Speaker 1: You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Folks. It's a hug. No, I haven't seen when us
Speaker 2: to see this last?
Speaker 1: Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were.
Speaker 2: True and truths that sound like lies.
Speaker 1: I'm the ghost of Danish Schwartz.
Speaker 2: And I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan. Welcome to
Speaker 2: the show, Lizzie.
Speaker 1: I have to ask, what is your familiarity with the
Speaker 1: feature film Master and Commander.
Speaker 2: I believe it's Master and Commander of the Far Side of.
Speaker 1: The World, Master Commander Colin the Far Side of the World,
Speaker 1: And I think you answered my question.
Speaker 2: Meant to be the first in a plan franchise. It's
Speaker 2: based on a series of very popular Like Dad novels. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I came to it late. I think it was a
Speaker 2: pandemic watch for me because people were talking about it
Speaker 2: online and it rips. It's a great movie.
Speaker 1: Great movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, The Lesser of Two Weavils is a great moment. Oh,
Speaker 2: I remember why I watched it. It was because, yes,
Speaker 2: it was a pandemic watch, because WandaVision made everyone like
Speaker 2: really excited about Paul Bettany, who is great in that movie.
Speaker 2: And so people were like, if you like Paul Bettany
Speaker 2: and WandaVision, you should check out A Night's Tale and
Speaker 2: Master and Commander, both of which rip and you should.
Speaker 1: You should check both of those films out. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you haven't watched Master Commander to anyone listening to the show,
Speaker 1: you absolutely should. But just to contextualize you for this episode.
Speaker 2: Oceans are bat out battlefields.
Speaker 1: That's what's happening right now.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, uh, Napoleonic Napoleonic warfare.
Speaker 1: The majority of this episode, like the main hoax, is
Speaker 1: going to take place during the Napoleonic Wars in eighteen fourteen.
Speaker 2: Okay, so people wearing the same outfits. I can just
Speaker 2: keep picturing it.
Speaker 1: Yes, But before we even get to the hoax, I
Speaker 1: need to introduce you to a man who is he single,
Speaker 1: very charming, actually not dating material, but he is the
Speaker 1: inspiration for Russell Crowe's character in Mastering Command.
Speaker 2: Wait, excellent, Okay.
Speaker 1: So his name is Thomas Cochrane. He's not that well
Speaker 1: known as a figure, even though I feel like if
Speaker 1: you're like, he's the guy who inspired the author of
Speaker 1: the books at Master and Commander, you'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: that seems like he should be maybe more famous.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I feel like that series is famously,
Speaker 2: like very popular among its fans, but not. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not like the Jack Ryan series.
Speaker 1: You know, it's true, and maybe I am also underestimating
Speaker 1: how you know, English listeners might be like, oh, Thomas Cochrane,
Speaker 1: we all know who he is. I don't think he
Speaker 1: has a translated Stateside. He's sort of the Kylie Minogue
Speaker 1: of maybe know who it is?
Speaker 2: Isn't Kyle Igustrian Australian? You know who is like blows
Speaker 2: British people's mind. Is Robbie Williams The Monkey? Yeah? Well
Speaker 2: now now Americans know him as the guy who made
Speaker 2: a movie in which he was played by a monkey.
Speaker 2: But like the fact that he's just not famous here,
Speaker 2: Like I've had friends, you know hum his most famous
Speaker 2: song I'm Gone who knows? And I yeah, no, so
Speaker 2: you do know that, and I have to explain to them, No, no,
Speaker 2: he is not famous.
Speaker 1: Here at Yeah, I've heard that song. I wouldn't before
Speaker 1: the Monkey movie, which I saw and genuinely enjoyed. Did
Speaker 1: you see it?
Speaker 2: No? I heard it was good, It's really good.
Speaker 1: I had no idea who Robbi Williams was, So maybe
Speaker 1: Thomas Cochrane is the is the.
Speaker 2: Robbie Williams of Napoleonic naval captains.
Speaker 1: Yes, But actually what we will discover over the course
Speaker 1: of talking about him is like part of the reason
Speaker 1: he maybe isn't as famous as he should be for
Speaker 1: his individual exploits is he never really commands like a
Speaker 1: whole fleet. He's never like he's mostly like, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of doing what Russell Crow's doing. He has a a
Speaker 1: small squadron. But to get into his backstory, he was
Speaker 1: born in seventeen seventy five in southern Scotland to Lord
Speaker 1: Cochrane to like a noble family. His dad in his
Speaker 1: lifetime becomes the Earl of Dundonald. His mom is the.
Speaker 2: Daughter of a distinguished Scottish family. He has six brothers.
Speaker 1: There's like a big military legacy on both sides. So
Speaker 1: his uncle, his paternal uncle is Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane.
Speaker 1: You know, his cousin was appointed Governor of Newfoundland. Some
Speaker 1: of his family fought in the if you can picture
Speaker 1: Outlander that situation but on the British.
Speaker 2: Side, oh sure, God Outlander another pandemic watch for me,
Speaker 2: but then I had to stop because it was too violent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so his family would have been on the Loyalists
Speaker 1: Jacobite side. They are like very noble, but on the
Speaker 1: British side their title and history rich but cash poor
Speaker 1: in when he's a young man, his family has to
Speaker 1: sell their ancestral estate.
Speaker 2: Are they cash poor in the way that like the
Speaker 2: Bennetts are poor in pride and prejudice, where like they
Speaker 2: still have a cook. Yeah, they just don't really have
Speaker 2: like in a state. But it's like, okay, you're not poor.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, he's never going to be poor. But
Speaker 1: again they do have to sell their ancestral estate. They're downsizing.
Speaker 1: They're not doing great. His dad. When Tom's Cochrane's young man,
Speaker 1: his dad gets in a position in the army, but
Speaker 1: he does not like it. He writes in his autobiography
Speaker 1: that they make him like slick back his hair and
Speaker 1: make him wear collars up to the neck.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like that. It's rules that he has to
Speaker 1: follow in the army, and he wants to go join
Speaker 1: the navy, which kind of is the beginning of a
Speaker 1: lifelong habit of him doing what he wants and being
Speaker 1: a pain in the butt to anyone in a position
Speaker 1: of authority around him, where someone's like, hey, I got
Speaker 1: you a position in the army and you're like, nope,
Speaker 1: Navy for me. So he goes to see as a
Speaker 1: midshipman under his uncle, who again was an admiral. He's
Speaker 1: sort of a naval nepo baby. Yeah, in the sense
Speaker 1: that there's like a thing that connected people do where
Speaker 1: they could list you as a member of a crew
Speaker 1: that you weren't actually on from the time you were
Speaker 1: a child. So then by the time you actually do
Speaker 1: get on a boat, you can be at a higher position.
Speaker 2: Oh it's like how Blue Ivy is already a millionaire
Speaker 2: because they just listed her on a couple of her
Speaker 2: mom's songs and then they can pay her and then
Speaker 2: it's a compounding interest.
Speaker 1: Compounding interest. So that's it. He's been like listed as
Speaker 1: a member of naval crews since he was a child,
Speaker 1: which is a common practice. But then he gets to,
Speaker 1: you know, be on as a midshipman under his uncle.
Speaker 1: He gets this pretty prestigious post run by this man
Speaker 1: named Admiral Keith. But even as a young man, he
Speaker 1: is court martialed for quote unquote flippancy. That would be
Speaker 1: one hundred percent what I get. Court martialled to the
Speaker 1: ship's first lieutenant, Philip Beaver, so supposedly, and this is
Speaker 1: the story, was upset that Cochrane had reported himself aboard
Speaker 1: the ship late after shore leave and he said that
Speaker 1: I'm only late because I had to change my money clothes,
Speaker 1: and they get in a fight about it. He's court martialed.
Speaker 1: He's given the chance to apologize, but he doesn't. And
Speaker 1: so from that point on he's just like on the
Speaker 1: admiral's bad side.
Speaker 2: Okay, and this uncle the admiral.
Speaker 1: This is this is Admiral Keith. He's like a different
Speaker 1: admiral that he's under. But this is again what's going
Speaker 1: to happen with Lord Cochrane as he comes to be known.
Speaker 1: He just like can't leave well enough alone and doesn't
Speaker 1: know how to make good or play nice or play
Speaker 1: the game. So people above him are always gonna hate him,
Speaker 1: and kind of for good reasons sometimes, like he is
Speaker 1: a pain.
Speaker 2: In the butt, especially in the military where following orders
Speaker 2: is like pretty crucial and it's pretty consistent.
Speaker 1: Superiors don't like him, subordinates don't really like him, colleagues
Speaker 1: don't really like him.
Speaker 2: Is he Why doesn't he get fired? Is good at
Speaker 2: being a midshipman? Oh well, we're gonna we're gonna get
Speaker 2: to that. I mean, part of it is like he's
Speaker 2: a well connected family. He is good and like flippan, see,
Speaker 2: you'll get court martialed, but you're not going to get
Speaker 2: fired for being flippant, okay, although he does.
Speaker 1: As a young man, he gets in a duel with
Speaker 1: a French royalist officer, and again, French royalists are our
Speaker 1: allies at this point if you're kindished, because Napoleon is
Speaker 1: not royalist. So he's at a costume party and he's
Speaker 1: dressed his costume is a common British sailor, and he
Speaker 1: isn't let into the party because he's not dressed fancy enough,
Speaker 1: and then this French person starts treating him like he's
Speaker 1: an ordinary sailor, which he is dressed as for the
Speaker 1: costume party. And then he challenges him to a duel
Speaker 1: and the other guy gets injured and he's fine, there
Speaker 1: are no fatalities. But again you're like if you're dressed
Speaker 1: as a common person and then they treat you as
Speaker 1: a common person you can't get mad at that.
Speaker 2: You can't duel. I mean he explained that it was
Speaker 2: his cost. He was doing it to be funny and
Speaker 2: make fun of the poor.
Speaker 1: He was doing it to make fun of the poor.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a great excuse.
Speaker 1: But this is just this guy's character, okay, and this
Speaker 1: is just what he's like his entire life. But he is,
Speaker 1: like you said, really good at his job. He captures
Speaker 1: this French ship kind of against all odds, brings it
Speaker 1: back through enemy territory, even through a huge storm, and
Speaker 1: it's so impressive that he gets promoted to be commander
Speaker 1: of the HMS Speedy, which is like, you get promoted,
Speaker 1: you have your own ship. The thing is, it's a
Speaker 1: very small ship with only a handful of small guns,
Speaker 1: and so it kind of feels like it's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a punishment to get him out of the way.
