Cochrane in the Pacific Read online

  But before Chilean independence was finally secure there was a crisis. After Chacabuco, the shattered remnants of the Spanish army had fled south to Concepcion and the Chiloe archipelago. There they were slowly reorganised and re-equipped, assisted greatly by cargoes of clothing, weapons and supplies found on board the American merchant ships Beaver and Canton, which had been seized by royalist privateers. Then in October 1817, the frigate Esmeralda arrived in Peru with a reinforcement of troops from Spain. This provided the Viceroy, Joaquin de la Pezuela, with the opportunity he needed to succour his colleagues in Concepcion and attack the Chilean regime from the south. Three months later, ten transports carrying three regiments of infantry, one of cavalry and supporting batteries of guns landed at Talcahuana under the command of General Mariano Osorio. The united force struck north and inflicted a serious reverse on the unprepared Chileans at Cancha Rayada, midway between Concepcion and Santiago, in which O'Higgins was wounded. There was momentary panic. The streets of the capital were once more filled with cargo mules and carriages as prominent citizens packed up their plate and valuables and prepared to flee over the Andes. But San Martin saved the day. Rallying the demoralised troops by sheer force of personality, he led them back against the enemy and, on 5 April 1818, he secured a final and decisive victory at Maipú. Of the 10,000 men who began the battle, at the end of the day 2500 lay dead with a similar number of Osorio's men taken as prisoners.

  Osorio's invasion had an unexpected side effect. For years the Carrera family, who arrogantly regarded themselves as the country's natural leaders, had been mounting a rival focus for Chilean independence, obtaining ships from the United States and raising men. At the beginning of 1818, two of the brothers, Juan José and Luis attempted to cross the border from the Argentine at Mendoza in disguise. Their purpose was to secure the overthrow of San Martin and O'Higgins by stirring up resentment at the growing dominance of the Argentine army in Chilean affairs and the secretive influence of the semi-Masonic Lautaro lodge to which San Martin, O'Higgins and most of their adherents belonged.5 In the panic and confusion that followed, Cancha Rayada, Juan José and Luis were arrested and, at the instigation of San Martin's brutal and merciless aide Bernardo Monteagudo, were shot. It is said that letters from San Martin and O'Higgins ordering that the Carreras be reprieved were on the way, but their real wishes have never been satisfactorily established. The elimination of the Carerras was certainly convenient in removing the division within the patriot ranks and enabling them to concentrate on the final challenge - the campaign against Peru.

  Among the officers of the Army of the Andes who were now enjoying the social life of liberated Chile were two young Englishmen - James Paroissien and William Miller. Both were to play supporting roles in the wars of independence, and both were to leave accounts of the campaign. Paroissien was the eldest. Descended from a respectable Huguenot family, he had been born on 25 November 1784 in Barking, where his father was a schoolmaster, and had later lived in Hackney where his half brother was the Anglican curate. He had had a general education, showing particular interest in natural science, but he also seems to have received some training in surgery and medicine. He certainly worked as a doctor in later life and frequently described himself as such. In 1806, Paroissien was one of the many Englishmen who rushed to the River Plate, dazzled by the British capture of Montevideo and Buenos Aires by Sir Home Popham and by the promise of imminent wealth. Alas, only months after Paroissien's arrival, the British were decisively defeated and forced to withdraw. Paroissien went to Brazil, where he became mixed up in one of Carlota Joaquina's intrigues to make herself Vice Reine of the River Plate as well as Queen of Brazil. Returning to Buenos Aires with secret papers, he was secretly denounced by the unspeakable Carlota Joaquina, arrested, and tried for treason. Fortunately for Paroissien, he was saved by the French occupation of Spain. One of the first acts of the newly appointed Junta of Buenos Aires was to release him and, with a probably undeserved reputation as a radical, he found himself welcomed in the United Provinces of the River Plate and awarded its citizenship. In 1811, he served as surgeon-in-chief in the first abortive expeditions against Peru. For the next four years, he was in charge of the state gunpowder factory in Cordoba. Then, in 1816, he was appointed surgeon-general to the Army of the Andes. In charge of the medical teams that accompanied San Martin's column, Paroissien crossed the Andes and distinguished himself at Chacabuco, the reverse of Cancha Rayada and the victory at Maipú. His stock stood high after these services, and he was decorated for his humanity and zeal for the injured. And the fact that he personally attended both San Martin and the wounded O'Higgins brought him into the inner circles of the patriot movement.

  William Miller's fame is associated more with his activities in the liberation of Peru than with Chile - but he was there too. Born in Wingham near Canterbury, at the end of 1795, at the age of fifteen he had joined the Royal Artillery as an Assistant Commissary and soon acquired extensive experience on the battlefields of the Peninsular War and in the conflict with the United States. In fact he had been present both at the burning of Washington and the British defeat at New Orleans in 1815. After the war, Miller had rejected the idea of moving into the unexciting world of trade and had travelled to the River Plate where, in 1817 at the age of 22, he had been commissioned as a captain in the Buenos Aires Artillery. Posted to the Army of the Andes, he arrived too late to be present at Chacabuco, but during the debacle of Cancha Rayada had shown the first sign of his astonishing bravery by saving a battery of guns in the face of the enemy. San Martin had been so impressed by his performance that he promptly made him an aide-de-camp. It was the first achievement in a career that was to culminate in Miller's appointment as a Peruvian General.

