The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane by Earl of Dundonald Thomas Barnes Cochrane (best classic books to read .TXT) 📕

to which he proceeded as soon as the congratulations of his new friends would allow him, Lord Cochrane was heartily welcomed. So profuse and prolonged were the entertainments in his favour—splendid dinners, at which zealous patriots tendered their hearty compliments, being followed by yet more splendid balls, at which handsome women showed their gratitude in smiles, and eagerly sought the honour of being led by him through the dances which were their chief delight—that he had to remind his guests that he had come to Chili not to feast but to fight.

There was prompt need of fighting. The Spaniards had a strong land force pressing up from the south and threatening to invest Santiago. Their formidable fleet swept the seas, and was being organized for an attack on Valparaiso. Admiral Blanco Encalada had just returned from a cruise in which he had succeeded in capturing, in Talcuanho Bay, a fine Spanish fifty-gun frigate, the Maria Isabel; but his fleet was ill-ordered and poorly equipped, quite unable, without thorough re-organization, to withstand the superior force of the enemy. An instance of the bad state of affairs was induced by Lord Cochrane's arrival, and seemed likely to cause serious trouble to him and worse misfortune to his Chilian employers. One of the republican vessels was the Hecate, a sloop of eighteen guns which had been sold out of the British navy and bought as a speculation by Captains Guise and Spry. Having first offered her in vain to the Buenos Ayrean Government, they had brought her on to Chili, and there contrived to sell her with advantage and to be themselves taken into the Chilian service. They and another volunteer, Captain Worcester, a North American, liking the ascendancy over Admiral Bianco which their experience had won for them, formed a cabal with the object of securing Admiral Blanco's continuance in the chief command, or its equal division between him and Lord Cochrane. Nothing but the Chilian admiral's disinterested patriotism prevented a serious rupture. He steadily withstood all temptations to his vanity, and avowed his determination to accept no greater honour—if there could be a greater—than that of serving as second in command under the brave Englishman who had come to fight for the independence of Chili. Thus, though some troubles afterwards sprang from the disaffections of Guise, Spry, and Worcester, the mischief schemed by them was prevented at starting.

A few days after his arrival Lord Cochrane received his commission as "Vice-Admiral of Chili, Admiral, and Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces of the Republic." His flag was hoisted, on the 22nd of December, on board the Maria Isabel, now rechristened the O'Higgins, and fitted out as the principal ship in the small Chilian fleet. The other vessels of the fleet were the San Martin, formerly an Indiaman in the English service, of fifty-six guns; the Lautaro, also an old Indiaman, of forty-four guns; the Galvarino, as the Hecate of Captains Cruise and Spry was now styled, of eighteen guns; the Chacabuco, of twenty guns; the Aracauno, of sixteen guns; and a sloop of fourteen guns named the Puyrredon.

The Spanish fleet, which these seven ships had to withstand, comprised fourteen vessels and twenty-seven gunboats. Of the former three were frigates, the Esmeralda, of forty-four guns, the Venganza, of forty-two guns, and the Sebastiana, of twenty-eight guns; four were brigs, the Maypeu, of eighteen guns, the Pezuela, of twenty-two guns, the Potrilla, of eighteen guns, and another, whose name is not recorded, also of eighteen guns. There was a schooner, name unknown, which carried one large gun and twenty culverins. The rest were armed merchantmen, the Resolution, of thirty-six guns; the Cleopatra, of twenty-eight guns; the La Focha, of twenty guns; the Guarmey, of eighteen guns; the Fernando, of twenty-six guns, and the San Antonio, of eighteen guns. Only ten out of the fourteen, however, were ready for sea; and before the whole naval force could be got ready for service, it had been partly broken up by Lord Cochrane.

There was delay, also, in getting the Chilian fleet under sail. After waiting at Valparaiso as long as he deemed prudent, Lord Cochrane left the three smaller vessels to complete their equipment under Admiral Blanco's direction, and passed out of port on the 16th of January, with the O'Higgins, the San Martin, the Lautaro, and the Chacabuco. He had hardly started before a mutiny broke out on board the last-named vessel, which compelled him to halt at Coquimbo long enough to try and punish the mutineers. Resuming the voyage, he proceeded along the Chilian and Peruvian coast as far northward as Callao Bay, where he cruised about for some days, awaiting an opportunity of attacking the Spanish shipping there collected in considerable force.

While thus waiting he employed his leisure in observations, great and small, of the sort and in the way characteristic of him all through life. One of his rough notes runs thus:—"Cormorants resort in enormous nights, coming in the morning from the northward to Callao Bay, and proceeding along shore to the southward, diving in regular succession one after another on the fish which, driven at the same time from below by shoals of porpoises, seem to have no chance but to be devoured under water or scooped up in the large bags pendent from the enormous bills of the cormorants." "Prodigious seals," we read in another note, "inhabit the rocks, whose grave faces and grey beards look more like the human countenance than the faces of most other animals. They are very unwieldy in their movements when on shore, but most expert in the water. There is a small kind of duck in the bay, which, from the clearness of the water, can be seen flying with its wings under water in chase of small fry, which it speedily overtakes from its prodigious speed."

