The NRS community was very sad to hear of the death of lifelong member Brian Vale in 2023. Colleagues described him as a thoroughly nice man, a gentleman and a skilled administrator. He became an important and prolific naval historian after he retired from the British Council for whom he served as an officer in Brazil, the Middle East and Spain then from 1987-91 as Assistant Director General in London. His publications established his reputation as an impressive myth buster: stressing the extent of naval medical reforms in the late eighteenth century and the contributions of others than just James Lind; and exploding the self-glorification of Thomas Cochrane. Moving into the early nineteenth century he explored British naval officers’ contributions to South American independence movements. In 2017, he edited the latest NRS volume of Naval Miscellanies (vol VIII). Perhaps the biggest debt of gratitude to him is as a clear-sighted improver of NRS administration including the introduction of an online archive available free to members. He will be greatly missed.

The post below was written for our Online Magazine in 2013 and as a tribute to Brian is made freely accessible to all here.

This letter is in the handwriting of one of the best known sea officers of the Georgian and Victorian periods, Thomas, Lord Cochrane, later 10^th Earl of Dundonald.  Cochrane’s career was spectacular.  One of the Royal Navy’s most audacious frigate captains, he was dismissed the service following involvement in a Stock Exchange swindle engineered by an uncle in 1814 and had been forced to take his talents overseas.  There, in command of the Chilean, Brazilian and Greek navies, he played a decisive role in their respective wars of independence.  Cochrane was as brilliant and succcessful officer: but he was also a troubled and unhappy man.  At sea, he was the master of naval warfare; but on land, his suspicious personality turned him into him a quarrelsome menace and, whether serving in Britain, Chile, Brazil or Greece, the pattern was the same – heroic deeds followed by bitter quarrels and the belief that he was being betrayed by subordinates, persecuted by superiors and denied his financial deserts.  Cochrane was notorious for his pursuit of money, but this was matched by an inability to control his expenditure.  Indeed, the fortune with which he returned to Britain in 1831 was soon dissipated on unwise investments and inventions.

Students of Cochrane who are used to wading through the pages of complaints and financial claims will find it a relief to read this very human letter written in July 1844 to his son Arthur, then serving on HMS Salamander on the South America station.   It says little that is new, but its interest lies in the insight it gives into Cochrane’s mind at a comparatively relaxed and happy period of his life.  Indeed, in contrast to much that he wrote, the letter is remarkable for its uncritical references to his wife and children; the optimistic gloss he puts on the progress of his major preoccupation, the steamship Janus; and the measured way he talks of his Chilean financial claims.

By way of context, it is true that by 1844, Cochrane (or Dundonald as we should call him) had much to be content about. His return to Britain had coincided with the great Reform Bill and the election of his political friends to government.  In 1832 he had obtained a Royal Pardon for his part in the Stock Exchange fraud, and had been restored to the Royal Navy as a Rear Admiral of the Blue.  In 1841 he became a Vice Admiral, had been awarded a pension for ‘good and meritorious service’, and had begun an ultimately successful campaign to get himself restored to the Order of the Bath.  His reputation also stood high with the public who saw him as a heroic survivor of the Napoleonic Wars, the liberator of South America, a gifted inventor, and a fearless fighter for radical causes.

The bland family news he gives in the letter however conceal some real concerns.  By the end of the 1830’s, relations with his wife, Katherine (“Dear Mama”) had broken down.  Married to a romantic hero twenty years her senior who was frequently absent, Katherine rapidly became disenchanted with the realities of actually living with him.  She objected to the way his obsession with inventions was eating up money; while Dundonald resented her lavish expenditure on luxuries and entertainment.  1839, they separated, Katherine moving to Boulogne with a huge financial settlement.  There she was to suffer from a variety of physical and nervous ailments, and to pepper Dundonald and her children with a series of bitter and divisive letters.

