The Land of Poyais

On the 22^nd of January, 1823, over two hundred would-be settlers set sail for Poyais.

Here’s the story of the real Never-never Land, in which there was no Peter Pan or Tinkerbell, but there were alligators, albeit most likely sans timepieces. There’s a book about this place, the title of which is ‘The Land That Never Was’ and which was written by David Sinclair. Despite the title, it was a land that was – and still is for that matter – only it wasn’t what it was supposed to have been. Incidentally, we know there were alligators in that land, because on the 26^th of April, 1823, a Scotsman was seized by an alligator whilst attempting to swim across the lagoon – maybe he was wearing a watch?

The central character was a cross between Harry Flashman and Richard Sharpe, except the real name of this real person was Gregor MacGregor. He was a Scot who was born on the 24^th of December, 1786, or as the legend on his portrait tells us, ‘General Gregorio MacGregor’. The fact that he became a General is the least amazing thing about MacGregor. He often referred to himself as Sir Gregor, though he was never knighted, and at one point, he styled himself ‘Gregor Mac Gregor, Brigadier General of the armies of the United Provinces of New Grenada and Venezuela, and General in Chief of the armies for the two Floridas, commissioned by the Supreme Director of Mexico, South America, &c.’ A soldier of fortune, this son of an Edinburgh merchant was also a fraud.

In 1803, MacGregor began his career as a sailor in the Royal Navy. Then, sometime after 1805, he served in the Spanish and Portuguese armies during the Peninsular War, but he didn’t hang around on the battlefields of Europe to see off Napoleon. Instead, by 1811, he was causing grief for the Spanish in South America. MacGregor had become Colonel of a British Foreign Legion in the army of the Captaincy General of Venezuela, which was fighting for its independence from Spain. MacGregor was vainglorious and wished to be seen as a celebrated military tactician, but his exploits tended towards the inglorious.

Notwithstanding his reputation, MacGregor did have some success. On the 29^th of June, 1817, General MacGregor (he was promoted by Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of Latin America) led a small army to a victory over the Spanish at San Fernandina, on Amelia Island – the Island of Eight Flags. After marching ten miles through swamps, breast deep in water, MacGregor’s fifty-five strong ‘army’ surprised, stormed and captured the seventy strong garrison of Fort San Carlos, whereupon he proclaimed an independent East Florida, under the grandiose title of General in Chief aforementioned. His island rule didn’t last long as his intended assault on the heavily garrisoned St. Augustine was abandoned without any fighting when MacGregor “capitulated and got very good terms.”

MacGregor’s next campaign was in Panama, in 1819, where he had further success in capturing Portobello, the stronghold that guarded the isthmus. However, when the Spanish counterattacked, MacGregor showed his true colours by fleeing to a ship offshore. Unsurprisingly the fort fell to the Spaniards and MacGregor’s mercenaries were taken prisoner – while he sailed to safety. In April 1820, he pitched up at Cape Gracias a Dios, where lived the anglophile native chief, King George Frederic Augustus I of the Mosquito Shore and Nation. MacGregor plied the King with whisky and rum, of which he was inordinately fond, and ended up being the beneficiary of an extraordinary deal.

MacGregor was granted perpetual ownership of a huge tract of land – 12,500 square miles – in the area of Black River (‘Río Sico Tinto Negro’) on the Mosquito Coast. So there it was and there it still is, in what is now present day Honduras; the land that never was, was. But the twist in the story comes from MacGregor’s almighty ambitions. It’s reasonable to assume that the King had appointed MacGregor as Cacique (Lord) of his new Territory of Poyais, but that wasn’t enough for MacGregor, who had a far more grandiose scheme in mind. He saw Poyais as an independent Principality – a new Darian – with himself as ruler. The trouble was, Poyais never was a bona fide country, far less a recognised independent state. In fact, it was an entirely fictitious state, which never was.

By the time he arrived in London, MacGregor had developed his fantasy of the Republic of Poyais. He announced himself in London as Gregor I, Cacique of Poyais and opened the Poyaisian Legate in Dowgate Hill. In October, 1822, MacGregor raised £200 000 for his Poyais Scheme, by issuing 2,000 bearer bonds and opened land offices in Scotland. In Edinburgh, he sold land rights for 3/- 3d per acre and printed Poyais banknotes. He also published a 350 page guidebook, which described his “unsurpassed Utopia”. The book was complete with an engraving of the country’s main port at Black River and descriptions of an “already existing infrastructure.” Poyais’ capital of St Joseph was said to have all the trappings of a civilised nation and the land; “large amounts of fertile soil.”

