Thomas Cochrane | Hacker News Reader

Thomas Cochrane

sergey.substack.com

220 pointsneural_thing78 comments

Some non-military context.

> with what he got, instead of partying, went to Edinburgh to get a first class education in moral philosophy

Scotland was the place to get such an education at the time.[0]

> decided to get elected. went to a very corrupt district where votes were bought for five guineas. campaigned on principles. lost heavily but paid all those who voted for him ten guineas after the fact. next year campaigned on principles again and won. when people came to him for the ten guineas, said “The former gift was for their disinterested conduct in not taking the bribe of five pounds from the agents of my opponent. For me to pay them now would be a violation of my own previously expressed principles”

Prior to the Reform Act 1832[1], each town with a Royal Charter had the right to elect two burgesses to the House of Commons. There were numerous 'rotten boroughs', such as Old Sarum, whose two burgesses were chosen by just seven electors, the rest of the population having moved downhill to Salisbury in the thirteenth century, or Dunwich, once one of the most important towns in England, but now washed away into the North Sea. Elections were not secret, and in rotten boroughs, electors could be bribed individually. Manchester, a bustling settlement of one million inhabitants by the time of the Act, on the other hand, was not chartered, and consequently had no burgesses in the Commons at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832

and for follow-on history to the Reform Act of 1832:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833#:~:...

Your link seems to go to the article itself. What function did you try to use?

Did you try to reference this paragraph?

>Up until then, sugar planters from rich British islands such as the Colony of Jamaica and Barbados were able to buy rotten and pocket boroughs, and they were able to form a body of resistance to moves to abolish slavery itself. This West India Lobby, which later evolved into the West India Committee, purchased enough seats to be able to resist the overtures of abolitionists. However, the Reform Act 1832 swept away their rotten borough seats, clearing the way for a majority of members of the House of Commons to push through a law to abolish slavery itself throughout the British Empire.[21]

No FF support yet: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Text_fragments

Sorry, hadn't realised those were bleeding edge :(

It's had good support for a couple years now, but only Mozilla is lagging for some reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I would like to be pedantic and mention that instead of outright bribery as we know today, the sort of coercion (in the broadest sense of the word) that enabled the rotten boroughs involved some far more innovative and long-term thinking like ensuring that the demographics of boroughs in question, if anyone still lived there, to essentially to owe their ability to live and by extension, ply their trades and all that. You are effectively voting so you can have a place to live, in many cases. Old Sarum is the classical case and almost certainly the most egregious one in a prima facie manner but thanks to the manifold of coercive measures implemented it took until the implementation of secret ballots to truly ensure that the old rotten boroughs age was finally no longer a serious concern, and that took another... 40 years? (I realize that I'm focusing on the descriptor on pocket boroughs specifically, which is a subset of the broader rotten boroughs phenomenon, but the subset's primary differentiation comes from how they were attained and not how their existence determined the makeup of parliament, considering that large landowners were able to have "in their pocket" the votes of multiple constituencies that they could exert indirect coercion over quite readily). Yes, it's amazing looking back that one did not follow the other somehow, but baby steps man, baby steps. It beats no steps at all when there's not really a better alternative on the table, even if it's a long way from ideal.

I love how an education in moral philosophy did not interfere with piracy.

Piracy was literally the national occupation of the Brits during the 18th and 19th century.

The difference was just a matter of scale and whether your ship was sanctioned by the government.

He's my ancestor! He hovers just on the edge of obscurity as a historical figure, and most people have never heard of him, so it's cool to see a summary like this out in the wild. My grandfather still shares exactly the same name too, though he's the last of the juniors.

He is known by all members of the Chilean Navy [1], he is not obscure in this part of the world. By the way, I am chilean and lived most of my childhood just a block away from Lord Cochrane street [0], in downtown Santiago, which is one the busiest places in the whole country (and those adjacent blocks have seen some history).

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lord+Cochrane+1-99,+Santia...

[1] https://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-726.html (documents, images and more)

Thanks for sharing! I'll pass this along to my family. They'll be interested to learn he is known in Chile.

Don't forget that he indirectly and in hindsight contributed to the independence of Peru as well. Most of the fighting of course did not happen on the seas, but just as air superiority matters a great deal, naval superiority in the 1820s mattered as well, and the upper hand he gave to the expedition from Chile/Argentina made it a war that was effectively centered on the land war aspect and led to in part and a few years down the line, Peru's independence from Spain as well.

