Cochrane (13 page)

Cochrane listed the ships in preparation and sent it to the First Lord. St Vincent replied coldly that they were promised elsewhere. Cochrane sent a second list of ships just under construction. They could hardly have been promised yet. St Vincent wrote angrily that they were all too large for a junior captain to command. But Cochrane was not without sympathisers. The Earl of Dundonald wrote to St Vincent on his son's behalf, and received a dull answer. The Marquis of Douglas wrote. "I have not forgot Lord Cochrane," replied the First Lord, "but I should not be justified in appointing him to the command of an
18
-pounder frigate when there are so many senior captains of great merit without ships of that class."
¹³

Cajoled by these protesters, St Vincent meditated his revenge. Cochrane himself was pacing the famous "waiting room" of the Admiralty, among other hopeful commanders, demanding audience with the First Lord. At length, St Vincent received him and Cochrane, in his slow deliberate lowland manner, played what seemed to be the winning card.

"If the Board is evidently of the opinion that my services are not required, it will be better for me to go back to the College of Edinburgh and pursue my studies, with a view of occupying myself in some other employment."
¹⁴

Cochrane later recalled, "His lordship eyed me keenly, to see whether I really meant what I said." But there was no doubt that the preposterous young captain, who dared to address the First Lord in a tone bordering on contempt, was in earnest. St Vincent knew that to send Cochrane back to Edinburgh was, effectively, to dismiss him from the Royal Navy without charge or trial. He could well imagine the storm which would break over their Lordships' heads in that event. As Cochrane recalled, St Vincent's displeasure was visible in his face as he dismissed the young captain.

"Well, you shall have a ship. Go down to Plymouth, and there await the orders of the Admiralty."
¹⁵

Cochrane went straight to Plymouth. Almost at once he was informed that his new ship was ready for him, and that the Admiralty had appointed him to command H.M.S.
Arab.
He dreamt, as he later recalled, of "a rakish craft, ready to run over to the French coast, and return with a goodly batch of well-laden coasters". With this in mind, he toured the dockyard in search of her and was finally led to the place where she lay. His first recorded observation on seeing her was, "She will sail like a haystack."
¹⁶

H.M.S.
Arab
was not a warship at all but a battered old collier. With the coming of war, some enterprising businessman had bought her, almost from the scrapyard, in order to hire her out at
£400
a month to an Admiralty which was hard-pressed to find ships. Cochrane may have seen himself getting the better of St Vincent, but he had been deftly snared. He had demanded a ship and orders. Now he had got both. His supporters would hear of his new command and, never having seen H.M.S.
Arab,
would relax their efforts.

It was apparent that there could be no question of getting the
Arab
to sea in her present state. She had been stripped down to her "bare ribs". Indeed, he found it was impossible to refit her at all except by using old timbers scavenged from other hulks recently broken up. When he had done the best he could with her, he was ordered to take her out on trials, round Land's End, into St George's Channel, and then back to Plymouth. This was his first voyage for many months and, at the sight of several ships which looked like possible prizes, he set a course to intercept them. But the
Arab
handled, according to her appearance, like an overladen tub. While her new captain fulminated on his little quarterdeck, the ancient collier wallowed at a humiliating and increasing distance from the quarry she was intended to pursue.

Despite this, when the
Arab
returned from her trials she was given immediate orders to join the flotilla of ships, under Lord Keith's general command, which was endeavouring to blockade Napoleon's invasion force in Boulogne. This was proving less easy than the Admiralty had hoped. Boulogne harbour was dry at low tide and its principal channel of navigation was the course of the little river Liane which ran through it. The original intention had been to sink block-ships in this channel and so avoid the necessity of a full-scale blockade. But as Captain Crawford observed, watching these futile attempts from the deck of the
Immortalite
,
it was almost impossible to get a favourable wind and tide so that the block-ships would be in the right positions for scuttling. After a month of "calms and contrary winds" the ingenious idea was abandoned and the entire squadron settled down to the dreary weeks of a conventional blockade.
¹⁷

There was no lack of excitement on board the
Arab,
though it was not of the kind which Cochrane had envisaged. The problem with the vessel, as with most colliers of the day, was that she would sail quite well but only in one direction. With the wind behind her, there was no difficulty in crossing from Ramsgate and the Kent coast to Boulogne. But nothing, it seemed, would persuade her to sail back against the wind. While the other ships of the blockade force prudently withdrew, Cochrane and his crew were left struggling with their ungainly craft, endeavouring by rigging and sweeps to sail or row her out of danger, until the tide changed and began to carry them clear of the French coast.

As Lord St Vincent's revenge, the
Arab
could hardly have been improved upon. Most forms of offensive action were out of the question while, as Cochrane remarked, the first strong wind from north or north-west was going to wreck the vessel on the French shore. No one who knew anything about ships or their handling would have ordered a collier to take part in the Boulogne blockade, as he complained to Lord Keith. His complaint was forwarded to the Admiralty, where Cochrane imagined it would cause considerable satisfaction.

There was, however, one method of dealing with their Lordships which might still prove effective in getting the
Arab
removed from the Boulogne blockade. The time had come to stage an international incident in the Straits of Dover, choosing the United States as the opposing party. There was a special reason for the choice. The

American ambassador in London, occupying the residence in Wim-pole Street, was James Monroe, who had already served as congressman, senator, and governor of Virginia. Later and better known as President Monroe, he had shown strong sympathy with revolutionary France during his period as envoy there and was almost the last man alive to tolerate interference with American shipping on the high seas.

