Cochrane in the Pacific Read online

  COCHRANE IN THE PACIFIC

  Fortune and Freedom in Spanish America

  by

  Brian Vale

  I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd

  6 Salem Road,

  London W2 4BU

  Published in 2008 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com

  In the United States of America and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan a division of St Martin's Press 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

  Copyright © Brian Vale, 2008

  The right of Brian Vale to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 978 1 84511 446 6

  A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall From camera-ready copy typeset by Oxford Publishing Services, Oxford

  Contents

  PREFACE

  Chapter 1 - THE ANDES AND THE SEA

  Chapter 2 - THE MAKING OF THE CHILEAN NAVY

  Chapter 3 - THE COMING OF LORD COCHRANE

  Chapter 4 - THE CALLAO CAMPAIGN

  Chapter 5 - THE CAPTURE OF VALDIVIA

  Chapter 6 - 'HEARTFELT GRATITUDE AT THAT SIGNAL ACHIEVEMENT'

  Chapter 7 - PLOTS AND PARANOIA

  Chapter 8 - INVASION AND BLOCKADE

  Chapter 9 - THE CAPTURE OF THE ESMERALDA

  Chapter 10 - THE VALDIVIA COURT MARTIAL

  Chapter 11 - THE LIBERATION OF PERU

  Chapter 12 - THE ROW WITH SAN MARTIN

  Chapter 13 - GUAYAQUIL AND THE SPANISH MAIN

  Chapter 14 - THE FINAL CURTAIN

  Chapter 15 - INDEPENDENCE - AT LAST

  Chapter 16 - SETTLING ACCOUNTS

  Chapter 17 - EPILOGUE

  NOTES

  Chapter 1: The Andes and the Sea

  Chapter 2: The Making of the Chilean Navy

  Chapter 3: The Coming of Lord Cochrane

  Chapter 4: The Callao Campaign

  Chapter 5: The Capture of Valdivia

  Chapter 6: 'Heartfelt Gratitude at that Signal Achievement'

  Chapter 7: Plots and Paranoia

  Chapter 8: Invasion and Blockade

  Chapter 9: The Capture of the Esmeralda

  Chapter 10: The Valdivia Court Martial

  Chapter 11: The Liberation of Peru

  Chapter 12: The Row with San Martin

  Chapter 13: Guayaquil and the Spanish Main

  Chapter 14: The Final Curtain

  Chapter 15: Independence - At Last

  Chapter 16: Settling Accounts

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  PREFACE

  In 1818, the revolutionary government of Chile was poised to move north against Peru, the last bastion of Spanish power on the continent. The liberation of South America had up to then been dominated by land campaigns. But the need to move the army of General José de San Martin up the coast and support it there made it necessary to seize control of the Pacific from the Spanish. The new Chilean Government therefore turned its energies into creating a navy. Short of indigenous naval manpower, Chile recruited officers and men overseas and within a year had signed on over 2000 sailors, large numbers of which were North American or British. And, as the new navy's commander-in-chief, the Chileans recruited that wayward genius, Thomas, Lord Cochrane.

  In 1819, Cochrane blockaded and attacked Callao, the Spanish naval base in Peru. In February 1820, he captured Valdivia, the last Spanish stronghold on the Chilean coast. In August, having effectively swept the Spanish from the seas and seized dozens of British and American merchant ships, he escorted the great seaborne invasion force to Peru. Then, while San Martin's army slowly advanced on Lima, Cochrane blockaded Callao, cutting out the frigate Esmeralda in a dramatic night attack. Six months later, Peru became independent and Cochrane sailed north in pursuit of the Spanish Navy's two surviving frigates, but was frustrated when they surrendered to the Peruvians. He then returned triumphantly to Chile before resigning his commission to lead the Brazilian war of independence.

