More balls than just the ones in his pockets

[cmdr_zoom]

An oddly-phrased reference on Wikipedia's featured-article list led me (as it was surely intended) to the entry for HMS Speedy, a fast but lightly-armed brig of the Royal Navy. After deciphering the link that had brought me there - it seems the ship's guns were so few and small, a full broadside's worth of shot could be carried in her captain's coat - I was mightily amused by the account of one particular naval battle.


So one day in 1800, the little English brig is cruising off the coast of Spain when it runs into a frigate that outguns it seven to one. On top of this, the brig is running low on crew, having taken some prizes lately. What does the captain do? He charges the frigate.

Gamo: *raises Spanish flag*
Speedy: *raises... American flag*
Gamo: "Wait, what??"
Speedy: "lol j/k" *raises British flag*

By this time, Speedy has lived up to its name and is inside the range of Gamo's guns. It closes to point-blank range and fires double- and triple-shot into the hull (taking out the captain and bosun), while the frigate's broadside passes through the brig's rigging without serious harm, like punches whiffing over the head of a smaller fighter as he savages his opponent's groin and kneecaps.

With their advantage in guns neutralized, Gamo's new commander decides to use his other advantage and bury the brig in men. No sooner do the boarding parties gather at the rail, however, than Speedy breaks contact, pulls back a little, and shotguns them with grapeshot. Ouch. Then, as the survivors are going back to their guns, Speedy's captain decides he's gonna board THEM. With everyone except the ship's doctor.

It's almost an even fight at this point, until (1) the Brits manage to strike the Spanish colors and (2) the captain calls over to the doctor to "send over another fifty men!" Who don't exist, but the Spanish don't know that, and they surrender. When the ranking officer finds out how badly he's been taken, he asks Speedy's captain for a note to his madre a letter saying that he'd done all that could be expected. Lord Cochrane, no doubt barely hiding a smirk, provides such a letter saying that the officer had conducted himself "like a true Spaniard." And is even more amused later when he finds out the man was promoted for this.

Which just goes to show, I suppose, that Hornblower-esque feats of incredible audacity great daring were not entirely the stuff of fiction.

Comments

[pjack.livejournal.com]

Laughing! Out loud, even!

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, a very famous incident, for those who are into that kind of thing. Cochrane was one of the principal inspirations for Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey, and an easily recognizable analog of this action (as HMS Sophie vs. Cacafuego) appears in the first Aubrey book, Master and Commander. Cochrane was Frederick Marryat's captain, and I think it's safe to believe that without Marryat's books (Mr. Midshipman Easy, et al.), we wouldn't have had Forester and O'Brian later on (nor even, conceivably, Joseph Conrad, and so much for Apocalypse Now).

As is often the way with literary heroes, of course, the real Cochrane had a far more colorful life - in part because he was the son of the ninth (and eventually became the tenth) Earl of Dundonald, a man who had an uncanny knack for inventing amazingly useful things that no one then bought. He passed on this knack, and the catastrophic financial position it eventually engendered, to his son; this ensured that Admiral Cochrane's away from the sea was made much more interesting by the twin forces of genteel poverty and technological innovation.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for the enlightening context.

Another friend of mine, well versed in naval tradition, compared him to "James T. Kirk crossed with your stereotypical slightly crazed English peer," which made me go o.O

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Scottish peer, if ye please. The Cochranes are the earls of Dundonald, which is in Ayrshire. And if you know anything of the Scottish peerage, that should make you go o.O with the capital O in a larger font. :)

But yes, Captain Lord Cochrane (as he was known when he had his most famous adventures) was a right mad bastard, as they say. And in spite of leading one of the most strenuous and dangerous lives in the history of strenuous and dangerous lives, he lived to be 84! By a curious coincidence, his lifetime spans from the eve of the American Revolution to the eve of the American Civil War - 1775 to 1860.

The parallel to Kirk is apt, and also amusing, since one of the early pitches for Star Trek (when they weren't saying it was Wagon Train in space) was "Horatio Hornblower in space", and Hornblower was another character whose adventures (if not his personality) were significantly inspired by Cochrane. In the end, Kirk turned out almost nothing like Hornblower, who is deeply insecure and self-critical despite his brilliance - he's much more like a sort of exaggerated Cochrane, Cochrane as the general public would have viewed him - but that was one of the wedges Roddenberry used to get in the door at the network. It's an interesting sort of Möbius loop of references.

God, I do become quite a bore on topics like this, don't I? I'd have fit right in at one of those dreary naval parties Hornblower's always hating to have to pretend he's enjoying, as one of the blowhard admirals who don't realize they're boring him to death. :)

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

You're certainly not boring me. While I was aware of the Trek connection/backstory, the rest of this information is both new and quite entertaining. Thank you. (Oh, and Merry Christmas.)

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

O the year was Seventeen Seventy-Eight...

http://www.oocities.com/~elainedues/lyrics.html

Great story, and I love the audacity of the captains of small ships. Spruance was a great admiral because he came up in destroyers. He was used to thinking in terms of not being able to win a stand-up fight.