Cochrane (47 page)

By this time, even the reputation of O'Higgins had suffered as a consequence of the corruption among his subordinates. In November, Cochrane managed to secure payment of the arrears due to the men of his squadron, while in the same month the town of Valparaiso was almost destroyed by an earthquake. Most of the ship's companies had no wish to serve longer, the major port had gone, and there seemed little more left for the Chilean navy to do. Indeed, Cochrane judged that from the financial neglect of the navy, only the newest ship, the
Independencia
was still seaworthy.

In December
1822,
he received a private despatch from Ramon Freire, the governor of Concepcion, for whose integrity
he had a great admiration. Freir
e denounced the "corrupted administration" which ruled the country, and which had brought Chile to "a state of greater degradation" than it had known under the power of Spain. He invited Cochrane to
assist him in staging a coup d'e
tat against the O'Higgins regime. Though Cochrane sympathised with Freire's attitude, notably in his disgust at the power enjoyed by San Martin, he felt it wrong that a foreigner should take a leading part in a domestic struggle of this kind. Early in
1823,
the coup d
'etat
was successful, O'Higgins was sent into exile, in the wake of San Martin who had already fled across the Andes on his way to find asylum in Europe. But Cochrane played no part in the affairs of the new regime. At the end of
1822,
he had received the first invitation from the Imperial Court at Rio de Janeiro to assume the command of the Brazilian navy in the struggle for independence from Portugal. He found it infinitely preferable to the weeks and months of haggling which now characterised his command of the Chilean fleet.
³⁴

On
18
January
1823,
having resigned his command in Chile, Cochrane set sail with some of his officers who were to accompany him in the new adventure, setting out for the return journey round

Cape Horn in a chartered brig. Now that it was no longer needed against the Spanish, the steamer
Rising
Star
had arrived safely in Valparaiso from London. Cochrane greatly regretted that he was not allowed to take it with him in lieu of the money he was owed by the Chilean government.

His Chilean debts were to sour his relationship with the new republic for the rest of his life. Whatever the accurate figures may have been, Cochrane's mood was not improved when he discovered that San Martin had been awarded
500,000
dollars and a pension of
20,000
dollars.
120,000
dollars was awarded to Cochrane for the capture of the
Esmeralda
but he swore that the bill for this, on the Peruvian government, was dishonoured at once. He was awarded
67,000
dollars after the capture of Valdivia, but the sum was never paid. He claimed that his situation was even worse than that, since he was later sued by owners of neutral vessels which he had seized during the blockade. He was obliged to sell his house in Regent's Park, which he had bought after the war, and the "cost" of his service to Chile was, by his own reckoning,
£25,000.
In
1845,
the Chilean government awarded him
£6000
in settlement of such sums as might still be outstanding. They had first deducted from his claim the costs and damages cited by neutral victims of his blockade. It was useless for Cochrane to protest that these "victims" had been trading under false papers and were thus liable to seizure. Nor were the Chileans impressed by his allegations that they were cheating him in order to appease the British business community at Valparaiso. So, as he complained to the world, he had lost
£25,000
and gained
£6000.
His service to the cause of Chilean independence had been absolutely unrewarded. Indeed, it had "cost me
£19,000
out of my own pocket !"
³⁵

But whatever his quarrels with the governments of the newly independent states, Cochrane's sympathy with their people was never in doubt. Before he left the Pacific for the last time, he addressed the people in terms which warned them against tyrants of every description, and he called them "Chilenos - My Fellow Countrymen!"

You know that independence is purchased at the point of the bayonet. Know also that liberty is founded on good faith, and on the laws of honour, and that those who infringe upon these, are your only enemies, amongst whom you will never find

8

Under Two Flags

By
the beginning of
1823,
the extent of Brazil's independence from Portugal was questionable. The origin of separate government lay in Napoleon's invasion of Portugal in
1808,
when the future John VI had decided to take refuge in his great South American colony. In consequence, Brazil began to enjoy a degree of political freedom which was more commonly associated with a European imperial state than with any of its colonial possessions. By the removal of restrictions on trade and by the participation of Brazilians in government, the ties with Portugal were gradually loosened.

At the time of his departure for South America, Dom John had been regent of Portugal and had left behind a council of regency to govern the country in his absence. In
1816,
while still in Rio de Janeiro, he succeeded to the throne of Portugal in his own right. Despite this, he remained in South America for a further five years, creating his son Dom Pedro regent of Brazil when he returned at length to Lisbon.

In both countries, the political future seemed unpromising. Portugal had been the scene of insurrection by reformers, whose movement was put down by the council of regency with British military assistance. Brazil was no less divided between supporters of independence and the adherents of the "Portuguese faction" who opposed it. As in Lisbon, so in Rio de Janeiro there were men who feared the loss of economic and political power which independence would bring. More to the point, the northern provinces of Brazil, including the major territories of Bahia, Maranham, and Para, remained firmly in the hands of Portuguese troops supported by a Portuguese fleet.

