Dambuster-in-Chief: The Life of Air Chief Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane

Introduction

On the morning of 17 January 1991, I arrived at Charing Cross station in London on the way to my office. As I passed through the ticket barrier on to the concourse I became aware that the announcements of arrivals and departures had been temporarily suspended, replaced instead by loud music. The tune was very familiar to me, a busy introduction giving way to a swelling melody, both repeated later on their way to the climax. It was The Dam Busters March, the theme to the film of 1955, and it was being played for good reason. Much earlier that day and thousands of miles away, Operation Desert Storm had just been launched and would in due course result in the liberation of Kuwait from the rule of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. The initial attack had been made by the air forces of the US-led coalition, and the RAF was playing a prominent part. British Rail had clearly decided to generate patriotic support by a direct allusion to a much earlier and dramatically successful operation. I have no doubt that I was one of many who made the connection, and I left the station with a lump in my throat.

As a young boy in the 1950s and a teenager in the 1960s, Paul Brickhill’s book The Dam Busters was high on my reading list, as was Guy Gibson’s Enemy Coast Ahead, and I saw the film on multiple occasions on television. If you were to ask anyone of my generation to name some of the wartime exploits of the RAF, the destruction of the Möhne and Eder Dams by 617 Squadron would probably be eclipsed only by the Battle of Britain. For those of all generations who have any interest in the air war of 1939–45, this almost certainly remains the case today.

Unlike the Battle of Britain, with its cast of thousands, the Dams Raid was conducted on a relatively modest scale. There was no pantheon of fighter aces, but instead two heroes, the brilliant scientist and the fearless bomber pilot. The former produced the weapon, encountering numerous obstacles on the way, the latter delivered it on target, but not without incurring a high rate of loss amongst his crews. Although some may question the value of the operation, there is no doubt that these two men, Barnes Wallis and Guy Gibson, fully deserved the plaudits they received at the time and thereafter. However, overall responsibility for delivering success lay with another, Air Vice-Marshal the Hon. Ralph Cochrane, the Air Officer Commanding 5 Group, by whom 617 Squadron was raised and under whose personal control it went on to serve with great distinction for the remainder of the war.

I have known about Ralph, whom I will call by his given name from here on to distinguish him from other members of his family, for over sixty years. I had an opportunity to learn much more about him recently, whilst I was undertaking the research for a biography of Marshal of the Royal Air Force the Lord Elworthy. Sam Elworthy had a relatively short involvement with the Dams Raid himself whilst working as Group Captain Operations at Bomber Command HQ but, more pertinently, he served under Ralph on three occasions, the first briefly whilst Chief Instructor of an Operational Training Unit in a group commanded by Ralph, the second as one of his station commanders in 5 Group and the third, during the last year of the war, as his Senior Air Staff Officer. He admired Ralph more than any other officer he encountered in his long RAF career.

I found that the Elworthy and Cochrane families had become friends and was delighted when Air Commodore Sir Timothy Elworthy, Sam’s eldest son, gave me an introduction to John Cochrane, who was at the time in the course of sorting out his father’s papers. John very kindly allowed me to look at them, which helped considerably with Elworthy’s story. Moreover, in the course of my research, I came to realize that Ralph was much more than just the man behind the Dams Raid, which had in fact occupied only two months of his thirty-seven year service career. He seemed to be an obvious candidate for a biography himself.

When I suggested this tentatively to John Cochrane I encountered a problem which I had come across on two earlier occasions, which was that my proposed subject, an inherently modest man, had himself not wanted any biography to be written, although he was always immensely helpful to other authors writing about his former colleagues. Quite understandably, his children were initially reluctant to go against his wishes, but they were persuaded that their father fully deserved to be better known and were thereafter highly supportive.