The truth was that Poyais was a completely undeveloped colony. It was basically a mosquito infested swamp, surrounded by scrub and dense undergrowth. In raising the bond capital and selling land rights, MacGregor and his cronies perpetrated a scam, which reeled in two shiploads of settlers – a theatre manager, cobblers, farmers, sawyers, jewellers, teachers, merchants, bankers, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, clerks and craftsmen – to develop his new state. On the 22^nd of January, 1823, a second ship, the ‘Kennersley Castle’, set sail from Leith, bound for Poyais. MacGregor stayed in Britain.

When the ‘Kennersley Castle’ anchored off Black River on the 20^th of March, it was to find that there was no port, nor any magnificent capital city. Apart from the wretched unfortunates in their rundown shacks, those who had preceded them in the ‘Honduras Packet’, all the would-be settlers found was virgin jungle and the ruins of a doomed British settlement abandoned in the previous Century. It was all too much for the immigrants, many of whom perished from yellow fever, malaria or exhaustion. One committed suicide and the alligator got another. Others migrated to Belize. Of the three hundred and twenty voyagers to Poyais, barely fifty made it back to Britain. Poyais was, but it wasn’t what it was supposed to have been. It was a combination of fantastic imagination, elaborate hoax, mythical reality and hopeful expectation.

Amazingly, although MacGregor tried the same trick in France, where he was acquitted in a trial, he escaped prosecution and punishment in Britain. Between 1826 and 1837, he continued to act as if Poyais was a genuine Republic, issuing bonds and land certificates, promoting stocks and even writing a new constitution. Eventually, he ran out of steam and, in 1839, returned to Venezuela where he lived comfortably on a General’s pension until his death in Caracas on the 3^rd or 4^th of December, 1845. Today, General Gregor MacGregor’s name can be seen on a giant monument in Caracas, built to honour Venezuela’s heroes of the struggle for independence.

Brigadier-General Hugh Mercer

Hugh Mercer, an Aberdeenshire-born Brigadier-General in the American army, died on the 12th of January, 1777.

Many Scotsmen played a significant part in the American War of Independence, otherwise known as the Revolution that resulted in the separation of the North American Colonies. Four of George Washington’s Major-Generals and nine of his Brigadier-Generals were of Scots descent. Of his other Generals, twenty were of Scottish blood.  Amongst those was Aberdeenshire’s Hugh Mercer, surgeon, Scottish Rebel, emigrant, exile, physician, indian fighter and American soldier, who became one of Washington’s Brigadier-Generals and a Revolutionary War hero.

Mercer’s military service and exploits spanned two continents and three separate armies. Beginning as a surgeon for the doomed Jacobite army at Culloden, Dr. Mercer became a wanted man and fled to freedom in America, where he took part in the ‘Seven Years’ War’ in the army of his former enemy, the Hanoverian George III. Later, after settling as a physician in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Mercer signed up for the third time, joining Washington’s Continental Army. Hugh Mercer became a friend to George Washington and one of his greatest Generals. Mercer was the man whose military genius conceived the plan for the crossing of the Delaware River and the capture of the Hessians at Trenton, in one of the definitive battles of the American War of Independence.

Mercer died from the bayonet wounds he received just prior to the Battle of Princeton, but historians and many biographers argue that, had it not been for his untimely death, Mercer would have gone on to have become an even greater leader than Washington proved to be; perhaps to rank as one of the greatest American heroes of all time. Trenton and Princeton were battles critical to American history as lacking those victories, Washington would have lost the War. According to Genevieve Bugay, Site Manager of the ‘Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop in Fredericksburg as reported in the Press & Journal of the 29th of March, 2005, “Washington made [Mercer] a Brigadier-General at the start of the Revolutionary War and he was so highly respected as a soldier that many people feel he was as good a General as Washington, if not better.”