Speaker 1: Like you are really good, but you're a pain in
Speaker 1: our butt. So like here's your promotion, but now like
Speaker 1: go over there. Yeah, but like jokes on them. This
Speaker 1: turned out to be the start of a legendary run
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 2: I'm really intrigued by this story, and I am like,
Speaker 2: when is it going to be a hoax.
Speaker 1: We to meet this man.
Speaker 2: We're gonna and I I'm not saying I'm impatient. I'm like,
Speaker 2: this is crazy because I'm already so intrigued and we
Speaker 2: haven't even gotten to the hoax part yet.
Speaker 1: Well, the good news is that there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: few mini hoaxes a long.
Speaker 2: I love a mini hooaks.
Speaker 1: So the thing about the hmas speedy and maybe you
Speaker 1: can tell from her name.
Speaker 2: She's well she's speedy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she can like slip in and out undetected.
Speaker 2: Are you stark?
Speaker 1: He literally, like a few weeks into his job, he
Speaker 1: captures a ton of French privateers, so his bosses can't
Speaker 1: even be mad at him. Okay, he has this classic
Speaker 1: move of like literal false flags.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Where So there's this big one of his most famous
Speaker 1: exploits is there's this big Spanish ship called El Gamo,
Speaker 1: and he Cochrane is outnumbered six to one, and they
Speaker 1: have a huge ship with like a ton more guns
Speaker 1: and weapons.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: He's such a big threat that it's pretty likely that
Speaker 1: Spain just like deployed this big ship just to get
Speaker 1: rid of him because he's such a pest. He flies
Speaker 1: an American flag and sales really close, allegedly close enough
Speaker 1: to see the whites of the Spanish cruise eyes. And
Speaker 1: Spain isn't gonna, you know, fire on an American ship
Speaker 1: because they're allies with America at this point, or at
Speaker 1: least neutral. They're not gonna like And so as soon
Speaker 1: as he gets really early close, American flag down, Union
Speaker 1: jack up, jokes on you. And then they're so close
Speaker 1: that this big ship keeps firing over them. Oh that's
Speaker 1: so funny, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, And so then
Speaker 1: anytime that they tried to board him, he would like
Speaker 1: pull away and fire on them. And then he boarded
Speaker 1: them and kind of through like strategy and trickery, like
Speaker 1: the way to manage this, he like prioritized pulling down
Speaker 1: the Spanish flag. So then the other off people on
Speaker 1: the ship, the Spanish people on the ship thought that like, oh,
Speaker 1: our officers have already given up, and they got demoralized.
Speaker 1: And he won this massive ship, which is just like, wow,
Speaker 1: you had a tiny little ship, and through trickery and
Speaker 1: strategy you got this big Spanish warship. Amazing, great job.
Speaker 1: But again other people also do the trickery thing, and
Speaker 1: he'll do you know a lot of like trickery to
Speaker 1: get what he wants. Allegedly, he has like a I'm
Speaker 1: imagining like a children's costume, like a chest of yeah,
Speaker 1: but for him it's like flags of other countries.
Speaker 2: I kind of I mean, I guess like the nobility
Speaker 2: of war, but like, why don't people why doesn't everybody
Speaker 2: just do that all the time.
Speaker 1: He has the mo of just like I am going
Speaker 1: to win if I can.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So he's almost taken at one point by the Spanish
Speaker 1: frigate that they was disguised as a merchant ship. He's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get taken. What do I do? He flies
Speaker 1: a Danish flag and he brings a Danish quartermaster on
Speaker 1: deck to tell the Spanish ship like, oh, we're plague
Speaker 1: grind and don't come on.
Speaker 2: There's a play oh, which is smart, We're just Danish
Speaker 2: people with a plague.
Speaker 1: And it works and they don't get captured again. He
Speaker 1: has a legendary run, takes down fifty three enemy ships
Speaker 1: at one points, captured and held hostage by the French.
Speaker 1: But even this is like a very like noble beings
Speaker 1: being held hostage, like the French captain will like come
Speaker 1: to him and ask advice and they'll hang out. Imagine
Speaker 1: like drinking tea together. Yeah, he's not in like a
Speaker 1: dingy prison cell.
Speaker 2: No, it's like honor among sailors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he is released in a prison exchange and
Speaker 1: you know, honorably acquitted for the capture of the Speedy.
Speaker 1: Everyone's really really impressed that he had this run on
Speaker 1: a really small ship. He's a character. He writes, not
Speaker 1: a biography. People are already writing about his adventures. Frederick
Speaker 1: Marian Marriott. I'm sure he's a famous author that that
Speaker 1: I am mispronouncing. But he writes like a famous fictionalized
Speaker 1: version of these exploits. He inspires. Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower.
Speaker 2: I don't know either of those.
Speaker 1: Jack Aubrey is Russell Crowe in Chara.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Horatio Hornblower, I'm sure is a famous if you're a
Speaker 1: British naval reader.
Speaker 2: But he's another fictional character, yes, okayat but he's a character. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's he's a sort of a Davy Crockett type. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But after this sort of like prisoner exchange, he was captured,
Speaker 1: he lost his ship. But everyone's like find about it,
Speaker 1: he doesn't immediately get promoted and does not get a
Speaker 1: new ship, and he becomes resentful and he starts openly
Speaker 1: criticizing the Lord Admiral Saint Vincent, which is not a
Speaker 1: thing that you should do if you want to get
Speaker 1: a promotion.
Speaker 2: No, but men be doing it anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then in eighteen oh three the Napoleonic Wars
Speaker 1: heat up again. He's sent on board this ship called
Speaker 1: the HMS Arab that's a bad ship. Punished. He sees
Speaker 1: it as punishment. He's patrolling northern Europe and he calls
Speaker 1: it naval exile in a tub. Luckily for him, the
Speaker 1: Lord Admiral Saint Vincent is replaced by a guy named Melville,
Speaker 1: who does not hate him quite as much. And at
Speaker 1: this point he gets a bigger ship, gets in the
Speaker 1: HMS Palace, which is a top of the line frigate,
Speaker 1: a lot more trickery, which is very fun. So this
Speaker 1: is like another of our mini hoaxes that he'll do.
Speaker 1: At one point he'll be outnumbered by three French ships
Speaker 1: and his boat is just men manned by a skeleton
Speaker 1: crew at this point, and so he's like, oh no,
Speaker 1: if they know that there's like, so few of us
Speaker 1: on board, they'll take us immediately and we'll lose. So
Speaker 1: how do we trick them into thinking there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of us on board.
Speaker 2: I'm picturing the party scene and home alone. He has
Speaker 2: Standy's to create this that there's a lot of people.
Speaker 1: He gets Michael Jordan carbod No, I mean it is
Speaker 1: really clever. He rigs the sails with rope yarn. So
Speaker 1: he rigs all the sails of his ship with yarn
Speaker 1: and figures it out in such a way that he
Speaker 1: can cut the yarn and all the sails come down
Speaker 1: at once. So it's like, whoa, they had all those
Speaker 1: men to release.
Speaker 2: All those sales.
Speaker 1: But the other ship runs off and he attacks, and
Speaker 1: the ship runs aground, The friendship runs aground in a panic,
Speaker 1: and then the other ships ground themselves rather than fight him.
Speaker 1: He just has like a ton of victories like this.
Speaker 1: He's a guy with a lot of good ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a war hero. Napoleon himself personally orders his capture
Speaker 1: and calls him le loupe de maire, which is French
Speaker 1: for the sea wolf.
Speaker 2: That's a cool nickname.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine Napoleon giving you that nickname.
Speaker 2: I know. It also is really close to that Shakira
Speaker 2: song she Wolf. He's a sea wolf. He's a sea yeah, yep, okay.
Speaker 1: His sort of most famous battle trickery exploit at the
Speaker 1: end of his naval career comes at this thing called
Speaker 1: the Battle of Basque Roads and he's in charge. It's
Speaker 1: like a very I don't want to get into the
Speaker 1: military logistics of it, but it just imagined. It's like
Speaker 1: a very important protected mouth of a river and they
Speaker 1: have to prevent to the French from escaping to the Atlantic.
Speaker 2: So they're trying to keep them in the river.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just trying to stop them from like Vietnam,
Speaker 1: and their strategy is fireships, which is like lighting ships
Speaker 1: on fire is part of your strategy on purpose, And
Speaker 1: he's like, I'll do you want better exploding ships?
Speaker 2: Oh great?
Speaker 1: So he hates the admiral that he's fighting under, but
Speaker 1: that's classic Cochrane. But he's like, all right, I'll still
Speaker 1: do a great job. He lights the ship that he's
Speaker 1: going to explode on purpose. They're sailing away and they're
Speaker 1: like dinghy getaway. He realizes that his dog was left
Speaker 1: on board, so he sailed They rode back, he runs in,
Speaker 1: he gets his dog, they go out.
Speaker 2: Dog is totally safe. That's going back staving Matilda behind,
Speaker 2: I know, but he's They rode back, they got the dog,
Speaker 2: and the ship blew up and it was exciting and
Speaker 2: the French were like, whoa, why would anyone do that?
Speaker 1: That was nuts. But what happens is it's not like
Speaker 1: a cohesive British victory. After that, basically, Cochrane gets very
Speaker 1: mad that the Admiral Gambier didn't like sweep in and
Speaker 1: finish the job, and so he publicly after all of this,
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, this would have been great if the
Speaker 1: admiral had known what he was frickin' doing.
Speaker 2: And the embarrassing for the admiral.
Speaker 1: Well, the admiral gets so angry that he requests that
Speaker 1: he himself get court martialed to clear his name.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I get that I didn't do anything under oath.
Speaker 2: I will answer all the questions.
Speaker 1: But from this point on, you know, Gambier has a
Speaker 1: bunch of aristocratic friends. People think of Cochrane as impudent,
Speaker 1: which he is, and he says, this whole thing has
Speaker 1: put a sour taste in my mouth. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do any more naval postings. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: get into.
Speaker 2: Politics, okay. Classic.