I had already seen a number of valuable documents during my research on Elworthy, but I was astonished by the amount of material which Ralph had accumulated. It included diaries, flying log books, essays and articles which he had written and the transcript of an interview which he had given to the Air Historical Branch of the RAF in 1975. The family also produced letters from him to his wife, Hilda, which added much to my knowledge of his private life. Most excitingly of all, I discovered that towards the end of his life Ralph had written his memoirs for the benefit of his family. Covering some eighty pages of typescript, these provided an invaluable framework to his story, as well as contributing to my understanding of the man himself and the events with which he was associated.

Ralph had an intriguing start as an aviator when he joined the airship branch of the Royal Naval Air Service during the Great War. This was followed by a highly successful career in the RAF between the two world wars, during which he developed two particular specializations, bombing and flying training. The recognition of his high intellect resulted in his selection, as a relatively junior officer, to advise the Government of New Zealand on the country’s air defences, and he was asked to stay on to become the first Chief of the Air Staff of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. As for his activities during the Second World War, the success of his squadrons in applying new techniques of target marking and precision bombing was arguably greater than that of the Pathfinders, and was spectacularly demonstrated by the sinking of the German battleship Tirpitz. Following his wartime exploits he went on to achieve much for the post-war RAF, notably in forging the peacetime Transport Command, and he rose to become the Vice-Chief of the Air Staff. He was, in short, an exceptional officer, and telling his full story has been long overdue.

It is, however, Ralph’s role in the raising, training and deployment of 617 Squadron and, in particular, in the planning of its most audacious operation on the night of 16/17 May 1943, for which he will continue to be best remembered. He took an unusually close interest in all the squadron’s activities, personally chose its four commanding officers after Gibson and remained in contact with its members for the rest of his life. There is every reason to believe that they thought of him not only as their overall commander but as one of themselves, and that is why he fully deserves to be known as the ‘Dambuster-in-Chief ’.

Prologue

The mood in the Operations Room was sombre, the atmosphere on the brink of oppressive. Whilst quiet conversations were taking place elsewhere, the three most important people in the room were now silent, their thoughts focused on events taking place hundreds of miles away. The scientist was the most agitated of the three, pacing up and down, going over and over in his mind the implications of what he, more than any other person, had set in train. The Air Chief Marshal and the Air Vice-Marshal stood still as the minutes ticked by.

Four times the telephone had rung, and each time the signals officer had reported the codeword for no result. Now the telephone rang again. The officer asked for confirmation and, when it came, his face lit up as he shouted out, ‘It’s Nigger!’ A wave of relief swept through the room. The scientist began to pump his arms up and down as the Air Chief Marshal went over to shake him vigorously by the hand. On the face of the Air Vice-Marshal, a man not given to extravagant displays of emotion, a rare smile appeared as he realised that his plan for the most extraordinary operation in his service’s history had at last come to fruition.

Chapter 1

The Cochranes of Dundonald

Both the roots and the name of Clan Cochrane have long been matters of debate. As to the former, some say that the clan was of Scandinavian ancestry, others that it was descended from the Strathclyde Britons. Like those of many great Scottish families the name is most probably territorial, deriving from the Barony of Cochrane – not a peerage, but a territory held as a tenancy-in-chief from the crown – which in the Middle Ages was situated near Paisley in Renfrewshire. However, it has also been suggested that it derives from the Gaelic words pronounced as ‘coch ran’, meaning ‘roar of battle’, bestowed as a result of some deed of valour. Whatever the case, the Cochranes were firmly established in the Paisley area by the late thirteenth century.

The members of the clan were loyal supporters of the early Stewart kings, not always to their advantage, as Robert Cochrane, a favourite of James III, who created him the Earl of Mar, discovered to his cost when he was seized by rebellious nobles in 1482 and hanged without trial. In spite of such setbacks the family prospered overall, and in 1592 the then chief, William Cochrane, was wealthy enough to be able to attach a high tower to his manor house, which became known as Cochrane Tower or Cochrane Castle. It was subsequently demolished, although its site is still marked by a stone. William was the last of the direct male line of the senior branch of the family, but he entailed his estate to one of his daughters, Elizabeth, and arranged for her to marry Alexander Blair, on condition that Blair assumed the name and the arms of Cochrane.