Somewhat ironically, the Irish diaspora (the Flight of the Wild Geese, which happened in 1691 and scattered the Irish Catholic military aristoracy across Catholic Europe and their descendants, just Europe in general, likely had a larger cumulative role in effectuating much of the independence movements. After all, O'Higgins is not exactly a native Spanish surname. Informally the scions of Irish Catholic families of importance, with their paths of advancing in Britain blocked, filtered out across the continent for the next hundred years or so and ended up having certainly an outsized influence on the makeup of military administration and colonial administration by way of the makeup of the officer corps of the nations where they ended up settling, stretching from Spain to France to Austria to Russia. They were not exactly mercenaries but really a true diaspora before the concept really solidified in today's terms. One can argue that it was certainly an early and self-inflicted 'brain-drain' through policies instituted by the post-Williamite British state that may have had longer term consequences (the loss of Minorca and the loss of America came in fairly rapid succession, for example) to the British and the distinct and separate traditions allowing them to be less attached to a sovereign but a cause. Much more on this needs studying, but what is certain is that policies made out of fear undermined the British and aided continental powers for generations. Look at the names etched on the Arc de Triomphe and you'll notice how many of the names are distinctly not French, including that of Dillion (Arthur Dillion, related to the Viscount Dillion, who also fought for the American side during the revolution), Clarke (whose father served in the Dillion Regiment), MacDonald (whose ties to Flora Macdonald during the Jacobite Rising precipitated his family's exile, but nevertheless served as officers first under Dillon before later siding with Napoleon and taking independent command, primarily in Switzerland) are just some of the prominent names inscribed. Sectarianism's long tail etched in stone right there.

In case you're interested, here is a photo I took in the Museo Marítimo Nacional, Valparaíso, Chile - a full-length stained glass portrait of him: https://i.imgur.com/XSr6wwG.jpg

There is also a monument to him in Valparaíso - https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monumento_a_Lord_Cochrane - he is pretty well known here.

[Off topic]

What a magic place HN is at times! Be it developers of ubiquitous technology answering questions or sharing anecdotes or stories like yours.

Maybe he is mine as well. Also, not mentioned, is that one of his descendants, Zefram Cochran, will be the inventor of warp drive.

I am Spanish and I've heard about him a couple of times now.

I'm fascinated with Cochrane and this era. For anyone who is looking for novels that attempt to tell the story of people like Cochrane, look no further than Patrick O'Brien's books. Starting with Master and Commander

Or look further and try the Hornblower books? Less naval terminology, sharper characterization.

O'Brian & Forester wrote fun adventures in the golden age of sailing.

You can look a little further still to check out Dudley Pope's Ramage series.

I like the naval terminology, even though I don't understand most of it.

Not having read the Hornblower books since adolescence, I can't compare them, but on "characterization" : sorry, bro. O'Brian's the master of it. Two very good actors took on Jack and Steven (Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany) and made a classic movie.

Unfortunately the movie oversimplified the characters. Jack in the books is a complex guy, who has besides his good traits some unpleasant parts (his obsession with making money with get rich quick schemes on land which often land him in debt, and his obsession with taking "prizes" at sea for personal gain more than duty). Crowe's Jack is just a generic hero. And Stephen is a complex guy too, who is an intelligence agent in addition to being a doctor and naturalist. Bettany's Stephen ignores this whole part of his character.

Ok. But you're criticizing the movie, not the books.

I don’t think that’s fair at all. My advice to people struggling with the naval stuff in Master and Commander is to keep reading. The important stuff gets explained in plain language to the perpetually lubberly Maturin, presumably for the benefit of the reader.

Aubrey and Maturin are two of my favorite characters in all of literature. The depth of their motivations, their relationship, and their own personal wants are at the heart of the series. The best parts of the entire series are frequently their adventures on land rather than the purely naval parts.

The hornblower books are for folks getting bored on their 3rd or 4th read through of the Aubrey/Maturin series :-)

I love the books as well (especially in my very nice Folio Society edition).

As for the impossible naval jargon, I found it amusing to see the movie in (Danish) cinema, where the incomprehensible naval terminology was replaced in the subtitles with… incomprehensible Danish naval terminology.

I don't mind the naval terminology, it's interesting. But I think Hornblower is deeper than those guys. And... all of literature? I mean, Karamazov?

I don't want to critique personal taste, because it's ultimately preference and who am I to judge yours? On the other hand, one of O'Brian's strengths is his wonderful characters along with his beautiful prose. Even to the point that later books, like The Thirteen Gun Salute to The Commodore (a 5 book stretch) have an awfully boring and uncompelling series of plots and I still liked them anyway.

I do like Hornblower. I've read all the books more than once, I bought the ITV show, and I even hunted down the Gregory Peck adaptation. To me Hornblower was a deeper character than I might have any right to expect in a historical adventure series, but his repetitive self-loathing in the face of his genius (genuinely a compelling choice) grates after so many books and so many successes and he begins to feel like a caricature of himself.

