Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, Marquess do Maranhão, GCB, ODM (Chile) (14 December 1775 – 31 October 1860), styled Lord Cochrane between 1778 and 1831,[1][2] was a senior British naval flag officer and radical politician. He was a daring and successful captain of the Napoleonic Wars, leading the French to nickname him 'Le Loup des Mers' ('The Sea Wolf' or 'The Wolf of the Seas'). He was dismissed from the Royal Navy in 1814, following a conviction for fraud on the Stock Exchange and he then served in the rebel navies of Chile, Brazil and Greece during their respective wars of independence. In 1832, he was reinstated in the Royal Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral of the Blue. After being promoted several times following his reinstatement, he died in 1860 with the rank of Admiral of the Red, and the honorary title of Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom. His life and exploits served as inspiration for the naval fiction of nineteenth and twentieth-century novelists, particularly C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey. Thomas Cochrane was born at Annsfield, near Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, the son of Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald and Anna Gilchrist. She was the daughter of Captain James Gilchrist and Ann Roberton, the daughter of Major John Roberton, 16th Laird of Earnock. Cochrane had six brothers. One was Major William Erskine Cochrane of the 15th Dragoon Guards, who served with distinction under Sir John Moore in the Peninsular War. Another was Captain Archibald Cochrane. [5] Cochrane was descended from lines of Scottish aristocracy and military service on both sides of his family. Through his uncle, Admiral Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane the sixth son of the 8th Earl of Dundonald, Cochrane was cousin to his namesake Sir Thomas John Cochrane who also pursued a naval career and became Governor of Newfoundland[6] and later Vice-Admiral of the United Kingdom. The family fortune had been spent by 1793 and the family estate was sold to cover debts. Cochrane spent much of his early life in Culross, Fife, where his family had an estate. There is now a bust in his honour outside the Culross Town House. Through the influence of his uncle, Alexander Cochrane, he was listed as a member of the crew on the books of four Royal Navy ships starting when he was five years old. This common, though unlawful practice (called false muster), was a tactic to have on record some of the length of service necessary before he could be made an officer, if and when he joined the Navy. His father secured him a commission in the British Army at an early age, but Cochrane preferred the Navy, which he joined in 1793 upon the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars. Cochrane first served in the Baltic Sea aboard a Sixth-rate frigate, the 28-gun HMS Hind, commanded by his uncle, Captain Alexander Cochrane. In 1795, he was appointed acting lieutenant on the 38-gun Fifth-rate HMS Thetis, also under his uncle's command. The following year he was commissioned in the rank of lieutenant on 27 May 1796, after passing the examination. After several transfers in America and a return home, he found himself as 8th Lieutenant on Lord Keith's flagship HMS Barfleur in the Mediterranean Sea in 1798. During his service on Barfleur, Cochrane received a court martial for showing disrespect to Philip Beaver, the ship's first lieutenant. Though the board found him innocent, the board did reprimand him for flippancy. This was the first public manifestation of a pattern of Cochrane being unable to get along with many of his superiors, subordinates, employers and colleagues in several navies and Parliament, and even those with whom he had much in common and who should have been natural allies. For instance, his behavior led to a long enmity with John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent. In 1799, Cochrane commanded the prize crew taking the captured French vessel Généreux to the British base at Mahón. The ship was almost lost in a storm, with Cochrane and his brother Archibald going aloft in place of a crew that were mostly ill. On 28 March 1800, Cochrane, having been promoted to commander, took command of the brig sloop HMS Speedy. Later that year, a Spanish warship disguised as a merchant ship almost captured him. He escaped by flying a Danish flag and fending off a boarding by claiming his ship was plague-ridden. Chased by an enemy frigate, and knowing it would follow him in the night by any glimmer of light from the Speedy, he placed a lantern on a barrel and let it float away. The enemy frigate followed the light and Speedy escaped. In February 1801, at Malta, he got into an argument with a French Royalist officer at a fancy dress ball. Cochrane came dressed as a common sailor, and the Royalist mistook him for one. This argument led to Cochrane's only duel. Cochrane wounded the French officer with a pistol shot but was himself unharmed. One of his most notable exploits was the capture of the Spanish xebec frigate El Gamo, on 6 May 1801. El Gamo carried 32 guns and 319 men, compared with Speedy's 14 guns and 54 men.