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commanding the Royal Navy brig-sloop Childers, a diminutive warship with a single gun-deck and eight small guns on either side. He was standing in towards the entrance of Brest harbour, the mouth of the port being guarded by two artillery forts. There was hardly a breath of wind and the flood tide was carrying the Childers towards the harbour entrance. When the ship was less than a mile away there was a white puff of smoke from one of the forts, the hiss of a cannon ball overhead, and then a plume of spray just beyond the brig-sloop. Assuming that there was some error of identification, Barlow ran up his ensign. At this the fort on the other side of the harbour opened fire as well and he found himself caught in a resolute crossfire. His only advantage was that the Childers was so small as to be a difficult target at that range. None the less, a 48 -pound shot hit the upper deck, exploding into three fragments and doing superficial damage. The tide was not due to change for some hours and Captain Barlow owed his escape to a light breeze which sprang up and enabled him to carry his ship clear of the port. He returned home with the questionable honour of being the first man to engage the enemy. 26
    On 1 February 1793, the French Convention put hostilities on an official footing by declaring war on England and Holland. The news reached London on 4 February and five days later George III wrote from Windsor to Lord Grenville, describing it as "highly agreeable to me". 27
     
    It was not, perhaps, highly agreeable to the Earl of Dundonald but it certainly opened up opportunities for placing his remaining sons in the army or the navy. Young Lord Cochrane had made a sufficient ass of himself to rule out the army, however much his father might have preferred that to a naval career and his uncle, Alexander Cochrane, had at least entered his name as a midshipman on the books of several small and undistinguished vessels. It was not much, but it was the only expedient at hand. The 9th Earl had not even the money to buy his son's uniform but the first weeks of war were a time of great patriotic feeling and the nation's leaders were more ready than usual to encourage martial ambition among the young. Lord Hopetoun was approached, and the Earl managed to borrow
    £100 from him. Part of this was laid out in the purchase of a gold watch, which Cochrane received with the remains of the money and a dour warning that it was the only inheritance he need expect.
     
    The frigate Hind, lying off Sheerness, was the first available ship on whose books the young man's n ame had been entered. Lord Coch rane's grandmother happened to be going to London at the time and, since he had yet to prove his capacity for looking after himself, he was entrusted to her care. With the final lecture on the spartan virtues of the "res angusta domi" echoing in his mind, he watched the vistas of Culross, Edinburgh, and Scotland, fade behind him. On 27 June, in charge of an uncle who saw him safely from London to Sheerness, Cochrane and his luggage were ferried out to the frigate, which lay at anchor in the river estuary, the sails reefed on her tall masts.
     
    Even the general air of public indignation against France could not disguise the deep preoccupation with hard cash which dominated naval affairs. It was a fact of war that enemy ships were far more often captured than sunk. In the first year of the new war, for example, the British captured thirty-six French ships of which twenty-seven were incorporated into the Royal Navy. The French took nine British ships in return. Subject to the ruling of the Admiralty prize courts, the value of the ships captured from the enemy was shared, however unequally, between captains, officers, and men, as well as the admiral who happened to hold general command of the area in which the seizure had occurred. Though it was not mentioned in the patriotic ballads, it was a commonplace observation among those who knew naval life at