The man who was vindicated many years after the event
Thomas Cochrane was a British naval officer who had a brilliant career fighting the French during the Napoleonic wars, then became an admiral in the navies of various Latin American independence movements and had an equally successful record fighting for them. His exploits helped to inspire a number of great works of naval fiction, almost certainly including some of the events of both C.S. Forester's "Hornblower" books and Patrick O'Brien's "Master and Commander" series. As I write this post, a reproduction of Montagu Dawson's painting " The smoke of battle - the gallant Speedy " hangs on the wall of the room, depicting the capture in 1801 by HMS Speedy under Cochrane's command of the Spanish frigate El Gamo . The battle shown in the painting was an extraordinary victory by Lord Cochrane. The disparity between the two vessels was staggering: • HMS Speedy : A small 14-gun brig with a severely depleted crew of just 54 men. • El Gamo : ...