Alexander and Elizabeth had seven sons, all of whom became soldiers. The oldest, John Cochrane, found himself torn in his allegiance. On the one hand, he was a supporter of Charles I; on the other, he was sympathetic to the National Covenant, whereby the Episcopacy, the bishop-led and essentially Anglican church which Charles tried to impose on Scotland, was abolished by the Scottish Parliament in 1638 in favour of the Presbyterian faith, which abjured bishops. John, who had been serving in Ireland, returned to join the Covenanter army. He was, however, then implicated in ‘The Incident’, a plot to kidnap the Marquis of Argyll, the leader of the Covenanters, and other Scottish nobles of the same persuasion. The plot failed and, indeed, hastened the end of Charles’s efforts to impose the Episcopacy. John Cochrane avoided execution, but he lost his commission in the Scottish army and part of his estates, only avoiding confiscation of the rest by making over the Barony of Cochrane to his next brother, William. He then joined the King’s army and was partially compensated for his losses with a knighthood. He subsequently acted for the King as one of his representatives on the Continent and later joined the future Charles II in exile, but he probably did not live to see the Restoration.

William Cochrane not only took over much of John’s property but also developed a large estate of his own, which included Dundonald Castle and the land around it. The castle, which lies in Ayrshire between Troon and Kilmarnock, is a ‘Peel Tower’ constructed in the fourteenth century, but by the time of its acquisition it was no longer habitable, so William and his family lived at the nearby Auchans House. Like his brother John, William was a staunch supporter of Charles I, was similarly knighted by the King and, in 1647, created Lord Cochrane of Dundonald. He raised a regiment in support of Charles II’s forlorn attempt to regain his throne after his father’s execution, which came to nothing at the Battle of Worcester, and continued to back Charles during his years of exile. In 1653 William acquired the Place, or Palace, of Paisley, lying just next to Paisley Abbey in the heart of the old clan territory, and he and his family moved to live there subsequently. His support for the Stewart kings resulted in a severe financial penalty from the government of Oliver Cromwell, but he retained his estates and, for his longstanding loyalty, was created Earl of Dundonald by the restored king in 1669.

The Cochranes have, throughout their history, had an extraordinary record of service in the armed forces of first Scotland and then Great Britain, and this was certainly true of the descendants of the 1st Earl of Dundonald, although few of them achieved high rank over the next century. Archibald Cochrane, who succeeded as 9th Earl in 1778, managed to serve both as a cornet in the Army and as a midshipman and acting lieutenant in the Royal Navy, although it is as a scientist and inventor, who amongst his other achievements discovered a simple way of extracting tar from coal, that he is best known. The properties in Paisley and Dundonald, including the Barony of Cochrane, had by this time been sold, and Archibald lived on a large estate at Culross, brought into the family by his grandmother. Culross was a major coal-mining area, and Archibald was able to build kilns on his own land for the extraction of the tar. He also discovered coal gas, but failed to realize its potential as a source of fuel, the exploitation of which would have made a considerable difference to the family fortunes. In the event, he was to die a pauper.

The first Cochrane to achieve flag rank in the Royal Navy was the 9th Earl’s younger brother, Alexander Cochrane, who joined as a midshipman in 1775, in time to serve in the American War of Independence. In 1779 he was promoted to lieutenant and in 1780 he acted as signal officer to Admiral Sir George (later Lord) Rodney, taking part in the indecisive action against a French fleet off Martinique, in which he was wounded. Rodney’s patronage saw Alexander’s swift promotion to commander and appointment to the command of a 14-gun American-built sloop, HMS Pacahunter. He was promoted to post captain only two years later, but this coincided with the end of hostilities with France, resulting in his having to go on half-pay. In 1790, however, he was given command of the 24-gun frigate HMS Hind and was still captaining the ship when France declared war on Great Britain in 1793, going on to capture no fewer than eight enemy privateers. He was then appointed to the 38-gun HMS Thetis, in which he was equally successful, taking two French frigates returning from the West Indies, for which he was presented with a sword by the Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund. In 1799 he took command of his first ship-of-the-line, the newly built 74-gun HMS Ajax.

