A Fresh Look at a Flawed Hero, 14 Jan 2008
Brian Vale has previously published a biography of Thomas, Lord Cochrane ("The Audacious Admiral") which covers some of the same ground as "Cochrane in the Pacific: Fortune and Freedom in Spanish America", but this new volume greatly expands the examination of Cochrane's activities in the Chilean and Peruvian wars for independence in the early 19th century. When Cochrane accepted an appointment as the commanding admiral of the new Chilean Navy, he had already greatly distinguished himself as a daring, inorinately successful commander of small vessels in Britain's Royal Navy (although his career there had been terminated by a Stock Exchage fraud of which he had been accused and convicted, although perhaps falsely).

As commannder of the Chilean nautical forces, Cochrane played a large and vital role in overthrowing Spanish rule along South America's Pacific coast (as he later did against Portugese rule in Brazil). His combat operations were a superb platform for his undoubted audacious tactical leadership and courage. Unfortunately, as Vale amply establishes, his activities also gave play to less positive traits, including his near-paranoid conviction that his superiors -- almost any superior -- were actively seeking to discredit him and that his suboridnates were conspiring to betray him. At the same time, he showed an almost embarrassing avidity for wealth and prize money. For many years, most English-language accounts of Cochrane's Chilean/Peruvian career have been based almost solely upon Cochrane's own autobiographical writings(actually, ghost-written for him in later years) and on early books by loyal members of his inner circle. Brian Vale, with access to Chilean and Peruvian primary sources and a huge library of personal correspondence preserved by Cochrane himself, provides a corrective account, praising him for his talents and magnificent successes, but not concealing the less praiseworthy aspects of Cochrane's conduct.