languedoc in alarm”

• didn’t lose a single man during it

• heard that there is a 6000 man French column marching and decided to take it on

• landed and occupied a fortress. set up booby traps. explosives and pits, etc. defended the fortress for weeks, threw back attacks by thousands with his crew of a couple hundred sailors

• walked out of the fortress leisurely under artillery fire to pick up a flag

• ended up delaying a whole column by weeks, killed hundreds. lost three men

• was reprimanded by the Admiralty for it, citing “excessive use of powder and shot”

• got summoned to Whitehall after a disaster - the French navy had escaped the blockade. the only chance to destroy it was with a fire ship attack but nobody would do it. so the powers that be charged Cochrane with doing it. he said ok, but I will also use EXPLOSIVE SHIPS

• in general, he really liked explosives, and was convinced that most problems in life could be solved with a careful application of the right amount of explosives at a precise point in space and time

• he also was a handsome devil

• the account of the battle is worth reading in full but the TL;DR is that Cochrane executed a brilliant plan, beached the entire French navy, but an idiot admiral who was more concerned with his sailors reading psalms than with anything involving naval affairs didn’t send ships to destroy the beached French navy

• and when Cochrane said, fine, I’ll just do it myself, the admiral instead sent him to England with a message

• there was a court martial afterwards stacked with friends of the admiral. Cochrane got disgraced and wouldn’t be given command of a ship.

• account of the battle by Napoleon - “The French admiral was an imbecile but yours was just as bad. I assure you that, if Cochrane had been supported, he would have taken every one of the ships.”

• not having command of a ship, Cochrane designed a new way of winning the war by using an entirely new way of bombardment and chemical weapons. his proposals were rejected

• took down a corrupt naval office in Malta that had refused him payment for captured ships. escaped from a local prison in the process

• got disinherited for marrying a firebrand 16-year-old instead of going into an arranged marriage

• married her twice more later for good measure

• got arrested for allegedly running a stock market fraud. was likely innocent but didn’t handle the court case well. all the other defendants (who were guilty) fled the country and he stayed and got sent to jail

• escaped from prison saying that it was illegal to imprison an MP. showed up to Parliament and had to be carried out back to prison

• got recruited by the Chileans to lead their navy in their war of independence

• casually plotted to rescue Napoleon from the island of Saint Helena and let him build an empire in South America to rival the USA

• captured the biggest Spanish naval fort in the Pacific with just a brig and a schooner. “Cool calculation would make it appear that the attempt to take Valdivia is madness. This is one reason why the Spaniards will hardly believe us in earnest, even when we commence. And you will see that a bold onset, and a little perseverance afterwards will give us complete triumph.”

• at a cost of 26 casualties

• capturing, amongst other things, 128 pieces of artillery and a ship

• actually sent a ship to get Napoleon, but was too late, Napoleon’s health had declined too much

• got frustrated with San Martin because the latter was being too cautious in liberating Peru. said “fine, I’ll just do it my gd self” and stole the Spanish flagship Esmeralda from Lima’s harbor, right under the nose of 300 guns and the entire Spanish navy in the region. lost just 11 men. the operation took fifteen to seventeen minutes

• blockaded Lima until the Spanish gave up and surrendered

• got really disappointed with San Martin when SM became a dictator of Peru instead of liberating it. SM refused to pay Cochrane’s men. Cochrane captured SM’s personal loot ship to pay his men, taking nothing for himself

• left Chile not being paid for his work at all. remarked that Chilean independence had cost him personally 19,000 pounds

• took command of the Brazilian navy in their war of independence

• basically had one functioning ship

• did a recon mission sailing through the main Portuguese harbor at night between all their ships

• that demoralized the Portuguese so much that they decided to evacuate

• the evacuation convoy was thirteen warships and 60-70 transports

• and Cochrane picked them off one by one with his one ship

• captured like half the Portuguese army

• then he sailed to their destination port, talked the commander into surrendering, and then leveraged that into convincing the rest of the armada to surrender

• basically captured the Portuguese navy in the region with one ship

• when the infighting between the Brazilians became too much, Cochrane took a ship and sailed to England

• took command of the Greek navy in their war for independence from the Ottomans

• united the Greek factions by saying “unless you unite, I’m out”

• made a fortune buying Greek bonds when nobody thought Greece could win

• returned to England a conquering hero, fought for personal justice, became an Admiral etc

• oh that reminds me, once when the British government wanted to arrest a radical MP, Cochrane showed up with gunpowder and mined his house to prevent that, freaking everyone out

these are just some of the anecdotes about Cochrane. he was a rogue, a performer, a leader of men, and a man of uncompromising principle. but if there is one lesson to learn from him, it’s that applying explosives wisely can solve most problems. if there’s a second lesson to learn, it’s that “a brilliant plan that is too dumb for anyone to reasonably attempt because of the odds against them may well succeed because nobody expects brilliant people to do such stupid hopeless things”

(all of the above is sourced from Cochrane: Britannia’s Sea Wolf by Donald Thomas)