– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

Sometimes, the life of a single man can be utterly  extraordinary. Such is the case of a certain 19th  

century Scottish madman, whose daring exploits  played a crucial role in defeating Napoleon,  

but also made him a revolutionary war hero in  Chile, Peru, and Brazil. Yet also, a man whose  

utter stubbornness made him an enemy of every  superior officer he ever served under. Welcome  

to our documentary on Lord Thomas Cochrane. The  single most insane sea captain of the age of sail.

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Thomas Cochrane was born in 1775 in Annsfield  in Scotland to Anna Cochrane and the 9th Earl  

of Dundonald Archibald Cochrane. The Cochranes are  the direct descendants of a Lowland Scottish clan,  

whose origins are traced to a Viking  warrior from around the 9th century  

and the name itself is derived from an old  Gaelic portmanteau meaning “The Roar of Battle”. 

The Cochranes had a long history of  military service to the British Empire,  

members of the clan had fought and  died in the war of Spanish Succession,  

served as loyalists during the Jacobite  Rebellion, and even partook in the French and  

Indian wars in the New World and the family was  affectionately nicknamed “The Fighting Cochranes”. 

From a young age, Thomas wished to add to the  Cochrane’s fighting legacy by joining the Navy,  

but against his wishes, his father had him  enlisted in the 104th regiment of the King’s army.  

The young Scot hated army life, particularly  the rigid dress-code. Stating this in his  

autobiography: “My hair, cherished with  boyish pride, was plastered back with a  

vile composition of candle-grease and flour. My  neck, from childhood open to the lowland breeze,  

was cased in an inflexible leathern collar.”  Cochrane fled back to his father, begging him  

to send him to sea, rather than spend one more day  in the army. This was the first time the Cochrane  

showed defiance in the face of authority and it  would become a theme for the rest of his life. 

On July 28th, 1793, Thomas Cochrane  entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman.  

It was a position that he earned  largely due to his family’s influence.  

At 17, he was a few years older  than most other midshipmen.  

Nevertheless, he made the most of his late start,  eagerly learning every intricacy of naval life,  

impressing his superiors with his natural  leadership abilities and voracious curiosity. 

Cochrane had joined the Royal Navy when  trouble was brewing on the continent.  

The French King Louis XVI had recently lost during  the revolution, and the newly established French  

Republic had declared war upon Monarchies of  Europe that would seek to reimpose a King on them.  

Thus, much of Cochrane’s naval career was defined  by war with the French and their Spanish allies. 

Cochrane spent much of his first two years  of service on the 38-gun frigate HMS Thetis,  

where he was promoted to acting lieutenant.  Thetis was active in the Eastern Seaboard  

of the United States, seizing American  merchant ships bound for French Harbours.  

After four years in North America on various  vessels, Cochrane returned to Britain in 1798.  

By then, the European war front had become more  dire. A Corsican artillery officer by the name  

of Napoleon Bonaparte had risen through the smoke  and blood of the Revolution to become a General  

devastating the British allies. Bonaparte had  his eyes set upon an invasion of Britain itself,  

and the only thing standing in his way  was the Royal Navy’s dominance at sea. 

Meanwhile, other big names among British  seamen were making names for themselves,  

as Britain was still celebrating Horatio  Nelson’s victory over French at the battle  

of the Nile. This only further invigorated the  fighting Scot to seek out glory of his own.  

Luckily, Cochrane’s connections in the Scottish  aristocracy managed to get him appointed as an 8th  

Lieutenant aboard the HMS Barfleur, flagship  of the British fleet in the Mediterranean,  

captained by the Acting Admiral, Lord Keith. For around a year, Cochrane served as part of  

a fleet of fifteen ships operating off the coast  of Southern Spain, managing to keep a fleet of  

twenty Spanish warships blockaded in Cadiz.  Meanwhile, many of Cochrane’s peers resented  

the relative speed at which he had advanced in the  ranks, and this enmity would soon come to a boil. 

The young Scot found himself butting heads with  the Barfleur’s first Lieutenant, Philip Beaver.  

Supposedly, Beaver had confronted Cochrane  for reporting himself aboard the ship late  

after a period of shore leave. Cochrane’s  prideful nature got the better of him,  

complaining that he had only been late  because he had to change his muddied clothes.  

For quarreling with his superior,  he found himself court martialed.  

He was offered an opportunity to apologize to  Beaver, but refused. Nevertheless, he was still  

acquitted by Lord Keith, but the incident would  cost him, he was now on his Admiral’s bad side. 

In January of 1800, the Mediterranean fleet was  dispatched to Italy, to join forces with Horatio  

Nelson. While ashore on Sicily, Cochrane had the  opportunity to meet Britain’s most famous Admiral.  

Nelson was a celebrity, and  Cochrane looked up to him.  

Cochrane’s autobiography mentions a particularly  laconic piece of advice given to him by Nelson:  

“Never mind maneuvers, always go at them.”  Cochrane would take this advice to his heart. 

A month later, Nelson seized a squadron of  French ships off Malta, and Cochrane was  

tasked to deliver one of the prize frigates into  British hands at Fort Mahon through enemy infested  

waters. A storm nearly sunk his quarry, but he  prevailed. For his success, he was promoted,  

and appointed Commander of the HMS Speedy. Unfortunately, Speedy was a tiny sloop  

equipped with only a handful of four-pounder  cannons, which Cochrane called “a species of gun  

little larger than a blunderbuss.” Cochrane even  found his new living quarters impossibly cramped,  

with barely room to stand straight,  sit properly, or even shave. 

It is possible that this appointment  was a form of punishment, by Lord Keith,  

who hoped to shackle the impudent Cochrane to  a small, insignificant vessel dooming him into  

obscurity. If this truly was the intention,  it would end up backfiring spectacularly.  

The path of destruction that Thomas Cochrane  would embark upon commanding this vessel  

would be the first of many adventures  that would cement him into legend. 

The journey of the HMS Speedy began on April 22nd  of 1800 with an immediate success. Cochrane was a  

mere month into his first cruise when  he captured a French Privateer vessel  

off the coast of Cagliari. Within the next three  months three more small vessels were captureed,  

while dozens more were harried, which put  Cochrane back in the good graces of his superiors.  

Cochrane regarded his early conquests  as modest, as he had larger ambitions. 

Following winter Cochrane really began to  employ his legendary cunning. His sloop had  

been patrolling the eastern Spanish Coast for the  better part of December, and on the 21st of that  

month, came upon a vessel they perceived to be a  well-laden Spanish merchant. Speedy drew closer  

to investigate, only for the target to raise its  gunports, revealing itself as a frigate of war.  

Cochrane had no intention to risk battle with a  vessel far superior in firepower to his, nor was  

his tiny brig able to outsail the foe. Luckily,  he had space and time to spare. He ordered his  

ship be painted to resemble a Danish Brig, and  brought a Danish speaking Quartermaster on deck.  

He instructed the Quartermaster to tell the  Spaniards the Speedy was plague-ridden and that  

spooked the Frigate away. It wouldn’t be the last  time that the cunning commander would employ false  

colours, as Cochrane kept a collection of various  flags aboard his ships for much of his career. 

The next few months saw Cochrane’s  successes continue to pile.  

Capturing an armed warship is very difficult, yet  Cochrane achieved that regularly. His deceptive  

cunning and clever use of false flags was the key  to his success. HMS Speedy travelled at night,  

and attacked at dawn, her small size allowed  her to strike fast, and slip away undetected.  

One notable engagement saw Cochrane once more  fly a Danish flag to approach a French and a  

Spanish brig off the coast of Catalonia. His  prey never suspected a thing, and Speedy closed  

in for the catch, hoisting British colours and  capturing both vessels and all 54 men aboard. 

Cochrane was now known both by his countrymen  and the enemies, as his autobiography notes  

that Speedy’s success had made him a “marked  object of the Spanish Naval Authorities.”  

His reputation as a maverick would only grow, most  notably within the gilded halls of high society. 

In February of 1801, the young Commander  purchased a ticket for a fancy ball in Malta,  

hosted by some aristocratic  French Royalists-in-exile.  

Cochrane dressed himself for the occasion in  a British Sailor’s garb he described as “as  

honourable a character as Greek, Turkish  and other oriental disguises in vogue.”  

Nevertheless, he was barred entry at the  gates, his outfit considered too rustic.  

A heated argument ensued with a French officer  ensued, followed by a challenge to a duel.  

