The Audacious Admiral Cochrane: The True Life Of A Navel Legend by Vale, Brian - 2004

United Kingdom: Conway Maritime Press, 2004. 1st Edition . Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. h/b 240 pages, condition is very good. Royal Navy captain, radical politician, respected inventor,Vice Admiral of Chile, First Admiral of Brazil - Lord Cochrane (1775-1860) achieved legendary status during a lifetime that spanned the conflicts of the late Georgian period into the relative peace and stability of theVictorian era. But he is best remembered as a naval hero, immortalised in the protagonists of the fiction of Patrick O'Brian, C. S. Forester and Frederick Marryat. Lord Cochrane's reputation for audacity and bravery was first established in 1801 during the famous encounter between the Speedy and El Gamo, when his diminutive 14-gun brig completely overwhelmed and captured the 32-gun Spanish frigate. It was indelibly sealed by his later exploits as a frigate captain in the cruises of the Pallas and Imperieuse, during which he put his aggressive orders into brilliant effect, seizing prizes and making amphibious raids along enemy coastlines, creating panic and confusion with fireships and other pyrotechnics. When the Stock Exchange Scandal of 1814 resulted in his expulsion from the navy he took his considerable tactical skills to South America, leading the Chilean and Brazilian fleets during their wars of independence. By 1827 he was in charge of the Greek navy fighting against Turkish control, before being accepted back into the Royal Navy and British public life as an admiral in 1832. Although his naval accomplishments are numerous, his career was marked by controversy and pathological disputes with some of the eminent men of the period; Admiral Lord Keith described him as 'wrong-headed, violent and proud'. Late in life, he published a series of autobiographies which have been accepted, unquestioned, as an accurate version of events. In this book Brian Vale sets the record straight. He has thoroughly investigated the incidents in Cochrane's life, going back to original sources in the archives of the UK, Chile and Brazil 'What emerges is a different picture to the one conveyed by Cochrane that ultimately reveals a much more complex and intriguing figure.