Ajax joined the Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral Lord Keith, who delegated to Alexander Cochrane the responsibility for directing the British landings at Aboukir Bay on 2 March 1801. Alexander’s barge, whose passengers included the British military commander, Major General Sir John Moore, was the first to touch ground in a successful operation which spelled the end of the French occupation of Egypt. Alexander’s relationship with Keith deteriorated, however, and it was perhaps no surprise that, when peace was declared in 1802, the Ajax was paid off and he was placed on half-pay. On the resumption of hostilities in 1803 he was given command of the 74-gun HMS Northumberland.¹ In the following year he became a rear admiral, hoisting his flag in the same ship, and in 1805 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Leeward Islands Station. In 1806 he was secondin-command to Admiral Sir John Duckworth at the victory over the French fleet off San Domingo, for which he was awarded a Large Gold Medal by the Admiralty and a Sword of Honour by the Corporation of the City of London and was created a Knight of the Bath. After toying with support for the growing rebellion against Spain by its South American colonies, for which he earned the disapproval of the British Government, he redeemed himself by capturing the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, becoming Governor General of the latter before being appointed to command of the North American Station on 1 April 1814, by which date Great Britain had been at war with the United States of America for nearly two years

Alexander Cochrane’s appointment coincided with the abdication of Napoleon, which freed up naval resources to carry out a strict blockade of American ports. He was not, however, prepared to conduct this reactively, preferring to take the fight to the enemy. He sailed into Chesapeake Bay in August 1814 and orchestrated an attack on the US capital city, Washington, which was carried out by Major General Robert Ross, with the enthusiastic participation on the ground of Rear Admiral George Cockburn, Alexander’s second-in-command. As a response to the burning of Toronto (known at the time as York), the attackers set light to a number of key government buildings, including the Capitol, and also to the President’s house, only the walls of which were left standing. When the house was rebuilt, its walls were painted white to hide the marks of the fire, giving rise to the name by which the building became known. Alexander was subsequently unsuccessful at Baltimore, although his attack on the city was later immortalized in the words of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’. His Army colleagues, conveyed in Alexander’s ships, were even less successful at New Orleans on 8 January 1815, a disastrous battle from a British perspective, even though the war had actually been concluded by the time it was fought.

New Orleans marked the end of Alexander’s active service, although he was subsequently appointed C-in-C at Plymouth. He had established a strong naval tradition in the family, and two of his sons joined the Royal Navy. The oldest, Thomas John Cochrane, served under his father, whose patronage ensured his rapid promotion. He became a post captain at the extraordinarily young age of seventeen and fought at Martinique and in the War of 1812, in which he captured an American privateer. He was Governor of Newfoundland from 1825 to 1834 and eventually hoisted his flag as a rear admiral and second-in-command of the East India Station in 1841. Much of the latter part of his career was spent in the Far East, and his final command was as C-in-C Portsmouth from 1852 to 1855. He lived long enough to become an admiral of the fleet in 1865 and died in 1872.

By some way the most famous member of the Cochrane family, and a remarkable man by any standard, was Alexander’s nephew and the eldest son of the 9th Earl of Dundonald. Thomas Cochrane was born on 14 December 1775 but did not succeed to the earldom until 1832, by which time he had concluded his most noteworthy exploits, and so he is generally known to history by his courtesy title, Lord Cochrane. He was the beneficiary of an outrageous and, indeed, unlawful system known as ‘false muster’, by which his name was placed by his uncle Alexander on the books of a number of the warships which he commanded. The purpose of this was to give the boy vastly accelerated seniority when he actually joined the Royal Navy on 23 July 1893 at the age of seventeen as a midshipman in Alexander’s then ship, HMS Hind. This enabled him to achieve fast promotion to acting lieutenant in 1795 and, having passed the necessary exam, to lieutenant in the following year. When Alexander was appointed to the Thetis he took his nephew with him, but Lord Cochrane subsequently served on other ships before joining Lord Keith’s flagship, HMS Barfleur, in the Mediterranean. Having transferred his flag to HMS Queen Charlotte, Keith ordered Cochrane, who had accompanied him, to sail a large French prize, the Généreux, from Palermo to Mahon in Minorca, at that time a major British base. The voyage, with a crew whose numbers were not really sufficient for the task, proved to be a difficult one, and the ship was very nearly lost in a storm, but the prize was brought in safely and, by way of reward, Cochrane was given command of the brig Speedy, with promotion to commander. After a short period on convoy duty, he was given a roving commission by Keith to wreak the greatest possible damage on shipping along the Spanish coast, Spain being at this time allied to France. During a period of thirteen months he sank numerous ships and took many others as prizes.