[7] Cochrane flew an American flag to approach so closely to El Gamo that its guns could not depress to fire on the Speedy's hull. This left the Spanish with no option but to board. However, whenever the Spanish were about to board, Cochrane would pull away briefly, and fire on the concentrated boarding parties with his ship's guns. Eventually, Cochrane boarded the Gamo, despite still being outnumbered about five to one, and captured her. In Speedy's 13-month cruise, Cochrane captured, burned, or drove ashore 53 ships before three French ships of the line under Admiral Charles-Alexandre Linois captured him on 3 July 1801. During his time as a prisoner Linois often asked him for advice and Cochrane later referred to how polite he was in his autobiography. A few days later he was exchanged for the second captain of another French ship. Then, on 8 August 1801, he received a promotion to the rank of post-captain. After the Peace of Amiens, Cochrane attended the University of Edinburgh. Upon the resumption of war in 1803, St Vincent assigned him in October 1803 to command of a Sixth Rate ship which was the 22-gun HMS Arab. This ship had poor handling, colliding with Royal Navy ships on two occasions (the Bloodhound and the Abundance), and afforded Cochrane no opportunities. In his autobiography he would compare the Arab to a collier. Despite this, he still managed to intercept and board an American merchant ship, the Chatham, and create an international incident, leading to the consignment of HMS Arab and her commander to fishing fleet protection duties beyond Orkney in the North Sea. In 1804, the new government of William Pitt the Younger removed St Vincent and in December Cochrane received an appointment to command of the new 32-gun frigate HMS Pallas, in which he undertook a series of notable exploits over the following eighteen months. In August 1806, he took command of the 38-gun frigate HMS Imperieuse, formerly the Spanish frigate Iphigenia. One of his midshipmen was Frederick Marryat, who later wrote fictionalized accounts of his adventures with Cochrane. In Imperieuse Cochrane raided the Mediterranean coast of France. In 1808, Cochrane and a Spanish guerrilla force captured the fortress of Mongat, which sat astride the road between Gerona and Barcelona. This delayed General Duhesme's French army for a month. On another raid Cochrane copied code books from a signal station, leaving behind the originals so the French would believe them uncompromised. When Imperieuse ran short of water, she sailed up the estuary of the Rhone to replenish. When a French army marched into Catalonia and besieged Rosas, Cochrane took part in the defence of the town by occupying and defending Fort Trinidad ('Castell de la Trinitat') for a number of weeks before the fall of the city forced him to leave; Cochrane was one of the last two men to quit the fort. While captain of Speedy, Pallas, and Imperieuse, Cochrane became arguably the most effective practitioner of coastal warfare during the period. Not only did he attack shore installations such as the Martello tower at Son Bou on Minorca, but captured enemy ships in harbor by leading his men in boats in "cutting out" operations. He was a meticulous planner of every operation, which limited casualties among his men and maximized the chances of success. In 1809, he commanded the attack by a flotilla of fire ships on Rochefort, as part of the Battle of the Basque Roads. The attack did some damage, but Cochrane blamed Admiral Gambier, the fleet commander, for missing the opportunity to destroy the French fleet. As a result of expressing his opinion publicly, Cochrane then spent some time without a naval command. In June 1806, Cochrane stood for the House of Commons on a ticket of parliamentary reform (a movement which would later bring about the Reform Acts) for the potwalloper borough of Honiton. This was exactly the kind of borough Cochrane wished to abolish; votes were mostly sold to the highest bidder. Cochrane offered nothing and lost the election. In October 1806, he again ran for Parliament in Honiton and won. Cochrane initially denied that he paid any bribes, but Cochrane himself revealed in a Parliamentary debate ten years afterward that he had paid ten guineas (£10 10s) per voter through Mr. Townshend, local headman and banker. In May 1807, Cochrane was elected by Westminster in a more democratic election. Cochrane campaigned for parliamentary reform, allied with such Radicals as William Cobbett, Sir Francis Burdett and Henry Hunt. His outspoken criticism of the conduct of the war and the corruption in the navy made him powerful enemies in the government. His criticism of Admiral Gambier's conduct at the Battle of the Basque Roads was so severe that Gambier demanded a court-martial to clear his name. This made him important enemies in the Admiralty. In 1810, Sir Francis Burdett, a Member of Parliament and political ally, had barricaded himself in his home at Piccadilly, London, resisting arrest by the House of Commons. Cochrane went to assist Burdett's defence of the house. His approach to this, however, was essentially similar to the approach he had taken in defending forts against enemy attack and would have led to numerous deaths amongst the arresting officers and at least partial destruction of Burdett's house, along with much of Piccadilly. On realising what Cochrane planned, Burdett and his allies took steps to end the siege.