Likewise, Dundonald’s eldest children had been going off the rails.  His heir, Thomas who had become “Lord Cochrane” when his father inherited the earldom, had got himself into financial trouble, raised money on false pretences and become indebted to a moneylender to the tune of £5000.  Dundonald had got him out of the way by arranging a posting as Assistant Quartermaster General in Hong Kong.  (Happily, he returned a changed man, married a Scottish heiress and become a responsible and sober citizen)

Horace had gone rapidly downhill.  Addicted to gambling and  extravagance, he had had to resign his army commission and live in the country under an assumed name to escape his creditors.  (He remained incorrigible, piling up debts and unable to hold down a job, and finally fled to Holland, owing £8000).

Lizzie had contracted an unsuitable marriage of which neither family approved with John Fleming of Stoneham Park, Hertfordshire with whom, as Dundonald writes, she was soon at loggerheads.  (A few years later she ran off with another man and ended up in Florence shunned by respectable society.  A relieved Fleming settled £600 on her on the sole condition she did not come back!)

Only Arthur, who had entered the navy as a midshipman in 1841, was sticking to the straight and narrow path of prudence and responsibility; soon to be joined by Ernest then aged 10.  (Both prospered in the navy and distinguished themselves in the Crimean War.)

To escape his family worries, Dundonald had buried himself in his inventions, working on the production of pitch and bitumen, developing his rotary engine, and advocating the introduction of steamships.  In 1844, the Admiralty had agreed to build an experimental paddle steamer to Dundonald’s specifications called HMS Janus of 763 tons and with 200 hp. engines.  He devoted much time and money to the project, and at the time he wrote the letter things looked encouraging.  (Unfortunately, Janus got nowhere.  Her draught was miscalculated and at her trials in 1847 the engine blew up.  Worse, experience by then had shown that bigger 1300 tons steamships (like Napier’s rival design Sidon) were more efficient, and that the propeller was more effective than the paddlewheel.)

The need to pay off his wife, settle the debts of his sons and meet the development costs of Janus left Dundonald short of money.  He had already been forced to sell his elegant Regent’s Park villa and move to unfashionable Pimlico.  Now he resurrected his financial claims against the Chilean Government using a local agent called Caldeclough.  Dundonald had left Chile with the whole of his pay and substantial amounts of prize money, but he had left behind a number of claims which he estimated were worth £13,200.  The principal ones comprised prize money for the captured Spanish frigate Esmeralda; and the balance on his accounts for the Peruvian campaign in 1821-2.  In the case of the latter, the Chilean Government had not “withheld” payment: the problem was that the accounts were so chaotic that the Auditors refused to pass them until Dundonald answered certain queries.  This he had refused to do.  Only in 1838 was he persuaded to agree and, in September 1844 he was to be offered £6000 in settlement.  Colonel Walpole, the British Consul General in Santiago who had seen all the papers, thought the sum ‘not unreasonable’; but the earl furiously rejected it.

Desperate for cash, Dundonald reverted to form.  In 1845, he presented the Chilean authorities with another massive petition, this time for £60,000, based on a series of new and totally unjustifiable demands.  He then turned his sights on the British Government.  In 1847 he produced Observations on Naval Affairs…..including Instances of Injustice experienced by the Author in which he detailed the activities and grievances of his life so far, and claimed that the Governments of Britain, Chile and Brazil owed him £225,000!

Ths publication enabled him to project his self image as the noble warrior hero who had performed prodigies of valour while being persecuted by the authorities, cheated of just financial reward and betrayed by lesser men.  A sentimental and uncritical Victorian pubic believed the story and were deeply moved.  Fifteen years later in old age, Dundonald elaborated it in four autobiographical volumes, which not only described the dramatic events of his long life but were designed to show that he had been right in his innumerable quarrels and that he was owed lots of money.  For 140 years these books were accepted as the truth and formed the basis of numerous uncritical biographies until the 2000s, when historians at last began to measure them against the documentary evidence.  They were found to be sadly wanting

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