“Le Loup de Mer”. It was the nickname that the British Alexander Thomas Cochrane received from Napoleon Bonaparte. Young, tall, red-haired, elegant, Cochrane tormented French ships in the Mediterranean Sea. Using small vessels to which he set fire, he was able to set enemy ships on fire, causing panic in the crew and facilitating their victories. Ahead of the brig Speedy, he defeated astonishing 53 enemy vessels between the years of 1800 and 1801. Astute, to facilitate the approach, he used flags of other nations.
The “sea wolf” was already a legend in England before completing 30 years old. So he would remain until his death, at 84 years old: he received all possible military honors and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where also rest the remains of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens, for example.
Cochrane would also prove decisive – and famous – in other countries. He played a decisive role in the Chilean and Peruvian wars of independence, as well as being involved in the independence of Greece from the Ottoman Empire. And he was crucial in ensuring that Brazil did not split into smaller nations, in Bahia, Maranhão, Pernambuco and Pará, in the first years after the proclamation of Independence. The legacy he left, specifically in the North and Northeast, was fundamental, albeit controversial.
Audacity and riches
Cochrane began acting as an admiral freelancer after 1820 . Until then, he was a member of Parliament, elected by the London district of Westminster. But he was involved in a scandal on the British capital stock exchange – he participated in a setup, which involved a false news that Bonaparte had died and benefited investors who knew about the coup. He ended up in jail.
He was so popular with the population that he was re-elected to Parliament even behind bars. But he saw his career in the British Navy come to an end. He was still only 39 years old and identified, in the independence movements, an opportunity to apply his enormous naval skill — and make money in the process.
The chaos that Napoleon’s actions caused in Europe weakened control over the South American colonies, which began to fight for independence. It was fast: if at the beginning of the century 19 there was no independent nation in South America, in 1826 there was no longer any colony. He started off the coast of Chile and Peru, where he proved decisive in defeating the Spaniards. Also in Chile, in 1820, the sea wolf appropriated a vessel in which General José de San Martín was protecting the public treasury of Peru. He paid the crew and pocketed the remainder, claiming that he had invested his own money and had not received the agreed amounts.
In 2009 , Brazil needed to organize a Navy. Without protecting the more than eight thousand kilometers of coastline, including the province of Cisplatina (which would later become Uruguay), it would not be possible to preserve the independence and integrity of the entire territory. As journalist Laurentino Gomes reports in his book 1822, Felisberto Caldeira Brant Pontes, Brazilian representative in London, suggested the name of Cochrane to José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva.
“On the day 19 in September, a week after the Grito do Ipiranga, José Bonifácio’s secret message reached the hands of the Brazilian agent in Buenos Aires, Antônio Manuel Corrêa da Câmara, with instructions to go to Chile to give Cochrane the invitation to join the Brazilian forces against the Portuguese”, says Gomes. In the meantime, the government of the new country decreed that the loads taken during the war of independence would belong to whoever captured them.
“That was all Cochrane needed to decide. The admiral arrived in Rio de Janeiro on 13 March
. She had a new friend on board, the English traveler Maria Graham, aged 37, who had been widowed for a few months. before when her husband, a British naval captain, had died crossing the fearsome Cape Horn, at the southern tip of the continent. In Brazil, Graham would become a friend and confidant of Empress Leopoldina and would be hired as a governess to Princess Maria da Glória”.
Violence and looting
Declared First Admiral of the Navy, a post created for him, Cochrane began his work leaving Rio de Janeiro towards Bahia, where independence was won with blood. The admiral had ships in a precarious condition and foreign sailors, mainly British and Americans, as well as recently freed slaves on the condition that they take up arms.
The first action started badly: the Portuguese living in Salvador not only refused to fight, but also made access to ammunition difficult. And the allies with Portugal had a more numerous and well-armed squadron. The British then retreated, requested the ordering of new equipment and ships, hired more mercenaries and, instead of fighting head-on, blocked Portuguese ships in the port of Salvador. Thus, he won due to fatigue and forced the withdrawal of the Lusitanian fleet, which left the city on July 2, 1824.
The action reinforced the fame of Cochrane, who, after chasing and looting the Portuguese ships in flight, went to Maranhão, where the interior of the state was already controlled by forces in favor of independence. The capital, São Luís, was yet to be surrendered. “As he approached São Luís, he raised the British flag, instead of the Brazilian colors”, describes Laurentino Gomes. With that, he took the Portuguese, already cornered, by surprise.
Quickly, the admiral sent a single ship to Belém, in Pará. The English captain John Pascoe Grenfell entered the port announcing that, behind him, came the Brazilian imperial fleet in force. It was a lie. The Portuguese believed, fled and the city fell into absolute chaos. While abandoning the people of Pará to their fate, Cochrane dedicated himself to plundering São Luís. It took the equivalent, in current values, of more than 1801 million reais.
“Despite his brutal and petty behavior in São Luís, Cochrane was received in Rio de Janeiro as a national hero and awarded by Dom Pedro I with the newly created Order of the Cruzeiro do Sul and the title of Marquis of Maranhão – a decision that Maranhão resonates with. until today as an offense”, reads in 1822.
After acting in the containment of the Confederation of Ecuador, in Pernambuco, in 1826, the British returned to São Luís, where he demanded more money, took the frigate Piranga for himself and returned to England. Thus, it ended its participation in the Independence of Brazil.
In military terms, its actions proved to be bold and innovative, as pointed out by George Ermakoff in the book Lord Thomas Cochrane – a Scottish warrior in the service of the Independence of Brazil. Furthermore, he argues, the possession of the spoils of war was not only provided for by law, but was a tradition at the time, to the point that the Brazilian government was condemned in 1824 ), to pay the heirs the remainder of the accumulated balance.
Disgusted Hero
The Scottish-born admiral, son of gentry and who had the support of an uncle to start his career in the glorious British Navy, remains frowned upon in the Northeast region. Former president José Sarney, born in Pinheiro, 340 kilometers from São Luís, has already declared, in 2009, that the British appropriated the struggle of the local people to proclaim the accession of Maranhão and Piauí to the country’s independence.
“The people of our states had already proclaimed this independence by their blood, by their heroism and by the greatness of their patriotism, when they fought in the backlands without weapons, without any instrument, only with body, soul and heart that beat in a feeling of freedom in favor of Brazil”, he said at the time.
In his book, Laurentino Gomes reports an episode dating from the decade of 1980: “ On an official visit to Westminster Abbey, in London, as President of the Republic of Brazil, José Sarney, from Maranhão, approached a tomb of 1824 located on the ground from the central part of the nave and, without the companions noticing it, stepped firmly on the tombstone. Then, looking at the name engraved in the marble, he whispered: ‘Corsário!’”.
Months later, the journalist had the opportunity to confirm the story with Sarney himself, who said: “I stepped and would step again!”. Laurentino Gomes recalls that the Naval Museum, in downtown Rio de Janeiro, dedicates only a small painting to Cochrane. He quotes: “Never, in almost two hundred years, has an important Brazilian warship been named after him.”