On 6 May 1801, Cochrane carried out what many believe to have been the most extraordinary ship-on-ship engagement in naval history.² The Speedy, whose armament consisted of fourteen 4-pounder guns, encountered the Spanish 32-gun frigate El Gamo, with a crew nearly five times the size of Cochrane’s own. Closing right up, the brig grappled with its opponent, whose guns were unable to depress sufficiently to cause any damage, whilst the Speedy could deploy its own light armament at point-blank range. After breaking off and grappling again, Cochrane ordered the doctor to take the helm, whilst the whole crew, which now included his younger brother, Midshipman Archibald Cochrane, stormed the El Gamo. One of the Speedy’s crew managed to haul down the enemy’s colours, the Spanish surrendered and their ship, with the crew as prisoners in the hold, was sailed to Mahon. Three months after this great success, however, the career of the Speedy came to an abrupt end when she was overcome by three French lineof-battle ships and Cochrane was made prisoner, although he was exchanged for a French officer shortly afterwards.

Lord Cochrane was promoted to post captain on 8 August 1801, his appointment having been delayed by the adverse reaction of the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of St Vincent, to his uncle Alexander pressing his case somewhat intemperately and to Cochrane himself seeking promotion for his own first lieutenant in similar vein. He was not appointed to a ship before the Treaty of Amiens brought the war to a temporary end, and it was only by dint of persistence that he obtained the command of the 22-gun HMS Arab, formerly a French privateer. The task he was allotted was unspectacular, convoy escort and fishery protection in the North Sea. It was only when St Vincent was replaced by Cochrane’s fellow Scot, Viscount Melville, that he was given command of a new 32-gun frigate, HMS Pallas, in which he conducted a highly successful cruise off the Azores which brought in some valuable prizes. In August 1806 he was transferred to a larger ship, the 38-gun HMS Impérieuse, with orders to harry the Mediterranean coast of France and Spain, frequently working in conjunction with Spanish guerrillas on land. This led to his receiving the plaudits of his superior, Admiral Lord Collingwood, but also provoked the disfavour of the Admiralty for what they considered to be his profligate use of gunpowder and shot.

In March 1809 Cochrane returned to England, only to be summoned to the Admiralty and ordered to produce a plan for the destruction of a large part of the French Atlantic fleet, which at that time lay in the Basque Roads, a sheltered anchorage between the Isle of Oléron and the French mainland. The French were being blockaded by a British fleet under Admiral Lord Gambier, who had shown a strong disinclination to use fireships to destroy the enemy as the Admiralty proposed. Cochrane delivered his plan and was instructed to put it into effect. He reported to Gambier, to whom he made it clear that he had been personally ordered to carry it out, and this caused a great deal of jealousy amongst far more senior captains. Cochrane took his small force of fireships and a few other vessels in across the boom which had been erected to protect the French ships and, although they did little direct damage, they forced the French to weigh anchor, following which many of them ran aground. Gambier, however, failed to support him and, although a large number of enemy ships were destroyed, many escaped to fight again.³

Cochrane was made a Knight of the Bath by a Government badly needing good news at this stage of the war and treating the Basque Roads as a great victory, while it was proposed that Gambier should receive a vote of thanks in the House of Commons. Like many serving officers, Cochrane had by this time entered politics, in his case as a Member of Parliament for the constituency of Westminster, and he made it known that he would oppose the motion to thank Gambier. In response, the admiral demanded to submit himself to a court martial, the result of which was that he was not only acquitted of dereliction of duty but congratulated on his achievement.