Speaker 1: But also coincidentally, at this time, the spoil system was
Speaker 1: being adjusted.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: It's where if you are a Lord Cochrane captain of
Speaker 1: a ship and you capture a Spanish pirate.
Speaker 2: Ship, oh, like the spoils, the spoils of war.
Speaker 1: You there's like a rules about like, okay, I'm the
Speaker 1: captain of the ship you get. I'm gonna say thirty
Speaker 1: percent of all the booty. Thirty percent is the crew,
Speaker 1: you know, your cruise and like the last whatever seventy
Speaker 1: percent goes to the admiral or England or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And at this point it was being shifted to that
Speaker 1: like the captain got less and like the crew got more.
Speaker 2: And oh so he's like, good time for me to
Speaker 2: leave being a captain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he also publicly was like really against that.
Speaker 1: Like coincidence, he becomes a politician in Parliament, being a
Speaker 1: real like man for the people, even though again with
Speaker 1: the spoil system, he was like man for me. He
Speaker 1: kind of has like libertarian politics.
Speaker 2: I would say that makes a lot of sense because
Speaker 2: he doesn't like being beholden to anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's very like, I know that's anachronistic to say,
Speaker 1: but he's generally just anti authority populist, just like wants
Speaker 1: his own good things to be recognized and thinks everyone's
Speaker 1: out to get him. Oh classic, And even though even
Speaker 1: when he's a member of parliament he can't get anything
Speaker 1: done because nobody likes him. Yeah, even people that he
Speaker 1: should ally with he.
Speaker 2: Doesn't, Yeah, because he's such a jerk.
Speaker 1: But his support he's like a war hero and his
Speaker 1: people like him. But again, he's just.
Speaker 2: He's kind of an asshole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that is just kind of the prologue to
Speaker 1: this episode.
Speaker 2: Wonderful.
Speaker 1: We need to just know who Lord Cochrane is. You
Speaker 1: have his character, Lord Cochrane. The Napoleonic War is happening
Speaker 1: at this point in the story. Lord Cochrane is no
Speaker 1: longer at sea. He's a member of parliament.
Speaker 2: What year is it?
Speaker 1: This is eighteen fourteen. Oh you told me that before.
Speaker 1: Good to anchor us. And something else to know is
Speaker 1: that people are trading stocks at this time. There is
Speaker 1: a London Stock Exchange and what we're focusing on mostly
Speaker 1: for the point of this podcast episode is government securities,
Speaker 1: which they call stocks but are really more like bonds
Speaker 1: as we know them today.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: I didn't know the difference between stocks and bonds and
Speaker 1: you don't have to. Great, what I'm just going to
Speaker 1: tell you is you're investing in like I mean, the government. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can buy government things. When good things happen. For
Speaker 1: the British government, it goes up when bad things happen.
Speaker 1: Imagine it goes down. The one what it's called is
Speaker 1: Omnium is the name of like the British government security
Speaker 1: that we're going to be focused on. But it's especially
Speaker 1: volatile in this period because financial systems aren't very regulated.
Speaker 1: The first financial regulations for the stock exchange only came
Speaker 1: about in like eighteen twelve, which again we're like two
Speaker 1: years into that, so people don't really know these rules.
Speaker 1: And you can also buy these government stocks without paying upfront, okay,
Speaker 1: so you can kind of buy on credit and like
Speaker 1: but bet on it. So you're like, okay, yeah, well
Speaker 1: I will probably make a profit in a month and
Speaker 1: then I will just get the profit and not get
Speaker 1: the capital.
Speaker 2: Okay. But it's just like really.
Speaker 1: Volved because you don't need to put that money up front,
Speaker 1: so people can just like bet a lot. People go
Speaker 1: into debt a lot too.
Speaker 2: So if if I'm like this thing is worth ten
Speaker 2: dollars and I don't have ten dollars, but I'll just
Speaker 2: like put I'll just like say I'm buying it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then in a month when it's worth fifteen dollars,
Speaker 2: I'll just get five dollars and I never have to
Speaker 2: have ten dollars.
Speaker 1: You never had to have ten dollars in your pocket.
Speaker 2: But if it goes down, debtor's prison for you will
Speaker 2: then somebody be like, where's the ten dollars?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it'll there's like a due date for like
Speaker 1: when you do have Okay, you can just sort of defer,
Speaker 1: you can affirm. What's is that called a firm that
Speaker 1: buy now, pay later klarna?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's a bunch of them.
Speaker 1: You can just do that. That's how you're buying it.
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm buying this government bound for ten dollars.
Speaker 2: Well, Klarna is like you pay a quarter of it
Speaker 2: now and then a quarter of it in a week
Speaker 2: and then like it's like space sing it out into
Speaker 2: little mini pagers.
Speaker 1: I guess this is more like a credit card where
Speaker 1: I'm buying it. Now, I'm buying it for ten dollars.
Speaker 1: Now I'm like, well in a month, I really hope
Speaker 1: it'll be fifteen, because in a month I owe ten dollars. Okay,
Speaker 1: but again, if people are just doing that, it's pretty volatile.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's what's happening in the world right now. And
Speaker 1: the Internet doesn't exist. That's also important that you.
Speaker 2: Love to say the Internet doesn't exist to explain how
Speaker 2: people don't know things. But it's like they had libraries
Speaker 2: and newspapers and like other places to get information.
Speaker 1: For the context of this story specifically, you can't get
Speaker 1: information quickly. You can't just google something, Okay, yes, but.
Speaker 2: I just for listeners. Like pre Internet, we did know
Speaker 2: how to look things up. It was called going to
Speaker 2: the library. There's a thing called the Encyclopedia Britannica. Okay,
Speaker 2: maybe in this story there was a moment for the
Speaker 2: Encyclopedia Britannica, but I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, So where in Dover, England, which is the
Speaker 1: southern there's cliffs.
Speaker 2: There's cliffs. I've heard of the Cliffs of Dover.
Speaker 1: There's right across the channel from France. Okay, England is
Speaker 1: fighting Napoleon, and they always we're hoping to restore the
Speaker 1: you know, French royalists, the people who supported the now
Speaker 1: deceased king and queen.
Speaker 2: But they're you know whatever.
Speaker 1: But on the morning of February twenty first, eighteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: it's one am and in Dover on the streets, this
Speaker 1: very tired man in a red uniform and a gray
Speaker 1: coat appears exhausted. He looks like he's been traveling for hours.
Speaker 1: He bangs on the door of an inn middle of
Speaker 1: the night. No one answers the inn because it's one
Speaker 1: in the morning, but he's banging so much that the
Speaker 1: owner of the pub next door hears him and is like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's going on. And they rouse the night porter of
Speaker 1: the inn, and everyone gets together and goes inside. And
Speaker 1: this man in this red uniform says, I've been traveling
Speaker 1: and I have very very important news. I can't tell you,
Speaker 1: very important. I need pen and paper to tell the authorities,
Speaker 1: don't ask any more questions. And also I need a
Speaker 1: horse and a rider to carry a message to the
Speaker 1: Admiral at Deal, which is like the naval base nearby,
Speaker 1: And I'm also gonna need a carriage and four horses
Speaker 1: to take me to London as fast as possible, and
Speaker 1: they're like, great, we'll get on that. Seems like you
Speaker 1: have money for that. Yeah, you do have to pay
Speaker 1: for that, okay. I also thought this because at certain
Speaker 1: points in the story he's like, bring me refreshment, and
Speaker 1: like they bring him like wine, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Like to see, you surely have to pay for that,
Speaker 2: and you do, okay.
Speaker 1: At this point it's sort of caused this excitement, so
Speaker 1: more people are gathering the inns, like regular landlord and
Speaker 1: an agent for the newspaper, the Traveler are all gathering
Speaker 1: in uh, I guess like the inn lobby, being like
Speaker 1: something's happening here. A lot of newspapers have like not spies, reporters,
Speaker 1: I guess stationed at Dover because it's right across the
Speaker 1: channel from France.
Speaker 2: To get keep an eye on the keep an eye
Speaker 2: on the front.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this mysterious man in a red uniform. We find
Speaker 1: out his name is Lieutenant Colonel de Bergh, who's the
Speaker 1: aid to camp to Lord Carthcart, who's a British officer.
Speaker 1: And he writes a letter to the Post Admiral, saying
Speaker 1: he has dispatches of the happiest nature. Bonaparte was overtaken
Speaker 1: by a party of Cossacks who immediately slayed him and
Speaker 1: divided his body between them. The white cockade is universal
Speaker 1: and immediate peace is certain. So he's writing this letter.
Speaker 1: He's being like, I can't tell you what's going on,
Speaker 1: but he is, you know, writing this letter to the Admiral.
Speaker 1: The landlord is like one of my personal boys will
Speaker 1: deliver the letter to the Admiral and set off to
Speaker 1: London straight away. So Colonel de Burgh sets off to
Speaker 1: London in the carriage along the way while the letter
Speaker 1: is going to the Admiral. Ironically, you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a long journey to London several hours when he
Speaker 1: stops at an inn at Rochester to eat something. The
Speaker 1: landlord is the brother of the guy who owned the
Speaker 1: show in Oh funny, So like the landlords are brothers,
Speaker 1: which is like kind of cute, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because they have like a string of best Westerns.
Speaker 1: And yeah, truly, and like this landlord was always like
Speaker 1: I knew you were coming. I knew something was happening
Speaker 1: because there already was like a messenger coming through saying
Speaker 1: there was news, so people are already spreading the word,
Speaker 1: and de Burg sort of off the record, is like,
Speaker 1: by the way, Napoleon is dead.
Speaker 2: Does de Burg explain how he's like the one person
Speaker 2: who knows this. Yes, He's like, I feel like if
Speaker 2: Napoleon were killed and chopped into pieces by Russian cossacks, yeah,
Speaker 2: m in Russia.
Speaker 1: No, the Russian troops came to.
Speaker 2: Christ to find Paris. Yeah, in Paris, a lot of
Speaker 2: people would be talking about that.
Speaker 1: He has not a story. I mean, he clearly came
Speaker 1: to dover all be draggled. He came on a French
Speaker 1: ship and the friendship didn't want to come too close
Speaker 1: because he was worried. They were worried that the British
Speaker 1: would fire on them because they might think they were
Speaker 1: the enemy. And basically this happened very very recently, and
Speaker 1: he's just the first. Okay, he just is like I
Speaker 1: just made it, Okay, this just happened. Okay, someone, I
Speaker 1: mean someone has to be the first to say no totally.