Like the grandparent, Aubrey and Maturin are my favourite characters in anything I've read. Everyone will tell you how they and their relationship is wonderfully depicted, but it could also have something to do with how many books there are and how often I've re-read them. At this point they're old friends so it'd be disloyal of me not to love them as much as I do.

I didn’t think it was necessary to put a disclaimer: they are my favorite characters in all of the literature that I personally have read. I can’t speak to my preferences about the millions of books I haven’t read, Karazamov sadly being one of them. I certainly hope that there are literary characters out there that I would like as much, or more, but I haven't met them yet, and so, continue searching.

I haven’t read Hornblower since I was a teenager, so some it might have gone over my head back then. My read on it was that it was more of an adventure story than anything. With the Master and Commander series I often find that the parts where they aren't at sea are the most interesting (The Fortune of War, The Surgeons Mate, Treason's Harbour are three of the books with particularly interesting periods on land). I am also biased since the subtle humor in the books is something I find particularly funny.

I absolutely adore the Hornblower books. Almost anything by CS Forester, really.

Patrick O'Brien's books are too dry for me. There's lots of characters stopping and explaining naval terminology to each other, or long conversations about feelings and posturing and etc.

In comparison, Forester writing really captures the adventure and gives you the spirit of the era in much less verbose but sharper prose.

It's dry in the sense the same sense Jane Austen's fiction is dry: it spends a lot of time chronicling the everyday minutiae of a bygone era. But whereas Austen was writing about her contemporaries, O'Brian does so at a remove of two centuries. As a literary and research achievement it's just .. stunning. I re-read this series at least once every decade, and each time my awe over what he has managed to accomplish in these books somehow increases. There is an old NYT book review (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/06/books/an-author-i-d-walk-...) that expresses it better than I can.

My suggestion would be to try the audiobooks instead (the ones narrated by Patrick Tull).

Yes, those are fun. My idea of what Jack and Stephen sound like in my mind is based on the voices Tull does for them. Although the voices he does for Indian and Chinese characters is a bit cringe.

All his lines as Padeen are super cringeworthy too.

For those having difficulties with naval terminology, seek out a copy of "A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O'Brian" by Dean King. Hornblower's naval terminology is the same as O'Brian's, and it's great guide to both.

A couple of Robert Brightwell's (Thomas) "Flashman" series* have the eponymous hero as a shipmate of Cochrane - first in the Mediterranean in "Flashman and the Seawolf" [0] and later in South America in "Flashman and the Emperor" [1]

Both are great rollicking action adventures.

* Thomas is the uncle of the more famous Sir Harry Paget Flashman, V.C., whose memoirs are edited by George MacDonald-Fraser.

[0] https://robertbrightwell.com/my-books/flashman-and-the-seawo...

[1] https://robertbrightwell.com/my-books/flashman-and-the-emper...

Horatio Hornblower is a lot of fun as well. It's fiction but based on a lot of Cochraine's ruses. It's both a highly rated TV miniseries (inexplicably unavailable on any streaming service in the US) and a series of books.

I've read all of Hornblower many times, starting in elementary school nearly 55 years ago. I've not read O'Brian at all, though I loved the "Master and Commander" movie.

Jack Aubrey was very consciously modeled on Cochrane according to O’Brien. The general arc of his naval career pretty closely follows that of Cochrane’s.

In case anyone's interested:

there is an interview with O'Brian on YouTube.

(Don't ask for a link. Just search.)

The details of all of the battles in O'Brien's books are drawn from Royal Navy records, albeit with some adaptation to fit the plot and characters. Cochrane's (Jack Aubrey in the book) capture of the Spanish frigate is the climactic scene in the first book, 'Master and Commander.'

I have been looking for a "Harry Potter for adults" for quite a while now. This series came the closest.

I have read all 20 books!

This is very entertaining, but it seems a bit too crafted for a specific audience with all the "those damned bureaucrats!" and whatnot.

For a similar naval hot shot, check out Peter Tordenskjold (lit. thunder shield):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tordenskjold

There are lots of amusing stories about his crazy deeds, but he employed people to do PR for him, so take it with more than the usual grain of salt.

commanded a vessel with 14 4-pounder guns, all of the balls for a round of which would fit in his pockets

This one confuses me. Anyone know what this means?

The guns were so small, that a single firing (so 14 guns shooting once simultaneously) could be loaded with a mass of balls that easily fit a man's pockets.

That being said, 14 four pound balls weigh 56 pounds (yes, you're welcome for me doing the difficult math), so they might fit in your pockets but you'll need a sturdy belt.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who went down that path...

I don't think that's what the author's intent might be. I believe the 4 pounder would be firing grape shot, not a large singular shot. So, the author is inducing you to picture that these, "cannons" shoot, not small bowling balls as you might imagine a normal cannonball to resemble, but a small sachet of marbles about the size of a juice box. One that fits in your pocket.