Lord Cochrane’s fortunes now went from bad to worse. The Admiralty was exasperated with his stance on Gambier, but became even more so when he began a campaign in the House of Commons to expose corruption in the Admiralty Prize Courts, and particularly the Court in Malta, whose officials he claimed, with considerable justification, had retained large sums due to the officers and crews of ships which had taken prizes. He even travelled to Malta at his own cost, only to be sent to prison, from which he managed to escape with the aid of his many sympathizers.

His fortunes dipped even further when in 1814 he became involved, naively but quite innocently, in a major Stock Exchange fraud. His trial was presided over by Lord Ellenborough, who was not only Lord Chief Justice but also a Cabinet Minister, at a time when Cochrane was causing great embarrassment to the Government. The verdict went against him and his sentence was a fine of £1,000, a year in jail and an hour in the pillory. The last of these was dropped in the face of public indignation, but he was imprisoned in the Marshalsea, from which he escaped, only to be recaptured. He was also expelled from the House of Commons, but immediately re-elected by the voters of Westminster. Worst of all, he was struck off the Navy List and his knighthood was forfeited.

It was thus unsurprising that when in May 1817 an invitation was extended to him to become C-in-C of the Chilean Navy, Cochrane readily accepted it. He oversaw the building of a new warship for the Chileans, the Rising Star, before leaving with his wife and two children for what was effectively exile from the United Kingdom. Spain’s South American colonies were by this time in open revolt. Argentina had already fallen to the nationalists, and in 1817 the Army of the Andes, led by José de San Martin and Bernardo O’Higgins, crossed into Chile, seizing Santiago and Valparaiso. The centre of Spanish resistance was to the south in Valdivia, which Cochrane, in his flagship O’Higgins, took from the sea in a stunning attack. The seizure of the last Spanish stronghold in Chile freed him to accompany San Martin in an assault on Peru. Cochrane’s contribution was again immense, the centrepiece being the cutting-out of the Spanish flagship, the Esmeralda, in Callao harbour.

Cochrane’s relationship with the liberators, especially San Martin, was not always an easy one, largely due to their failure to honour their obligations to pay him and his crews. Undaunted, he sailed north to Ancon, where he seized the treasure which had been confiscated from the Spanish and paid his crews the arrears they were owed, before handing back the balance. This, however, was the final nail in the coffin of his relationship with San Martin, which had by that time deteriorated considerably. In any event, Cochrane believed that his work in Chile and Peru was now over, so accepted an invitation to command the Brazilian Navy

Brazil was at this time still ruled by the Portuguese royal family, who had escaped there when the French occupied their country in 1807, but the King’s son, Don Pedro, had announced the country’s independence when his father returned to Portugal, and had declared himself Emperor. The Portuguese still held much of northern Brazil, but within four months of his arrival in March 1823, Cochrane had defeated their much larger fleet, thereby effectively liberating the rest of the country. He was made Marquess of Maranhão in recognition of his service.

His work in Brazil at an end, in 1825 he accepted an offer to command the Greek fleet in the country’s war of independence from the Ottoman Empire. His achievements there were not as spectacular as those in South America, and it was an Anglo-French-Russian fleet under Admiral Sir Edward Codrington which destroyed the Turkish fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Cochrane now returned to England to carry on the campaign to clear his name. It was the accession to the throne in 1830 of William IV, himself a former serving naval officer and broadly sympathetic to Cochrane, which provided the stimulus to remedy the injustices done to him and, having succeeded as the 10th Earl of Dundonald in 1831, he was restored to the Navy List with the rank of rear admiral. It was not until 1847 that he was reinstated in the Order of the Bath and, in the following year, he was appointed C-in-C of the West Indian and North American Station for three years, his last service at sea. He died on 31 October 1860 and was buried in Westminster Abbey at the request of Queen Victoria.