Speaker 1: And he's chatting with these postboys along the way and
Speaker 1: sort of being like, I'm not supposed to say anything,
Speaker 1: but Pollyan is dead and these postboys are you know,
Speaker 1: probably running into London to tell the news their newspapers.
Speaker 1: He tells everyone his story is like, yeah, when I
Speaker 1: got here, even I had to walk two miles once
Speaker 1: I came ashore because the French crew didn't want to
Speaker 1: get too close to Dover, like it was a whole thing.
Speaker 1: He has this big story. As Colonel de Bergh starts
Speaker 1: getting closer to London, he seems to start getting nervous,
Speaker 1: nervous about being seen, which is kind of unusual. He
Speaker 1: needs to get into a like a coach, like a
Speaker 1: coach like a taxi basically, but he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: go to a coach stand that's too crowded. He goes
Speaker 1: he asks to go to like a less crowded coach stand,
Speaker 1: and he transfers carriage to coach like with the doors
Speaker 1: opened so no one can see him.
Speaker 2: Oh sneaky, which is just.
Speaker 1: Sort of like an unusual move. He had started this
Speaker 1: journey at one am. By the time he gets to London,
Speaker 1: it's about nine am, and he tells the driver to
Speaker 1: bring him to an address in London, and that address
Speaker 1: just so happens to be the home of Lord Cochrane. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is where these stories connect. So we have
Speaker 1: a lot of witnesses that will emerge later because spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a court case. But in case
Speaker 1: you're wondering, how we know what address he was delivered to, one,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to the cab driver later basically. But also
Speaker 1: what I think is very funny is there's a bank
Speaker 1: clerk named Richard Barwick who basically happened to see this
Speaker 1: like pretty suspicious man getting into this hackney coach, this
Speaker 1: like taxi from a carriage where the horses were like sweating.
Speaker 1: Like he's like, oh, this guy just came and something
Speaker 1: exciting is happening. And so he is a banker and
Speaker 1: he wants inside information, and so he follows this guy's
Speaker 1: carriage to be like, where's this guy going, what's he
Speaker 1: up to? And he eventually has to turn around because
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to be late to work at nine am,
Speaker 1: but he did as a witness. We have like a
Speaker 1: lot of witnesses to basically pin where Colonel de Berg
Speaker 1: was at anytime, and one of them was a banker
Speaker 1: being like, something exciting is happening.
Speaker 2: He needs those tips.
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, the boy beckoned over had delivered the letter
Speaker 1: to the admiral at three am, and the admiral is like, huh, well,
Speaker 1: that's interesting news if Napoleon died, But he's not like
Speaker 1: sure about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like you get false tips a.
Speaker 1: Lot, yeah, or you just want confirm you're not going
Speaker 1: to act on that. He sends the note along to
Speaker 1: with like a note of his own being like I
Speaker 1: don't know the providence of this to the Secretary of
Speaker 1: the Admiralty, okay, which is I think what he did
Speaker 1: the right thing, to be honest, That's.
Speaker 2: What I would do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile in London, word is spreading because merchants, dealers
Speaker 1: and brokers have all gotten a word from like postboys
Speaker 1: and the coaching and landlords and all the gossip. And
Speaker 1: so by the time the stock market opens at ten am,
Speaker 1: government bonds, which were pretty much at the same level
Speaker 1: they were at, you know, the weekend before, begin to jump.
Speaker 1: So Omnium, the government stocks that we had been talking about.
Speaker 2: What day of the week is it Friday? Okay?
Speaker 1: No Monday?
Speaker 2: Okay, yes, So they've just been chilling all week.
Speaker 1: They've been chilling all weekend, okay. Omnium, which had been
Speaker 1: at twenty six and a half. And again I don't
Speaker 1: know what these mean.
Speaker 2: Like conceptually or currency.
Speaker 1: Currency, okay, but just the stock was at twenty six
Speaker 1: and a half. Great, and then it rises to thirty
Speaker 1: and a quarter oh my goodness, which you know, it's
Speaker 1: a boost, but there's no confirmed, you know, official account
Speaker 1: of the Allied victory and Napoleon dying, So then stock
Speaker 1: prices begin to trickle back down. But then midday, this
Speaker 1: carriage drawn by four horses decorated with laurels appears in
Speaker 1: the city and men inside are wearing the blue uniform
Speaker 1: of French royalists, celebrating. They're riding over London Bridge. They're shouting,
Speaker 1: and they're scattering like pamphlets that say Viva le Roi
Speaker 1: and Vive le Barbon, and they're celebrating because Napoleon's dead.
Speaker 1: And then omnium jumps back up to thirty two and
Speaker 1: a half.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: Crowds are gathered outside the Mansion house waiting for the
Speaker 1: Lord Mayor to appear to make an official announcement because
Speaker 1: they're waiting to hear that Napoleon died. It's like a
Speaker 1: good day on Twitter.
Speaker 2: I so much of this reminds me of things going viral.
Speaker 2: But it's like until we hear.
Speaker 1: For sure, until we hear for sure, we don't know.
Speaker 2: But like right now it's on desmis yet, but it
Speaker 2: hasn't been in people yet.
Speaker 1: It's not secure. And then even by the end of
Speaker 1: the day, the government says, we don't think this is real,
Speaker 1: this is not confirmed. We think this is an elaborate hoax,
Speaker 1: and omnium goes back down to twenty six and a half.
Speaker 2: So this is all.
Speaker 1: That's exactly where it started, exactly where it started, all
Speaker 1: over the course of just literally one day, and people
Speaker 1: are really mad. I think people don't like to be
Speaker 1: taken for fools, no, and they don't like to get
Speaker 1: their hopes up. But also the stock market had been
Speaker 1: manipulated and people have money in there.
Speaker 2: And that's I mean, at least nowadays, like a felony.
Speaker 2: I think it's like stock market.
Speaker 1: It's something you're not supposed to do it.
Speaker 2: I have seen a few seasons of the show Billions.
Speaker 1: Oh I haven't.
Speaker 2: It's pretty good. Yeah, And I know that our listeners
Speaker 2: don't love it when I go on tangents, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to do a really quick one which is that
Speaker 2: they do an episode of a very serious not very
Speaker 2: serious but like within the context of the show, it's
Speaker 2: a big move where they do a stock market manipulation
Speaker 2: over the course of one day. But the company that
Speaker 2: they're trading is called Ice Juice. Oh no, just so stupid.
Speaker 2: And so it's Paul Giamatti very seriously being like, what's
Speaker 2: happening with Ice Juice?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is me going on a tangent. My
Speaker 1: husband and I have both declared that we're beginning a
Speaker 1: rewatch of John Adams. Oh have fun. So that that's
Speaker 1: where we are right now. Just visa Paul Giamatti, you
Speaker 1: have v Paul Jamatti, great, an iconic person. We love him.
Speaker 1: But the Stock Exchange a committee is formed very quickly.
Speaker 1: The Committee of the Stock Exchange meet and puts a
Speaker 1: subcommittee together and pretty immediately spring into action. Great, and
Speaker 1: we're like, we're really upset this happened. Yeah. They there's
Speaker 1: sort of three main things that they're going to be
Speaker 1: looking for. There's a two hundred and fifty pounds reward
Speaker 1: for anyone who knows the identity of this Colonel de Berg,
Speaker 1: because turns out Colonel de Berg is not a real person,
Speaker 1: no kidding. They're looking for the identity of those French
Speaker 1: guys who are celebrating in the carriage. Yeah okay, And
Speaker 1: they're looking at who made money in the stock market,
Speaker 1: like who bought suspiciously and then sold suspiciously really good timing.
Speaker 1: And with that last thing, they look at who bought
Speaker 1: and sold the most suspiciously. And it turns out it's
Speaker 1: a syndicate composed of Cochrane, Lord Cochrane, his uncle Cochrane Johnson,
Speaker 1: and delightfully their stockbroker.
Speaker 2: His name I am P. T. Barnum. What I'm pleasing
Speaker 2: to tell you is Richard.
Speaker 1: But his name is Dick Butt. B you T T
Speaker 1: two Tea's great Dick, but Dick, but what a dick Butt.
Speaker 1: So the three of them, Cochrane, Johnson, the uncle.
Speaker 2: Is Johnson, and Cochrane are not cock.
Speaker 1: Johnson and Butt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is who we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: He's his uncle, but he's one of those uncles. He's
Speaker 1: only eight years older than him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I have nieces who I can drink with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like a cool uncle. And he's described as
Speaker 1: a quote charmer and a rogue. But to me, it
Speaker 1: kind of seems like more of the rogue part and
Speaker 1: in bad ways. This uncle was governor of the island
Speaker 1: of Dominica, but he also like dabbled in the slave
Speaker 1: trade and then was forced to resign from the army
Speaker 1: for underhand financial dealings if you believe it. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: in debt for around sixteen pounds and the only thing
Speaker 1: that has sort of kept him out of debtors prison
Speaker 1: is he is a member of parliament. But it's like
Speaker 1: at this point, being a member of parliament, a lot
Speaker 1: of seats are notoriously corrupt where you can just bribe people,
Speaker 1: ok And he's like, had bought a notoriously corrupt seat.
Speaker 2: Oh you can, Okay, you can just bribe people to
Speaker 2: get into parliament, Yeah, to vote for you. Okay.
Speaker 1: But that's that's who this uncle is, just so you
Speaker 1: have a context of him. But is like a day trader,
Speaker 1: their investment advisor. And we know who Lord Cochran is.
Speaker 2: Are all three of these men British? Yes, okay, so
Speaker 2: they're manipulating their own stock exchange. I thought this was
Speaker 2: going to be like a prank by the French. No,
Speaker 2: that would be really fun, but it's not like in
Speaker 2: their war that they would do like like financial war
Speaker 2: like how I don't know. I feel like Russia is
Speaker 2: always trying to mess with us.
Speaker 1: I know these are just men trying to enrich themselves.
Speaker 1: Oh and at this point, I do want to point
Speaker 1: out and I've made it interesting. I've made a note
Speaker 1: in the document there is a difference between a scam
Speaker 1: and a hoax. Yes, and a scam is for personal
Speaker 1: financial benefits, yes, And a lot of this episode is
Speaker 1: in scam territory. But I do think there's overlap in
Speaker 1: the ven diagram, absolutely, And one of the key pieces
Speaker 1: of overlap in the venn diagram is whimsy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there are multiple costumes involved in and I think
Speaker 1: that that costumes brings it squarely over to hoax territory.