The following morning, the pair met with pistols  in hand. Cochrane shot the Frenchman through  

the waist, while he himself passed unscathed. Cochrane put back to sea later that month. It  

was business as usual once more aboard HMS Speedy,  as it returned to harrying the vessels of Napoleon  

and Spain on the coasts of the Meditteranean.  By the morning of May 6th of 1801, Speedy had  

already captured or sunk seventeen vessels  off the Spanish coast, and was now cruising  

the coasts of Barcelona. There, she came across  a peculiar vessel on the horizon, and tacked on  

the breeze to investigate. As it turned out, it  was the El Gamo, a Xebec-Class Spanish Frigate,  

which likely had been deployed specifically to  eliminate the menace that was Speedy. Cochrane  

knew his situation was dire, as Gamo was a heavy  warship, baring 32 cannon and 319 crewmen. Speedy,  

on the other hand, had only 54 hands on deck,  and 14 cannons, which lacked the power and range. 

Admiral Nelson’s words rang true in the daring  Scotman’s mind: “Never Mind maneuvers, always  

go at them.” Cochrane ordered his crew to hoist  an American flag, and make directly for Gamo.  

The Spaniards hesitated, unwilling to  risk a diplomatic incident by firing on  

what could be a neutral vessel. This allowed  Cochrane to approach so close to Gamo that  

he could see the whites of her crew’s eyes. Speedy’s yardarm locked with Gamo’s rigging,  

and from there, the gig was up, and Cochrane gave  the order to let fly. The union jack was hoisted,  

and Speedy unleashed a deadly broadside cannonade  at point-blank range. Her guns had been elevated,  

and unleashed destruction upon the Spanish  deck, killing Gamo’s captain in the first blast.  

Speedy’s proximity made it so her foe’s  cannon fired harmlessly over her short deck.  

Musket fire proved an ineffective tool as well  in picking off a battle-hardened British crew.  

Twice, the Spaniards attempted a boarding  party, and twice Speedy veered out of range,  

and fired another broadside. Cochrane soon realized it was time  

for the coup de grace, stating “Our rigging being  cut up and the Speedy’s sails riddled with shot,  

I told the men that they must either take  the frigate or be themselves taken.” And so,  

Speedy once more latched onto Gamo, and Cochrane  had his crew blacken their faces with soot so to  

appear more terrifying. From there, the British  boarded the frigate from the bow and stern,  

a fierce melee of pistols, axes and cutlasses  ensuing with Cochrane at the center of it all.  

Always a quick thinker, the daring commander  ordered his men to haul down the Spanish  

flag flapping over the mainmast. This  was a brutal strike to Spanish moral,  

for they now believed their officers had given up  the ship, and laid down their arms to surrender. 

Gamo was taken as a prize  and sailed to Fort Mahon,  

following that, Speedy continued upon its cruise  of destruction. By July of 1801, she had captured,  

sank or ran aground a mind-boggling 53 enemy  ships becoming the scourge of the Mediterranean.  

And yet, all things must come to an end. In the  end, it took three massive French Ships of the  

Line baring over 70 guns each to capture the tiny  sloop, cornering her off the coast of Alicante. 

Cochrane was taken aboard one of the warships,  Dessaix, and presented his sword to the Captain.  

The Frenchman declined out of respect  for his foe, saying he “would not take  

the sword of an officer who he had for so  many hours struggled against impossibly.”  

Cochrane’s captors treated him with kindness, and  the Scotsman particular notes the French Admiral  

Charles-Alexandre Linois, who held him in high  regard and often asked him for nautical advice.  

Cochrane witnessed the British defeat at the  battle of Algeciras from the deck of Dessaix,  

before he was eventually released in a  prisoner exchange, and sent to Gibraltar. 

On July 18th, 1801, Thomas Cochrane stood  aboard the deck of the 80-gun HMS Pompee  

to face a military court for the capture of  HMS Speedy. However, he knew that the slew  

of unlikely victories he had won upon his little  sloop outweighed the cost of its eventual loss.  

Sure enough, Cochrane was honourably acquitted.  With that out of the way, he had expected three  

things: a swift promotion to post-captain,  a shiny new frigate to command, and a return  

to the bountiful fame of Napoleonic warfare.  Unfortunately, none of this would come to pass. 

The Royal Navy brass dragged their feet, and  for three months, he watched rival officers get  

promoted ahead of him. Although he was finally  appointed Post-Captain on August 8th, he had  

become resentful towards the British Admiralty,  publicly berating the Lord Admiral St. Vincent, an  

act which would earn him ire from the aristocratic  oligarchy that was British Naval command. 

On May 18th 1803, Britain declared war on  Napoleonic France once more. Cochrane, who  

had been unemployed during a year long truce, was  delighted to finally be deployed. Unfortunately,  

his ill-advised aggressions had come back to  haunt him, as the vengeful Lord St. Vincent saw  

to it that the new Post-Captain was stiffed again.  Cochrane was appointed to command the HMS Arab,  

a destitute sixth-rate frigate, which he equated  to a flat-bottomed cargo hauler rather than a  

Royal Navy warship, lamenting that “she would sail  like a haystack.” For the next year, Cochrane was  

relegated to patrolling Northern Europe, remarking  that “It was literally naval exile in a tub.” 

However, in May 1804, St. Vincent was replaced  by Lord Melville, who had more appreciation  

for Cochrane’s achievements, and in Autumn  gave Cochrane command of a vessel worthy of  

his talents: the HMS Pallas. She was brand new a  top of the line fifth rate Thames-class frigate,  

armed with 36 cannons. Her deck was  nearly twice as long as HMS Speedy,  

and had crew capacity thrice as large.  Pallas was a sleek weapon of destruction. 

By the turn of 1806, HMS Pallas had become  an infamous menace to both France and Spain.  

In one cruise along the Azore Islands she had  captured four Spanish Treasure Galleons heavily  

laden with new world Silver, depriving the Spanish  treasury of millions of dollars’ worth of capital.  

Cochrane was then deployed to the  coasts around the Bay of Biscay,  

where he harried a dozen more French vessels. Pallas’ most noteworthy action came on the 5th of  

April, 1806. Cochrane heard word of a squadron of  French Corvettes anchored down the estuary of the  

Garonne River. The waters and coastline did not  make open battle favourable, thus Cochrane waited  

patiently for nightfall, and anchored his frigate  at the mouth of the river estuary. From there, he  

appointed his lieutenant John Haswell to take 180  of his crewmen and embark upon the boarding boats,  

rowing upriver along the shoreline under cover  of darkness. Sure enough, this boarding party  

came upon a ship at anchor, Tapageuse , a  14-gun Corvette serving as a guardship for  

the rest of the French vessels upstream. At 3AM, the crew of the Pallas launched  

themselves upon Tapageuse, catching the Frenchmen  by surprise. After a brief but fierce skirmish,  

the British sailors prevailed, inducing the  enemy’s surrender. Yet things were soon to go  

sideways, for the shouts and musket fire from  the melee had alerted the vessels up-river.  

Before Lieutenant Haswell was able to weigh  Tapageuse’s anchor and return to the Pallas,  

his men were intercepted by another French  Gun-Brig. A broadside gunfight ensued,  

in which Haswell managed to use the captured  vessel’s cannon to subdue the foe. Despite this,  

the prize ship suffered damage to her rigging,  stranding the majority of British seamen upriver. 

At sunrise, the crew remaining aboard the Pallas  itself spotted three French Corvettes bearing down  

upon them from the coastline. Cochrane was  now vulnerable, as the majority of his men  

were still with Haswell far upstream. At full  capacity, Pallas could potentially outgun  

three corvettes, but with only a paltry 40  men on her deck, it was a hopeless fight. 

Thinking quickly, Cochrane ordered his skeleton  crew to fasten rope yarns to the furled sails.  

Then, in one motion all the yarns were  cut at once, losing all sail in one go,  

giving off the illusion that Pallas was manned  by a full crew. In Cochrane’s own words:  

“The manoeuvre succeeded to a marvel. No sooner  was our cloud of canvas thus suddenly let fall  

than the approaching vessels hauled  the wind, and ran off along shore.” 

Pallas engaged in pursuit, blasting her bowguns  into the stern of the first fleeing corvette.  