  Chacabuco and Maipú may have dealt shattering blows to the Spanish army's position in Chile, but the Spanish navy still commanded the Pacific. But this was due as much to patriot inaction as to the number of ships at its disposal. Indeed, the Napoleonic Wars had crippled Spain's once proud Navy, and the French occupation had destroyed the logistical base of its dockyards. There was therefore a woeful shortage of ships to counter the rebellion in South America. Commodore Bowles reported at the end of 1817, that 'the whole naval force of His Catholic Majesty in these seas consists of the Venganza and Esmeralda of 36 guns each, and three corvettes of 16 or 18 guns.'6 In fact, Spain also had a dozen small gunboats and armed ships in the area, but these were of little military use except for port defence. In 1817, the Spanish Government estimated that it needed 20 ships of the line, 30 frigates and 40 lesser craft to meet its global commitments.7 Only a fraction of these were available and, faced with a succession of budget deficits, the authorities found it impossible to provide many more. The government in Madrid made desperate efforts to do so and were not helped when, behind the backs of his ministers, Ferdinand VII bought five ships-of-the-line and three frigates from his friend the Tsar of Russia using, as a deposit, the entire £400,000 that had been paid to Spain by Great Britain in return for an agreement to suppress the slave trade. Alas, with two exceptions, the ships were found on arrival to be totally and embarrassingly rotten. However, one of the sound vessels, a big 18-pounder frigate renamed Maria Isabel, was hastily prepared for sea and, in May 1818, was sent to the Pacific with a convoy of twelve transports carrying 2400 men as a second reinforcement to the Viceroy of Peru.

  The Spanish Government was still hopeful that the revolutionary tide in South America could be stemmed. In Cadiz, preparations for the great expedition against the River Plate went on apace. And in the Pacific, Spain still held two bases that would be crucial to any reconquest - one was the port of Valdivia in southern Chile; the other the heavily fortified arsenal of Callao - the port of Lima - in Peru. Valdivia was significant because it was the first place at which ships could now find refuge, supplies and repairs after the gruelling passage from Europe round Cape Horn. Callao was both Peru's major commercial port and the hub of Spanish naval activity on the Pacific coast. It wa
s from Callao, that the Viceroy began to send warships and privateers to harry the rebels in newly independent Chile and to round up any merchant vessels trading with them. From June 1817, Valparaiso was blockaded alternately by the frigates Venganza or Esmeralda supported by corvette Sebastiana and the brigs Pezuela and Potrillo. With only two ships initially at its disposal - the brig Aguila, commanded by an enthusiastic but undisciplined Irish artillery captain from San Martin's army called Raymond Morris, and the tiny cruiser Rambler, under the former French privateer Juan José Tortel - there was little the Chileans could do about it.

  Chapter 2

  THE MAKING OF THE CHILEAN NAVY

  Britain was generally favourable to the independence movements in South America. Radical opinion expressed both in the House of Commons and in the columns of the Morning Post, welcomed the end of autocratic government and the spread of political freedom. Ministers in the Tory Government were less enthusiastic. Their major concern was the preservation of British trade to the region, which had boomed during the Napoleonic Wars. As long as this was guaranteed they would have been perfectly content to see a continuation of Spanish rule. But even the Foreign Secretary, the aloof and icy Lord Castlereagh, realised that this was now impossible and that some form of self government was inevitable. Castlereagh expressed his willingness to mediate in the dispute, but made it clear that, while Spain was free to try a military solution itself, the British Government and Navy would stop the despotic monarchs of the European Holy Alliance from giving any assistance.

  The spread of fighting on the ground and - more significantly - on the sea, posed a threat to British trade in the Pacific and to the commercial communities, merchant ships and whalers on which it depended. Faced with royalist embargoes, the creation of republican navies and the appearance of privateers on both sides, the Admiralty decided in August 1817 to increase its South American squadron to five vessels - the frigates Amphion and Andromache, and the sloops Blossom, Tyne and Slaney. But the commander-in-chief, Commodore Bowles, and his captains found themselves doing more than normal naval duties. Britain only had diplomatic relations with monarchical Brazil; so there were no diplomats in Chile and the River Plate where the revolutionary regimes were unrecognised, nor in Peru where the Spanish colonial system made it impossible. Naval officers therefore found themselves acting as floating ambassadors and consuls, reporting on political and military developments, intervening on behalf of individuals in difficulty and protecting British communities from forced loans or unfair commercial practices. Warships also played a vital function in safeguarding the profits of British trade by transporting remittances worth around a million pounds per annum to England. When, for example, the frigate Owen Glendower returned from the Pacific in October 1821, she carried $1.4m (£300,000) in cash and bullion packed into 600 bags, trunks and boxes. The list of contents covered 25 foolscap pages and required 287 separate Bills of Lading.1 Since the captains whose ships carried such 'freight' were paid an average of 1 per cent of the value - the same amount being divided between the commander-in-chief and Greenwich Hospital - it was a much sought after duty.