Undoubtedly, Hugh Mercer has hero status in America. Mercersburg, in Pennsylvania is named after him and there are Mercer Counties in his honour in seven US States. Statues of him have been erected in Philadelphia and his adopted city of Fredericksburg, where the aforementioned Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop is preserved and run as a historic site. A monument to his memory was erected by the St. Andrew’s Society of Philadelphia in Laurel Hill Cemetery. Not bad for a wee loon frae rural Aberdeenshire, who having fled from persecution after on rebellion said in 1776 prior to another, “I am willing to serve my adopted country in any capacity she may need me.”

Hugh Mercer was born in the Manse of Pitsligo Parish Kirk, near the fishing village of Rosehearty, on the 17th of January, 1726. Hugh grew up Rosehearty and at the age of fifteen, went on to study medicine in Marischal College at the University of Aberdeen. In 1745, a year after graduating as a Doctor, Mercer joined Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army in which he served an assistant surgeon. He was present at the Battle of Culloden on the 16th of April, 1746, when the Jacobites were defeated, and as the survivors were being hunted down and killed, Mercer became a fugitive in his own land. He spent a year in hiding, on the run from Government soldiers, and eventually managed to buy passage on a ship sailing to America, where he pitched up in Pennsylvania, in March of 1747.

He practiced medicine in what is now Mercersburg, quite peacefully, for eight years until after the outbreak of the French and Indian wars in 1754. When General Braddock’s army was butchered by the French and Indians in 1755, Mercer tended the wounded and the following year, in a pragmatic move that had more to do with self preservation than any notion of loyalty, enlisted in the army of the same King he had sought to overthrow. Serving as a soldier instead of a surgeon, he was commissioned a Captain in a Pennsylvania regiment. He joined Lt. Col. Armstrong’s expedition of 1756, during which he took part in the raid on the Indian village of Kittanning, in the September. Captain Mercer was badly injured in the attack, but the heroic Scot set his own shattered arm and managed to trek one hundred miles, through fourteen days alone on foot and unaided, to the safety of Fort Shirley. He had been given up for dead and his survival made the headlines in the Pennsylvania Gazette. His bravery was recognised and he rose to the rank of Colonel.

It was during the Seven Years’ War that Mercer first met Washington and, in 1760, both men settled in Fredericksburg, which was recommended to Mercer as being “likely to afford a genteel subsistence in the [practice of Physick],” according to a letter he wrote in February of 1761. Mercer was described as “a physician of great merit and eminence” and in 1774, he purchased Ferry Farm, Washington’s childhood home. Shortly after, when the Colonies rebelled, Mercer ‘changed sides again’ and, by January, 1776, he had become a full Colonel and commander of the 3rd Virginia Regiment of the Line. Later, in June of 1776, at Washington’s personal request, Mercer was promoted to Brigadier-General. After the British captured Forts Washington and Lee, Mercer joined Washington in the retreat to New Jersey and, thanks in no small measure to Mercer, Washington’s men crossed the Delaware and, on the 26th of December, 1776, won the Battle of Trenton.

On the 3rd of January, 1777, the day after the Second Battle of Trenton, whilst leading the vanguard en route to Princeton, Mercer got into a fight with two British regiments and became isolated in an orange grove, with his horse shot from under him. Mercer was surrounded and mistaken for Washington by the British troops, but refused to surrender. Drawing his sabre, he stood his ground against the odds, but was mortally wounded, suffering a total of seven bayonet wounds and numerous blows to the head from musket butts. His men rallied, while he lay propped up against ‘the Mercer Oak’, before being carried to the field hospital. Despite the efforts of his medical colleague, Benjamin Rush, Mercer could not be saved. Hugh Mercer from Pitsligo died of his wounds, three thousand miles from home and on the 12th of January, 1777, nine days after the Patriots won the Battle of Princeton. His funeral in Philadelphia was attended by more than 30,000 mourners.

Victor Alexander John Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow

Victor Alexander John Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow, Governor-General and Viceroy of India from 1936 to 1943, died on the 5th of January, 1952.

The 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow, whose ancestors had been Highland Earls in for two centuries, was a British statesman who is best known for having been the Viceroy of India from 1936 until 1943 and the man to have held that post for the longest period. When he retired in 1943, after an eventful seven years in the history of the Raj, Linlithgow’s obituaries were unanimous in considering him to have been one of the most skilful of Colonial Officers to have held high office. It’s debatable with hindsight and in retrospect, but at the time and from a purely British point of view, he was lauded and admired for his achievements. His list of credits focuses on two main themes: furthering the cause of Indian independence through the adoption of a federal form of government; and suppressing opposition to Britain during the Second World War.

