COCHRANE THE DAUNTLESS
The Life & Adventures of Thomas Cochrane – David Cordingly
978-0-7475-8088-1; Bloomsbury £20
There is something about British heroes - maybe it’s what makes them such - but there is a common strain of impetuousness, verging on the reckless, in most. Thomas Cochrane, born into Scottish nobility in 1775 and ‘envied’ by no lesser Romantic than Lord Byron, was possibly more impulsive than any. He has been the basis of literary greats from the pens of C S Forester and Captain Marryat (the latter having served with Cochrane as a midshipman) and his exploits aboard Speedy became the inspiration for Captain Jack Aubrey in Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander.
What he lacked in diplomacy – particularly in making enemies of the wrong people - he made up for as a man of action, and on entering Parliament he drew attention to many injustices that he’d come across as a naval officer, including the conditions of ordinary seamen, their pay and pensions. Ousted from the Royal Navy and imprisoned after a Stock Exchange scandal – when he was implicated in a scheme to make money from speculation on the (untrue) rumour of Napoleon’s death – he added to his reputation by making his escape from prison by rope. In the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, however, and restless to be active again, he took his considerable talents to South America, where he helped to build the navies of Peru, Chile and Brazil.
After further adventures, he returned to England and was eventually granted a pardon and reinstated as a naval Rear Admiral, although by now his seafaring days were behind him. His autobiographies, albeit courting some controversy, revived interest in his early naval exploits, and he died shortly before his eighty-fifth birthday, in 1860.
As with all the author’s books, this is meticulously researched yet eminently readable: ‘a vivid portrayal of a flawed hero who helped define his age’.