So long as John VI ruled in Rio de Janeiro he could, in theory, command the allegiance of all factions and all forces. But with his return to Lisbon, there was every sign that the Cortes of Portugal would attempt to reduce Brazil to her former colonial status. On
1
December
1822,
while Cochrane waited in idleness and with increasing frustration off Valparaiso, Dom Pedro had yielded to popular pressure. Discarding his allegiance to his father, he put himself at the head of the independence movement and was proclaimed Emperor of Brazil.

In Brazil, as in Chile, it was easy enough to establish an autonomous region, in this case in the south and round Rio de Janeiro. But the same problem of a hostile imperial army, supported and supplied by its European fleet, stood between the new state and its final freedom. In the north of Brazil it was not merely a few fortified points, like Valdivia or Callao, which held out against the new rulers. The greater part of these provinces remained subject to colonial government so long as the Portuguese fleet controlled the sea routes. And so long as that remained the case, Dom Pedro's southern empire and his court at Rio de Janeiro would remain under the shadow of a Portuguese invasion.

If the struggle were to be decided in favour of the new Brazilian empire, victory at sea was imperative. The Brazilian charge d'affaires in London was instructed to recruit officers and seamen to serve as mercenaries in the new imperial navy. As admiral, there could only be one choice. As early as November
1822,
Cochrane received his first invitation from Antonio Correa, Brazilian consul at Buenos Aires, who was deputed to make the* approach. While he hesitated and balanced the claims of Brazil against certain other calls on his allegiance, he received a more urgent appeal from Correa.

Venez, milord, l'honneur vous invite - la gloire vous appelle. Venez - dormer a nos armes navales cet ordre merveilleux et discipline incomparable de puissante Albion.
¹

Antonio Correa was a confidant of Dom Pedro and evidently wrote at his master's dictation. Cochrane, however, replied coolly at first, since his immediate plans had been directed to serving a cause which appealed more strongly to him than that of Brazil.

The war in the Pacific having been happily terminated by the total destruction of the Spanish naval force, I am, of course, free for the crusade of liberty in any other quarter of the globe.

I confess, however, that I had not hitherto directed my attention to the Brazils; considering that the struggle for the liberties of Greece - the most oppressed of modern states - afforded the fairest opportunity for enterprise and exertion.
²

The freedom of Greece, the vision of democracy and the glory of the Hellenic dream, appealed to the imagination of liberal England. With the outbreak of open rebellion against Turkish rule in
1821,
Burdett, Hobhouse, and Byron were among the most famous who warmed to the crusade for liberating from Turkish slavery the land of Plato and Demosthenes. To Cochrane, the challenge was simple and irresistible. None the less, he promised Antonio Correa that, since he would be rounding the Horn anyway, he would meet him on neutral ground, in Buenos Aires. Geographically, at least, Brazil was on the way from Valparaiso to Athens. But his promise was coupled with a warning. He knew little about the new government of Dom Pedro, and he had no intention of supporting it unconditionally. He would hold himself free to decline the command, "should the Government . . . differ so widely in its nature from those which I have been in the habit of supporting, as to render the proposed situation repugnant to my principles".
³

No such difference appeared. The Brazilian government not only resembled others in its democratic aspirations but also in its reluctance to pay Cochrane and his men for services rendered, at least on the scale which the mercenary admiral judged proper. Undeterred by his experience of this in Chile, he arrived in Rio de Janeiro on
13
March
1823
and accepted the command of the Imperial fleet. He had been promised the same pay as in the service of Chile,
8000
dollars a year. When there was some doubt raised over this, he informed the Minister of Marine that "without condescending to chaffer on such a subject", he would seek redress from the Prime Minister and the Emperor himself. The Minister of Marine begged him to do no such thing, and the difficulty vanished, for the time being.
⁴

Dom Pedro himself escorted his new admiral on a tour of inspection of the fleet. There were eight ships, though two of them were not in a state to put to sea for the time being and two others were only suitable as fire-ships. Of the remaining four, the
Maria
de
Gloria
was a smart looking clipper which on closer inspection proved to have been built of unseasoned timber and was "little calculated to do substantial service". But two ships, the
74
-gun
Pedro
Primiero
and the frigate
Piranga,
were well-built and quite sufficient for Cochrane's purposes. Ships like the
Maria
de
Gloria
were manned by "the refuse of the merchant service", even the
Piranga
and the
Pedro
Primiero,
his flagship, had too many untrained recruits. Against him, the Portuguese had a battleship, five frigates, five corvettes, a brig, and a schooner with some
2000
miles of friendly coastline on which they might depend. But much of Cochrane's naval
-
life had been spent in showing just how much he could do with a pair of reliable ships in a situation of this kind.
⁵