  The history of the naval war in the Pacific is an exciting one. But when Cochrane came to tell the story in his 1859 epic, Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chile, Peru and Brazil, he introduced a less agreeable, almost paranoid, element by claiming that his victories had been won in spite of plots and disloyalty by his subordinates and jealousy and obstruction by his superiors. This version was first retailed in the memoirs of three South American residents which were published in the middle 1820s - William Bennet Stevenson, Maria Graham and John Miers. It has been claimed that these books provide corroborative evidence of the truth of Cochrane's allegations. In fact this is not so. All three writers were intimates of Cochrane during his time in Chile and Peru, and each repeated the admiral's own bitter version of events - indeed, they were primed to do so. The result of all this, is that for 150 years it is the Cochrane interpretation of the history that has been accepted as the truth and repeated without challenge in innumerable biographies.

  The aim of this book is to describe what really happened during the war in the Pacific. It is also to reassess Lord Cochrane's behaviour in a campaign where dramatic opportunities for action and administrative worries - both real and imaginary - brought out the best and the worst of him. It does not repeat yet again the version of events put forward by Cochrane and those who today would be called cronies and spin doctors, but tells the true story as it emerges from original documents, letters, dispatches, diaries and newspapers of the time. Ironically, the task has been made easier by Lord Cochrane's reluctance to throw away any piece of correspondence that went across his desk. The mountain of unedited and uncensored personal and official papers he left behind him provide a major source of information. They can be found in original, duplicate or microfilm form in numerous locations, principally the National Archives of Scotland and the respective naval archives of Chile and Peru. For the convenience of readers, when these documents are cited, it is their location in the National Archives of Scotland that is given rather than the place where they may have been actually consulted. Thanks to the work of David J. Cubitt, these papers are now more easily penetrable. Likewise, where documents have been published - and South Americans are very good at doing that -it is that source that is quoted as being the most accessible.

  I would like to express my thanks to the directors and staffs of all these archival collections, together with those of the National Maritime Museum Greenwich, the National Archives in Kew, Canning House in London, the Essex County Archives, the University of Liverpool Special Collections, the Club Naval in Valparaiso and the Archivo General de la Marina, Madrid, for help and assistance over many years.

  Brian Vale

  Greenwich

  2007

  Chapter 1

  THE ANDES AND THE SEA

  On 18 January 1817, the Argentine General José de San Martin, wearing the blue uniform of the Mounted Grenadier regiment he had founded, a thick fur-lined pelisse and jackboots with golden spurs, ordered his army forward on one of the epic marches of South American history. His intention was to cross the icy peaks of the Andes from the east, launch a surprise attack on the royali
sts in Chile, and ultimately threaten Peru, the last bastion of Spanish power in the Pacific. With only 5000 men, San Martin's Army of the Andes was tiny compared with the hosts that had fought their way across Napoleonic Europe - but it was enough. Marching out of the Argentine town of Mendoza accompanied by 10,600 mules and 1600 horses, and driving 700 head of cattle before it, the army headed in two columns westwards towards the towering wall of the Andes. San Martin and the main body then took the more direct route of Los Patos. For three weeks, they climbed into the mountains, snaking up precipitous defiles and crossing rushing torrents by improvised rope bridges while animals and equipment were swayed across by block and tackle. They scrambled up the shale-littered valley between the peaks and glaciers of the Aconcagua and Tupungata mountains, then over the natural rock bridge of the Puente de Inca, before climbing the high pass which crosses the Andes at 12,000 feet and descending at last into Chile. Meanwhile, a second column under General Juan Gregorio Las Heras, made up of the remaining troops and the artillery took the quicker, but no less rugged, Uspallata route, filing up the gorges of the Mendoza river between towering icy peaks before crossing the bleak wilderness of the Paso de la Cumbre at 12,600 feet, and clambering down the broken ravines on the other side.

