Dundonald, Thomas Cochrane, 10th earl of

Dundonald, Thomas Cochrane (dŭndŏn`əld), 10th earl of, 1775–1860, British naval commander. He served in the Napoleonic Wars, executing his assignments with a boldness and originality sometimes too radical for the admiralty. Given charge of a British naval force in the Bay of Biscay, he brilliantly succeeded in crippling a French fleet (1809); but he criticized the handling of the fleet by his commander in chief, Lord Gambier, and was discredited when a court-martial acquitted Gambier. In 1814 he was accused, perhaps falsely, of implication in a stock market fraud. Dismissed from the navy, he went to South America, where, as admiral of the Chilean navy, he was prominent in the liberation of Chile and Peru. He aided the newly independent nation of Brazil from 1823 to 1825, and in 1827 he commanded the Greek navy in the war of liberation against Turkey. The next year he returned to England. He received a pardon and was reinstated (1832) in the navy, eventually becoming admiral.

Bibliography

See biography by W. Tute (1965); study by H. Cecil (1965).