Some
600
miles north of Rio de Janeiro, the first of the areas under Portuguese control was the sea port and province of Bahia. Cochrane put to sea on
3
April, the
Pedro
Primiero
having
160
English and American seamen in her crew. He was less than enthusiastic about some of the other members who now appeared to be the "vagabondage" of Rio de Janeiro, nor was there any way of predicting the behaviour in battle of his
130
black marines, "just emancipated from slavery".
⁶

The first encounter with the Portuguese battle squadron was a humiliation which might have become a disaster for him. The
Pedro Primiero
sailed into action, breaking through the Portuguese line and cutting off the four rearmost ships from' the rest. Cochrane signalled the three ships of his squadron, the
Piranga,
the
Maria
de
Gloria,
and the
Liberal,
to join him in attacking and capturing the four separated ships. To his great anger, not one of them obeyed the order, keeping carefully clear of the skirmish. By now, the
Pedro
Primiero
was engaging the enemy alone but Cochrane soon realised that something was badly amiss. The salvoes from his gun-deck were ill-directed and far fewer than they should have been. One of his English officers, Captain Grenfell, went below and discovered two Portuguese members of the crew withholding powder from the gunners and warning off the powder-boys from running their errands. Grenfell dragged the two miscreants on deck but by then the situation was hopeless. The
Pedro
Primiero
might have fought alone against the enemy fleet with the sort of crew Cochrane had commanded on the
Speedy
or the
Imperieuse
but under the present circumstances he was compelled to break off the action.
⁷

On
5
May, while still at sea, Cochrane wrote a long letter of complaint to the Prime Minister, Andrada, warning him that little would be accomplished with the fleet in its present state. Later in the same month, having been left to his own devices by the Brazilian government, he informed the Minister of Marine that he was stripping all the other ships of his squadron of most of their European and American officers and seamen in order to transfer them to the
Pedro
Primiero.
Though the rest of his little fleet would still be in attendance, the flagship alone was to be relied upon when he sailed into battle against the Portuguese.
⁸

By the beginning of June, Cochrane was ready for the attack upon Bahia itself. He prepared his two fire-ships ostentatiously and was gratified to hear that news of the preparation had caused "consternation" among the Portuguese authorities. Their admiral, Cochrane was told, was "in nightly expectation of a repetition of the scene in Basque Roads". During the first week of June, the Portuguese went through the motions of threatening an attack on Cochrane and his fire-ships before he could move against the port of Bahia itself. On the night of
12
June, Cochrane decided to make a close reconnaissance of Bahia with the
Pedro
Primiero,
while the Portuguese commanders and officials were at a public ball. He also intended to destroy such ships as came within his reach in the deep bay and estuary which formed the anchorage.

The night that was chosen was particularly dark and the
Pedro Primiero
sailed between the outer vessels, mapping the position of the Portuguese fleet. When challenged, Cochrane replied that she was an English merchant ship. To the discomfort of all on board, however, the wind then dropped and the sails went slack. Their ship was suddenly becalmed, nine miles from the open sea, under the guns of the shore-batteries and of the enemy fleet. The attack which Cochrane had planned was out of the question. He could do nothing but let the flagship drift out with the ebb tide, keeping her off the shoals on either side of the channel by using the stream-anchor to drag her towards deep water.

But the reconnaissance had been invaluable for the fire-ship attack and for its effect on the Portuguese. When it was discovered that the mysterious ship, threading its way through the anchored vessels, had been the
Pedro
Primiero,
the admiral at Bahia insisted on evacuation. If Cochrane could enter the harbour again, with fire-ships or explosion vessels, the result in the confined anchorage would be a catastrophe for the Portuguese campaign in Brazil. Apart from this, Cochrane's blockade had virtually cut off all supplies by sea. At the end of June, General Ignacio Madeira issued a proclamation to the inhabitants, informing them that he and his men would evacuate Bahia, proceeding with the fleet to the northern province and city of Maranham. Room would be found on the transports for Portuguese families who wished to accompany them.
⁹

Nothing short of panic would have persuaded Madeira to put to sea, where the
Pedro
Primiero
waited like a cat for so many mice. Cochrane played on the panic by sending letters to the Bahia junta, warning them, "for the sake of humanity" to surrender rather than attempt the escape. The letters referred to the heart-rending prospect of the "destruction of passengers" on the transports, "for in the obscurity of night it is impossible to discriminate ships in which they may be embarked". The reference to night attacks effectively revived the horror of fire-ships and explosion vessels, far out at sea and beyond hope of rescue.