Victor Alexander John Hope was born in Hopetoun House, in South Queensferry, on the 24th of September, 1887. He received a privileged education at Eton College and, on the 29th of February, 1908, he succeeded his father as 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow. During the First World War, Linlithgow was decorated whilst serving as an officer on the Western Front and ended the War with the rank of Colonel and command of a battalion of the Royal Scots. His early political career saw him serve in various minor roles in the Tory governments of the 1920s and 1930s. In between times, from 1922 until 1924, he served as the Civil Lord of the Admiralty and as if that wasn’t odd enough for an ex-squaddie, he also served as President of the Navy League, from 1924 until 1931.

Linlithgow made a habit out of ‘chairmanships’ as he served in that capacity for the Unionist Party Organization, for two years from 1924; for the Medical Research Council; for the Governing Body of the Imperial College London; for the Committee on the Distribution and Prices of Agricultural Produce; for the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India, from 1926 to 1928; and from 1933 to 1935, for the Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform, which produced the famed ‘Linlithgow Report’. He was President of the Edinburgh and East of Scotland College of Agriculture until 1933 and, in 1944 and 1945, good Presbyterian that he was, he served as Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland. He became Viceroy of India on the 18th of April, 1936, after having declined the post of Governor-General of Australia, a position that his father had held previously as the very first such office holder.

Prior to his being appointed Viceroy of India, Linlithgow had earned a reputation as a specialist in Indian politics, having overseen the introduction of the 1935 ‘Government of India Act’. As ‘Time Magazine’ of Monday, the 27th April, 1936 reported his arrival in India, “Ahead of him had arrived his ‘New Deal’, the renovated and liberalized Indian Constitution, based on Lord Linlithgow’s own exhaustive 350-page investigation and recommendations.” The article in ‘Time’ went on to add, “What made 350,000,000 Indians so anxious last week for a sight of …their new Viceroy was that the new Constitution gives him the power to be either a messiah or a tyrant.” His remit was the creation of autonomous Indian Provinces and a self-ruling, all-India Federal Government. The bottom line was to create a genuinely British India or perpetuate British rule by force. As Viceroy, Linlithgow retained absolute powers, such as the right to single-handedly overrule his own Executive Council and to veto laws passed by the Indian Legislature if he thought they would “affect the safety or tranquillity of British India”.

The year after he became Viceroy, he successfully oversaw the implementation of those plans for local self government in India, initiating the first provincial general elections in India. During the course of the Act’s implementation, Linlithgow made several significant, constitutional and political changes, which resulted in government led by the Congress Party in five of the eleven Provinces, which had been made autonomous units of a Federation. He also oversaw the separation of Burma, which was given its own constitution. At the time, the conflict between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League prevented the full establishment of Indian self government. Nevertheless and significantly, Linlithgow’s reasonable belief in preserving and protecting the interests of minority communities ensured that they had representatives in every provincial government. Part one of the story ends thus, reasonably positively.

It is claimed that Linlithgow’s reforms later allowed India to become fully independent without armed conflict. Whatever you might think of that, India’s independence wasn’t achieved without a good deal of strife. The period of the Second World War was a critical one in the history of India, during which independence became the major theme. At its outset, Linlithgow displayed a high-handed disregard for India’s ruling Congress when he declared war on Nazi Germany without bothering to consult its leaders. The likes of Ghandi and Nehru temporarily resigned, but far from appealing for unity, Linlithgow’s subsequent actions only served to encourage the Muslim League, at odds with the predominantly Hindu Congress, in its desire for separate nationhood.

