1700s: Sea Wolf's legendary exploits inspired Hornblower

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Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane was the larger-than-life character thought to have inspired C S Forester’s fictional Hornblower. In the early 1800s, his legendary exploits both with the British navy and several others, earned him the name, Sea Wolf. Unfortunately, he had to sell his family home in north Derbyshire – as Maxwell Craven recounts.

Right up in the north western corner of our county lies a wild moorland tract in the parish of Rowarth, part of which once formed a hunting estate centred on a modest early-16th-century manor house called Long Lee Hall which still survives.

It was built of local stone on an L-plan with a two-storey porch nestling in the angle of the two wings which end-on to the road. Being probably older than the rest of the building, they have exceedingly small mullioned windows. The other section has a pair of 10 light mullioned and transomed windows.

Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane

The latter and the porch probably date from 1663, the date on the entrance, and the range of outbuildings look about the same date.

One, dated 1679, is known as the chapel. The tombstone of its builder, John Hyde, is still inside the adjacent shippon. The Hydes, the family that built Long Lee, go back on the site to at least Robert Hyde, who was recorded in 1415.

The family continued there in the male line until 1703, although the house and modest estate remained with the family until about 1740, when it was sold for the shooting to William Cochrane, 7th Earl of Dundonald.

He was killed in 1758 at the siege of Louisburg, when his estates, including Long Lee, passed to a distant cousin, who succeeded as 8th Earl.

His grandson, Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, the 10th Earl was one of the most colourful characters of his age, inspiring both C S Forester and Patrick O’Brien in the creation of their fictional heroes.

Admiral Cochrane’s life was every bit as exciting as Hornblower’s.

At 19, young Tom was a captain in the 106th Foot, soon afterwards transferring to the Navy as lieutenant in command of HMS Speedy, a 158-ton brig, armed with 14 four-pounders and a crew of 54.

In the Speedy, in 1801, he captured the 600-ton Spanish frigate El Gamo, armed with 32 guns and manned by a crew of 319, a feat said to have been unmatched in the entire history of the Royal Navy and for which he was promoted to full captain.

In 1808-1809, although a sitting (radical) MP for Westminster, he led the seemingly hopeless defence of the fort of the Trinity at the Spanish port of Rosas, where a plaque was dedicated to him in 2005.

The French had pounded it almost to a ruin, with what Cochrane called a “hole the size of the great west window at Westminster Abbey” in its seaward wall.

At one point, he strolled out under fire to pick up a fallen Spanish flag and raise it again, stopping a bullet in the process. Eventually, as the French swarmed through the town, he evacuated the fort with the loss of only three men to the French 100 and taking a good few more when the French entered the fort and Cochrane’s booby traps went off.

The French justifiably dubbed him Le Loup de Mer – the Sea Wolf – and his exploits quickly became legendary.

Unfortunately, in 1814, he was convicted of working a stock exchange fraud (the real culprit was one of his uncles) and was unseated from Parliament, cashiered from the Navy, stripped of his knighthood of the Bath, fined £1,000, sentenced to an hour in the pillory and a year in prison.

He wrote a note protesting his innocence on the back of the £1,000 note he used to pay his fine and promptly escaped from prison, fleeing to Chile, where he was appointed admiral commanding the forces of the Republic 1817.

Later, he transferred to command the forces in Peru until 1822, capturing Valdivia and taking the Spanish frigate Esmeraldo under the very guns of the fortress of Callao, during the war of independence from Spain.

In 1823-25, he set up the Imperial Brazilian Navy as First Admiral, receiving the title of 1st Marquess of Maranham from the Emperor Don Pedro I, before moving on to set up the Greeks as a naval power and leading their fledgling navy against the Turks.

His innocence from the fraud was finally established and he was pardoned in 1832. He was reinstated in the Navy, pursuing a senior naval career, filing numerous patents, championing the use of steam propulsion and retiring with a GCB.

He died in 1860 after a career which, if presented as fiction, would be laughed off by any commissioning editor as too extraordinary to be convincing.

Long Lee, meanwhile, was sold by Cochrane to the Lancashire Bamfords, probably to cover his £1000 fine.

It passed from them via the Nicholsons to the Bamford-Heskeths of Gwyrch Castle before being sold in the mid-1900s. It is now a restored private home, rather than a rather damp shooting lodge.

No doubt, in his youth, the buccaneering Lord Dundonald (he inherited the Earldom while still in exile in 1831) must have visited Long Lee when his father organised shooting parties.

It is pleasant to record that this romantic figure had so substantial a Derbyshire connection, even if he did have to sell it after having been fitted up for a crime he did not commit!