Cochrane Read online

  The Cochranes of the eleventh century perhaps fought on the other side at Culross. According to family tradition, they were "sea rovers" from Scandinavia whom the fortunes of war brought to Scotland. It was not until the thirteenth century, however, that their name first appeared in official Scottish documents as "Coveran", and then as "Cochran". A hundred years later, while England was ruled by the Plantagenets, the family assumed a new importance in Scotland's affairs in the person of Robert Cochran. His taste for fine architecture was combined with an ability to hew his opponent to pieces with a broadsword in a remarkably short space of time. It was the latter quality which recommended him to James III of Scotland. Thomas Cochrane later remarked that his ancestor played the same role to King James as Cardinal Wolsey was to do to Henry VIII, though with a different conclusion.

  Unscrupulous in most things, Robert Cochran was loyal to his master, crushing the power of the Scottish nobility in order to reinforce the authority of the King. James duly rewarded him with the Earldom of Mar. Exasperated by this, the disgruntled knights and noblemen met to plan their vengeance, which was to take effect at a ceremonial military gathering. They fell upon Robert Cochran there and brought him to the bridge at Lauder. The bodies of other courtiers lynched by the plotters were already dangling from the bridge. Cochran coolly suggested that if they proposed to despatch him in the same manner, then his rank as Earl of Mar entitled him to die by a silk cord from his own pavilion. By way of answer, one of the knights wrenched off the gold chain about Cochran's neck, and slipped the noose over him. A moment later, King James's trusted servant dropped over the side of the bridge, and died as the rope sprang taut.

  Surprisingly, in view of their way of life and the troubled times, no other Cochrane died by the hangman's art. A near exception was Sir John Cochrane, younger son of the 1st Earl of Dundonald. When the Protestant Duke of Monmouth raised the west of England against the Catholic James II, Sir John joined the Earl of Argyll's simultaneous rebellion in Scotland. After its failure, he was taken prisoner and sentenced to death. It required only the arrival of the death warrant from London to seal his fate. But his daughter, showing the traditional spirit and audacity of the Cochranes, dressed herself as a man and "twice attacked and robbed the mails (between Belfor and Berwick) which conveyed the death-warrants". At the same time, she persuaded Father Petre, King James's confessor, to forward a bribe of £5000 for Sir John's life. A pardon was accordingly obtained. Bishop Burnet, staunchly Whig and Protestant, preferred another story. According to this, the King pardoned Sir John after a private interview, during which the prisoner betrayed details of secret negotiations between the rebels and William of Orange, who was to depose the King three years later and reign as William III. Not that Burnet was prepared to forego the story of the bribe entirely, remarking that Sir John had "a rich father, the Earl of Dundonald: And he offered the Priests £5000 to save his son. They wanted a stock of money for managing their designs: so they interposed so effectually, that the bargain was made."3

  Whatever the precise truth, Sir John had had a very narrow escape. His cautionary experience persuaded the rest of the Cochrane family to spend most of the next century in loyal, if humdrum, service to the crown.

  Eventful and vivid though his family history might be, the young Thomas Cochrane was quite as apt to be influenced by the present as by the past. His background, in this respect, differed markedly from that of English political patrons and their favourites, who knew that lucrative administrative posts as ' 'placemen" of the ministry, no less than the political reward of sinecure employments, were theirs by right to manipulate or enjoy. As late as 1833, Lord Macaulay, writing of Sir Robert Walpole in the Edinburgh Review, could remark equably, 'That he practised corruption on a large scale is, we think, indisputable. . . . Walpole governed by corruption because, in his time, it was impossible to govern otherwise . . . the House of Commons was in that situation in which assemblies must be managed by corruption or cannot be managed at all." The attitude of men of affairs in the eighteenth century could hardly be more accurately mirrored. Despite the scorn of later generations, the recent memories of "corruption" were not unduly disquieting to Macaulay, either as essayist or as minister of the crown. When Cochrane, with his clear sense of honour and political decency, encountered the easy-going ministerial politics of his time, had showed neither respect nor mercy to his opponents.4

  His childhood world made him ill-equipped for the great moral compromise of public life. Culross was idyllic, though not remote, bounded by the hills of Kinross, the smooth waters of the Forth, and the city of Edinburgh a dozen miles downstream, already fulfilling its claim to the cliche, "The Athens of the North". To Cochrane, Edinburgh was always the natural seat of learning and jurisprudence, of fine art and high society. The noble buildings of the defunct

  Scottish parliament served as a reminder that at the beginning of the century Scotland had still been free of the borough-mongering and ministerial bribery of Westminster politics.

