ns in
foreign countries impossible." If England and France were once more
engaged in war--_absit omen_!--the story of Cochrane's exploits on the
Spanish and French coasts might prove a very valuable inspiration and
object-lesson. Cochrane's professional reward for his great services
in the _Imperieuse_ was an official rebuke for expending more sails,
stores, gunpowder and shot than any other captain afloat in the same
time!

The fight in the Basque Roads, however--or rather in the Aix Roads--has
great historical importance. It crowned the work of Trafalgar. It
finally destroyed French power on the sea, and gave England an absolute
supremacy. No fleet actions took place after its date between "the
meteor flag" and the tricolour, for the simple reason that no French
fleet remained in existence. Cochrane's fire-ships completed the work
of the Nile and Trafalgar.

Early in 1809 the French fleet in Brest, long blockaded by Lord
Gambier, caught the British napping, slipped out unobserved, raised the
blockades at L'Orient and Rochefort, added the squadrons lying in these
two places to its own strength, and, anchoring in the Aix Roads,
prepared for a dash on the West Indies. The success with which the
blockade at Brest had been evaded, and the menace offered to the West
Indian trade, alarmed the British Admiralty. Lord Gambier, with a
powerful fleet, kept guard outside the Aix Roads; but if the blockade
failed once, it might fail again. Eager to destroy the last fleet
France possessed, the Admiralty strongly urged Lord Gambier to attack
the enemy with fire-ships; but Gambier, grown old, had visibly lost
nerve, and he pronounced the use of fire-ships a "horrible and
unchristian mode of warfare." Lord Mulgrave, the first Lord of the
Admiralty, knowing Cochrane's ingenuity and daring, sent for him, and
proposed to send him to the Basque Roads to invent and execute some
plan for destroying the French fleet. The Scotchman was uppermost in
Cochrane in this interview, and he declined the adventure on the ground
that to send a young post-captain to execute such an enterprise would
be regarded as an insult by the whole fleet, and he would have every
man's hand against him. Lord Mulgrave, however, was peremptory, and
Cochrane yielded, but on reaching the blockading fleet was met by a
tempest of wrath from all his seniors. "Why," they asked, "was
Cochrane sent out? We could have done the business as well as he. Why
did n