Customer Reviews

The Sea Wolf: The Life of Admiral Cochrane

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For any reader who isn't familiar with the Cochrane saga, Alexander Cochrane was the son of an impoverished Scots nobleman, the Earl of Dundonald (a title he eventually inherited). Like many in similar circumstances he sought a naval career, which had prestige equal to the army but with minimal entry costs and the chance of enrichment by prize money. Cochrane's entry was eased by the presence in the navy of other family members, including one who (illegally) carried Cochrane's name on his ship's books when he was still a young child, thus giving him a flying start in accumulating the sea-time required for a lieutenant's commission. Cochrane also had the good fortune to be in the generation of officers who were of an age for command as the long series of French wars broke out in the late 18th century.

He established a great reputation for energy and enterprise in commerce interception and amphibious raiding, first in the minute brig-sloop Speedy, and later in the frigate Imperieuse. He also established a reputation for arrogance, tactlessness and shameless lobbying for preferential treatment, carried out mostly through his connections with the numerous Scots prominent in Parliament and naval administration. His career culminated in his appointment in 1809, over the heads of the officers on the spot, to lead the operations aimed at destroying the French fleet bottled up in Aix Roads on the Biscay coast. He got totally inadequate support from Admiral Gambier and the operation was a very limited success; the subsequent very public recriminations finally exhausted the patience of the Admiralty and he was left on the beach for the rest of the war. In 1814, following his implication in a stock market scam, he was dismissed from the Navy and stripped of his seat in Parliament and his knighthood. From 1817 to 1828 he served as a naval mercenary in the service of various independence movements both in Latin America and Greece; he returned to Britain and was restored to his naval rank (plus accrued seniority) in 1832. Thereafter he held peacetime commands, but his reputation for recklessness kept him ashore in the Crimean War.

I bought this book when in a condition of scepticism induced by previous writings on Cochrane, hoping it would help me to make a balanced judgement on him. I finished it in a condition of near Cochranophobia, but I have to confess that may be as much due to the shortcomings of the book as to those of the man. For a truly dreadful book it is. It is littered with elementary technical errors, such as references to 74-gun 'frigates', that show Grimble had not troubled to acquire even a casual reader's level of nautical knowledge, and with inconsistencies of argument such as condemning Britain's strategy of coastal raiding against the USA in 1813-14, having previously given fulsome praise to Cochrane's similar raids on the French. Worst of all, though, he approaches his subject with a degree of ranting adulation that in the end arouses distrust of all his statements about Cochrane, even those on his hero's most praiseworthy aspects.