  Worse still, Westminster showed its scorn for the Scots, the "Sawneys" and "North Britons", as an inferior breed whose very religion was despised. A group of Presbyterians sought an interview with Lord Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor, to ask that they should not continue to suffer civil and political disqualifications merely for being Presbyterians. "Gentlemen," said the Lord Chancellor, "I'll be perfectly frank with you. Gentlemen, I am against you and for the Established Church, by God. Not that I like the Established Church a bit better than any other church, but because it is established. And whenever you can get your damned religion established, I'll be for that too. Good morning to you."5

  However great their distaste for English public life, the decline of the family estates left the Cochranes with little choice but to seek their fortunes through it. As patterns for the young Lord Cochrane's future, his childhood world was haunted by the dim and often downright shady figures of his paternal uncles. Uncle Charles, of course, had died for King and Country at Yorktown, but his surviving brothers were energetically involved in different public pursuits.

  The Honourable Basil Cochrane had chosen the service of the East India Company, where his nephew might one day make money in considerable quantities. Unhappily, when the boy was eight years old, news reached Culross of a great misfortune in Uncle Basil's life. In his zeal for justice, he had been so unfortunate as to flog two Indians to death, or so it was alleged. They had been guilty of falsifying the account books at Negapatam, where Basil Cochrane was in charge of John Company's affairs. The keeper of accounts, Vydenadah, refused to produce the books so Basil Cochrane had him tied to the balustrade and flogged by a team of sepoys to persuade him of his error.6

  Of the two "murdered" Indians, one Ramah Naig, was found to be alive and well. But Vydenadah had certainly died several days after the beating, from whatever causes. The East India Company in Madras was obliged to hold an inquiry. The next year, 1786, the Court of Directors in London read the report and dismissed Basil Cochrane from their service. They would have preferred to see him removed from India altogether but he remained as a merchant, victualling the ships of the Royal Navy at Madras on the basis of a one per cent commission. He knew too much about the secrets of the East India trade for the directors to risk public warfare with him. He was ready to tell the world, for example, the story of "condemned provisions". These cases of rotten food were put ashore from ships and written off. They were then resold to other ships, as fresh supplies, and in due course put ashore somewhere else. Dumped and sold repeatedly, the putrifying cargoes sailed the Indian Ocean "at the expense of the public".7

  The East India directors made their peace with Basil Cochrane, who spent the next forty years screwing every last penny from the Victualling Board of the Admiralty, on whose behalf he operated. Once, at least, they thought they had the measure of him, reckoning that he owed them over £9000. They should have known better. There was a ten-year dogfight in the Court of Exchequer, in Parliament, where Cochrane presented p
etitions against them, and in the press. When it was over, the Victualling Board had not seen a penny of their money and found themselves, by the vagaries of Exchequer, condemned to pay Cochrane almost £1ooo.8 It was unlikely that the East India Company would receive Basil Cochrane's nephew with much enthusiasm.

  A more hopeful avenue was opened by the career of a more distinguished uncle who was to win 'high naval honours, Alexander Cochrane, then a captain in the Royal Navy. The 9th Earl of Dundonald disliked the navy, having tried it for a short while himself, so Uncle Alexander acted independently. He had fought with distinction under Admiral Lord Rodney and his influence was sufficient to allow him to enter little Thomas Cochrane's name, as midshipman, on the books of four Royal Navy ships: the Vesuvius, the Caroline, La Sophie, and the Hind. Of course, it was not intended that the child should go to sea at an unreasonably tender age. Uncle Alexander was merely ensuring that if his nephew was allowed to choose the navy, then his seniority as a midshipman would date from the time his name was entered on the ships' books.