I guessed that it should have read "each of the balls".

Explosives in the 1800s are like rapid unscheduled refactoring today. Most programming issues can be solved with a careful application of the right amount of rapid refactoring at a precise point in space and time.

love that he helps win the war against napoleon only to try to break him out of exile a few years later

It's like athletes hating each other on the pitch/court, but being friends outside of it - because, in the end, they have more in common between themselves than with the outside world.

That was particularly true in the reactionary environment of the 19th century, when traditional hierarchies were fighting hard against "uppity" upstarts who did not fit conventions.

Insert list of highly questionable, immoral activities -- before the following entry:

>"with what he got, instead of partying, went to Edinburgh to get a first class education in moral philosophy"

And, insert another continuing list of highly questionable, immoral activities -- after the above entry...

This particular entry, if true, would portray this historical character -- as a rather humorous historical character, who was, at least, somewhat hypocritical! :-) <g> :-)

(But who knows? Perhaps he needed the class in moral philosophy to learn about what hypocrisy is, and how it works! <g> :-) <g>)

Anyway, the article is an excellent biographical summary of a very colorful historical character!

There’s an entertaining fictionalised account of some of his antics in Sharpe’s Devil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe%27s_Devil

And he was one of the models for Horatio Hornblower, created by CS Forrester. They're great reads and I understand that their descriptions of Napoleonic sea battles are fairly accurate

Several streets in Chile bear his name.

Anyone else a bit skeptical?

Dang it. Reading that, I want to give the book to my wife. But she does all of her reading these days on audible. And https://www.amazon.com/Cochrane-Britannias-Wolf-Donald-Thoma... shows only a paperback. (Only 3 books left.)

Doesn't mention his role in burning Washington, DC, and attacking Baltimore. If he had been brave enough to send one of his ships of the line into Baltimore harbor instead of just a few frigates and gunboats, Ft McHenry would now be a long-forgotten pile of rubble.

Dan Snow's history hit podcast just started a series on him - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ispIHiXbKt6ocJJH4RqN6

The inspiration for the captain in the "Master & Commander" book series, though also, somewhat confusingly, a peripheral character in them.

> started (legally) pirating left and right

This made me chuckle.

This is awful. Paragraphs exist for a reason.

TL, Dr:Empires always reward incompetence.

Off topic I know, but what's with the tonnes (nearly 70?) bullet points? It's like the author had a normal piece of text and semi-randomly decided where to split it into bullets, losing context and structure along the way. Some of the items are sequential, others are standalone. Some are paragraphs, others are tiny addendums to the previous point.

Cochrane sounds like a very unique character, but after the first few bullets I just wants to go and read his Wikipedia page.

+1 to that. tl;dr

This needs a whole series of novels. Oh wait. There already is one:

https://www.soundingsonline.com/features/the-real-jack-aubre...

So that's where both Stephenson and Disney got the first name of their concurrently written Jacks from (I assume that both Shaftoe and Sparrow were already public when BBC writers created Harkness who is basically the same character as the other two)

"Jack" - a great name for a pirate or sea captain.

"Morris", "Herman", "Nigel", "Cuthbert" - not so much.

Follow me for more fiction advice.

I always assumed that at least one of them was inspired by the Billy Joel song

Hah, I was thinking this sounded a lot like "Lucky Jack".

I remembered that O'Brian had drawn on a lot of captain's logs for the novels but still based a lot of him on a single captain, but I wasn't sure if this was the man until your comment.

> all of the above is sourced from Cochrane: Britannia’s Sea Wolf by Donald Thomas

Thats pretty much what they did. I do sort of like the idea of sharing less-than-perfectly-polished writing. But it does make for an odd read.

FWIW, I found the layout entertaining.

I think it's a really nice example of form matching content: a very long list of roughly equally improbable events. No prose could ever express the sheer quantity of it all like that seemingly endless list of bullet points. I kind of expected the last bullet point to be "wrote and published his own own biography, few other sources remain"

Agreed, it kind of reads like an overly long and insanely impressive CV passed along in a blasé sort of way. It paints Cochrane as someone who was a lot more interested in doing things than convincing people what cool things he had done, which by the raw facts seems plausible haha.

It's sadly becoming more and more common because too many people aren't used to reading stuff longer than a Tweet at a time. Put a regular paragraph of text in from of them and they will just close the browser tab and move on.

I mentioned in another comment, I enjoyed the structure and found it much easier to process. This is despite mostly reading long form articles and never having been a huge twitter user.

- I hate the writing style

- Of breaking up a paragraph

- Into a hundred individual sentences

- And fragments

- We really have Twitter

- To thank for this

On the contrary, I have never been a heavy twitter user, yet I would dearly love all articles I read to be broken down like this. I definitely find it easier to process a list structure like this.

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