Seeing as Gilles asked what Cochrane had achieved, I thought I would post something, but it would seem more appropriate to hijack this thread for the purpose than the one it was raised in.
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Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, Marquess do Maranhão, GCB, ODM (Chile) (14 December 1775 – 31 October 1860), styled Lord Cochrane between 1778 and 1831,[1][2] was a senior British naval flag officer and radical politician. He was a daring and successful captain of the Napoleonic Wars, leading the French to nickname him 'Le Loup des Mers' ('The Sea Wolf' or 'The Wolf of the Seas'). He was dismissed from the Royal Navy in 1814, following a conviction for fraud on the Stock Exchange and he then served in the rebel navies of Chile, Brazil and Greece during their respective wars of independence. In 1832, he was reinstated in the Royal Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral of the Blue. After being promoted several times following his reinstatement, he died in 1860 with the rank of Admiral of the Red, and the honorary title of Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom. His life and exploits served as inspiration for the naval fiction of nineteenth and twentieth-century novelists, particularly C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey.
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That nickname, incidentally, was bestowed by Napoleon.
Cochrane is one of those larger-tha-life characters whose exploits seem absurdly implausible. He was an excellent ships captain but was totally incapable of getting along with his superiors, and even his friends in the Radical party found him insufferably direct and undiplomatic. His political effect was limited, although he did have some success in his prime concern which was corruption in the navy, itself a major political issue of the day. But he was no orator, and at the time it was possible to be both an MP and an active military officer, so much of his term of office was spent at sea. Indeed, that was probably a big part of the motive behind becoming an MP in the first place, to make such a nuisance of himself on land that the Admiralty would give him a ship.
Cochrane was both personally brave and very careful with the lives of his crew, to the point that he was once denied a medal because he had sustained no casualties, and the Admiralty therefore concluded that it could not have been a hard fought action.
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One of his most notable exploits was the capture of the Spanish xebec frigate El Gamo, on 6 May 1801. El Gamo carried 32 guns and 319 men, compared with Speedy's 14 guns and 54 men.[7] Cochrane flew an American flag to approach so closely to El Gamo that its guns could not depress to fire on the Speedy's hull. This left the Spanish with no option but to board. However, whenever the Spanish were about to board, Cochrane would pull away briefly, and fire on the concentrated boarding parties with his ship's guns. Eventually, Cochrane boarded the Gamo, despite still being outnumbered about five to one, and captured her.
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Some things that are not mentioned about this incident: the Speedy's guns were only 8-pounders, which could barely penetrate the hull the Gamo; and the ship was so structurally unsound that firing a full broadside risked damage. When they boarded, they left only the bosun aboard the Speedy, and once engaged Cochrane called down to him to send up a second wave, upon which the crew of the Gamo surrendered. They then put their prisoners in the hold and wrestled a couple of carronades to point down into the hatch so the minimal prize crew could sail her back to Britain.
Another incident typical of Cochrane was the attack on Rochefort. Cochrane was in disgrace at the time, while the port was blockaded by the fleet, and so he amused himself by constructing a plan for the use of fire-ships which he sent to the Admiralty. (Cochrane's father had been something of an inventor, and had probably invented a sort of poison gas, although it was never adopted.) None of the admirals of the fleet were willing to use fire-ships as they thought it dishonourable, so Cochrane was given the command (probably in the hope he'd get himself killed). Cochrane then improved on his own plan by constructing some "explosion ships", filled with tamped down gunpowder, shot, and grenades, to go in along with the fire-ships, and sailed one of these himself. When he and the small number of volunteers abandoned the explosion ship in a launch, they heard barking from the ship and rowed back to rescue the ships mascot dog. This probably saved his life because it put them inside the perimeter where most of the debris came down.
There are biographies of Cochrane that are well worth a read, and he always features in accounts of the British naval war of the period. A contemporary of his on the other side,
Baron de Marbot, is also worth reading; he wrote a memoir, and while perhaps not quite as colourful as Cochrane he certainly lived an exciting life, being wounded on several occassions and at one point being paralyzed by the effect of a cannonball which struck his hat.
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