  San Martin had planned the crossing with all the skill and care for which he was famous. Each line of march was secretly surveyed in advance by an able 37-year-old major of artillery, called José Antonio Alvarez. Detailed timetables were drawn up, emergency supplies and special equipment prepared, and diversionary forces sent north and south to deceive the enemy. No amount of planning could, however, control the elements, and exhaustion, freezing temperatures and lack of oxygen took their toll. Most of the troops got through, but only half the mules and one-third of the horses survived the journey. Nevertheless, the crossing went like clockwork. After three weeks, on 11 February, San Martin's army emerged from the narrow defiles of the mountains, regrouped, and deployed itself on a long ridge overlooking the Spanish position at Chacabuco. Next morning, it descended the slopes and fell on an astonished and unprepared royalist army. After a battle of move, countermove and improvisation, the Spaniards were decisively defeated. Next day, the victors entered Santiago and triumphantly proclaimed the independence of Chile.

  The events that led up to this victory had been set in train ten years earlier when the Emperor Napoleon had kidnapped the King of Spain, put his brother Joséph on the throne and occupied the country. From the highest to the lowest, the Spanish people rose in rebellion while Juntas were established at home and abroad to rule in the name of the absent King. The arrangement was supposed to be temporary - but of course it was not. The locally born creoles in the Spanish colonies in the New World seized their chance. For centuries they had been kept in a state of subordination - ruled by autocratic Viceroys and peninsular born officials, and restricted by monopolies that made the merchants of Old Spain rich. Now they took control of the Juntas, acquired a taste for running their own affairs and began to talk of self-government. Back in the mother country, the provisional authorities were dismayed. Though politically liberal, the idea of compromising the enormous economic benefits that Spain derived from its South America possession was out of the question. Tensions mounted and were made worse by the behaviour of some local officials who continued to operate in their usual high-handed style. Indeed, in Peru, the Viceroy refused to have any truck with Juntas at all and insisted in ruling alone in the name of absent King Ferdinand.

  Peru remained a centre of royalist power: but elsewhere on the continent from Caracas in the north to Buenos Aires in the south, radical politicians and military strongmen took over the local juntas, overcame royalist opposition and began to push for full independence. In the north, Simon Bolivar was the dominating figure, establishing the Republic of New Granada in 1814. In the south, the radical Junta in Buenos Aires took the lead. Basking in the prestige of its defeat of the British invasion in 1806-7, it masterminded an armed rebellion that ejected the last Spanish Viceroys from Buenos Aires and Montevideo. In 1813, the United Provinces of the River Plate was established as the republican predecessor of the modern Argentina, and immediately began to send liberating armies against the royalists in Peru northwards through the Paraguay river system that provided the back door to the continent.

  With the fall of Napoleon in 1814, Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne of Spain on a wave of national enthusiasm. But, true to his reactionary instincts, the new King promptly reverted to autocratic rule, overthrew the liberal Constitution of 1812, and viciously persecuted anyone who had supported it. In the Americas, his government went on the offensive. A Spanish army under General Manuel Morillo reoccupied New Granada, forcing Bolivar and his supporters to flee. Further south, the

  Viceroy of Peru, Don Joaquin de la Pezuela, repelled three separate attacks by the United Provinces and crushed a rebellion in Chile. Meanwhile, at home, the Spanish Government began to assemble a huge military force in Cadiz aimed at the reconquest of the River Plate and the removal of the troublesome radicals who ruled it.

  The only event that disturbed the rhythm of the Royalist reconquest was a Portuguese invasion of what is now Uruguay. It was done allegedly on behalf of Ferdinand VII, but was in reality an attempt to realise the historic Portuguese ambition of extending the frontiers of Brazil to the River Plate. But this was a matter of traditional power politics rather than a revolutionary threat - the Queen of Portugal and Brazil, the diminutive and malevolent Carlota Joaquina was, after all, Ferdinand's sister. Faced with these setbacks, republican confidence began to wane. And, understanding the realities of European politics, many patriot leaders - including Bolivar and San Martin - began to favour a compromise whereby the states of South America would become independent as monarchies ruled by minor European Royals.