Speaker 2: I mean we are, like, you know, coming up with
Speaker 2: fake names and like getting on horses and riding around
Speaker 2: about it. So I think that is I think, all out,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you'll find out later. But the guy like
Speaker 1: Colonel Desberg had to like go to a costume shop.
Speaker 2: And this is our second costume of the episode because
Speaker 2: Cochrane wore that poor person.
Speaker 1: Costs costume and see you see how well it did
Speaker 1: he this conglomerate of the three of them, had bought
Speaker 1: a bunch of government stock just a few days before
Speaker 1: the hoax. And they didn't pay cash like we were saying.
Speaker 1: They sort of bought it on credit and the settlement,
Speaker 1: which means they would like have to pay February twenty third,
Speaker 1: And this all happened on the twenty first. Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's like you got to make your money before then.
Speaker 1: So it's like, well, that's really convenient timing. And Cochrane
Speaker 1: hadn't had any government securities as of February eleven, but that,
Speaker 1: you know, a week and a half before all this,
Speaker 1: Like he.
Speaker 2: Was not a frequent trader of these things, he all
Speaker 2: of a sudden took an interest in the stock market.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he in this one day made one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five the equivalent today of one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand pounds. It's like two at the time.
Speaker 1: The profit is like twenty five hundred pounds, but again
Speaker 1: that's almost like two.
Speaker 2: A lot of money.
Speaker 1: But and even more astonishing, there had been an order
Speaker 1: that But had tried to put through. Mister Butt had
Speaker 1: tried to put through to get five times as many bonds,
Speaker 1: but it hadn't gone.
Speaker 2: Through h so it was like they were really trying
Speaker 2: to do something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so pretty much immediately the Committee of the
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange is like, okay, so we're going to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on these three because that's suspicious.
Speaker 2: I mean maybe, sorry, we'll probably get to this, but
Speaker 2: like this seems really obvious, and like, did they think
Speaker 2: they wouldn't get hot?
Speaker 1: Well, it's not illegal to buy and sell stocks.
Speaker 2: Right, but insider treating is illegal, and like, I mean, okay.
Speaker 1: We will. It's not he didn't get any insider information
Speaker 1: at this point. It's not like he bought it because
Speaker 1: he knew Napoleon had died, you know, ten days earlier. Okay,
Speaker 1: And he will argue I'm getting ahead of ourselves, but
Speaker 1: I do think it's worth pointing out. Cochrane as he's
Speaker 1: defending himself, will argue, well, I bought government bonds. I've
Speaker 1: bought I've been in the stock market for years. I
Speaker 1: buy a lot of things, and I told my investor,
Speaker 1: when you can make a profit of one percent, sell them.
Speaker 1: And so I had them and then it went up,
Speaker 1: so we sold them. Okay, Okay, okay, I mean like
Speaker 1: you can believe. You're like, oh, well, my crime is
Speaker 1: that a week ago I bought these stocks and then
Speaker 1: when it was out of profit, I sold them. Like
Speaker 1: you're like, you can't get no.
Speaker 2: But they're obviously going to prove that they did the room.
Speaker 2: I mean, is you got to prove it though, Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: it's not so that's that's that's the part they think
Speaker 2: they won't be caught for. He's like, they're not going
Speaker 2: to know that it was us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the the fake French guys, the fake French royalists.
Speaker 1: The committee finds them pretty immediately because they basically just
Speaker 1: trace the carriage to an inn. And the landlord's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a letter from this guy, this regular named Sandam,
Speaker 1: who's like asked me to arrange a carriage. And this
Speaker 1: one of his housemates, Murray, who's the other guy who
Speaker 1: did this, had been like loudly asking around. He had
Speaker 1: brought he had brought home a blue French officer coat
Speaker 1: and had his wife make the white cockades like the
Speaker 1: Royalist signals, and he shared a house with like other
Speaker 1: lodgers and people are like, why are you doing this?
Speaker 1: And he's like, in order to deceive the speculators, and
Speaker 1: then he was penniless before and then right after this
Speaker 1: had a bunch of fifty fifty you know, you have
Speaker 1: like fifty pound bills, and he pretty much loudly he
Speaker 1: had asked this guy named mister Vin, who was not involved,
Speaker 1: to meet him at a coffee shop and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I have a great business opportunity.
Speaker 2: You can get it on.
Speaker 1: And Vin is like that sounds illegal. I don't want
Speaker 1: to have anything to do with it. But Vin did
Speaker 1: know French, and so he wrote out like Viva Viva
Speaker 1: le Roy. He's like, I'll do the French phrases. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll help you translate because they don't have internet, they
Speaker 1: don't have a Google Translate.
Speaker 2: Okay, I can there like French English Dictionary. Well, Dana
Speaker 2: forgot about books.
Speaker 1: But they confess almost immedia great.
Speaker 2: But also they don't seem like both smartest got No, they.
Speaker 1: Did not cover their tracks. They will claim that they
Speaker 1: did this completely independently of the de Burg thing. He
Speaker 1: was like, we were just trying to increase our own
Speaker 1: stock market holdings.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make any sense, but okay.
Speaker 1: No it doesn't. And there are some tenuous links between
Speaker 1: these people and Cochran Johnson to make it seem like
Speaker 1: it was. That is not the case, but the courts
Speaker 1: actually won't try to prove that because that's at this point.
Speaker 1: They're like, we only really need to prove the link
Speaker 1: between de Borg and Cochran Cochran Johnson. But again, these
Speaker 1: fake French guys did not do very well. Immediately confessed
Speaker 1: they found them and with this two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pound ransom, someone comes forward with Colonel de Bergh's identity
Speaker 1: and it is a guy named Charles Random de Barringer.
Speaker 1: He is so Random's so random, de Barringer a cool name.
Speaker 1: De Barringer is described as he's forty two years old.
Speaker 1: He's described as an adventurer, which I just think is
Speaker 1: kind of like a euphemistic rich person with no.
Speaker 2: Job or poor person with no job.
Speaker 1: And this guy with no job, yeah, his family actually
Speaker 1: very interestingly had lost all of their property because they
Speaker 1: had settled in America, but they had been loyalists during
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War, so then they came back to England
Speaker 1: with nothing. He is heavily in debt and he is
Speaker 1: like confined as quote an insolvent debtor under the rules
Speaker 1: of the King's Bench, which means he's basically under local
Speaker 1: house arrests. Okay, like he can only stay in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And is it the neighborhood in Dover, No, it's it's London.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to.
Speaker 2: That's why he didn't want to be seen. I get it.
Speaker 1: He serves as a volunteer in like a core of
Speaker 1: sharpshooters under this guy named Lord Yarmouth. He wears a
Speaker 1: green uniform, which is very important.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: But as they're all trying to investigate this Colonel de
Speaker 1: Burgh situation, they find the red uniform that Colonel de
Speaker 1: Bergh had been wearing, like wrapped up and it had
Speaker 1: been thrown in the Thames.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was about to say you should get
Speaker 2: rid of it, but he did it. I guess it
Speaker 2: must have washed out. They're not like ragging the tan
Speaker 2: a fisherman finds, Okay, But they find it and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is you know something doesn't have his name, No,
Speaker 2: but it hasn't proved that it was his the specific insignia.
Speaker 2: And again all of these witnesses on the route saw him.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like the innkeepers, like multiple innkeepers, multiple coachmen,
Speaker 2: multiple postboys, and all of them in court will point
Speaker 2: at the barringer and be like, that's him, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: that's him, and this is what he was wearing. It's
Speaker 2: a lot of witnesses. And also they find him trying
Speaker 2: to escape the country at length, and he has banknotes
Speaker 2: that specifically can be traced back to Cochrane, Cockran Johnson.
Speaker 2: And but even without the Internet, even without the Internet
Speaker 2: they can trace banknotes.
Speaker 1: They can't which actually I do think tracing banknotes is
Speaker 1: probably easier back then because I think you had to
Speaker 1: write them out.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: But suspicious, Yeah, Lizzie Loogan, if you had to guess
Speaker 1: who is guilty in.
Speaker 2: This case, who do you say? It is? All of them? Right?
Speaker 1: You mean the guy who famously hates following rules and
Speaker 1: does false flags when he's in battle, who hates regulators
Speaker 1: in the admiral You think he would be involved in
Speaker 1: something tricky.
Speaker 2: But are you asking me who was found guilty or
Speaker 2: who I think actually did it?
Speaker 1: Who you think actually did it? I think they all yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, correct.
Speaker 2: The Cochrane, Cochran, Johnson, but the four I'm gonna call
Speaker 2: them like the actors, yeah, and the faked burg guy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's they were all in on it.
Speaker 1: They're all in on it. Lord cochrane is not going
Speaker 1: to stand.
Speaker 2: For that, okay. He He's like, my uncle and my
Speaker 2: friend were in on it, but I wasn't.
Speaker 1: He writes a preemptive voluntary affidavit, uh huh, trying to
Speaker 1: clear his name, being like, I am literally completely innocent
Speaker 1: of this. The fact that I am even being involved
Speaker 1: in this is evident of a vast conspiracy against me.
Speaker 2: So he is doing the move that his superior once
Speaker 2: did of being like court martial me, court marcial mean,
Speaker 2: come at me, bro, I mean like, I will take
Speaker 2: a polygraph. It's like when people are always like, well,
Speaker 2: I'll take a polygraph. The crazy thing is he's like,
Speaker 2: I'll take a polygraph.
Speaker 1: Writing this voluntary affidavit, but because it's a voluntary affidavit,
Speaker 1: it's like they're no legal consequence.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but that's it.
Speaker 1: It's like he's like, I'll take a polygraph, dude, and
Speaker 1: it's like, no, you're just doing it. You got it
Speaker 1: off Amazon and is a real polygraph, Like if you
Speaker 1: lie under a voluntary affidavit, you're not going to be
Speaker 1: held in contempt, okay, But his story is that Look,
Speaker 1: on the morning of February twenty first, I was out
Speaker 1: to breakfast with some people and a messenger came to
Speaker 1: me and said, Hey, someone's waiting at your house. My
Speaker 1: brother is sick on his ship.