There were no later Cochranes able to emulate the feats of the 10th Earl of Dundonald, at least partly because of lack of opportunity, but many were highly distinguished in their own way. Lord Cochrane’s second son, Arthur, also joined the Royal Navy, serving in the Baltic during the Crimean War, commissioning in 1861 HMS Warrior, the Royal Navy’s first iron-hulled and armour-plated ship, and hoisting his flag as C-in-C of the Pacific Squadron in 1873. The eldest son, also Thomas, later the 11th Earl, served in the Army but failed to progress beyond captain in rank. The 12th Earl, Douglas, on the other hand, had a successful military career, whose high point was the command of the Mounted Brigade in Natal during the Boer War, in which role he relieved Ladysmith. In due course he achieved promotion to lieutenant general.

The second son of the 11th Earl, Thomas Horatio Arthur Ernest Cochrane, was born in 1857. He began a military career in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, later serving for some years in the Scots Guards before returning to his former regiment. In 1892, however, he entered politics with his election as the Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament for North Ayrshire. He served in government, initially from 1895 to 1901 as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Joseph Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He then took leave of absence from Westminster to take part in the Boer War as a staff officer, before returning to serve as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in the Government of Arthur Balfour from 1902 to 1906. He was narrowly defeated by the Liberal candidate in the General Election of January 1910 and subsequently focused on his business interests, although he commanded the 2nd/7th (Fife) Battalion of the Black Watch, which saw no service overseas, from 1914 to 1917. In 1919 he was raised to the peerage as Lord Cochrane of Cults.

In 1880 the future Lord Cochrane of Cults married Lady Gertrude Boyle, the elder of the two daughters of George Boyle, 6th Earl of Glasgow. They had eight children, four girls, one of whom died in infancy, and four boys, the third of whom and the seventh child, Ralph Alexander Cochrane, was born on 24 February 1895.

Chapter 2

From Fife to Scapa

Ralph Cochrane was born in the family home, Crawford Priory, situated about two miles south-west of Cupar in Fife. The greater part of the house was built by the eccentric Lady Mary Lindsay Crawford in the early nineteenth century, on the site of a modest hunting lodge erected by her father, the 21st Earl of Crawford. The architectural style of the main building was a strange mixture of Scottish Baronial and Gothic and was said to resemble a priory, although there was no religious connection. Following Lady Mary’s death the estate passed to the Earls of Glasgow, and in the 1870s the 6th Earl attached a tall tower and a chapel. Whilst not as large as many country houses, its indoor staff nevertheless numbered about twelve, with two gardeners, two gamekeepers and two foresters outside.

The grounds of Crawford Priory extended to some 4,000 acres and included a substantial lime works of medieval origin, which was said to have provided material for the building of the Palace of Holyroodhouse in the seventeenth century. The agricultural land was substantially worked by tenants until well after the Great War, when Ralph’s father decided to farm it himself.

The house and estate formed the dowry of Ralph’s mother, Lady Gertrude Boyle, whom his father married, doubtless out of love, but also in the belief that she was a great heiress. He was therefore taken aback to find out after the event that the property was burdened by a substantial mortgage. Moreover, his new father-in-law invited him for a meeting shortly afterwards at which he was asked to lend the Earl, who was effectively bankrupt, a substantial sum of money! The ‘old rogue’, as he called his father-in-law, left him with debt from which he only extracted himself in due course through his own good management.

Notwithstanding this setback, Ralph’s parents went on to produce a large family. The oldest of their offspring, Louisa, was already grown up when Ralph was born, but was unmarried; she was frequently unwell and was to die of tuberculosis in 1916. Tom, the eldest son and the heir to the title, was ten years older than Ralph, and Archie, the second son, eight years older, so during his childhood they were away a great deal, Tom at university, after which he