THE FOLIO SOCIETY

'My lads! The rest of the galleons with the treasure from La Plata are waiting ...'

The real-life 'Master and Commander', Thomas Lord Cochrane's heroic naval exploits and maverick public life made him one of the most celebrated figures of Georgian England. As captain of the brig Speedy and the frigates Pallas and Impérieuse during the Napoleonic Wars, he earned a fortune in prize money and terrorised the French and Spanish, wreaking havoc along their seaboards, capturing countless coasters and gunboats, and destroying dozens of shore batteries and signalling stations. But his greatest achievements - the audacious capture of the 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo in 1801, and his ferocious assault using 'explosion vessels' on the French fleet at the Basque Roads in 1809 - were tempered by tussles with authority and some very public humiliations. Elected MP for Westminster, he conducted a bitterly out-spoken campaign against perceived naval corruption and political injustices until his conviction for a Stock Exchange fraud in 1814 saw him imprisoned and disgraced. Following his release, Cochrane embarked on a new life as a mercenary naval commander on the far side of the world, where he was instrumental in securing the liberation of Chile, Peru and Brazil from their imperial yoke.

Selected from the extensive memoirs that Cochrane published towards the end of his life, this is the first single-volume edition to present his own account of every one of the dazzling exploits - from boyhood experiences at sea to his victories as the First Admiral of Brazil - on which his legendary reputation is based and which inspired C. S. Forester, Patrick O'Brian and the whole fictional genre of the Napoleonic sea-adventure.