These were the only guns they had the ability  to man, unbeknownst to the French Captain  

who deliberately ran his vessel aground upon  the shore in a panic, the shock of the impact  

collapsing the vessel’s mainmast. With one  ship subdued, the vicious Cochrane relentlessly  

pursued the remaining two Corvettes. Both ran  themselves aground and wrecked their vessels,  

rather than risk battle with Pallas. Overall, with  only one Frigate and a handful of boarding boats,  

Cochrane and his men had decommissioned  four French warships, and captured one.  

It was a stunningly unlikely victory,  won through iron will and quick wit. 

In the Summer of 1806, Cochrane returned  to Britain as a triumphant war hero,  

his fearless raids off the Bay of Biscay  having earned him no small amount of fame.  

Napoleon himself, the newly crowned Emperor of  France, had taken an interest in this particularly  

prolific Captain’s trail of destruction, and  personally ordered his capture, bestowing upon  

him a new title:“le loup de mers”- the Sea Wolf. Never one to rest on his laurels,  

Cochrane was far from finished with his seaborne  marauding. In August of 1806 he was appointed  

to the HMS Imperieuse, a sturdy 38-cannon frigate  that was significantly more powerful than Pallas. 

Imperieuse soon became an icon of glory for the  British Navy, and a consistent scourge to France.  

It would be in 1808 when Cochrane hit his stride  once more off the coasts of Spain. This was a year  

when the British Army was embroiled in a desperate  land-struggle across the Iberian Peninsula against  

their Napoleonic foe, and Cochrane’s naval  contributions to the war effort were invaluable.  

The writings of contemporary novelist Sir Walter  Scott emphasize as much, claiming the Captain had,  

with his single ship, “kept the whole coast of  Languedoc in alarm”, “destroyed Telegraphs of  

utmost importance to the French, preventing troops  being sent from that province into Spain” and  

“excited such dismay that 2000 men were drawn from  Figeras to oppose him. Men who otherwise would  

have been marching further into the Peninsula.” Despite his success, Cochrane continued to lament  

upon the lack of recognition he received from  the British Admiralty, often claiming in his  

autobiography that they not only failed to give  him any praise, but in fact cheated him and his  

crew out of their rightfully earned prize money. In June, the Imperieuse sailed for Montgat,  

a Catalonian fortress under the occupation  of French troops under General Duscheme.  

With the help of Catalan Guerillas, he launched  a two-pronged assault on the coastal battery,  

capturing it soundly. He would later go on  to seize and decipher French code-books, and  

occupy Fort Trinidad, causing invaluable losses in  French manpower, intelligence, resources and time. 

To many among friend and foe, the Sea Wolf  had become larger than life, more vengeful  

spirit than man. It was this reputation that  would see him conscripted into the largest  

fleet engagement of his life, a contest that would  serve as the climax to his naval boldness and the  

peak of his hubris: the Battle of Basque Roads. In Spring of 1809, a Royal Navy Fleet was being  

hastily assembled by one Admiral Gambier, in order  to confront a French flotilla that had escaped a  

British Blockade in Brest, and now lay anchored  in the well protected mouth of the river Charente,  

a region known as Basque Roads. The French  intention was to escape into the open Atlantic and  

harry British interests in the West Indies, which  the British under no circumstances could allow. 

To this end, the Admiralty directly sought  out its most dauntless Post-Captain.  

Cochrane’s reputation as a maverick  made using him a risky gamble,  

but his daring nature and unquestionable naval  genius were exactly what the Royal Navy needed  

to complete the total destruction of the French  Atlantic Fleet. At the Palace of Whitehall,  

Cochrane met with First Admiral Lord Mulgrave,  who asked for the Scotsman’s personal advice.  

The idea of using fireships was put on the  table, and Cochrane insisted that the plan would  

only work if supplemented by ships laden with  explosives and rockets to further eliminate the  

enemy’s ability to resist amidst fire and chaos. Satisfied with this plan, Lord Mulgrave ordered  

Cochrane to join Admiral Gambier’s fleet at Basque  Roads and personally lead the Fireship’s charge.  

This dismayed the Scotsman, who  personally despised Admiral Gambier,  

believing him to be the exact breed of corrupt  aristocrat who had so often hampered his career.  

Despite his insistence, Mulgrave would not  rescind the order, and Cochrane begrudgingly  

sailed Imperieuse to join the British war fleet. Cochrane arrived at Basque Roads on April 3rd,  

and found his suspicions of Admiral  Gambier had proven to hold warrant.  

Gambier was a vacillating commander, an  evangelical Christian who insisted on distributing  

religious tracts to his men, and making them study  them, rather than actively planning an attack. 

The arrival and appointment of Lord Cochrane as  head of the coming assault did not help matters.  

One Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey was enraged that he  had been snubbed of the role in place of a junior  

officer, and fiercely denounced Gambier, calling  him a ‘Psalm-slinger’, as well as claiming:  

“I never saw a man so unfit for the command of  the fleet. If Admiral Nelson were here he would  

not have anchored in Basque Roads at all, but  would have dashed at the enemy at once.” Harvey  

had been the Captain of HMS Temeraire. He was a  hero of the Battle of Trafalgar, yet he was sent  

to London and court martialed all the same. His  departure was an ill-omen for the British fleet. 

The two Fleets stood nine miles apart from  one another in an indefinite standoff.  

The French column, commanded by Admiral Zacharie  Allemand, was comprised of eleven Ships of the  

Line and Four Frigates, organized into two rows,  wedged between the tiny Ile d’Aix and the perilous  

shallow Boyart Shoal. Furthermore, a fortified  garrison, complete with operational gun batteries,  

sat firmly on the Island’s northern edge. With  both sides inaccessible to British vessels,  

the French had secured their  flanks and were firmly wedged in. 

Realizing there was no time to waste, Cochrane  asked for permission to convert the transport  

ships in Gambiers fleet into fireships  and explosive vessels, which was granted.  

Three explosion vessels were prepared, their  holds packed with 1,500 barrels of gunpowder  

stuffed into casks and tied together,  supplemented by 3,000 hand grenades,  

all tied to a long fuse lit from the  ships’ stern, giving its brave crew  

around fifteen minutes to scuttle off  in a lifeboat before the big detonation.  

Eight more prepared fire-vessels arrived  on April 10th, sent by Lord Melville. 

Having prepared his deadly squadron of suicidal  vehicles, Cochrane asked Gambier for permission to  

begin the attack posthaste and charge straight for  the French line. Gambier refused, denouncing the  

Scotsman’s head-on tactics as sheer foolhardiness.  This infuriated Cochrane, who countered that  

further delay would lead to the French Admiral  doubtlessly catching on to the Fireship plan  

and putting safeguards in place, inevitably  leading to the loss of more British lives. 

Sure enough, the next morning’s sun revealed  the existence of a massive boom that barricaded  

the narrow channel between the Fortress at  d’Aix and the Boyart Shoal. Furthermore,  

Admiral Allemand had in fact been  made aware of the British fireships,  

and had ordered the front row of his Ships of the  Line to point forward to present a smaller target.  

Seventy canoes were deployed to wait by the  boom, equipped with towing lines so as to tug any  

approaching fire ships out of harm's way, while  the French Frigates too sailed ahead of the fleet,  

to guard the harbour chain  against British incursions. 

As day turned to dusk on April 11th, the winds  began to churn, turning the coastal seas into  

a choppy tempest. It was at this time that  Gambier finally approved the Fireship’s assault,  

perhaps taking advantage of the  poor conditions to discourage  

Cochrane. Nevertheless, the Sea Wolf was  undeterred, and pressed forward with his plan.  

His crew was made up purely of volunteers,  as fireships fell outside the conventional  

boundaries of warfare, and sailors  captured by the enemy while operating them  

would not be taken prisoner, but instead executed. First, the British Frigates Imperieuse, Pallas,  

Aigle and Unicorn were anchored at the seaward  end of the Boyart Shoal, standing by to pull  

the crewmen of the kamikaze vessels out of the  sea once they’d abandoned ship. When night fell,  

the contest commenced. The sloops HMS Redpole  and HMS Lyra anchored on either end of the narrow  

straight, lighting their lanterns so as to mark  the channel for the attackers. At around 8PM,  

three explosive ships barreled down towards the  French Boom, taking advantage of the flood-tide.  

