LITMIR.BIZ

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of pig-headedness in pig-headed Port Admirals.

      The cruise of the frigate on the French coast was not very fruitful in incident, and early in 1807 she was back in port. There she remained for the greater part of the year, while her captain was fighting the battles of the navy in the House of Commons. A general election took place in the spring, and Cochrane, who had sat already for Honiton, stood with Sir Francis Burdett for Westminster. They were elected, and the captain of the Impérieuse at once began, or rather returned to, those attacks on abuses in the Admiralty and dockyards which were so uniformly right in substance and wrong in form. It is a pleasing instance of the inability of man to hold the balance even when his own interest is in the scale, that Cochrane never seems to have seen anything wrong in the retention of a fine frigate in port during war in order that her captain (who was drawing full pay all the time) might attend to parliamentary duties in London. Conscious of rectitude, he would have treated the suggestion that he also was an abuse with scorn. According to his own version of the story, told in profound good faith, he did his higher duties as member of the House with such efficiency that the Admiralty decided to confine him to the exercise of his profession in future. At the close of the session the Impérieuse was ordered to join Lord Collingwood’s fleet in the Mediterranean, and sailed from Portsmouth on the 12th of September, 1807.

      

      In October, Marryat made his first acquaintance with Malta, and the scenes associated with the immortal memory of Mr. Midshipman Easy. He was not to stay there long, for the Impérieuse left almost immediately to join Lord Collingwood, who was cruising off Palermo. Soon after, the future describer of so many dashing affairs with boats had an opportunity of seeing one. On the 14th of November (Marryat himself says the 15th), the Impérieuse sighted two vessels under the land of Corsica, and, as it was calm, the boats were ordered out to examine them, under the command of Napier and Fayrer.

      “As soon,” it is Marryat who speaks, “as they were within half a mile, the ship hoisted English colours. The sight of these colours, of course, checked the attack; the boats pulled slowly up toward her, and, when within hail, demanded what she was, for, if an English vessel, she could have no objection to be boarded by the boats of an English frigate. Now, as it afterwards was proved, the ship was a Maltese privateer of great celebrity, commanded by the well-known Pasquil Giliano, who had been very successful in his cruises, and, if report spoke truly, for the best of reasons, as he paid very little respect to any colours; in fact, he was a well-known pirate, and, when he returned to Malta, his hold was full of goods taken out of vessels, which he had burnt that he might not weaken his crew by sending them away; and in an Admiralty Court so notoriously corrupt as that of Malta, inquiries were easily hushed up. Although such was the fact, still it had nothing to do with the present affair.

      “When the boats pulled up astern, the captain of the polacre answered that he was a Maltese privateer, but that he would not allow them to come on board; for, although Napier had hailed him in English, and he could perceive the red jackets of the Marines in the boats, Giliano had an idea from the boats being fitted out with iron tholes and grummets, like the French, that they belonged to a ship of that nation. A short parley ensued, at the end of which the captain of the privateer pointed to his boarding nettings triced up, and told them that he was prepared, and if they attempted to board he should defend himself to the last. Napier replied that he must board, and Giliano leaped from the poop telling him that he must take the consequences. The answer was a cheer and a simultaneous dash of the boats to the vessel’s side.

      “A most desperate conflict ensued, perhaps the best contested and the most equally matched on record. In about ten minutes, the captain having fallen, a portion of the crew of the privateer gave way, the remainder fought until they were cut to pieces, and the vessel remained in our possession. And then, when the decks were strewn with the dying and the dead, was discovered the unfortunate mistake which had been committed. The privateer was a large vessel, pierced for fourteen guns and mounting ten, and the equality of the combatants, as well as the equality of the loss on both sides, was remarkable. On board of the vessel there had been fifty-two men; with [the] boats fifty-four. The privateer lost Giliano, her captain, and fifteen men; on our side we had fifteen men killed and wounded. Fayrer lost for ever the use of his right arm by a musket bullet, and Napier received a very painful wound, and had a very narrow escape—the bullet of Giliano’s pistol grazing his left cheek and passing through his ear, slightly splintering a portion of the bone.”

      Marryat’s version of the story does not agree in every detail with Cochrane’s, but in essentials they are at one. Particularly there is no difference of opinion between them as to the character of the Maltese Admiralty Court. In this case it not only refused to allow that the King George (Giliano’s vessel) was a lawful prize, but it fined the Impérieuse five hundred double sequins. That iniquitous court was one of the many abuses Cochrane had to fight in his life.

      Here certainly was an experience likely to be useful to the midshipman who was to record it. The fight was a dashing one—a thing well worth seeing in itself, and besides the King George privateer so-called, but in fact pirate or little better, with her motley crew of Russians, Italians, Sclavonians (“a set of desperate savages” Cochrane styled them in his despatch), must have introduced him to the lawless, and scoundrelly fringe of the great naval war. From privateer to pirate was at all times but a step, and amid the confusion of the great wars, with the connivance of dishonest Colonial Admiralty Courts, and the tacit consent of some neutrals of little scruple, not a few ruffians were able to flourish—the plundering, murdering, cowardly camp followers, so to speak, of the great regular naval armaments.

      From Corsica the Impérieuse went on to Toulon, to report to Lord Collingwood, who was back at his regular blockading station. Thence Cochrane was sent to Malta, and on to the Ionian Islands to command a squadron then engaged in blockading some French frigates in Corfu. Here Cochrane, true to his character, fell out with another abuse. When he arrived on the station, he found that neutral vessels, or even vessels belonging to our enemies, were allowed to trade with the island under cover of passes supplied by the officer commanding the English blockading force. Of course Cochrane seized them, to the wrath of the officer in question, who consistently enough intrigued against him at headquarters. The captain of the Impérieuse was recalled as being too indiscreet, by Lord Collingwood, apparently on the mere complaint of the officer whose passes had been treated with such scant respect, and so lost his one chance of commanding a squadron on work which he was eminently fitted to do well. The story of the passes (which of course were not given for nothing) must have been known to every man on board the Impérieuse, and, doubtless, the officer who had such a remarkable idea of his duties, went, in the course of time, to the making of Captain Capperbar. Having made one more place too hot to hold him, by hasty action, where a little tact and patience would have enabled him to have his way and to bring the trading naval officer to book, Cochrane was employed cruising to and fro till January, 1808, when he was despatched by Lord Collingwood to the coast of Spain, where he was to have a longer period of active brilliant work.

CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      When the Impérieuse reached the coast of Spain early in 1808, we were still at war with that country. Napoleon had not yet turned his submissive ally into an enemy by that act of brigandage which was the capital error of his life. The war was for us still a “rich war,” as Nelson put it—there were still Spanish prizes to be picked up. Cochrane was master of the work to be done. His previous cruise in the Speedy had made him perfectly familiar with the Spanish coast. It had also given him an absolute confidence in his power to beat the Spaniards at any odds. On this occasion he had no opportunity to equal the most marvellous of all his feats—the capture of the frigate Gamo with his tiny gun-brig the Speedy, but he was incessantly active and uniformly successful. The Impérieuse hugged the Spanish coast, destroyed isolated forts, sailed into the very ports and marked her prey down coolly, before sending her boats in to cut out the more tempting prizes. In all this stirring fighting Marryat had such share as a midshipman might. The history of it is recorded

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