By great good fortune, Cochrane was able to manoeuvre the
Arab
with sufficient speed to intercept the United States merchant ship
Chatham,
bound from New York to Amsterdam. In his most outrageous manner, he stopped and boarded the
Chatham
in the Dover Straits. He informed her master, Captain Chur, that there was a British blockade of the river Texel and that, consequently, the
Chatham
must turn back. Chur was surprised at the news, which was natural enough since Cochrane had just invented this particular "blockade" for his own purposes. Indeed, when the American captain seemed about to ignore the warning and sail on, Cochrane advised him that if he did so he would be sunk. The
Chatham
dropped anchor in the Downs, and Chur sent an anxious message to Wimpole Street.

Monroe's enemies found him lacking in certain of the finer intellectual qualities, but he was ideally qualified to blast their Lordships of the Admiralty with his protests over this outrage. He accused them of allowing the
Chatham
to be "impeded in her voyage" and her captain to be threatened by Cochrane. "I am led to presume that this is some mistake," he added, in describing the alleged blockade. The Admiralty hastily admitted that Cochrane's action was "unauthorised". They had no wish to add an American war to all their existing commitments. As a general precaution, the
Arab
and her commander were sent to protect fishing fleets beyond the Orkneys. In these lonely northern waters, where the collier now patrolled, there were no prizes, no signs of the enemy, and not even a fishing fleet to protect. Cochrane's punishment by the Admiralty was by no means over. For more than a year he endured this "naval exile in a tub, regardless of expense to the nation". Lord St Vincent was content, noting in Cochrane's case, "not to be trusted out of sight", and adding for good measure, "mad, romantic, money-getting, and not truth-telling". Admiral Keith hastened to support the First Lord and, temporarily forgetting the prizes which he had enjoyed through Cochrane's efforts, reported the young post-captain as "wrong-headed, violent and proud".
¹⁸

The cruise of the
Arab,
from
5
October
1803
until
1
December
1804
was described by Cochrane as "a blank in my life". It was fortunate for him that political life at Westminster had been somewhat more eventful. William Pitt and Charles James Fox, the two dominating figures of the opposition, had privately agreed to bring down the Addington government. One of the unlikely targets which they chose was Lord St Vincent, the very symbol of the fight against naval corruption. While Pitt led the attack in the House of Commons, newspapers like the
True Briton
and pamphlets such as Francis Blagdon's
Naval Administration: A Letter to the Earl of St Vincent,
accusing him of "incapacity" and "misconduct", maintained a shrill denunciation before the general public. Another of Blagdon's pamphlets,
Audi Alteram Partem,
went further, assuring its readers that St Vincent had paid
£3000
out of public funds in an attempt to get the earlier pamphlet suppressed. St Vincent may be an unsympathetic figure but it is only fair to add that when the proposition for suppressing the first pamphlet was put to him, he replied characteristically that he "would not give sixpence to suppress or stop the circulation of that, or of all the pamphlets in the world".
¹⁹

When the renewed war had broken out with France, Addington had tried to induce Pitt to serve under him. Attacked on all sides during the spring of
1804,
he gave up the struggle to govern alone and reconciled himself to serving under Pitt. His administration resigned on
10
May
1804,
Pitt becoming Prime Minister for the last time in his life. Addington was created Viscount Sidmouth when, in
1805,
he became President of the Council in the new ministry. Indeed, Pitt's government contained six of Addington's twelve colleagues who, a few weeks before, had sworn that Pitt was a danger to his country and the curse of its politics. Sheridan, surveying the Treasury Bench across the floor of the Commons, remarked scornfully, "The six new nags will have to draw not only the carriage but those six heavy cast-off blacks along with it."
²⁰

There was no place for St Vincent in the new administration. He had stirred up too much mud in the murky depths of naval affairs and had been the main target in Pitt's attack on the Addington government. Worse still, libel actions against Blagdon and others had been begun on his behalf by the former ministry. The new Attorney-General was obliged to continue them, thus putting Pitt and his colleagues in the invidious position of prosecuting men who had written at their own instigation while they were in opposition. For St Vincent there could be no hope. He was replaced as First Lord of
the Admiralty by Henry Dundas, 1
st Viscount Melville, later to be impeached for fraud.

Melville, although over sixty, was described by his acquaintance

Joseph Farington the painter as "very hearty & has great spirits

He drank wine liberally". For better or worse, he was a total contrast to the grim figure of St Vincent. Melville disliked formal interviews with officers and conducted virtually all his business by correspondence. "The intercourse I had with Naval Officers was at my
dinner table."
Dinner parties were, for the new First Lord, the prime source of information about the navy and the war. Melville had been a loyal colleague of Pitt, rewarded by simultaneous incomes as Treasurer of the Navy, President of the Board of Control, and other offices. Sheridan suggested that in a time of national crisis, decency required the surrender of at least one sinecure, but Melville could not see it.
²¹

The favours shown to him, he showed to others in turn. When the Duke of Hamilton wrote, complaining that one of the most promising Scottish seamen, young Lord Cochrane, was exiled on a collier somewhere between the Orkneys and Greenland, Melville took notice. The Duke, at least, was not a man to be ignored, however much the other members of the Board of Admiralty might wish the exile to continue. When Cochrane returned from fifteen months of desolation, he learnt that Melville had given him a command: the
Pallas,
a new fir-built frigate of thirty-two guns.