One was captained by Frederick Marryat, one of  Cochrane’s most trustworthy officers, while the  

Sea Wolf captained one himself, taking the lead. At around half past eight, Cochrane determined  

that his floating bomb was around ten minutes  away from the boom. He commanded his crew  

immediately proceed to the lifeboats to  evacuate, and personally lit the fuse,  

creating a countdown for his vessels’ imminent  explosion. Together they boarded the dinghy  

and rowed vigorously against the currents  to get out of range of the incoming blast,  

only to discover about 100 yards out that  they had left their mascot dog on board.  

Refusing to let his pooch get blown up, Cochrane  rowed back for the floating timebomb, climbed  

aboard, grabbed the dog, and jumped back into the  dinghy, once more rowing away with extra vigour. 

Soon, the floating bomb hit the boom, and a  massive explosion illuminated the night sky,  

a veritable fireworks display of destruction.  The explosive vessel was torn apart,  

and in turn shredded the massive chain that  stood between the Royal Navy and its foe.  

Ten minutes later, Marryat’s vessel collided  with what remained, creating a second eruption,  

which scattered the French canoes that had  been waiting to tow away the attackers. This  

annihilation completely dumbfounded Admiral  Allemand, for fire ships were one thing,  

but in no world could he imagine his opponent  creating explosive vessels, a monstrosity that  

disregarded every convention of civilized warfare. The third explosion vessel had run aground and  

been put out of commission, but the way was  now cleared, and it was time for the inferno.  

At 9:30 PM, twenty British fire ships began  their way down the channel. The French Frigate  

vanguard quickly cut their anchor lines and  fled hastily back towards the main fleet.  

Yet, the Fire Ships soon encountered trouble. The  choppy currents made their navigation perilous,  

causing many captains to panic, then  light and abandon their ships too early,  

causing the burning husks to drift harmlessly  into the shoals on either side of the channel.  

However, the stormy sea worked too in  the British favour, rendering the waters  

too perilous for their French foes to maneuver. Of twenty fireships, four managed to make it into  

the French anchorage, and from there, chaos was  the order of the night. A flaming vessel latched  

on to the 74-gun Regulus, causing the Ship of the  Line to crash into its fellow French Tourville.  

Several more ships were set alight as rockets  flared chaotically across wooden decks.  

Men drowned diving overboard to escape the  flames, creating a scene of panic incarnate. 

By daybreak, it was revealed that of  fourteen French ships, all but two had  

been damaged and run aground on the nearby  mudflats in an attempt to evade the fires,  

rendered completely immobile. Cochrane  had since made it back to the Imperieuse,  

and knew that the time to strike was now, when  the enemy was trapped and helpless. Yet, Admiral  

Gambier refused to give the order. Cochrane was  floored with disbelief, unable to comprehend how  

a man with eleven battleships and 7 frigates  at his disposal refused to engage an enemy who  

at current had only two operational vessels. By noon, the Océan and four other French ships  

had been put back afloat, and were retreating  deep into the mouth of the River Charente.  

Knowing that total victory was slipping out  between his fingers, Cochrane committed an act of  

blatant insubordination, launching HMS Imperieuse  deep into the gulf alone, to take on the entire  

French Fleet single-handedly, saying later in his  own words: “It was better to risk the frigate,  

or even my commission, than suffer a disgraceful  termination to the expectations of the Admiralty.” 

Imperieuse engaged the beached  vessel Calcutta, with the two  

warships exchanging deadly broadsides, with  the British Frigate at an immense advantage.  

Simultaneously, Cochrane ordered his bow  and stern cannons fired into the Aquilon and  

Ville de Varsovie respectively.  Beached they may have been,  

but a single Frigate was still engaged in a duel  with three Ships of the Line twice its size. 

Soon, the Calcutta surrendered, and  was captured by Cochrane’s crew.  

It was at this point that Gambier finally  sent some backup into the channel,  

unable to let one impetuous captain take on the  entire French navy. Five frigates and two ships  

of the line entered Basque Roads. Calcutta was  abandoned and set flame, while the Aquilon and  

Ville de Varsovie quickly surrendered. A fourth  ship, Tonnerre, was scuttled by its own crew. 

The battle of Basque Roads was undoubtedly  a victory for the Royal Navy, who had sunk  

three French Ships of the Line, a fourth rate,  and a frigate, all while losing only 30 men  

and no ships of their own. However, had Gambier  shown any initiative, the entire French Atlantic  

Fleet could have been destroyed in the space  of the morning, whereas now the majority  

of it would live to fight another day. Cochrane remained infuriated by Admiral  

Gambier’s incompetence, and upon returning to  England, publicly shamed him for his conduct.  

Defiance in the face of authority was nothing  new to Cochrane, but never before had he been so  

enraged, or so viciously ripped into the personal  character of such a powerful, well connected man. 

Gambier demanded a court martial to determine  his innocence. Naturally, the tribunal was  

stacked with aristocrats sympathetic to him, and  the Admiral was exonerated from all wrongdoing,  

while Cochrane, known for his impudence,  had suffered a dire blow to his reputation. 

This incident compelled Cochrane to refuse  further naval appointments, and from 1809 onwards,  

the Wolf of the Sea focused on his career  as a Member of the British Parliament.  

Indeed, Cochrane had pursued political ambitions  since 1806, when he’d first been elected as a  

representative of the riding of Honiton, and later  Westminster, acting as MP concurrently with his  

naval service. He used his position to campaign  for hard naval reforms, becoming an outspoken  

critic of the corruption in the Royal Navy. The following years saw Cochrane’s popularity  

increased with the common people, as he continued  to relentlessly campaign against the aristocrats.  

Yet, he had few friends in parliament, and  near none among the Lordship and Admiralty.  

In 1814, Cochrane was implicated in a great stock  exchange fraud, accused of deliberately misleading  

the public about Napoleon’s death to increase  the value of his government securities shares.  

Naturally, the young Lord protested  his innocence, but his words fell  

deaf upon the courts- who had likely been  bought out by his many shadowy enemies,  

acting vindictively upon him for his  attempts to disrupt their status quo. 

As punishment for his alleged fraud, Cochrane  was dishonourably expelled from Parliament,  

and formally discharged from the Royal Navy- an  institution he had won countless victories for.  

His honours were revoked, and he was sentenced  to twelve months in jail. It was there, in the  

dour walls of King’s Bench Prison, that this  chapter of the Sea Wolf’s story came to an end. 

In 1815, Napoleon was finally defeated at  Waterloo and his demise brought an end to the  

war that had defined the entirety of Cochrane’s  naval career, but the disgraced Scotsman was  

unable to bask in this glory, having been left  to rot in prison. Never one to accept his fate,  

Cochrane escaped from King’s Bench in March of  1815, scaling down the prison walls from a three  

story window using contraband rope. Instead of  fleeing, he went to Westminster and demanded his  

seat in the House of Commons, where he had served  before his unceremonious conviction in the Stock  

Exchange Fraud. Unsurprisingly, he was promptly  arrested and thrown back into jail. Cochrane was  

released in June, upon finishing his sentence,  and rejoined his family. In the years since his  

resignation from the Royal Navy, he had taken a  wife, Kitty, and by her had a son, Thomas Junior. 

In 1818, Cochrane was approached by  the representative of Chile in London  

Don Jose Alvarez. At this time, Chile was a rebel  nation fighting for its freedom against Spain.  

The aftermath of Napoleon’s demise saw much  of South America rise in open rebellion  

against the Spanish Empire, fighting in wars  made iconic by the likes of Simon Bolivar,  

who at present was engaged in a struggle to  establish republics in Colombia and Bolivia. Chile  

had enjoyed much success in this regard. Under the  leadership of the General Jose de San Martin, and  

the Irish-descended Commander Bernardo O’Higgins,  much of inland Chile had been liberated. 

However, at sea, the Spanish were still strong.  Held up in highly fortified coastal fortresses  

from Peru to Patagonia, they threatened the new  Republic with a counter-revolutionary strike.  

Ambassador Alvarez had specifically sought  out Cochrane and implored him on behalf  

of commander-in-chief of the Chilean Republic  O’Higgins to assume command of the Chilean navy,  

and drive the Spanish from  their coasts. On August 15th,  

1818, Cochrane departed for Chile with his family. 

On November 29th, Cochrane came upon the docks  of Valparaiso, the provisional capital of the  

republic. Soon he was introduced to  the Chilean navy. It was not much,  

consisting merely of three frigates, three brigs,  and a sloop. The largest ship was a 50-gunner,  

O'Higgins, named after Chile’s commander-in-chief.  Cochrane made this vessel into his flagship. 