  Apart from such figures as Basil and Alexander, the six Cochrane uncles contained one man who was the "black sheep" of the family in the grand manner. As a scoundrel and a fraud, Colonel Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone, as he called himself, was to play the most important role in his nephew's life. He was a profiteer and slave-trader who had entered the army and risen to the rank of colonel by 1797. Then he was appointed Governor of Domenica, a post which he reasonably regarded as carrying a licence to pilfer and embezzle to his heart's content. As for his slave-trading interests, the government could not have been more helpful. The 8th West India regiment was put under his command and he quickly set them to work for his private use, building a fine estate to house the harem of girls whom he collected as a hobby. He seemed the archetype of the Victorian "bounder" or "cad". As he watched the parade of slave women with a connoisseur's eye, or observed the flogging of a recalcitrant subject, it might seem that this easy existence could not last. For this contingency, he had a well-laid plan. When, in 1803, the great investigation began, the acts of embezzlement and misappropriation had been so arranged that they all appeared as the work of his subordinate, Major Gordon.

  The court-martial, however, was a match for Cochrane-Johnstone. Its members heard the evidence, acquitted John Gordon, and indicted the ex-Governor of Domenica himself. Still he eluded their vengeance. As time went by and the law delayed, it grew more difficult to prove the case. To the disgust of George III, the prosecution failed. Yet in the general brevet promotion of army officers in 1803, Cochrane-Johnstone was passed over. Indeed, he was made to resign his commission. He wrote to the Prince of Wales saying that he had heard his resignation was to be cancelled and that he was to be made a major-general. A cold official reply informed him that if he had heard anything of the kind, he was sadly in error. Cruelly misjudged, he sat in the comfort of his Harley Street house, describing himself, moist-eyed, to all who would listen as "an innocent man, who had devoted his life and fortune to the service of his King and Country". In order to be immune from arrest for debt and to turn unreservedly to "speculation", he bought the parliamentary seat of Grampound. The constituency was so notoriously corrupt that even an anti-reform House of Commons made an exception and abolished it a decade before 1832. When the authorities chose to topple Thomas Cochrane from a hero's pinnacle, the rogue uncle was a handy instrument.9

  The 9th Earl himself exercised the most direct influence over his son's development. Quick-tempered, anxious, unpredictable, he was crotchety with good reason, tight-fisted because he had nothing to give. He harped querulously on the "res angusta domi", that convenient Latin tag conditioning his family to frugality and parsimony. In politics he was a Whig, approving progress and emancipation at a future date which seemed to recede infinitely. When he ventured out of Culross, to visit Edinburgh or London, he returned complaining tetchily, "This is an age of sentiment, novels, and overstrained refinement." He despised those who tried to sail "with the tide of the popular". While disliking political oppression, he deeply suspected men like William Wilberf orce whom he saw parading their "misguided phrenzy or opinion, making a bustle about Slave Trade, Freedom, and emancipation of Negroes, while they will turn their eyes from scenes of domestic and national misery". In fact the young Wilberforce's evangelical enthusiasm embraced the suppression of Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, and indecent literature at home, as well as slavery overseas. To the Earl, he seemed just the type to become the dupe of violent revolutionaries. "He surely does not foresee the consequence of ill-timed alterations."10

  Even before the death of his young wife, the Earl himself turned away from politics to the immediate question of the "res angusta domi". It was both a corroding anxiety and, at the same time, the spur to achievement. He vowed to redeem the family fortunes, perhaps to hand on to the young Lord Cochrane a flourishing estate whose wealth would be greater and more enduring than that of his ancestors who had built Culross. The new fortunes of the Cochranes would not lie in war, nor in the corrupt ministerial favouritism of Westminster and the "places" found for political sycophants. The riches would be those of the new age which was dawning in Europe, the wealth of reason and the rewards of enlightenment. The 9th Earl of Dundonald would be remembered as a great scientist, inventor and manufacturer of his day.