Throughout the War, Congress, which professed to speak for all Indians, was emasculated by the refusal of Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslims, to cooperate. In 1940, the Viceroy, who was unrelenting in his belief that the Raj shouldn’t come to an end, produced the ‘Linlithgow Offer’, which would’ve conceded Dominion status to India after the War, but behind the public facade, rather than calming things down, the Viceroy’s actions served only to foster the unrest and lack of cooperation between the Muslims and the Hindus. The inability of Congress to unite and the lack of agreement on independence eventually led to massive civil disobedience and the ‘Quit India’ resolution of 1942. In one area of Bengal, nationalists declared themselves a part of ‘Free India’, but Linlithgow brutally suppressed all disturbances. His administration jailed thirteen thousand Indians and over one thousand people were killed. By the time that he stood down in 1943, Lord Linlithgow, despite his intentions, was largely responsible for creating the conditions that ultimately led to the break up of his beloved Raj, the creation of an independent India and, significantly, the formation of the ‘Land of the Pure’ – Pakistan – in 1947. Thus ends part two of the story. Victor Alexander John Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow, who died on the 5th of January, 1952, was certainly no messiah, but you can decide for yourself whether or not he was a tyrant.

Major Alexander Gordon Laing

Major Alexander Gordon Laing, explorer, was born on the 27th of December, 1793.

If you’re someone who can’t find their way to the edge of town without a ‘sat-nav’, spare a thought for a generation of 19th Century Scotsmen who ventured into the uncharted territory of deepest, darkest Africa in search of fame and glory without even so much as a sketch map. Explorers like James Bruce, Hugh Clapperton, David Livingstone, Mungo Park and Major Alexander Gordon Laing were intrepid when the word had meaning. For the most part, those guys’ adventures were for bigger reasons than simply “it was there”. Such men displayed a vast reservoir of physical courage, moral fibre and inexhaustible perseverance and none more so than Alexander Laing who, in 1826, became the first European to reach the ancient and fabled city of Timbuktu.

For Laing, in that time of British Colonial expansion, Timbuktu was the “far-famed capital of Central Africa” and for many Europeans, a legendary ‘lost city of gold’. Its reputation stemmed from fantastic tales of unimaginable wealth, such as that of its greatest ruler, Mansa Musa, who in the 14th Century had passed through Cairo on his way to Mecca accompanied by twelve thousand silk clad slaves and eighty gold laden camels. During a period when bloodthirsty, medieval Europeans were fighting the Crusades and Robert the Bruce was devastating the north of England, peaceful merchants from across the north of the African continent visited the markets of the central African capital to trade in gemstones, ivory and gold. Centuries later, there was a rivalry, almost a national obsession, between the French and the British, manifest in a prize of 10,000 Francs being offered by the Société de Géographie to the first man to reach the fabled city, hidden somewhere in Africa’s vast, unexplored interior.

Enter Alexander Gordon Laing, who was born in Edinburgh on the 27th of December, 1793. He was educated by his father William, a private teacher of classics, and at Edinburgh University, intending to become a teacher. However, in 1811, Alexander Laing went to Barbados to act as clerk to his maternal uncle, General Gabriel Gordon, who was then a mere Colonel. Whilst in Barbados, Laing volunteered for the British Army and, through the services of the Governor, became an Ensign in the York Light Infantry. In 1822, he was given command of a company in the Royal African Corps and in that same year, he was charged with opening up commerce and abolishing the slave trade in Mandingo country, in Sierra Leone. He also found time to make his first discovery of exploration, when he ascertained the source of the Rokell. Laing also took an active part in the Ashanti War of 1823-24, after which he returned to Britain.

Whilst back in England, Laing produced a narrative of his exploratory journeys, which was published in 1825 and entitled ‘Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries, in Western Africa’. He saw his future as an explorer and set his sights on Timbuktu and the source of the Niger, which he had endeavoured to reach in 1822, before being stopped by the natives, but not before he had been able to fix its location with approximate accuracy. Laing had impressed Henry, the Earl of Bathurst, who was at that time the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and so the Earl, an advocate of African exploration, became a patron and in February, 1825, Laing set off on his journey.

Unlike Mungo Park, another Scot who had disappeared twenty years earlier whilst trying to trace the Niger with a huge team, including forty-six Europeans, none of whom survived by the way, Laing set out with three Africans, a Caribbean-born servant and a Jewish interpreter. Laing made it to Timbuktu, but he was betrayed and almost killed on the way, and he was betrayed and killed for certain on his way back. Somewhere south of an oasis called Wadi Ahnet, on the 2nd or 3rd of February, 1826, Laing was savagely assaulted in his tent whilst the Arab traders, whose caravan he had joined, looked on dispassionately. Laing’s guide, Sheikh Babani, had struck a deal with the Tuareg to dispose of the Scotsman and share his belongings. But they hadn’t reckoned with Laing, who despite being hacked almost to pieces and suffering a total of twenty-four gruesome injuries, refused to die. In a staggering feat of endurance and indomitable will, Laing carried on, survived a dysentery epidemic and finally, on the 13th of August, 1826, arrived at his destination.