On January 16th, 1819, Cochrane set sail upon  his first South American campaign. To his great  

irritation, he found out that his five-year-old  son had enthusiastically stowed himself aboard  

his flagship. By the time the child had been  discovered, it was too late to turn back. He  

begrudgingly allowed his son to stay aboard, where  the sailors outfitted the boy as a midshipman. 

One of the Spanish fortresses in the region  was the harbour-town of Callao, where Spanish  

ships could resupply their soldiers under the  protection of a massive beachfront fortress.  

Cochrane made Callao his target, for  he had received intel that the two most  

powerful frigates in the Spanish Fleet,  Esmeralda and Venganza, were anchored  

there. In February they arrived at the town,  which conveniently was celebrating a carnival. 

Cochrane plan was to cut into the harbour with  two of his warships while the town was distracted  

by the festivities, board the two Spanish  frigates, and make off with them as a prize.  

Yet, as the O’Higgins and Lautaro made forth, a  thick fog blanketed the rocky anchorage, making  

it far too dangerous to approach,  and costing them valuable time. 

The fog soon lifted, revealing the Chilean advance  to the 350 guns stationed on the nearby Fortress.  

Fully manned and ready to unleash hell,  it turned out that Callao had not been as  

taken by merriment as they had hoped.  Lautaro quickly listed off to safety,  

leaving Cochrane aboard the O’Higgins the  bear the brunt of the oncoming cannonade.  

The Scotsman immediately made maneuvers  to veer out of range. But, to his horror,  

he saw his toddler son run on deck, enthusiastic  to join in the action. A Spanish cannonball  

whizzed over the deck, blowing off the head of a  nearby Marine, and splattering tiny Tom in blood. 

Cochrane stood paralyzed in terror, until  the child shouted: “I am not hurt papa,  

the ball did not touch me.” Cochrane quickly  tacked his vessel out of cannon range, all the  

while ordering his son to be carried back below.  Not wanting to miss the action, Tom struggled  

and screamed until he was allowed to stay. The  O’Higgins managed to escape with little damage.  

Unphased, Cochrane engaged in an exchange of  prisoners with the fortress, trading captives he  

had taken from a royalist gunboat for indentured  Chileans. During these talks, the Spanish Viceroy  

demanded to know why a British officer would serve  a nation of continental rebels. Cochrane replied:  

“A British nobleman is a free man, capable of  judging between right and wrong, and at liberty  

to adopt a country and a cause which aim at  restoring the rights of oppressed human nature.”  

The Spaniards remembered all too well  the terror that Cochrane had caused them  

aboard HMS Speedy twenty years earlier.  Cochrane was pleased to hear that Spanish  

sailors had a nickname for him: El Diablo. Having exhausted all his avenues into Callao,  

Cochrane turned to the south,  and set his sights upon Valdivia.  

While O’Higgins respected Cochrane, he refused to  lend him funds and manpower for an assault on that  

city, as it was widely considered to be the most  impregnable redoubt in all South America. Chile  

would never be secure while Valdivia remained  Spanish, but attacking it was considered suicide. 

But Cochrane never cared about the odds. So, in  December of 1819, the Sea Wolf sailed southwards  

with only his flagship, fully intending to take  on Latin America’s most fortified stronghold  

alone. On January 17th of 1820, the O’Higgins  arrived at Corral Bay, an estuary upon which  

seven heavily garrisoned Fortresses stood firm.  These land batteries formed the main obstacle  

between Cochrane and the city of Valdivia  proper, which lay 16 miles upriver. Success  

was paramount, both to maintain the Sea  Wolf’s near mythic reputation, and to stay  

in good graces with the Chilean Government. Luckily, the campaign got off to a good start.  

Cochrane had employed his classic false flag  technique, flying Spanish colours in the bay.  

When the Royalist Brig Potrillo listed towards  the shore, she was promptly deceived and captured. 

Aboard Potrillo was $20,000 and a highly  detailed sea chart of the harbour of Valdivia.  

Having performed a satisfactory reconnaissance,  the O’Higgins sailed up the coast and travelled  

to Talcahuano bay, where the local Chilean  governor levied 250 men for the Sea Wolf’s cause.  

Cochrane also managed to recruit the services  of two schooners, the Montezuma and Intrepido.  

Together, they sailed southwards once more,  knowing that 350 sailors in three wooden ships  

were about to face down 2,000 soldiers  stationed across seven fortresses of stone. 

After being briefly run aground by a  rogue wind on the island of Quiriquina,  

the O’Higgins managed to get back afloat through  some vigorous bilge-pumping and Cochrane’s  

personal carpentry skills. However, the ship  remained damaged, and the water that had flooded  

the hull had ruined the powder magazine and  most of the ammunition aboard. Undeterred,  

Cochrane simply convinced his crew they would  find victory through use of their bayonets alone. 

The frigate rendezvoused back with the two  Schooners. The crew of the leaking O’Higgins  

was transferred to the Montezuma and Intrepido,  both of whom docked just off the Fort Ingles at  

the mouth of the river Valdivia, flying Spanish  colours so not to alert the defenders inside. 

Cochrane had realized that most of the  enemy fortresses were designed to repel  

a seaward assault and a land attack might have the  element of surprise. As he explained to his crew:  

“operations unexpected by the  enemy are, when well executed,  

almost certain to succeed,  whatever may be the odds.” 

On the afternoon of February 3rd, the Spaniards  demanded the two vessels to identify themselves.  

Cochrane sent an officer ashore to parley with the  Spaniards in Fort Ingles, claiming they had been  

blown off course from a Spanish squadron rounding  Cape Horn. The Spaniards didn’t buy this story,  

and at precisely 4:00 PM opened fire on Intrepido,  breaching its hull and killing two soldiers.  

Cochrane was forced to order the  immediate commencement of his assault. 

To that aim, a vanguard was formed, 44 marines led  by English-born Major William Miller were boarded  

upon a canoe, and began a perilous approach upon  the beach of Fort Ingles. The Spaniards sent out  

an advance contingent of 75 soldiers, launching  volley after volley of musket fire upon the  

Chilean boat. A handful of marines were killed,  but the rowers pressed on bravely under fire.  

Eventually reaching shore, Major Miller  led a fierce bayonet charge upon the enemy,  

routing the Spanish force back into their fort.  A tentative beach-head had been established. 

Soon, night had fallen, and the second phase  of Cochrane’s plan fell into motion. Under the  

cover of darkness, 250 Chilean soldiers  were quickly ferried onto the beach.  

Guided by a captured Spaniard, they climbed  the rocky bluffs onto the grassy heights upon  

which the fort stood. From there, the  assault team split into two commands.  

The first approached the seaward wall of Fort  Ingles, making as much noise as possible,  

whooping, hollering and firing their muskets into  the air while remaining out of gunfire range.  

They had precious little ammunition, but Cochrane  knew that this bluff was crucial to his success,  

for the second contingent had begun circling  around to the Fortress’s inland face.  

They stalked silently through the darkness,  whatever sound they made drowned out by the  

cacophony of their comrades in front of the fort. They concealed themselves within a grove of trees,  

trained their sights upon the distracted Spanish  soldiers on the seaward wall, and unleashed a  

devastating musket volley with the last of their  remaining dry powder. In the ensuing chaos,  

the Chilean soldiers raised their bayonets and  charged their enemy, screaming horrible war cries  

to appear all the more monstrous. The Spaniards,  gripped by darkness, confusion and death,  

succumbed to terror, and evacuated Fort Ingles,  fleeing towards the neighbouring Fort Carlos.  

They were pursued relentlessly by Cochrane’s men,  who impaled the panicked Royalists as they ran. 

As the Spanish garrison of Ingles fled  towards the neighbouring Fort San Carlos,  

the commander of the battery frantically ordered  its gates open to receive the refugees. In the  

shroud of night and amidst the chaos of terrorized  men, the Sea Wolf’s warriors slipped right in  

through the open doors, and began hacking away  at the Spaniards inside. Once more, the combined  

garrisons of Ingles and San Carlos abandoned the  second battery, and fled towards Fort Amargos. 

The contest continued as an almost comical game  of dominoes, as Fort Amargos suffered the very  

same fate that San Carlos had before it. Chilean  soldiers slipped through the open gates meant  

to bring sanctuary to their fleeing victims, and  began ruthlessly hacking away at the souls within.  

Despite outnumbering the Chileans six to  one, the Spaniards had been wholly routed  

by a foe who in their eyes could  be no less than the devil itself. 