Speaker 2: And this is true.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, oh, if someone has like
Speaker 1: a message for me my brother about my brother, I
Speaker 1: want to go back quick. So he raced back. He
Speaker 1: returns it's not about his brother. It's the Bearringer in
Speaker 1: a green uniform and he's familiar with de Bearnger. He's
Speaker 1: like a sharp, you know, in the low core, and
Speaker 1: he's wearing the green uniform that he would normally have
Speaker 1: and he's asking for Cochrane's help in getting him a
Speaker 1: position on a ship that he's going to command at
Speaker 1: some point.
Speaker 2: And isn't he hander local arrest? How can you get
Speaker 2: on the ship? I think maybe he's probably maybe his
Speaker 2: Like he's like, once I paid these, once I pay
Speaker 2: the debts.
Speaker 1: Like maybe because I you know, will you give me
Speaker 1: this exception? Like he needs a favor from this military hero.
Speaker 1: And he came in uniform. According to Cochran because he
Speaker 1: like expected that he would go straight on board the ship, okay.
Speaker 1: And Cochrane is like, okay, well that's not going to happen,
Speaker 1: but you should go meet with like your commanding officer,
Speaker 1: like maybe i'll like write you a note or just
Speaker 1: help you. Like he sends him off to meet with
Speaker 1: his commanding officer and is like, well, you shouldn't like
Speaker 1: go out in your full uniform, so here borrow my
Speaker 1: black great coat, okay, because that's another sort of suspicious
Speaker 1: detail that people call will call out later. It's like,
Speaker 1: so this guy showed up and then left wearing one
Speaker 1: of Lord Cochrane's coats, okay, which if he had been
Speaker 1: wearing a red unim that then he rolled up and
Speaker 1: threw in the Thames, he would need a new coat.
Speaker 1: He would need a new coat to borrow from someone.
Speaker 1: But Lord Cochrane is arguing, well, it would be weird
Speaker 1: to wear your green dress uniform just casually out. So
Speaker 1: here have my coat, okay. And with regards to the
Speaker 1: stock market, he says, my stock group has bought and
Speaker 1: sold government stocks. Before we do we buy a lot
Speaker 1: of stocks. We had bought some government stocks and we
Speaker 1: had instructed our advisor, mister butt that when it makes
Speaker 1: one percent profit, automatic sell.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay, I mean that part. I mean the timing
Speaker 2: of when they bought it is suspicious, but the timing
Speaker 2: of when they sold it is not suspicious because the
Speaker 2: stock went up. Yeah okay.
Speaker 1: But also if you think that the I'm just going
Speaker 1: to say, you think that the war is over and
Speaker 1: that Napoleon is dead, you might think that like it'll
Speaker 1: go higher when it's even officially announced, right, like it's
Speaker 1: only going go up selling then even like before it's
Speaker 1: announced is like kind of like we know this as
Speaker 1: a hoax, we better sell quick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, Like if he was under strict
Speaker 2: orders to sell as soon as it hit one percent, he.
Speaker 1: Could just be like well yeah yeah, and that's what
Speaker 1: they said.
Speaker 2: Well okay, But also like what if they think what
Speaker 2: if they think it's a hoax but not one that
Speaker 2: they planned. Also if it's like, oh my god, this
Speaker 2: stock that I happened to own is like on a bubble.
Speaker 2: This rumor is unsubstantiated. There's a fifty to fifty chance
Speaker 2: that Napoleon's not dead. I better sell and get out
Speaker 2: while the gettin's good. Yeah, not illegal, not illegal, but
Speaker 2: they totally planned it.
Speaker 1: Okay, but not illegal, but not like Look, you can't
Speaker 1: get mad at me. But the thing is, it's pretty
Speaker 1: suspicious that de Bergh, who also happens to be Debarringer,
Speaker 1: did this thing in Dover and immediately came to Lord
Speaker 1: Cochrane's house, changed his coat and then left the country
Speaker 1: with banknotes from you tried to leave the country.
Speaker 2: He didn't was. Yeah, it's just suspicious.
Speaker 1: But the thing that would make it not suspicious is
Speaker 1: if du Bourg wasn't de Bearringer.
Speaker 2: Sure, two similar looking guys.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just two guys. And de Behringer is going
Speaker 1: to insist on an alibi defense, saying that all of
Speaker 1: his servants will attest to the fact that he never
Speaker 1: went to Dover and stayed around town. Even his lawyer
Speaker 1: will be like before the statement will be like, for
Speaker 1: the record, I do not think this is the best defense.
Speaker 1: But this is what my client says, because again, all
Speaker 1: of these people, so he met all these people along
Speaker 1: the way and they all are like that they identify
Speaker 1: him in the courtroom with a positive ID. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: like a bunch of people being like that's him. You're
Speaker 1: gonna get convicted, and he had one guy's like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but like his whiskers were different, because like sometimes he
Speaker 1: had whiskers and sometimes he shaved them. But like that's
Speaker 1: the closest someone's like, yeah, I think that's him, except
Speaker 1: he had shaved. No, that's him, he just shaved. But
Speaker 1: the big thing that Lord Cochrane really holds onto is
Speaker 1: the fact that de Barringer when he showed up, even
Speaker 1: if he was to Berg, who knows what he had
Speaker 1: been doing in Dover, he was in a green coat
Speaker 1: when he came to my house.
Speaker 2: Okay, So is there like a version of events where
Speaker 2: to Barringer does the hoax and is then like, you know,
Speaker 2: it would be really convenient for me to be on
Speaker 2: a ship while all of this happens. Why don't I
Speaker 2: change coats, try to get a job, yeah, and then
Speaker 2: leave town. And Cochrane is none the wiser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I mean that's what he will say. He'll
Speaker 1: be like, I don't know, maybe he changed into a
Speaker 1: green coat. But again, Lord Cochrane knows this guy. If
Speaker 1: he had shown up to his house in a red
Speaker 1: Aid DeCamp uniform, he would have been like, that's weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not your uniform. Yeah, so his story like relies
Speaker 1: on the fact that he was not wearing a red
Speaker 1: aid DeCamp uniform. Okay, he would have had to change
Speaker 1: at some point, and he's like he definitely was in
Speaker 1: green when I saw him. Sure, and all of his servants,
Speaker 1: Lord Cochrane makes all of his servants also submit voluntary
Speaker 1: affidavits even though he.
Speaker 2: Sounds really voluntary when your boss is making you do it,
Speaker 2: and he wrote them out, Oh sure, sure, sure. But
Speaker 2: the problem is the prosecution brings a bunch of witnesses
Speaker 2: that all identified to Barringer in court, and everyone says
Speaker 2: he was in a red uniform, including the like taxi
Speaker 2: cab driver who dropped him off. So he would have
Speaker 2: had to Cochran have his green coat like under his
Speaker 2: red coat and like run to the Thames and back.
Speaker 1: And also like even in the book I read about
Speaker 1: this hoax is like logistically maybe he had like changed
Speaker 1: in the carriage, Yeah, but he didn't have like a
Speaker 1: suitcase with him that was big enough to hold two
Speaker 1: uniform and it was like a very short, bumpy carriage
Speaker 1: ride that would have been like very hard for him
Speaker 1: to change uniforms. The guy who ran the military surplus
Speaker 1: uniform store remembers the Behringer coming in and buying the
Speaker 1: red Aide de Camp uniform and when the guy running
Speaker 1: the store was like, do you want to rent it?
Speaker 1: You're like, you don't need to buy it, and he's like, nope,
Speaker 1: I'm buying it, and then he identifies it as the
Speaker 1: one that was bunched up and thrown into the Thames.
Speaker 2: Yeah. See, you gotta get a friend to do your
Speaker 2: shopping for you when you're planning a hoax.
Speaker 1: Gotta get a friend. This trial goes on all day. Literally,
Speaker 1: you think, like, oh, trials like break for whatever. The
Speaker 1: judge at this point is aware that it involves a
Speaker 1: lot of like professional and government people who might not
Speaker 1: be able to come the next day, so he just
Speaker 1: does not break.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The defense doesn't start until ten thirty at night, oh Jesus, which,
Speaker 1: to be fair, it's one of these situations where you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: even if they are guilty, court case was that is
Speaker 1: like a really challenging position to be and everyone is tired,
Speaker 1: and you're starting your defense yeah at ten thirty at night,
Speaker 1: and like goes until two in the morning.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I would be like mistrial or like you know,
Speaker 2: you can appeal appeals court. Yeah, Cochrane's lawyer even in
Speaker 2: his like final defense statement, is like, okay, look, maybe
Speaker 2: even Cochrane got mixed up and he was so used
Speaker 2: to seeing his friend to Barringer in a green uniform
Speaker 2: that he like forgot and just like misremembered what color
Speaker 2: of the uniform was. And that's not a crime, No
Speaker 2: it's not. But lo and behold he is found guilty. Okay,
Speaker 2: they are all guilty. All found guilty. Okay.
Speaker 1: Oh in the banknotes. Their excuse for like why they
Speaker 1: had banknotes was he was like, yeah, well, Cochrane, Johnson
Speaker 1: owed de Barrenger money because de Barringer had like worked
Speaker 1: on his pleasure garden and then like that money. We're
Speaker 1: all we're all, you know, we all owe each other money.
Speaker 1: People venmo each other, people venmo each other. So like,
Speaker 1: is it crazy that I gave my investment manager money
Speaker 1: and then he gave it to someone he owed money
Speaker 1: to and then he gave it to him, Like whatever, sure,
Speaker 1: all right, they're all found guilty. Uh huh, he is sentenced,
Speaker 1: Lord Cochran, I mean they all are. But like Lord Cochrane.
Speaker 1: Who's I say, they all are but Cochrane Johnson has
Speaker 1: fled the country.
Speaker 2: Oh, another sure sign of innocence. Yeah, when you flee,
Speaker 2: he has.
Speaker 1: Made it up. He is wherey to go Dominica, where
Speaker 1: he was previously the governor, classic place to go. He
Speaker 1: is going to try to reclaim his property that has
Speaker 1: been sold to pay off his debts. Unsuccessfully, but he
Speaker 1: does make it out okay. But they're all found guilty,
Speaker 1: sentenced to twelve months in prison, a thousand pound fine.
Speaker 1: And the pillary. Do you know what a pillary is?