  The tide in South America began to turn in Spain's favour - but not for long. In 1817 there were two significant revolutionary gains. In the north, Bolivar returned, gathered support and began to roll back the Spanish positions. While in the south, a fourth liberating expedition against Peru was being prepared in the River Plate - this time under the command of the dominating figure of southern independence, General José de San Martin. Tall, dark and handsome, with bushy hair, thick black whiskers and piercing eyes, San Martin had been born in 1778 in the north of what is now Argentina, the fourth son of an army officer commanding a provincial outpost. Returning to Spain with the family, he had joined the Spanish army as a youth, eventually rising to become Lieutenant Colonel of the Walloon Guards and a staff officer with the Spanish forces fighting with the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War. Returning to the River Plate in 1812, San Martin joined the cause of independence and steadily rose to become its leading military strategist. He originally aligned himself with the Argentine Supreme Director Carlos Antonio de Alvear,1 but the relationship soon went sour and when Alvear fell from power in 1816, it was San Martin who acted as 'king maker' and secured the appointment of Juan Martin de Pueyrredon as his successor.

  That done, San Martin returned to his duties as governor of the remote state of Cuyo. But this was no provincial exile. He had long since concluded that the best way of attacking the royalists in Peru was to strike west across the snowy passes of the Andes and use Chile as the springboard for invasion. Cuyo was on the border, and its capital Mendoza commanded the crude post road that led to Santiago. It was here that San Martin organised and trained the invasion force, the Army of the Andes, which he led so dramatically across the Cordillera to victory in 1817. The planning and leadership shown by San Martin in the campaign were vital to its success, and Commodore William Bowles, who was then commander-in-chief of the British South America squadron, was so impressed that he wrote a special dispatch to London giving the details.2

  Bowles knew San Martin well. He described him as well bred, pleasant in manners and conversation, but austere and abstemious in his private life - eschewing luxuries and preferring to sleep on a camp bed and share
the hardships of his men. One of his most remarkable habits was his preference for taking his meals standing up, buffet style, rather than at a table. In the discharge of business he was hard working and conscientious, with no detail escaping his personal attention. San Martin's campaigns, however, had a bad effect on his health. He suffered from asthma and duodenal ulcers, and the opium he took as a remedy was later used by his detractors to give the impression he was an addict. As a soldier, San Martin was a hard disciplinarian but, unusual among Spanish officers, he was solicitous of the welfare of his troops and as a result was highly popular. Bowles saw San Martin as a dedicated patriot, but one who had no illusions about the potential for internal strife in South America and who therefore favoured an authoritarian - even monarchical - form of government. But he was not interested in political power for himself. Bowles found him 'entirely divested of personal ambition' and dedicated 'solely to the pacification and happiness of his country.'3 Three years later, Captain Basil Hall of HMS Conway, formed exactly the same impression.4 It was a judgement that was immediately confirmed when San Martin refused to accept the Supreme Directorship of newly liberated Chile, and stood down in favour of his friend and subordinate, General Bernardo O'Higgins.

  Short and stout, with liberal principles he had acquired at school in England, O'Higgins was in many ways the opposite of San Martin. But he was a good choice, being a local boy and the illegitimate son of Ambrosio O'Higgins, one of the many Catholic Irishmen who had joined the Spanish royal service and risen high to become Governor of Concepcion and Captain General of Chile. Unacknowledged by his father during his early life, Bernardo had had a penurious upbringing and was moved from one foster parent to another, until Ambrosio finally took an interest and sent him first to Spain and then to Richmond near London to complete his education. There - to the horror of his father who by this time had become Marquis of Osorno and Viceroy of Peru - he came under the influence of the veteran South American revolutionary, Francisco de Miranda. Inheriting a large estate on the death of his father, Bernardo returned to Chile and was inevitably drawn into the independence movement. And when the Viceroy of Peru invaded the country to reimpose royal authority in 1814, he found himself thrust into a leadership position in the military resistance. Defeated at Rancagua due to betrayal by his political rivals, the aristocratic and influential Carrera brothers, O'Higgins had joined the flood of refugees fleeing across the Andes and now returned as one of San Martin's subordinate commanders. As Supreme Director, O'Higgins became a popular figure, though subsequent events were to prove that he lacked the ruthlessness needed for survival in Latin American politics.