By the time Fort Amargos had been subdued,  Cochrane’s men had killed a hundred Spaniards,  

and taken captive a hundred more. They moved  on to the Fort Chorocomayo, which was situated  

inland on a hill. Unlike the three forts before  it, Chorocomayo offered a token resistance  

but was eventually overcome by the  ferocity of the Sea Wolf’s marines. 

When the sun rose on the morning of February  the 4th, four out of the seven fortresses were  

in Chilean hands. Absolutely stunned by this  humiliating defeat, Spanish morale was at an  

all time low. The Fortresses on the eastern half  of the harbour put up an unconvincing fight,  

opening fire upon the Montezuma and  Intrepido as they sailed into the bay.  

However, when the O’Higgins reared its  imposing hull within sight of Fort Niebla,  

the last of the Spanish resolve broke, for they  believed that Cochrane would shell them with the  

captured artillery from Fort Chorocomayo. this,  compounded with the firepower and inevitable  

reinforcements aboard the 50-gun Frigate,  made further resistance futile. In reality,  

this was yet another bluff, for the  O’Higgins had no reinforcements aboard,  

nor was it in any state to fight. Nevertheless,  the Spaniards abandoned the eastern forts,  

and all of Corral bay was now in Cochrane’s  hands. In total, he had lost only 26 men. 

Cochrane now advanced down the river to  launch his assault upon the city itself,  

only to find that the Spanish Governor had  looted everything of value in his township  

and fled with his garrison. The city of Valdivia  was now officially in Chilean hands. Despite  

the sacking, there was plenty of booty to be had.  Bountiful amounts of arms, munitions, and currency  

were seized from the fortresses, amounting  to loot of the most promising proportions. 

More importantly, the last Spanish stronghold in  Chile had been eliminated, eliminating the final  

holdout of Colonial power in the south of the  continent. This victory effectively secured the  

long-term future of Chilean independence, and won  them their autonomy over their coast and southern  

frontier. It was the greatest victory that Lord  Thomas Cochrane would win on South American soil. 

Cochrane then returned to Valparaiso. The Chilean  government had assumed he would fail in his  

Valdivian campaign, and had preemptively prepared  to court martial him for insubordination. Learning  

that he had succeeded, they quickly backpedaled  and publicly honoured the Scotsman’s victory. 

To follow up his triumph at Valdivia, Cochrane  turned his attention back northwards to Peru. More  

specifically, the harbour of Callao, a stronghold  which thus far had managed to defy him. On August  

21st, 1820, the Sea Wolf departed Valparaiso at  the head of the entire Chilean naval squadron,  

aboard with him was the esteemed General Jose de  San Martin, alongside 4200 of his troops, which  

made up the bulk of the Chilean army. Ultimately,  their goal was the conquest of Lima, the Peruvian  

capital city that sat adjacent to Callao. Cochrane soon developed friction with San Martin.  

The Chilean general refused to commit his men  to an all-out assault upon their main objective.  

Instead, he disembarked his men at various ports  hundreds of miles from both Lima and Callao,  

stalling for weeks at a time,  and accomplishing very little. 

Believing San Martin to be of feeble military  mind, Cochrane cut off from the main Chilean  

force, and made directly for Callao  with only three vessels, O'Higgins,  

Lautaro and Independencia. He told San Martin  that he intended to blockade the port thereby  

isolate Lima by sea, but this was not the truth,  as Cochrane was planning something much bolder.  

He had suspected that the Spanish Frigate  Esmeralda was still anchored at Callao, and upon  

reaching the port, his suspicions were confirmed. To launch a frontal assault upon the coastal  

fortresses in the bay would be suicide, and  Cochrane’s previous attempts to do such had  

taught him as much. However, the Esmeralda was the  most powerful Spanish Warship in South America’s  

Pacific Coast. If he could launch a stealth  assault upon the Frigate and snatch her out  

from under the cannons of Callao, it would be  a mortal blow to Royalist naval power in Peru.  

The plan was simple in execution. Under cover of  darkness, a quiet boarding party would row into  

the harbour aboard small launch craft, board and  subdue the crew of the Esmeralda as they slept,  

and make off with the prize frigate while  the harbour fortress remained none the wiser. 

At midnight, the attack commenced, the Sea  Wolf’s crew embarked aboard fourteen canoes,  

they rowed harmlessly past two neutral vessels,  the American Macedonia and the British Hyperion. 

Soon enough, the boarding skiffs reached  Esmeralda, and began scaling its hull via  

the Frigate’s main-chains. Cochrane was put  in a perilous situation when the deck watchmen  

heard the clanking of chains and raised the  alarm. Esmeralda had now been alerted, and the  

attackers had no time to waste. Cochrane heaved  himself onto the deck, onto to be struck upon  

the forehead by the butt of a sentry’s musket. He  fell unceremoniously back onto the skiff below,  

but flung himself right back upon the chains,  climbing the Frigate’s hull once more.  

This time, he shot the sentry with his  pistol, and launched himself onto the gangway,  

bellowing loudly: “Up, my lads! She’s ours!” Chileans swarmed upon the Esmeralda, routing  

the Spanish crew to the forecastle bow, where  they rallied and unleashed a volley of musket  

fire upon the boarding party. Cochrane was shot in  the thigh, but pressed on. The remaining Spaniards  

were soon routed- diving overboard or submitting  to capture. The Esmeralda was in Cochrane’s hands.  

By now, the fortress had been well alerted, and  began opening fire upon the captured Frigate.  

The Sea Wolf’s crew set to work, unfurling the  sail and hastily sailing their prize out of the  

harbour. In yet another stroke of cunning,  Cochrane ordered Esmeralda’s tail lights to  

be raised in an identical pattern to  the neutral Hyperion and Macedonia,  

making it indistinguishable from the two. Unable  to risk firing upon neutral vessels, the Spaniards  

could do nothing but helplessly watch their  strongest warship slip out between their fingers. 

The capture of the Esmeralda functionally crippled  the Spanish navy west of Cape Horn. Cochrane was  

now the master of the coasts, and proceeded to  blockade Callao. The Spaniards within, now cut  

off entirely by both land and sea, realized that  their options were to surrender or starve. After  

only a month, the defenders within the fortress  deserted, and joined the Chilean Republic. 

General San Martin, meanwhile, had gained  little with his ground force that besieged Lima.  

He devoted his efforts into inciting the local  Native populations to rebel against the Spaniards,  

but that failed. Cochrane became wary  of San Martin believing that the General  

was deliberately keeping his army intact to  seize control of the nation when it was time. 

Frustrated, Cochrane offered to  lead the assault on Lima himself,  

but was denied. He then requested that the  General at least lend him 600 men, which was  

reluctantly granted. Cochrane took to his ships,  and proceeded to harass the nearby Spanish coast.  

The Royalists in Lima had their supply lines all  but shredded by the Wolf’s prowl, and after three  

months, the Spaniard’s resolve finally broke, and  they surrendered the city. On the 28th of July,  

1821, General San Martin marched into Lima, and  declared the independence of the nation of Peru. 

On July 17th, Cochrane himself entered the newly  liberated metropolis and was given a hero’s  

welcome by the local citizenry. The Scotsman  had come a long way since his fall from grace,  

once more reclaiming his status as a military  legend. Yet, with this triumph loomed the shadow  

of future conflict, for just as Cochrane had  suspected, Jose de San Martin had been appointed  

the Supreme Protector of Peru, but following their  victory, the rifts between them had begun to grow.  

San Martin had essentially established himself as  a dictator, which he saw as a pragmatic necessity.  

The war had left Peru in chaos, and a heavy  hand was needed to prevent widespread looting,  

food shortages, and general anarchy. Cochrane,  however, saw San Martin as a traitor who had  

betrayed his oath to establish a liberal democracy  in lands freed from Spain. In his eyes, Peru  

had simply traded one absolute tyrant for another. It didn’t help that Cochrane and his crew had not  

been properly paid by San Martin, who argued  that it was Chilean responsibility to do so,  

not Peru’s. The Scotsman resolved  this in typical Cochrane fashion,  

by tracking, boarding, and looting a schooner  transporting the state treasury of Peru,  

and using the funds to pay himself and his sailors  exactly what they were owed. Naturally this caused  

a public outcry, and Cochrane quickly went from  war hero to dangerous wildcard in the eyes of  

the Peruvian people. His uncompromising  idealism, stubbornness, and complete lack  

of discretion had alienated him from the very  government he had literally just helped create. 