Speaker 2: Is that like the stocks?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's where you are put in like a device
Speaker 2: that sort of clamps your head and your wrists. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then people throw fruit at you. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like public shaming, public shaming, except Lord Cochrane is
Speaker 1: a war hero. Yeah, and like a hero of the
Speaker 1: popular people.
Speaker 2: All of his like parlor.
Speaker 1: He's one of those like parliamentarian who like talks big
Speaker 1: talk but never actually got anything done. But people do
Speaker 1: love him.
Speaker 2: I also feel like he has the reputation where if
Speaker 2: I'm a local, I'm like, yeah, I could throw a
Speaker 2: tomato at this guy, and the moment he gets out,
Speaker 2: he's gonna beat my ass, Like I'm not making an
Speaker 2: enemy of this. Do you throw a tomato like he will.
Speaker 1: Fucking beat me. The government, I think pretty smartly does
Speaker 1: away with the pillary They like wave that because they're like,
Speaker 1: I think the public will actually respond badly to this,
Speaker 1: because it's very humiliating. And again he's like a naval
Speaker 1: hero and a champion of the people. But he is
Speaker 1: kicked out of the Navy, stripped of his naval ranks
Speaker 1: and position, all of his honors. Genuinely sad like he's
Speaker 1: like things are torn out down from Westminster Abbey. He's
Speaker 1: kicked out of Parliament, sent to prison for twelve months.
Speaker 1: He is I wanted kicked out of Parliament. He is
Speaker 1: immediately re elected by his constituents. Oh incredible, which is great.
Speaker 2: Even the other people withdraw so that he can run
Speaker 2: on a post. It's because I he'p beat there.
Speaker 1: But Cochrane also just another example of himself just getting
Speaker 1: in his own way. He just cannot keep his mouth
Speaker 1: shut in a way that really hurts him. At his sentencing,
Speaker 1: like before they actually sentence him to twelve months in prison,
Speaker 1: he like is in front of the judge, and he's
Speaker 1: actually like really level headed and even keeled, and like, look,
Speaker 1: my defense lawyer like didn't touch on this, Like they
Speaker 1: didn't even call my servants to the stand, and like
Speaker 1: he like lays out his defense in a really level headed,
Speaker 1: easy way, but the judge is like, sorry, no retrial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he kind of goes nuts. He gives a speech
Speaker 1: basically accusing everyone of conspiracy to sabotage him. It's the
Speaker 1: government and or the Admiralty, all of the servants and witnesses,
Speaker 1: and the judge and his own defense team. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he just kind of gets really angry again. And you're
Speaker 1: doing this behavior where you're like this is the kind
Speaker 1: of guy who would do this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like it doesn't make you seem more credible
Speaker 2: when you start making up other crimes yeah that supposedly
Speaker 2: are going on, like to say I was swindled versus
Speaker 2: like I was framed, you know, like I got roped
Speaker 2: into this thing. Okay, Yeah, like your uncle or whatever
Speaker 2: convinced you to buy some stock when he knew he
Speaker 2: was gonna be manipulating it, Like that is more feasible
Speaker 2: than like so your uncle and your financial advisor have
Speaker 2: been scheming against you, and they knew that they would
Speaker 2: get caught for this crime, and they wanted to bring
Speaker 2: you down too, And.
Speaker 1: Your defense team also wanted to make sure you'd be convicted.
Speaker 2: They are willing to go to prison to make sure
Speaker 2: you also go to prison.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, he had made all these enemies among
Speaker 1: the admiralty for flippancy and insubordination, and he's like, and
Speaker 1: now they take their evenge. Several months into his prison sentence,
Speaker 1: he gets a contraband rope and escapes from prison.
Speaker 2: Dude literally climbs down.
Speaker 1: From the window, gets a concussion, like it's not like
Speaker 1: a clean landing, but he is fine. He immediately goes
Speaker 1: to Parliament to try to get his seat.
Speaker 2: Back and they're like, you know, you're back. He gets
Speaker 2: rearrested immediately, and he kind of admired this guy, honestly,
Speaker 2: like what huts book.
Speaker 1: He immediately gets rearrested and they put him in like
Speaker 1: solitary confinement, like I wasn't all without windows. But that
Speaker 1: again is like the insane sort of delusional thinking of
Speaker 1: him being like, I'll just go to Parliament and they'll
Speaker 1: let me back in that I think is why he
Speaker 1: did do this crime. Yes, and to be very transparent
Speaker 1: orians disagree.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's not settled.
Speaker 1: It's not fully settled, but I will say there are
Speaker 1: a lot of holes in his story. That it's a
Speaker 1: lot of circumstantial evidence, and I could definitely see the
Speaker 1: argument made that you could say like there was a mistrial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, bad proof.
Speaker 1: And again a lot of the evidence is circumstantial, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty convincing. I would say, like his story that
Speaker 1: like I got this note, you know, and I of
Speaker 1: course rushed back because it could be my sick brother
Speaker 1: from breakfast. Where it's like, if I'm de Bearringer and
Speaker 1: I just arrived at the house of this lord who
Speaker 1: I'm about to ask a favor from and he's at breakfast.
Speaker 2: Would I send one of his servants to go bother him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I send a note being like urgent, come
Speaker 1: back now, I expected you to be home, where it's
Speaker 1: like that is what you would send if you were
Speaker 1: like in a conspiracy with someone. Yeah, and all these
Speaker 1: people testify like part of his story was when Lord
Speaker 1: Cochrane is like, well, I didn't want him like out
Speaker 1: and about going to see his supervising officer and his
Speaker 1: green drill coat. But all these people testify that they're like, no,
Speaker 1: wearing your green coat is not weird at all. The
Speaker 1: officer testifies, like, no, it would have been totally normal
Speaker 1: for him to wear his coat, and his landlady is like, no,
Speaker 1: he comes in wearing his green coat.
Speaker 2: It's not that weird.
Speaker 1: And again, his entire Lord Cochrane's entire personality is just
Speaker 1: like thinking the rules don't apply to him and using
Speaker 1: costumes and trickery to try to make as much profit
Speaker 1: as he can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he'll he'll fly a false flag.
Speaker 1: He'll literally fly a false flag and try to make money.
Speaker 1: And I mean not to pathologize him, but it's like
Speaker 1: if you are someone who grew up with a noble
Speaker 1: family that then had money problems, like money has been
Speaker 1: a thing that you're touchy about, like want to make
Speaker 1: as much as he can. Financial regulation, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: is really new, and I think he just thought.
Speaker 2: He would get away with it. I mean, I do
Speaker 2: think oceans are now battlefields, like maybe stock markets are
Speaker 2: now oceans where it's like hey, man, like fairs fare,
Speaker 2: like shooters, shoot, I'm going in, I'm gonna do a
Speaker 2: little get what I can. Who's it hurting except you know,
Speaker 2: other people? But yeah, and also who's it hurting other
Speaker 2: fat cats investing in the stock market? Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 1: He will spend the rest of his life saying he's
Speaker 1: innocent of this, I thus wrong fully convicted. Okay, so
Speaker 1: before I should also mention before all of this, like
Speaker 1: actually before, like you know, the day even the fake
Speaker 1: Napoleon is dead hoax. He had married a teenager, oh Fantos,
Speaker 1: who was twenty years younger than he was, and it
Speaker 1: was one of those situations where it's like we eloped
Speaker 1: and she had a baby, but we definitely eloped. Oh,
Speaker 1: and then they'll get married more officially later. What I
Speaker 1: like is that out of their six kids, one of
Speaker 1: their daughters is named Lizzie No, and they have a
Speaker 1: son named Arthur Lizzy and Arthur Lozian Arthur and his
Speaker 1: two other sons not Arthur. Arthur's a good boy, but
Speaker 1: his two other sons will get into debt problems, but
Speaker 1: not Arthur, which I think is not Liz and not
Speaker 1: Lizzie to the best of my knowledge, although I didn't
Speaker 1: look into her financial future, he has this sort of
Speaker 1: astonishing second act or correct yeah.
Speaker 2: I think ACTE was his naval career act to intermission
Speaker 2: for a hoax that he didn't do parliament or didn't
Speaker 2: write anything in Parliament. I keep forgetting.
Speaker 1: He is like, great, I got kicked out of the navy,
Speaker 1: which is the one thing I'm really good at. I
Speaker 1: need to make money. What am I going to do?
Speaker 1: South America is like, hey, we're trying to get some
Speaker 1: independence from Spain and Portugal. Here, can we hire you
Speaker 1: to come and like navy for us? Oh yeah, He's
Speaker 1: like great.
Speaker 2: He becomes like a Chilean hero. Amazing.
Speaker 1: He's like he fights for the Chilean independence against Spain.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: They're like street in Chilean named after him and like statues,
Speaker 1: and then he does it for Brazil against Portugal and
Speaker 1: like before you're like he did this, like he will
Speaker 1: again spend like the rest of his life being like
Speaker 1: they didn't pay me enough and they still owe me money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but still it's fun. It's great, it's fun. I
Speaker 2: want him on a boat. He's on a boat.
Speaker 1: He's fighting for Chile, he's fighting for Brazil. I mean
Speaker 1: they win, yeah, good for them. He really is like
Speaker 1: a Chilean and Brazilian hero. I believe if you're a
Speaker 1: Brazilian or Chilean listener, I would love to hear the
Speaker 1: insider's perspective on him. But again, he was a naval
Speaker 1: commander for the independence of our navies, and then they'll
Speaker 1: fight for the Greeks against the Ottomans. But by this
Speaker 1: point he's really lost his touch and he's like, does
Speaker 1: a bad job there and is actually like fully shown
Speaker 1: up by his second in command. But Chile and Brazil
Speaker 1: does a great job. Great comes back to England, keeps
Speaker 1: trying to clear his own name. It doesn't work until
Speaker 1: King George the fourth dies and then King William, the
Speaker 1: next king is on the throne. And like for con text,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to anchor this, King William is right
Speaker 1: before Queen Victoria. It's her oh okay okay. And the
Speaker 1: George who died is the son of the Bridgerton George King.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that if like I'm helping you
Speaker 1: like costumes.
Speaker 2: Because Bridgerton King is also Hamilton.
Speaker 1: King's Hamilton King, Hamilton King, one of our sons.
