Before the Mast

victusinveritas:

Minor fact about Thomas Cochrane, the partial inspiration behind Will Laurence, Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower.

In 1810, Sir Francis Burdett, a Member of Parliament and political ally, had barricaded himself in his home at Piccadilly, London, resisting arrest by the House of Commons. Cochrane went to assist Burdett’s defence of the house. His approach to this, however, was essentially similar to the approach he had taken in defending forts against enemy attack and would have led to numerous deaths amongst the arresting officers and at least partial destruction of Burdett’s house, along with much of Piccadilly. On realising what Cochrane planned, Burdett and his allies took steps to end the siege.

Interesting part in italics. Yes, Cochrane’s suggestion was quite simply to help Burdett avoid arrest (for libel), by killing everyone trying to arrest him. Granted, this was before the days of Robert Peel and the Metropolitan Police, but…Cochrane’s solution included putting part of central London to the torch (or maybe just drilling through walls with bayonets, hard to tell, but…the fucker was creative, so there probably would have been explosions involved) to help a friend avoid arrest…
Awesome.