56 HEREDITY AND DEVELOPMENT OF NAVAL OFFICERS. 



11. THOMAS COCHRANE. 



THOMAS COCHRANE (tenth Earl of Dundonald) was born at Annsfield, in 

 Lanarkshire, December 14, 1775. Provided with a commission, he entered the 

 infantry service, although he had been put on the books of a man-of-war while 

 still a boy. He disliked military life and in 1793 went to sea in the ship of which 

 his father's brother was captain. He became a lieutenant in 1796 and was court- 

 martialed on account of a quarrel with a superior officer. Placed in command of 

 a brig in 1800, "he gained a great and deserved reputation as a daring and skillful 

 officer." He captured a Spanish frigate in 1801, by an act of unparalleled audacity. 

 Having secured an election to Parliament, "he soon made his mark as a radical 

 and as a denouncer of naval abuses." Engaged in an attack on the French squad- 

 ron, April 1809, under Lord Gambier, his own work was brilliant, but he brought 

 on a court-martial of the admiral which led to nothing but his own discomfiture. 

 Meanwhile, he plunged into politics and speculations on the stock exchange and 

 was dragged down by the peculations of an uncle and imprisoned. In 1817, on 

 the invitation of the Chilean government, he commanded its naval forces against 

 Spain and captured a Spanish frigate by an act of daring. In 1823 he helped 

 Brazil in similar fashion to independence, but by 1825 he had fallen out with the 

 Brazilians and returned to Europe. He then helped the Greeks for a time in their 

 struggles with the Turks. Except for a command of three years at North American 

 and West Indian stations (1848 to 1851) and certain relations with the Crimean 

 War, he spent the last twenty-five years of his life in experiments and invention. 

 He took out patents for lamps to burn oil of tar (his father was a pioneer inventor 

 in the field of illuminating gas), for the propulsion of ships at sea, for facilitating 

 excavation, mining, and sinking, and for rotary steam-engines. By 1843 he was 

 advocating the use of steam and the screw propeller in warships. He died in 

 October 1860, and was buried in Westminister Abbey. 



Lord Dundonald was a hyperkinetic. He possessed abnormal restlessness, 

 insatiable energy, and "a passionate though unconscious egotism." He was 

 always self-assertive, frequently insolent to his superiors, daring as a naval officer, 

 "saturated with the sense of his superiority, impatient of all control." "Never 

 was a man more emphatically a man of action. Action was the breath of his 

 nostrils. Give him an enemy to overcome and he was in his element; force him 

 to concentrate his whole activity on that enemy and he was safe." "His whole 

 life was made up of a series of quarrels." "To his combative nature, rejoicing in 

 its strength, a new enemy can hardly be said to have been unwelcome." 



This hyperkinesis is also shown in his father, who entered the army at the 

 age of 16, but turned to the navy and became acting lieutenant. Ever restless, 

 he left the navy and turned to physical and chemical experimentation, but in this 

 he showed lack of balance. He established manufactories where the result of his 

 researches could be practically applied, but, as these failed to bring a return, he 

 plunged deeper and deeper into his manufacturing speculations. This father 

 had a brother who was a colonel in the army, but threw up the service in disgust 

 and became a member of Parliament. The father's father and father's father's 

 father of the propositus were military men, but details as to their temperament 

 and that of their consorts are lacking. One generation further back is John 

 Cochrane, who was implicated in the Rye House plot in 1683, and was compelled 

 to flee for his life to Holland. Two years later he returned to enter into the 

 insurrection of Argyll. He was always turbulent and dissatisfied. 