Speaker 2: This is how Americans understand British history. Sorry, British listeners,
Speaker 2: this is what we need. But now you know with
Speaker 2: William more liberal whigs are in office and then his
Speaker 2: it literally takes his wife. They're they're keep trying to
Speaker 2: like push it through Parliament and it gets like gridlocked
Speaker 2: and it literally being it being like his uh like
Speaker 2: to pardon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it literally takes his wife going to the king
Speaker 1: and being like please, you have the power to do
Speaker 1: this unilaterally, can you just pardon him? Yeah, because he's
Speaker 1: like a war he's like a celebrated navel here okay,
Speaker 1: and he had already done these amazing things internationally, and
Speaker 1: you're like, like he's one of ours, we.
Speaker 2: Want credit for him.
Speaker 1: He got him back, and so King William pardons him
Speaker 1: and he gets all of his navy rank back, and
Speaker 1: I'll kind of spend the rest of his life getting
Speaker 1: pretty like cushy naval jobs and increasingly nice titles and
Speaker 1: wasting moneies on his bad inventions.
Speaker 2: Oh fantastic.
Speaker 1: Like so actually, during all this court case situation, he
Speaker 1: was like, I'm actually just working on a lamp. I
Speaker 1: don't even care about going back to see I'm working
Speaker 1: on a new lamp.
Speaker 2: I love lamp.
Speaker 1: He loved lamp. He's like, I'm making a more efficient lamp.
Speaker 1: It's very important. I'm working on this. That's actually it's
Speaker 1: not even about the money that captains don't get on
Speaker 1: chips anymore. It's not about the spoil system. I need
Speaker 1: more time to work on my inventions and work on
Speaker 1: my lamp. But he's working on an oil lamp and
Speaker 1: they're gonna transition to gas lamps like immediately, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. And he also tries to design a new
Speaker 1: type of steamship that's a huge failure. It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: And he's terrible inventions and apparently he spends twenty thousand
Speaker 1: pounds on inventions with no return. And just for context,
Speaker 1: remember the prophet allegedly ill gotten in this Napoleon hoax
Speaker 1: was twenty five hundred Oh goodness. So it's like he's
Speaker 1: just throwing money at his terrible inventions.
Speaker 2: I mean, I will say, like there's something to be
Speaker 2: said for betting on yourself. Yeah, like he he he
Speaker 2: believed in Cochrane, but he does not stop rallying against
Speaker 2: the people he thinks wronged him. She has like a
Speaker 2: long vendetta against the judge of the case, Lord Ellenborough,
Speaker 2: and he keeps maintaining that he was framed by the
Speaker 2: government and the Admiralty or both. He also tries to
Speaker 2: sue the prosecution witness his name was Crane, who was
Speaker 2: the Hackney coachman who had driven de Burgh to Cochrane's house.
Speaker 2: Like he had testified like yeah, yeah, this guy.
Speaker 1: Up in a red uniform and dropped him off at
Speaker 1: Cochrane's house. And he's like this Blaggert shall not besmirch
Speaker 1: my name any longer. And he keeps trying to lobby
Speaker 1: the government for half pay for the time that he
Speaker 1: was kicked out of the navy, like the back pay
Speaker 1: that he had, he like keeps fighting for that for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. He dies at eighty five
Speaker 1: years old in eighteen sixty and even though his banner
Speaker 1: and insignia like did get restored to the chapel in
Speaker 1: Westminster Abbey before his funeral, he never got his back
Speaker 1: pay that he thought he was out okidding. But in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight, so eighteen years after he dies, in
Speaker 1: his will he had granted He's like, and when I
Speaker 1: get my backpay, it go to my grandson. And in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight a grant of five thousand pounds was
Speaker 1: made to Lord Cochrane's grandson by this point, the new
Speaker 1: Lord Cochrane, which is said to be like the arrears
Speaker 1: of half pay without interest. So it's like his vindication.
Speaker 2: Why because he's a kame hero. Okay, I think they're
Speaker 2: just like, let's this guy's been dead for eighteen years,
Speaker 2: but for some reason we still feel like paying him.
Speaker 1: Well. His family kind of kept being pests about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: They're like, we we've been betrayed by our government. All
Speaker 1: he's done is fight for his country and this is
Speaker 1: the pay we get. And you know he did he
Speaker 1: did fight for the country. Sure, sure, but it is
Speaker 1: kind of funny that they did. He did get that
Speaker 1: back pay even though I think he was guilty.
Speaker 2: I think so too.
Speaker 1: Again, everyone else in this story ends up pretty badly.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned before, Cochrane Johnson flees, tries unsuccessfully to
Speaker 1: keep his property in Dominica from being sold for his debts,
Speaker 1: and he dies a fugitive in eighteen thirty three, but
Speaker 1: is in and out of prison heavily in debt. But
Speaker 1: poor butt de Barringer actually does seem pretty okay.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean he does have a flare, so you know.
Speaker 1: After he's served his punishment, he stayed with his like
Speaker 1: sharpshooter unit and then started working as the manager of
Speaker 1: a sports stadium in Chelsea, teaching shooting. It seems like
Speaker 1: he was like a pretty good use your skills. He
Speaker 1: sort of like became a gym teacher. But at Cranmore House,
Speaker 1: the sports stadium that he ran, he held an quote
Speaker 1: Olympic festival in eighteen thirty two to commemorate Queen Victoria's coronation,
Speaker 1: and another in eighteen thirty eight. And what's interesting is
Speaker 1: the modern Olympics as we know it weren't you know,
Speaker 1: created until eighteen ninety six. So he just sort of
Speaker 1: created this thing that was like the precursor to the
Speaker 1: modern Olympics, which, as we are recording, are happening right
Speaker 1: this very.
Speaker 2: Much, right at this very moment. Figure Skating tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Figure Skating Tomorrow. He still gets into some financial problems
Speaker 1: and he dies in eighteen forty five, but.
Speaker 2: Not terrible, no, as far as these things decent legacy.
Speaker 1: He started in financial problems, So didn't there you go
Speaker 1: get way worse?
Speaker 2: You know who? I This whole episode is giving me
Speaker 2: such an appreciation for Martha Stewart because she was like, peop,
Speaker 2: you know, the target of such misogyny. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: she did do insider trading. Yeah. And then she did
Speaker 2: go to prison and she took it like a woman,
Speaker 2: and she didn't try to whine and complain and do vendettas.
Speaker 2: And now everybody loves her so true.
Speaker 1: She owned her truth.
Speaker 2: She owned her truth. She got out and she was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I still do exactly what I've always done, but like
Speaker 2: I'm a little bit chiller now and I'm gonna hang
Speaker 2: out with Snoop Dogg and post thirst traps and everyone's like, cool,
Speaker 2: you're forgiven. Literally no one cares that you did financial crimes.
Speaker 1: And Lord Cochrane again maintained that he was innocent for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. And I think just waited
Speaker 1: long enough that people are like, oh, that was one day,
Speaker 1: Like we don't really care about that anymore. I think
Speaker 1: he just waited until people didn't care that much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because probably, I mean, did Napoleon actually die eighteen
Speaker 2: twenty one, Okay, so like Napoleon has been for real dead,
Speaker 2: so who cares about that time he was fake dead?
Speaker 1: It was fake dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also find it kind of a fun twist of
Speaker 1: fate that like, thank goodness he was kicked out of
Speaker 1: the British military because then he helped the Chilean military,
Speaker 1: the Chilean Navy and the Brazilian Navy. Yeah, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have done that if he was still in the British Navy.
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
Speaker 1: But it just goes to show that, like, you.
Speaker 2: Can't keep a good man down, but I think you can.
Speaker 1: I really do think if this guy had like played
Speaker 1: the game a little yeah, and like didn't bad mouth
Speaker 1: his superiors constantly at every turn, he would there would
Speaker 1: be statues of him everywhere.
Speaker 2: He'd be like the king of the world.
Speaker 1: I think we would know his name. I think like
Speaker 1: he would be like, we know, you know Horatio Nelson.
Speaker 2: Do we though? Because I don't know who that is,
Speaker 2: all right, I'm like, I think.
Speaker 1: There are some like admirals that we know.
Speaker 2: I know Matthew Perry Washington, Admiral Matthew Perry. That is
Speaker 2: the name of the actor from Friends and An Admiral. Okay,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: It's like he really did get in his own way.
Speaker 1: He was really cocky. I think he conchran. He was
Speaker 1: really cochrane. I really think he just thought he would
Speaker 1: get away with it. And then I also kind of
Speaker 1: think he convinced himself he was innocent.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, That's the thing about I mean, it's interesting
Speaker 2: because this guy obviously was not a total liar, like
Speaker 2: not everything in his life was a hoax. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: like if you ever confront a compulsive liar with the truth,
Speaker 2: like they just double down. Yeah, and they convinced themselves,
Speaker 2: Like the Firefest guy is like completely delusional.
Speaker 1: I really do think like on his grave he would
Speaker 1: be like, no, I was wrongfully, you know, accused in
Speaker 1: a conspiracy by the admirals and government who hated me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think in his heart of hearts he believed that
Speaker 1: even though it's not true. Even though hey, Danish Swartz's
Speaker 1: personal opinion is at its mantrue.
Speaker 2: It's also Lizzie Logan's personal opinion. Lizzie, where can the
Speaker 2: good people find you? The good people can find us
Speaker 2: at at Hoax the Podcast on Instagram. We love hearing
Speaker 2: from you, and uh, it's it's fun to chat, Dana.
Speaker 2: Where people find you?
Speaker 1: You can email Hoax the Podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: I will read those emails and get back to you
Speaker 1: sometimes slowly but sometimes very quickly, depending on how busy
Speaker 1: the rest of my life is. And you can follow
Speaker 1: me on Instagram and TikTok at Danish Swartz with three
Speaker 1: z's at the end.
Speaker 2: Listen to Noble Blood.
Speaker 1: Listen to Noble Blood. Please and pre order the book
Speaker 1: The Arcane Arts, which is out in May. And if
Speaker 1: you pre order it, that's actually huge help. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening.
Speaker 2: Please hoax responsibly Bye. Hoax is a production of iHeart podcast.
Speaker 2: Our hosts are Danish Schortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive
Speaker 2: producers are Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer
Speaker 2: Rima L. Kali and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk.
Speaker 2: Our theme music was composed by Lane Montgomery. For more
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.