Cochrane returned to Valparaiso, where the  local Chileans still held him in high regard.  

It was there, in November of 1822, that the Sea  Wolf received a letter from one Antonio Correa da  

Camera, a Brazilian agent operating out of Buenos  Aires. It was a tantalizing proposition; Cochrane  

was being offered command of the Brazilian navy.  At first, he didn’t intend to accept, but civil  

strife was brewing in Chile, and the Scotsman had  no intention of getting involved. With his mind  

made up, he addressed the Chilean people with a  fiery oration: “Chilenos! My fellow countrymen!  

You know that independence is purchased at the  point of a 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.” With that, he sailed away from the  country he had helped liberate, never to return. 

Much like the Spanish side of South America,  the nation of Brazil was currently embroiled in  

an independence struggle against its own colonial  father, Portugal. Although as far as revolutionary  

wars go, this one was unique. In 1807, Napoleon’s  armies had overrun the Portuguese Kingdom,  

forcing its royal family to flee to their  wealthiest colony across the Atlantic.  

During this period, Brazil had become the de-facto  capital of the Portuguese Empire, and as such  

its people were afforded the highest status and  privileges. In 1815, Napoleon had been defeated,  

and Portugal’s ruling family was called upon to  return to their newly liberated mother country.  

King Joao IV went home, leaving his  son Pedro to rule Brazil on his behalf. 

King Joao began soon rolling back the privileges  the aristocracy of Brazil had been enjoying,  

reverting its status back to a subordinate colony.  But the Brazilians had had a taste of liberty, and  

now called for rebellion. It would be an unlikely  man that would rise to lead the revolution:  

The Young Prince, Pedro. Despite being  the heir to the throne of Portugal,  

he had spent most of his life in Brazil,  and cared deeply for his adopted homeland.  

So, Pedro made the slightly unorthodox move  of seceding from his own royal line, declaring  

“Independence or Death!” for Brazil. Before long  he was crowned as the new nation’s first Emperor. 

In the Spring of 1823, Cochrane arrived in Rio  de Janeiro. By then the young Emperor Pedro had  

more or less secured the independence of the  southern half of his realm, but the Portuguese  

still remained in control of the northern regions  of Bahia and Maranhao. Cochrane received a brief  

audience with the Emperor, who accompanied him to  survey the ships that would be under his command.  

It was a modest but functioning navy, consisting  of three frigates, two corvettes, three brigs,  

and a handful of schooners. Cochrane’s  flagship was the fleet’s only ship-of-the-line,  

a 64 gunner named Pedro Primiero. In April, Cochrane was deployed northwards  

for the first time. His initial target was the  Seaport of Salvador, capital of the province of  

Bahia, and the most powerful stronghold in  Brazil which was still in Portuguese hands.  

The city was currently besieged on the landward  side by the forces of Emperor Pedro, so Cochrane  

blockaded the harbour with five of his ships,  to prevent the city being resupplied by sea. 

The Sea Wolf knew that the reliability of his  crew was tenuous as best. During colonial times,  

Brazilians had been shunted from maritime  jobs in favour of Portuguese-born sailors,  

so the new Empire faced a severe lack of reliable  mariners. Cochrane’s ships were manned primarily  

by English and American mercenaries, African  freedmen recently liberated from slavery,  

and Portuguese nationals, who were  poorly paid and treated with suspicion.  

Cochrane knew he could depend on the  Anglophones, and the Africans were a wildcard,  

but the disgruntled Portuguese  labourers were highly untrustworthy. 

He didn’t have much time to address his  misgivings, as on the 4th of May a squadron  

of thirteen Portuguese warships appeared on the  horizon, intent to relieve the naval blockade of  

Salvador. As usual, Cochrane was outnumbered two  to one. Equally as usual, the sea wolf’s answer  

to this dilemma was to abandon all caution and  charge headlong into the enemy. As the Portuguese  

fleet hastily arranged themselves into a line of  battle, the Pedro Primiero barreled in between  

their formation, isolating four Portuguese  vessels from the main body of their fleet. 

Immediately, Cochrane sent a flag signal to  the rest of his ships to descend upon the  

isolated enemy vessels. But disaster struck- the  disgruntled Portuguese aboard the Brazilian ships  

had decided that since their pay was so meagre,  they may as well revert their loyalties back  

to their mother country. They refused to  engage in battle, and Pedro Primeiro was left  

to fight the entire enemy fleet alone. To make a dire situation worse,  

Cochrane soon found that there  were saboteurs aboard his own ship.  

Two Portuguese labourers had imprisoned the  Pedro Primiero’s powder monkeys below deck,  

preventing crucial gunpowder from  being transported to the gun decks,  

and rendering his ship unable to  effectively return fire at the enemy.  

The conspirators were captured, but even Cochrane  had to admit that there was no way he could earn  

any victory out of this humiliation. The Sea  Wolf was forced to order a hasty retreat after  

what had been a humbling and unceremonious defeat. Following this major setback, Cochrane drastically  

rearranged the personnel in his fleet. The  Englishmen, Americans, loyal Brazilians and  

Black Marines were all concentrated aboard his  flagship and two frigates. It would be with this  

greatly reduced, but overall more reliable fleet  that Cochrane would proceed with in the war. On  

the night of June 12th, Cochrane disguised the  Pedro Primeiro as an English Merchant ship,  

and sailed into Salvador harbour, performing  reconnaissance in order to plan an attack using  

an old but reliable trick of his: fire ships. Cochrane’s presence was soon discovered,  

but it worked in his favour. The citizens of  Salvador were already exhausted from a year  

of being besieged, and when they found out it  was the sea wolf himself at their seaward gate,  

they became gripped in terror, their minds  taken by whatever crazy plan the infamous  

Scotsman had up his sleeve. The townsfolk  had lost all desire to continue the fight,  

and pleaded with the Portuguese governor  to finally abandon the coastal stronghold. 

On July 2nd, 1823, the Portuguese garrison  assembled into a convoy of ships and left Bahia  

for good, sailing back to their mother country  aboard 17 warships and 75 transport vessels.  

We can only imagine what sort of sinister  grin might have creeped upon Cochrane’s lips  

as his prey exposed themselves on the  open ocean. Before long he unfurled his  

flagship’s sails and descended upon the fleeing  Portuguese like a wolf upon a flock of sheep. 

Within months, Cochrane had all  but eviscerated King Joao’s navy,  

relentlessly pursuing them across the Atlantic,  isolating and picking off enemy warships one by  

one with only three vessels at his command. In  total, the Scotsman and his subordinates had  

captured over thirty Portuguese ships, and  taken over 2,000 enemy soldiers prisoner. 

Following this utter devastation of Portuguese  sea-power, Cochrane proceeded to Sao Luis,  

the capital of the province of Maranhao. With  only his flagship, he boldly sailed within range  

of the town’s guns, and sent his captain  ashore to treat with the local commandant.  

Cochrane’s message was simple: Bahia had  been liberated, the Portuguese fleet had  

been destroyed, and a massive Brazilian fleet was  on its way, descending down upon Maranhao. This  

was a huge bluff, since no such Brazilian fleet  existed. Nevertheless, the Portuguese garrison  

swallowed the bait, hook, line and sinker. The  next day, the local Junta and the town Bishop  

came aboard the Pedro Primeiro, forsaking Portugal  and swearing allegiance to the Brazilian Emperor.  

Cochrane’s men promptly took total control  of the town, seized all its munitions and  

commandeered all the ships in its harbour. Cochrane returned to Rio in 1824,  

where he once more received a hero’s welcome, and  was granted the non-hereditary title of Marquess  

of Maranhao by Emperor Pedro. That same year,  a new rebel movement emerged in the Province  

of Pernambuco, led by wealthy landowners who  opposed the Brazilian Emperor’s liberal reforms.  

Cochrane sailed north once more and helped to  quickly crush the rebellion. At this point,  

The Sea Wolf had cemented himself as an eternal  hero in the ethnogenesis of Brazilian nationhood,  

much like he had done in Chile and Peru. Unfortunately, Cochrane had developed a  

nasty little habit of becoming a nation’s most  celebrated war-hero, only to immediately alienate  

said nation’s government with his bullheadedness,  and this Brazilian episode would end much like his  

Spanish-American escapades did. Throughout  the revolution, Emperor Pedro’s government  

had insisted on a policy of reconciliation with  the former Portuguese land-owners still living  

in Brazil, returning the wealth and property  seized during the war to their original owners.  