From note-making of that sort, Lord Cochrane turned to more serious business. The batteries of Callao and of San Lorenzo, a little island in the bay which helped to form the port, mounted one hundred and sixty guns, and more than twice as many were at the command of vessels there lying-to. Direct attack of a force so very much superior to that of the Chilian fleet seemed out of the question. Therefore Lord Cochrane bethought him of a subterfuge. Learning that two North American war-ships were expected at Callao, he determined to personate them with the O'Higgins and Lautaro, and so enter the port under alien colours. It was then carnival-time, and on the 21st of February, deeming that the Spaniards were more likely to be off their guard, he proposed "to make a feint of sending a boat ashore with despatches, and in the mean time suddenly to dash at the frigates and cut them out." Unfortunately a dense fog set in, which lasted till the 28th, and made it impossible for him to effect his purpose before the carnival was over. Let the sequel be told in his own words.

"On the 28th, hearing heavy firing and imagining that one of the ships was engaged with the enemy, I stood with the flag-ship into the bay. The other ships, imagining the same thing, also steered in the direction of the firing, when, the fog clearing for a moment, we discovered each other, as well as a strange sail near us. This proved to be a Spanish gunboat, with a lieutenant and twenty men, who, on being made prisoners, informed us that the firing was a salute in honour of the Viceroy, who had that morning been on a visit of inspection to the batteries and shipping, and was then on board the brig-of-war Pezuela, which we saw crowding sail in the direction of the batteries. The fog, again coming on, suggested to me the possibility of a direct attack. Accordingly, still maintaining our disguise under American colours, the O'Higgins and Lautaro stood towards the batteries, narrowly escaping going ashore in the fog. The Viceroy, having no doubt witnessed the capture of the gunboat, had, however, provided for our reception, the garrison being at their guns, and the crews of the ships-of-war at their quarters. Notwithstanding the great odds, I determined to persist in an attack, as our withdrawing, without firing a shot, would produce an effect upon the minds of the Spaniards the reverse of that intended. I had sufficient experience in war to know that moral effect, even if the result of a degree of temerity, will not unfrequently supply the place of superior force.

"The wind falling light, I did not venture on laying the flag-ship and the Lautaro alongside the Spanish frigates, as I at first intended, but anchored with springs on our cables, abreast of the shipping, which was arranged in a half-moon of two lines, the rear-rank being judiciously disposed so as to cover the intervals of the ships in the front line. A dead calm succeeded, and we were for two hours exposed to a heavy fire from the batteries, in addition to that from the two frigates, the brigs Pezuela and Maypeu, and seven or eight gunboats. Nevertheless the northern angle of one of the principal forts was silenced by our fire. As soon as a breeze sprang up, we weighed anchor, standing to and fro in front of the batteries, and returning their fire, until Captain Guise, who commanded the Lautaro, being severely wounded, that ship sheered off and never again came within range. As, from want of wind, or doubt of the result, neither the San Martin nor the Chacabuco had ever got within fire, the flag-ship was thus left alone, and I was reluctantly compelled to relinquish the attack. I withdrew to the island of San Lorenzo, about three miles distant from the forts; the Spaniards, though nearly quadruple our numbers, exclusive of their gunboats, not venturing to follow us.

"The action having been commenced in a fog, the Spaniards imagined that all the Chilian vessels were engaged. They were not a little surprised, as it again cleared, to find that their own frigate, the quondam Maria Isabella, was almost their only opponent. So much were they dispirited by this discovery that, as soon as possible after the close of the contest, their ships-of-war were dismantled, the topmasts and spars being formed into a double boom across the anchorage, so as to prevent approach. The Spaniards were also previously unaware of my being in command of the Chilian squadron. On becoming acquainted with this fact, they bestowed upon me the not very complimentary title of 'El Diablo,' by which I was afterwards known amongst them."

Two hundred and forty years before, almost to a day, Sir Francis Drake—whom, of all English seamen, Lord Cochrane most resembled in chivalrous daring and in chivalrous hatred of oppression—had secretly led his little Golden Hind into the harbour of Callao, and there despoiled a Spanish fleet of seventeen vessels; for which and for his other brave achievements he won the nickname of El Dracone. Drake the Dragon and Cochrane the Devil were kinsmen in noble hatred, and noble punishment, of Spanish wrong-doing.

Retiring to San Lorenzo, after the fight in Callao Bay on the 28th of February, Lord Cochrane occupied the island, and from it blockaded Callao for five weeks. On the island he found thirty-seven Chilian soldiers, whom the Spaniards had made prisoners eight years before. "The unhappy men," he said, "had ever since been forced to work in chains under the supervision of a military guard—now prisoners in turn; their sleeping-place during the whole of this period being a filthy shed, in which they were every night chained by one leg to an iron bar." Yet worse, as he was informed by the poor fellows whom he freed from their misery, was the condition of some Chilian officers and seamen imprisoned in Lima, and so cruelly chained that the fetters had worn bare their ankles to the bone. He accordingly, under a flag of truce, sent to the Spanish Viceroy, Don Joaquim de la Pezuela, offering to exchange for these Chilian prisoners a larger number of Spaniards captured by himself and others. This proposal was bluntly refused by the Viceroy, who took occasion, in his letter, to avow his surprise that a British nobleman should come to fight for a rebel community "unacknowledged by all the powers of the globe." Lord Cochrane replied that "a British nobleman was a free man, and therefore had a right to assist any country which was endeavouring to re-establish the rights of aggrieved humanity." "I have," he added, "adopted the cause of Chili with the same freedom of judgment that I previously exercised when refusing the offer of an admiral's rank in Spain, made to me not long ago by the Spanish ambassador in London."

Except in blockading Callao and repairing his ships little was done by Lord Cochrane during his stay at San Lorenzo. On the 1st of March he went into the harbour again and opened a destructive fire upon the Spanish gunboats, but as these soon sought