Government house, now surrounded by the burgeoning city of St John’s, remains as a memorial to Cochrane. Designed in England, it was originally estimated to cost £8,778 increased size and frequent alterations at Cochrane’s wilful discretion brought the final costs in 1831 to £36,000, a most embarrassing sum which provoked a court of inquiry. It stood on a ridge between Fort William and Fort Townsend far away from the dangerous fire area of the lower town. To fit his ideas of good living, Cochrane had a new residence built for the governor. Tory and authoritarian by upbringing and profession, Cochrane was fond of ceremony and preferred good living he brought to Newfoundland enough household effects to equip a palace and, according to Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle*, he “displayed a magnificence in his vice-regal function before unknown” in the poor colony. He was the first resident governor, ending over 100 years of naval administration of an island long considered by the Admiralty as a ward of its own policy – a “great ship” anchored off the Grand Banks – and by the West Country merchants as their special area of commercial exploitation. By 1825 Thomas Cochrane had put in 26 years of service in the Royal Navy, including eight years on the North American Station, which were presumed to have been useful experience for his appointment as governor of Newfoundland on 16 April of that year.Ĭochrane ushered in a new era for Newfoundland. He became its captain in 1806 and saw service on it in the West Indies until 1809. They are all mad, romantic, money-getting and not truth-telling.” Reputedly Sir Alexander practised nepotism unduly, as when he entered his seven-year-old son on the books of his ship Thetis as a volunteer in 1796 and kept him under his pennant until 1805, when Thomas was promoted lieutenant on Jason.
Earl St Vincent stated that the “Cochranes are not to be trusted. in England in 1872.ĭuring their careers both Thomas John Cochrane and his father excited a great deal of envy and provoked considerable acid comment against themselves. 1812 to Mathilda Ross by whom he had two sons and two daughters d. 1789, eldest son of Admiral Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane and his wife Maria Shaw, widow of Captain Jacob Wheate m. COCHRANE, Sir THOMAS JOHN, officer in the Royal Navy and colonial administrator b.
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