and the want of hearty co-operation to be expected. Cochrane had suffered too much annoyance, both in Chili and Brazil, to think lightly of these objections; but he accepted the invitation, stipulating that out of the loan of 2,000,000l. which had just been contracted in London, 150,000l. should be devoted to the construction of six steamers in England, and the same amount to the building and fitting out of two large frigates in the United States; they were to be manned by English or American seamen, and he was to have sole, independent, uncontrolled command of the entire Greek fleet. All this was readily agreed to, but for nearly eighteen months Cochrane was fully occupied in endeavouring to forward the building and equipment of the steamers which were unaccountably delayed. It was the dawn of naval warfare under steam, and Cochrane was quick to perceive the enormous advantage they would give him in the narrow confined waters of the Archipelago. 'Steam vessels,' he wrote, 'whenever they shall be brought into war for hostile purposes, will prove the most formidable means that ever has been employed in naval warfare. It is my opinion that twenty-four vessels moved by steam (such as the largest constructed for the Greek service) could commence at St. Petersburg and finish at Constantinople the destruction of every ship of war in the European ports.'
It was not till March 1827 that Cochrane arrived at Hydra, and then only in a small yacht; the steamers and frigates were not ready, and, as a whole, never were ready. The money allotted for them had been lavishly expended; one of the frigates was eventually finished at a cost of 200,000, and of the steamers only one appears ever to have reached Greece. There was no money to pay the seamen, and the patriotism of the Greek sailors did not extend to trusting their country for payment in the future. In May the new admiral held a review of the fleet at Poros. The men demanded a month's wages in advance, and as this demand could not be complied with they weighed anchor and took their vessels, mostly small brigs, out of the fleet, to swell the ranks of the pirates, which at that time infested the Levant. 'It was impossible,' Cochrane wrote some months later, 'to induce the Greek seamen to submit to the slightest restraint on their inclinations, or to render the most trifling service without being paid in advance, or to perform such service after being so paid, if it suited their interest or convenience to evade the fulfilment of their engagement. More than six crews have passed under my review on board the Hellas in the course of as many months, exclusive of those in other vessels, and notwithstanding all that has been written to praise the courage of the Greek seamen they are collectively the greatest cowards I have ever met with.' It was thus that Cochrane was able to accomplish little or nothing in the Greek war, which came virtually to an end in the following October with the battle of Navarino [see Codrington, Sir Edward]. The business was unfortunate in every way. It had been agreed that he was to receive 57,000l. as payment for his services; of this sum 20,000l. was never paid, and the other 37,000l, invested in Greek stock at par, was so depreciated as to prove insufficient to meet his expenses. It thus appears that he really derived no pecuniary advantage from his appointment, though scandal made free with his name, for it was patent that he was associated with men beneath whose financial skill the loan of 2,000,000l. wasted away without benefit to the Greek cause (Finlay, Hist. of the Greek Revolution, ii. 154-8). In February 1828 Cochrane returned to England for a few months. He hoped to advance the cause of Greek independence by pushing forward the armaments that had been contracted for. By September he was back again in Greece, not having been able to accomplish any satisfactory end; but in Greece he was received with scant civility, and returned in December.
The object to which Cochrane now devoted himself was his reinstatement in the English navy. He had already during his visit to England in the summer of 1828 presented a memorial to the Duke of Clarence, then lord high admiral; but the duke having submitted it to the cabinet it was decided that nothing should be done. Other memorials were presented after the accession of the duke as William IV; but it was not till 2 May 1832 that he received, not the annulling of the condemnation nor the investigations for which he had prayed, but a 'free pardon.' He was at the same time restored to his rank in the navy, on 8 May he was gazetted as a rear-admiral, and on the following day was presented at the levee. He had meantime, by the death of his father on 1 July 1831, become in succession Earl of Dundonald. Released from the cares and annoyances of the peculiar service in which he had been so long engaged, he devoted his leisure to mechanical inventions, and especially to improvements of the steam engine in its adaptation to marine purposes, and as early as 1843 he was urging on the admiralty the necessity of adapting steampower and screw-propellers to ships of the line. 'During the last twelve years,' he wrote, 'I have actually disbursed, to the great inconvenience of my family, upwards of 16,000l.