This was an affront to Cochrane, who had  seized the equivalent of some $12,000,000  

modern US dollars’ worth of booty during his time  in Brazil, and insisted that he was owed at least  

one-eighth of the total take, as was proper. This boiled over in 1825, when Cochrane once  

more took his payment into his own hands, sacking  Brazilian merchant ships anchored at Sao Luis do  

Maranhao and making off with the public funds in  their holds. Outraged, the Brazilian government  

demanded that the Scotsman return to Rio,  but Cochrane had absconded aboard a frigate,  

and after a 7-year absence, made his way  back home to Britain. But as it turned out,  

Cochrane’s homecoming tour would be brief, as  once more, a new nation was calling for his aid. 

While the people and culture of Greece were  Ancient, its modern nation was very new,  

and forged in rebellion. After nearly four  centuries of Ottoman rule, the Greeks in the  

Ottoman Empire had risen up in 1821, and had been  fighting a desperate war of survival ever since.  

The Greek struggle had evoked  sympathy across Western Europe.  

Many saw the rebellion as a righteous  holy war against their Turkish oppressors.  

Meanwhile, the educated elites of Western Europe  had gobbled up classical Greek literature since  

the advent of the Renaissance, and called upon  their governments to help liberate the land of  

Socrates, Sophocles, Euripides and Demosthenes. All of this was very tantalizing to Cochrane,  

who despite being over 50, still craved  action, adventure, fame, and glory.  

After the Greek Committee in London sent the  Legendary Sea Wolf a letter asking him to assume  

command of the Hellenic Navy, he readily agreed.  However, there were a few wrinkles to iron out  

first. Having felt cheated out of his pay in  Peru and Brazil, Cochrane demanded an upfront  

payment of 37,000 pounds from the Greeks, an  exorbitantly high sum. He also insisted that a  

fleet of steam-powered warships be built for the  war effort. Steam-powered vehicles were still a  

brand new invention in the 1820s, but Cochrane had  long been an eager supporter of the technology.  

However, due to incompetence in the production  line, none of Cochrane’s commissioned steam ships  

were completed fast enough to influence  the Greek war effort, and the delay they  

caused in Cochrane’s deployment cost the Greek  revolutionaries heavily in time and resources. 

On March 17th, 1827, Cochrane finally arrived in  Poros. By then the rebellion was in dire straits.  

The Greek leaders mounting the resistance  had descended into vicious infighting,  

while the Turks’ Egyptian allies were ravaging  the Peleponnese in a devastating invasion.  

Things did quickly turn around the  moment Cochrane stepped ashore.  

The Sea Wolf was legendary; by now everyone  was well aware of his track record against  

Napoleon and across South America. His mere  presence was a massive boost to Greek morale,  

and he quickly used his clout to help  unite the feuding Greek generals,  

who were finally able to agree on one man to  lead them, the statesman Ioannis Kapodistrias. 

Unfortunately, the rest of Cochrane’s endeavors in  Greece went rather poorly. He had never developed  

a rapport with his Greek troops the way he had  earned the loyalty of those of Chile and Brazil.  

He considered the Hellenes in his crew poorly  trained and mightily undisciplined. In reality,  

the Chilean and Brazilian navies had been pretty  much non-existent before Cochrane’s arrival,  

allowing him to create a hierarchy and military  doctrine from the ground-up. Meanwhile,  

the makeshift Greek Navy had enjoyed much success  before Cochrane took command of them, forcing the  

Sea Wolf to adapt to a pre-existing style of  irregular naval warfare he was not used to. 

On the 5th of May, 1827, an attempt to liberate  Athens by laying siege to the Acropolis ended in  

disaster, largely because Cochrane couldn’t stop  quarreling with his fellow Briton, Richard Church,  

the man who had been appointed to lead the  Greek army. Their collective failure to  

execute a successful invasion resulted  in the deaths of thousands of Greeks.  

From that point on, Cochrane no longer played a  major role in Greek struggle for Independence,  

although his participation in the war did  indirectly lead to the intervention of the Great  

Powers of Britain, France and Russia, who defeated  a Turko-Egyptian fleet at Navarino in 1828,  

securing the independence of Southern Greece. 

Nevertheless, the Sea Wolf’s legacy in Hellas  is considered a stain in an otherwise remarkable  

naval career. It would take Cochrane several years  to recover from his failures in the Peloponnese,  

as he grappled with his own shattered sense of  self-worth. His fighting days were now over. 

Over the years, the British Parliament that  had originally driven him from his homeland  

had begun to recognize his value once more,  slowly becoming sympathetic to him. On May 2nd,  

1832, Cochrane was finally pardoned for the Stock  Fraud and was reinstated as an officer of the  

Royal Navy of Great Britain, and all the honours  he had earned in the Napoleonic War were returned. 

Cochrane was promoted to Rear Admiral of the  British Navy. He never saw direct combat again,  

living his days in semi-retirement, where he  continued his experiments with modern technology,  

pouring funds into the continued research  and development of steam-powered engines.  

One of Cochrane’s many legacies today is  that of a pioneer of military technology,  

and he is widely considered to be one of the more  influential men who helped Britain transition  

from the age of sail into the age of steam. In 1860, an elderly Sea Wolf wrote an extensive  

autobiography of his life and adventures, the same  tome we’ve referred to throughout this series.  

That same year, his health began to  deteriorate. And on the 31st of October,  

while undergoing a risky surgery for kidney  stones, he passed away- at the age of 85. 

The legacy of the Sea Wolf still casts a large  shadow upon the nations for whom he served.  

In Britain, he is considered perhaps the single  most daring commander of the age of sail,  

and his adventures have directly inspired famous  naval fiction such as the Horatio Hornblower  

series, as well as Master and Commander. In Chile, six vessels, dozens of streets,  

and a small town all bear his name, while a  striking monument in Valparaiso has immortalized  

his role in the freedom of the country. Each year  in May, representatives of the Chilean Navy hold  

a wreath-laying ceremony at his grave. Many in  Peru and Brazil today still honour Cochrane’s  

crucial role in the liberation of their nations. Thus, ends our video on Thomas Cochrane, but we  

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Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
single /ˈsɪŋɡəl/ A1	adjective - only one
man /mæn/ A1	noun - an adult human male
life /laɪf/ A1	noun - the existence of an individual human or animal
war /wɔːr/ A2	noun - a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country
hero /ˈhɪərəʊ/ A2	noun - a person who is admired for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities
enemy /ˈen.ə.mi/ A2	noun - a person who is actively opposed or hostile to someone or something.
officer /ˈɒfɪsər/ B1	noun - a person holding a position of authority in the armed forces
captain /ˈkæptɪn/ B1	noun - the person in command of a ship
sleep /sliːp/ A1	verb - a condition of body and mind in which the nervous system is relatively inactive, the eyes closed, the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended noun - a condition of body and mind in which the nervous system is relatively inactive, the eyes closed, the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended
schedule /ˈʃedjuːl/ B1	noun - a plan for carrying out a process or procedure, giving lists of intended events and times. verb - arrange or plan (an event) to take place at a particular time.
regular /ˈreɡjʊlə(r)/ B1	adjective - done or happening at the same time each day, week, month, or year
healthy /ˈhelθi/ A2	adjective - in good health
navy /ˈneɪvi/ B1	noun - the part of a country's armed forces that is trained to fight at sea
family /ˈfæməli/ A1	noun - a group of people who are related to each other, such as a mother, a father, and their children
sea /siː/ A1	noun - the salt water that covers a large part of the earth's surface
battle /ˈbæt.əl/ B1	noun - a violent struggle or fight verb - fight or struggle vigorously to achieve or resist something
fleet /fliːt/ B1	noun - a group of ships sailing together, engaged in the same activity, or under the same command.
revolution /ˌrevəˈluːʃən/ B2	noun - a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system.
capture /ˈkæptʃər/ B1	verb - take into one's possession or control by force or strateg noun - the act of capturing someone or something.
victory /ˈvɪktəri/ B1	noun - an act of defeating an enemy or opponent in a battle, game, or other competition.
attack /əˈtæk/ A2	verb - take aggressive action against (a place or person) with weapons or armed force, typically in a battle or war. noun - an act of attacking someone or something violently or aggressively.