Dundonald, THOMAS COCHRANE, EARL OF, seaman, was the eldest son of Archibald, ninth earl (1749-1831), who beggared himself over chemical discoveries. Born at Annsfield, Lanarkshire, on 14th December 1775, he was destined for the army, but, after a desultory education, was permitted to enter the navy (1793). He served in the fiords of Norway, for five years on the North American station, then in the Mediterranean, and in March 1800 received the command of a crazy little sloop of 14 four-pounders and 54 men. In a fifteen months' cruise he took or retook upwards of fifty privateers and merchantmen, 122 guns, and 534 prisoners; his most dashing achievement being the capture by boarding of a Spanish frigate of 32 heavy guns and 319 men, with a loss to himself of but 3 killed and 18 wounded. His own capture by three French line-of-battle ships followed shortly, his speedy exchange, his promotion to post-captain, a half-year of study at Edinburgh University, fifteen months on a 'collier,' protecting non-existent Orkney fisheries—at length, in February 1805, he returned to prize-taking, and in April came sailing into Plymouth Sound, with £75,000 of prize-money for his own share, and a tall gold candlestick at each mast-head.
The next four years were mainly spent in harassing the enemy's coasts—cutting out ships, blowing up semaphores and batteries, and in 1808, with 80 of his own men and as many Spaniards, defending for twelve days the almost untenable Fort Trinidad at Rosas. Meanwhile, in 1805 he had stood unsuccessfully for Honiton on 'patriotic' (no bribery) principles, but by rewarding his few supporters with double the current price, had secured a cheap victory at next year's election. In May 1807 Westminster returned him at the head of the poll; and at once proceeding, with more zeal than discretion, to war against naval abuses, he was at once ordered off to the Mediterranean.
In April 1809 he was selected by the Admiralty for the hazardous service of burning the French fleet of fifteen sail (848 guns), then blockaded in Aix Roads by a stronger force under Lord Gambier. On the night of the 11th he led the way in an explosion-ship, whose 1500 barrels of powder successfully shattered the huge boom guarding the entrance; but of twenty-one fireships only four reached the enemy's position, and not one of them did any damage. Still, daylight showed almost the whole French fleet aground—an easy prey; it also showed Gambier fourteen miles away. Six urgent signals met with no response; at last, single-handed, Cochrane engaged the foe, and did destroy four of his ships. It was the last blow he was to strike for England.
He received the knighthood of the Bath; but to Gambier were voted the thanks of parliament, after 'a most honourable acquittal' by the friendly court-martial which ensued on Cochrane's protest against that vote. Thus discredited, put upon half-pay, Cochrane pursued his crusade against naval corruption, till in June 1814 he, the hero, the high-born, the Radical reformer, was placed in the dock as a fraudulent stock-jobber. A lying rumour of Napoleon's overthrow had sent up the funds; and he, with two others, was tried for propagating it, and selling out upwards of a million sterling with a gross profit of £10,000. Those two others—an uncle one—were certainly guilty, Lord Cochrane as certainly innocent. Yet, through the exertions of his judge, Lord Ellenborough, a verdict was procured against him; and he was sentenced to pay a fine of £1000, to suffer a year's imprisonment in the King's Bench, and to stand for an hour in the pillory. The last part of the sentence was remitted; but his name was struck off the navy list, and he was expelled from parliament, and formally degraded from his knighthood. Westminster re-elected him; and in March 1815 he broke out of gaol, and reappeared in the House, to be torn thence by tipstaves, lodged in the strong-room for the three months yet to run of his sentence, and next year nullified anew in £100.
Weary of inactivity and of fruitless attempts at self-justification, in 1818 he once more girt on his sword, to rescue Peru and Chili from Spanish thralldom. As commander-in-chief of Chili's small, ill-equipped navy, he stormed with 300 men the fifteen strong forts of Valdivia (1819), and cut out a frigate from under the batteries of Callao (1820), in two and a half years making Chili mistress of her own waters, and her flag respected from Cape Horn to Panama. Himself he reaped no reward, as neither (beyond the marquiseate of Maranham) for his services, only less brilliant, on behalf of the infant empire of Brazil (1823-25).
For the cause of Greek independence he could do little or nothing, through lack of both ships and men (1827-28); so, returning to England, he devoted himself to the task of procuring his reinstatement in the navy. But it was not till May 1832, under the 'Sailor king' and Lord Grey's Whig administration, that a 'free pardon' was granted to the Earl of Dundonald—he had succeeded to the title ten months earlier—and that he was gazetted a rear-admiral. Restored to the honour of knighthood (1847), commander-in-chief on the North American and West Indian station (1848-51), and rear-admiral of the United Kingdom (1854), he died at Kensington, 31st October 1860, in his eighty-fifth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He had married in 1812 Miss
Katherine Corbet Barnes—a runaway Scottish marriage; she bore him Thomas, the eleventh earl (1814-85), and three other sons, of whom two entered the navy.
Much might be written of Lord Dundonald's inventions, his application of steam-power and the screw-propeller to war-ships; still more of his 'secret war-plan,' a secret still, which he claimed at the time of the Crimean war would within four hours annihilate Cronstadt or Sebastopol. It was submitted to committees in 1812 and 1846, and condemned as too inhuman, though irresistible, infallible. But from the inventor one ever reverts to the tall, big, splendid sea-captain, brilliant, daring, cool, prompt, and sagacious, faultless afloat, though ashore out of his element. He equalled the old Elizabethan adventurers; he might, had Fate suffered it, have rivalled Nelson.
See his own Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru, and Brazil (1859), and Autobiography of a Seaman (2 vols. 1860-61), which breaks off in 1814, and has been completed in the Life by the eleventh earl and H. R. Fox Bourne (2 vols. 1869); also the monograph in the 'Men of Action' series (1896) by the Hon. J. W. Fortescue; and a book on the trial by Atlay (1898) in defence of the verdict.