His two thousand mile journey had taken three hundred and ninety-nine days, during which he had faced sandstorms, unbearable heat, loneliness, hunger, thirst and violence. Imagine his reaction when he looked upon what was little more than a dusty, dirty, dismal wee dump on the southern edge of the Sahara. He must’ve been in denial or hallucinating when he wrote to his father-in-law that “it has completely met my expectations”. Laing remained in Timbuktu for thirty-five days, studying old Islamic manuscripts, before leaving on the 21st of September as it had become “exceedingly unsafe”. Not having much choice, he joined another Arab caravan and travelled north meet his fate. According to Bongola, Laing’s sole remaining companion, he was murdered at night on the 26th of September, 1826, by another Sheikh, Ahmadu Labeida.

In a ‘Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen’, originally edited by Robert Chambers and published by Blackie & Son just thirty years after Laing’s death, there is reference to a ‘masterly summary’ of evidence contained in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (number 84) in support of allegations that the French were treacherously complicit in Laing’s murder. Facts were apparently established to the entire satisfaction of the consuls of Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Sardinia that, in 1828, Major Laing’s papers were secreted in Tripoli and handed over to the Baron de Rosseau, the French Consul. Furthermore, it states that during the greater part of the Laing’s journey, the Consul had been in secret correspondence with the conspirators, including Sheikh Babani, one Hassunah D’ Ghies, son of the Prime Minister of the Bashaw of Tripoli, and the eventual murderer it refers to as Bourabouschi.

Interestingly, in 1828, a Frenchman called René Caillié also reached Timbuktu, but perhaps significantly and unlike poor Laing, he returned to claim the Société de Géographie’s prize. Much later, in 1903, for some reason known only to them, the French government placed a tablet bearing Laing’s name and the date of his visit on the house he had occupied during his stay in Timbuktu.

Sir Thomas Alexander Cochrane

Sir Thomas Alexander Cochrane, the 10th Earl of Dundonald, Knight Grand Cross of the Bath, sailor, politician, Member of Parliament, Admiral, inventor and industrialist, died on the 31st of October, 1860.

Sir Thomas Cochrane was one of Britain's greatest ever naval officers and certainly one of its most extraordinary naval heroes. In his first ten years in the Navy, he earned a reputation for brilliant and audacious daring and seamanship during the Napoleonic Wars. His exploits read like something out of a seafaring novel and indeed, they have been depicted in fact and fiction in many guises since he ‘buckled his swash’. Cochrane was the inspiration for Captain Marryat, C. S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian, whose fictional naval hero, Captain Jack Aubrey, was depicted in the film ‘Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World’. It’s funny how Australians get to play Scots in the movies. An early adventure of Lieutenant Cochrane’s saw his command, H. M. S. ‘Speedy’ capture fifty ships within the space of a year. His most famous engagement earned him promotion to Post-Captain and the wrath of Napoleon, who named him ‘Le Loup de Mer’ (‘Sea Wolf’). That capture of the Spanish frigate ‘El Gamo’ on the 6th of May, 1801, amply illustrates Cochrane’s cunning and daring. He hoisted the American flag, confused the Spanish, avoided their broadside and stormed aboard wielding a cutlass at the head of a boarding party. The Spaniards quickly surrendered.

Another legendary escapade occurred at the Battle of Basque Roads, off Rochefort, in 1809. On that occasion, Cochrane used fireships to cause confusion amongst the French and all but two of their ships were run aground. However, Cochrane’s Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Lord Gambier, failed to grasp the opportunity to annihilate the enemy fleet. Cochrane, who by that time was also an MP, was furious and opposed a Commons motion of “thanks matelot” for Gambier, but when the dithering Admiral insisted on a court martial to clear his name, the ‘establishment’ ensured he was acquitted. Funnily enough, Cochrane had been court marshalled himself in 1798, for challenging a fellow-officer to a duel. For his part, Cochrane was made a Knight of the Order of the Bath, but the writing was on the wall as he had shown a rare ability to make enemies in the wrong places. In addition to superb seamanship and inspirational leadership, Cochrane was a wee bit argumentative, but ultimately he had the last laugh.

