Free Cochrane by Donald Thomas

than a year's practical experience as acting-lieutenant. This, at least, was some defence against them as they strove to dismast him, run him aboard another vessel, or wreck him on their own carefully contrived rocks. 5
    Thanks to Jack Larmour's practical instruction and his own ability to think quickly, young Lord Cochrane survived the perils of the examiners' imagined storm. Other midshipmen emerged crestfallen from the great cabin, their reputations smashed on the rocks of Beachy Head or stranded on the Goodwin Sands. Cochrane, instead of being told to do six more months at sea and try again, left the Resolution with a lieutenant's commission.
    It was Admiral Vandeput, Murray's successor, who appointed Cochrane as a lieutenant on the Resolution for a brief period. Cruising the waters from the St Lawrence to Chesapeake Bay, Vandeput found little sign of the French or the war and the Resolution settled down to an agreeable social routine.
    Cochrane's first dinner was in the captain's dining cabin, a spacious room in the stern of the vessel with large square-paned windows overlooking the sea. Its elegant furnishings and studied ritual seemed a world away from the life of the orlop deck, twenty feet below. As the braided and cock-hatted officers walked the deck before dinner, the Royal Marine band piped "The Roast Beef of Old England" to summon them to their food. The sunlight, reflected through the stern windows by the shifting sea, caught the polished silver and finely-wrought glass. Dinners of this sort began at about 3 p.m. and lasted for the best part of two hours, several courses and a number of wines being consumed.
    Cochrane noted, however, that the "leading motive" of a seaman was "prize money", and it was never more true than in his own case. The social pleasantries on board the Resolution hardly masked his ravenous need of this extra income. To make matters worse, Vandeput and his well-heeled officers decided that, when winter came, there was no point in resuming patrols until the spring. The admiral dropped anchor in Chesapeake Bay and went ashore to a large house which he had rented. Parties of officers joined him for shooting and hunting. As Cochrane remarked, it was fortunate for the admiral that the Virginians "retained their affection for England, her habits, and customs. Even the innkeeper of the place contrived to muster a tolerable pack of hounds". Admiral Vandeput, whose particular fetish was very tall girls, was also in pursuit of the Misses Tabbs, each more than six feet high. 6
    During the boisterous dinner parties and the enforced gaiety, Cochrane brooded over the war he was missing and denounced the government of toadies and placemen who had lost England's colonies for her. He believed that the United Colonies meant what they said in 1775, "that on the concession of their just demands, 'the colonies are to return to their former connections and friendship with Great Britain'". Might not a more democratic and reformist government in Britain have prevented the great schism? 7
    Among such thoughts came the announcement that H.M.S. Thetis was to return to England. His companions behaved with tolerant amusement towards the tall anxious "Sawney" with his mop of red hair and his unpredictable sentiments. But since he seemed so desperate for a chance to fight, he was sent back across the Atlantic with the Thetis. His orders were to proceed with Admiral Keith's flagship from Plymouth to Gibraltar, for the great battle of the Mediterranean had just begun.
     
    The Mediterranean had not been the scene of many British victories between 1793 and 1797. To blockade the major ports of Toulon, Cadiz and Brest, in order to prevent the escape of French battle-fleets and wholesale slaughter among British convoys to the West Indies, had proved an intolerable strain on the Royal Navy's resources. By 1796, the British had abandoned the bases at Leghorn, and Corsica, pulling back to Gibraltar and concentrating along the