  It was less absurd than it might seem. As a young man, the Earl had spent a short while in the navy. During this period, he had noticed the ravages of worms on the bottoms of ships, where they ate into the structure of the hull. The replacement of so much rotten timber was a considerable drain on the resources of the Admiralty. A few ships were "hobnailed", the bottoms covered with large-headed iron nails, but this was far too expensive a method to be undertaken often. The 9th Earl, pondering this problem, thought of the coal on the Culross estate. It was only mined in a small way, the Earl's philanthropic principles forbidding the use of colliers' wives and daughters as "beasts of burthen" in hauling the coal to the surface. He had undertaken some simple experiments of his own with coal, in a kiln. When it was "reduced" to coke, a thick black substance was given off, known as coal tar. The coke was readily bought by the new ironworks. But might not the coal tar be refined in such a way that it could be used to coat the hulls of ships ?u

  When his son and heir was six years old, the Earl turned almost exclusively to the pursuit of his scientific dream, being granted a patent for his "coal tar". In the following year, 1782, he pacified his creditors with promises of future riches and set up "The British Tar Company" at Culross. He was not alone in the venture. Matthew Boulton, who had successfully marketed James Watt's steam-engine was a family friend. Joseph Black, "the father of modern chemistry" and Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh, was a friend and enthusiast. Sir John Dalrymple, a parliamentary lawyer, surveyed the company's financial obligations and reported favourably to the Earl's creditors. By 1783 there were four furnaces at Culross, processing twenty-eight tons of coal a week. The Earl was delighted and thought only of expanding the project. Adam Smith as well as Black and Dalrymple became an admirer of the new process. Now was the time to raise vast sums of capital and the Earl wrote hopefully to his uncle Andrew Stuart urging him to invest at such a propitious moment. "We are encouraged to proceed in establishing the manufacture upon a very large scale in different parts of Great Britain . . . but a capital of thirty to forty thousand pounds will in the course of a few years need to be expended." Such an outlay was staggering, it was far more than all the accumulated debts of all the Cochranes in history. £22,400 was invested with a promise of an annual clear profit of £5ooo.12

  The delighted Earl was within reach of his ambition. He had, after all, achieved an easy and cheap answer to the problems of worm-eaten vessels. Dalrymple hardly exaggerated when he claimed that "from a Naval Nation Lord Dundonald deserves a Statue of Gold". The Earl travelled to Birmingham, taking young Thomas Cochrane with him, and talked to the great James Watt of this and other inventions which had either been propo
sed or were thought desirable. Young Lord Cochrane remembered how they discussed the problem of finding some source of lighting for the streets of towns and cities. The man who could invent and patent such a process was assured of wealth and honours. The solution seemed far away. On the Culross estate the Earl was preoccupied with the distilling of coal tar and had no leisure to consider other men's problems. He was concerned over the vapour which was given off in the process, since it was inflammable and possibly injurious. Near the house itself, he had an experimental kiln which he decided to adapt in order to get rid of the unwanted fumes. In darkness, he fitted a gun barrel to the outlet pipe, carrying the vapour to a safe height. Then, as the process of extracting coal tar began, he held a light to the muzzle. Three miles away, on the other shore of the Firth, the inhabitants stared in amazement as the dark waters and distant coast blazed with light. But the Earl's head was bent to examine the dark and glossy coal tar on which he had set all his hopes. Above him, the gas lighting, which he had invented without realising it, blazed unheeded. It was William Murdoch, an employee of James Watt who saw the possibility latent in the one invention which might have saved Cul-ross. He developed it and it was later patented by Frederic Winsor in 1804.13

  But the Earl still had his coal tar and, taking young Lord Cochrane with him once more, he set off for London. He was about to present his great discovery to the Admiralty and their ship-repairers. It was not too much to hope that wealth and honour would be his at last.

  The Admiralty seemed disinclined at first to take any notice of the coal tar invention. But they relented and agreed to coat one side of a buoy at the Nore with the Earl's patent mixture. However, they insisted that it was to be done at the Earl's own expense, the Navy Board was not to be committed to any financial outlay. The inventor agreed and the buoy was prepared. He waited impatiently during the trial period and then went to receive the verdict of the Admiralty. Yes, the experiment had been a complete success, protecting the side of the buoy against the worm while the other side had rotted. No, the Admiralty was not interested in the invention.