Thomas Alexander Cochrane, later the 10th Earl of Dundonald, was born on the 14th of December, 1775, in Annisfield, Lanarkshire. He was educated at home and spent much of his early life at the family’s estate in Culross, Fife. Thomas was listed as a crew member on Navy ships from the age of five, which was a common, if illegal, practice, which meant that, when he did step aboard ship, there was at least a paper record of the length of service necessary to become an officer. Cochrane spent a brief spell in the Army, at the Chauvet Military Academy in London, before he joined the Royal Navy proper as a seventeen years old midshipman in 1793. He served on four ships between then and 1798, and briefly commanded a captured French battleship, before being speedily promoted to Lieutenant and (appropriately!) given command of H. M. S. ‘Speedy’.

Cochrane had been elected as the Member of Parliament for Honiton in Devon, in 1806, at the second time of asking, and in 1807, he won a seat as a Radical for Westminster. He kept that seat for ten years, but the reason he was often back at sea and demoted was because Parliament was heartily sick of his attacks on the Government. He won no friends with his headstrong and outspoken stance against corruption in the Navy, and campaigns for parliamentary reform. A bad time for Cochrane occurred when he was falsely accused and found guilty during the ‘1814 Stock Exchange Fraud’. He was effectively ‘stitched up’, with the ‘establshment’ having an excuse to ‘get even’ and destroy his career. He was expelled from the Commons, sentenced to two hours in the pillory and a year in jail, given a fine of £1,000, and stripped of his rank and knighthood. Cochrane avoided the pillory and as a measure of his popularity, when he sensationally escaped from prison in 1815, and was rearrested and fined another £1,000, the fine was paid by public subscription. Our hero was also quickly re-elected to Parliament. Then in 1818, Cochrane, who had become a kind of ‘persona non grata’, resigned in disgust from the House of Commons and went off to new adventures in Chile, Peru, Brazil and Greece. He became a legendary figure, first as victorious Commander of the Chilean Navy in its battle for independence against the Spanish in 1819-20, then by doing the same for the embryonic Brazilian state in 1823. The Brazilians made him ‘First Admiral of the National and Imperial Navy’ and, each year in May, representatives of the Chilean Navy hold a wreath laying ceremony at his grave.

On the road to redemption in 1831, Cochrane succeeded to his father's title, becoming the 10th Earl of Dundonald and, after having returned to Britain under a sympathetic Whig government, he succeeded in clearing his name. He got a Royal Pardon from the new King, Wullie IV, and in 1832, he was reinstated into the Royal Navy as an Admiral. His remarkable comeback continued in 1847, when good ol’ Queen ‘Vic’ restored his knighthood and in 1848, he became Commander-in-Chief of the North American and West Indies Station. The final turnaround came in 1854, when he was appointed to the honorary rank of Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom. He probably got that to keep him out of the way during the Crimean War. He was disappointed not to be involved with the Baltic fleet, but the Russians were ecstatic. The Government actually thought that his “adventurous spirit” might have led him to try “some desperate enterprise” that would have upset delicate negotiations. As a legacy, Cochrane’s list of achievements is immense. Domestically, he abolished all underground labour for women and girls in his mines and pioneered the use of caissons, compressed air and air locks to allow coal mining under the River Forth. In a naval context, he invented or introduced several improvements such as: gas lighting and convoy lanterns; tubular boilers; steam propulsion; fire ships; and the use of the smoke-screen. And as early as 1812, he had proposed the world’s first weapon of mass destruction – poison gas. The idea seems nothing to be proud of and was rightly rejected as terrible and inhuman, however, years later, but for the breakthrough at Sevastapol, Palmerston would have authorised the use of ‘stink ships’ to break the stalemate during the Crimean War.

Scotland's flamboyant and daring naval hero, Sir Thomas Cochrane, died on the 31st of October, 1860, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where he is commemorated by a magnificent monument, which records that the was “'illustrious throughout the world for courage, patriotism and chivalry.” He is also remembered in the name of the naval base at Rosyth; H. M. S. Cochrane.