  The sending of more warships was however a precautionary measure. The British Government was determined to remain neutral in the conflict and to maintain good relations with both its old ally, Spain, and its new commercial partners; and it was made clear to naval captains that any kind of force or provocation should be avoided. In October 1817, Commodore Bowles was in Lima, attempting to intervene with the Viceroy over the detention and looting of the British merchant vessels, Justinian, Will, Mary Ann and Hydra, by Spanish ships. Pezuela was unsympathetic and made it clear that they had been arrested not only under normal blockading rules but under the old Law of the Indies, which prohibited any form of trade by foreigners with the Spanish Empire. Bowles was further dismayed to be told that the blockade applied not only to merchant vessels but to warships as well, thus excluding his squadron from the haven of the Chilean ports.2 This placed him in a dilemma since his orders stressed the need to maintain good relations with the Spanish authorities. Fortunately, the problem was solved by the Americans.

  In the United States too, opinion on events in South America was divided. The public were vociferous in support of their fellow republicans in the region and there was considerable backing in Congress led by Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams was less sure. He naturally favoured the establishment of sister republics in the region, but seriously doubted that the South Americans had the political maturity to operate a democracy. There was also the fact that the United States was doing very well by trading with both sides in the dispute. Nevertheless, with 40 merchant vessels, 60 whalers and property valued at a million dollars in the area, the American Government was concerned at the growth of naval activity and decided to establish a permanent presence in South American waters. Feeling that one ship was sufficient to protect its interests, in July 1817, the corvette Ontario was sent south with orders to defend American trade and shipping. She also carried an authorised diplomatic representative in the shape of Judge John B. Prevost to give official muscle to the efforts of the scatter of American commercial agents.

  Ontario's captain, James Biddle, was a veteran of the campaigns against Tripoli and of the 1812-14 war, during which had had served on the Wasp when she captured HMS Frolic and commanded Hornet when she had taken HMS Penguin. Confident and politically well connected, Biddle was less tolerant than the tactful Bowles. Bold and arrogant by nature, he also belonged to a navy whose officer corps was notable for its personal rivalries and by elevated notions of personal honour that led to a culture of duelling. At the national level, its experiences in Tripoli had also led to the conviction that force was a far more effective way of settling disputes than weak diplomacy. Thus, when Biddle arrived off Valparaiso in January 1818, he refused to be warned off by the Spanish blockading squadron or to follow Bowles's example of trying to resolve the dispute through courteous correspondence, and sailed boldly into Valparaiso to succour the five American merchantmen - Lion, Two Catherines, Enterprise, Rambler and Levant - which had been caught in the port. With this act of defiance, the Viceroy's prohibition on the entry of foreign warships was broken and quietly forgotten.

  With Chilean independence secured by the Battle of Maipú, San Martin began to prepare for the final showdown with the Spanish royalists in Peru. But the need to move his army northwards up the narrow strip between the Andes and the Pacific introduced a new element into the conflict - sea power. Up to then, the campaign had been dominated by land battles. Now it was clear that no invasion of Peru was possible until control of the Pacific was wrested from the Spanish Navy. The Chileans therefore turned their attention to creating a navy of their own. In overall charge as Minister of Marine was José Ignacio Zenteno, a cold but dedicated man with the training and temperament of a lawyer, who had suffered all the ups and downs of the campaigns of liberation as an army officer and was high in the confidence of O'Higgins. His performance as the architect of the new navy and later as Governor of Valparaiso more than justified the Supreme Director's good opinion. Zenteno's first task was to draw up the legal framework the new navy needed and, in November 1817, he promulgated a Reglamento Provisional de la Marina based on existing military codes, which - amongst other things -established the rules and procedures for the taking and adjudication of prizes, and laid down a rank structure for sea officers together with rates of pay and allowances. In Spanish American fashion, military designations were used, so that Chile's navy was initially commanded by a Brigadier, and its ships by colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants and ensigns.3

  The Spanish blockade of Valparaiso made it difficult for Zenteno to procure ships locally. But a more acute problem was the absence of officers and sailors to man the new navy. In spite of its extensive coastline, Chile was a country of ranchers, miners and mountaineers: few people had any experience of the sea. Where therefore were they to find the men they n
eeded? San Martin and O'Higgins had the answer - to send recruiting agents to the largest pools of maritime labour in the world, Britain and the United States. Accordingly, in June 1817, José Antonio Alvarez -the same discrete and trustworthy officer who had surveyed San Martin's invasion route across the Andes -headed for London and Manuel Hermanegildo Aguirre for New York, each carrying $100,000 (the equivalent of £20,000) and orders to buy warships and to raise officers and men. Manuel Zanuarte went with similar orders to Buenos Aires, but with the general brief to maintain at all costs the Argentine alliance.4