The following "Resumé of the Services of the late Earl of Dundonald, none of which have been Requited or Officially Recognized," was written by his son, one of the authors of the present work, and printed for private circulation in 1861.
1. The destruction of three heavily-armed French corvettes, near the mouth of the Garonne, the crew of Lord Cochrane's frigate, _Pallas_, being at the time, with the exception of forty men, engaged in cutting out the _Tapageuse_, lying under the protection of two batteries thirty miles up the river, in which operation they were also successful, four ships of war being thus captured or destroyed in a single day. For these services Lord Cochrane obtained nothing but his share of the _Tapageuse_, sold by auction for a trifling sum, the Government refusing to purchase her as a ship of war, though of admirable build and construction. Contrary to the usual rule, no ship ever taken by Lord Cochrane, throughout his whole career, was ever allowed to be bought into the navy. For the corvettes, which Lord Cochrane destroyed with so small a crew, he never received reward or thanks, the alleged reason being, that, having become wrecks, they were not in existence, and therefore could not have value attached to them. This decision of the Admiralty was contrary to custom, as admitted to the present day. In the late Russian war a gunboat of the enemy having been driven on shore and wrecked, compensation is said to have been awarded to the officers and crew of the British vessel which drove her on shore. The importance of wrecking a gunboat, in comparison with the destruction of three fast-sailing ships, which were picking up our merchantmen, in all directions, needs no comment.
2. Lord Cochrane's services on the coast of Catalonia, of which Lord Collingwood, then commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, testified of his lordship to the Admiralty that by his energy and foresight he had, with a single frigate, stopped a French army from occupying Eastern Spain. The services by which this was effected were as follows:—Preventing the reinforcement of the French garrison in Barcelona, by harassing the newly-arrived troops in their march along the coast, and organising and assisting the Spanish militia to oppose their progress, Lord Cochrane himself capturing one of their forts on shore, and taking the garrison prisoners.