"Thomas Cochrane and the Battle of the Basque Roads, " Topic

…April 1809.

""His courage, ingenuity and resource have never been surpassed: neither, unfortunately, has his lack of tact. His ship's companies appear to have loved him, but he had a genius for fighting his superiors as well as the French…"[2]

"… the idea that the service as a whole was enthused by ‘the Nelson touch' is far from correct, as the lethargic attack upon the French fleet in the Basque roads in 1809 demonstrated. Lord Cochrane, the hero of the debacle, was disgusted that more enemy ships were not destroyed by a fleet that played it safe. At stake, he believed, was that vital potency that Nelson had bequeathed. ‘If,' he wrote after a court martial had acquitted his commander-in-chief, ‘the anticipation of possible danger is to awe a British fleet, when the enemy is within its reach, and by an effort of no uncommon enterprise might be destroyed, we must take our farewell of those gallant exploits … that have thrown a luster over the annals of our country…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Woops – pete and repeat…