COSMÉ DAMIÁN CHURRUCA

Why have mentioned Commodore Cosmé Damián Churruca in detail? Because his life ran in tandem to that of Admiral Lord Nelson and gives a little history of the Spanish Navy of the same period.

Commodore Cosmé Damián Churruca was one of Spain's great sailors of the time although a doomed captain at Trafalgar. He combined Spanish pride and strong religious beliefs with superb seamanship and naval professionalism. He was determined to have the best ship and crew in a Spanish Navy that always seemed to moved too slowly to thoroughly train its sailors for their duties. His final message to his crew before Trafalgar - "eternal glory for those who will die in battle, but summary execution for any who shirked the fight " - was far harsher than Nelson's direction that "every man is expected to do his duty"

In November 1803, almost two years before the disastrous and fatal mid-afternoon of 21st October 1805 off Cape Trafalgar, Churruca had requested the command of the San Juan Nepomuceno because he wanted to turn it into as efficient a ship as he had done with earlier commands.

Fleet commanders in all European navies allowed their ship captains little leeway for disobedience on board the uncomfortable, unhealthy wooden warships in which, for months on end, officers and men were cooped up in small and unsanitary spaces. Both Churruca and Nelson displayed the all the mixed characteristics of hardness and humanitarianism. Nelson's last words of concern and tenderness for Lady Hamilton came from the same man who, earlier in his career at sea, hanged disobedient crew members.

Churrucas' last letter, written on 11 October 1805 in his cabin in the San Juan Nepomuceno, to his brother is filled with seamanlike assessments of the enemy and the situation of the fleet for the battle ahead but also touched on his innermost worries about his poor financial situation and family needs at home. Like Nelson, he had unpaid debts. Churruca had often been paid irregularly or not at all during the four years of his naval career leading up to Trafalgar. Indeed, he went into that battle with his officer's frock coat tattered and worn.

Churruca was worried about his bride of only five months, Dofia Maria Dolores de Luis Apodaca, daughter of Vicente Apodaca, another commodore. Churruca went to sea and to his death at Trafalgar with the assurance that 'a rich friend' (unnamed) in El Ferrol, Spain's Galician naval base, would help her if such financial aid was required. As indeed it was. Nevertheless, the day before his funeral, Churruca's widow had to write a humiliating plea to Carlos IV from El Ferrol that her husband be paid the same back salary and pension awarded to other senior officers killed at Trafalgar. Her pension was granted as well as back pay that some say was due to Churruca from as far back as 1800. As with Nelson, Churruca was plucked away in the prime of life - the great English admiral at forty-seven, Churruca newly-wed at forty-five.

Nelson came to Trafalgar with a record of numerous brilliant sea victories before achieving the rank of Vice Admiral. As a Commodore, Churruca was never more than chief-of-staff to an admiral in charge, but undoubtedly he equalled Nelson's best ships' captains in professionalism and style. He came to his last command after a brilliant career in the awkwardly handling two- and three-decker wooden warships of his day. The most famous of these was Conquistador, the third ship to carry that name in the Spanish Navy before 1800, in which both his seamanship and skill in training a crew were the outcome of a lifetime of working and fighting at sea. Under his command Conquistador survived a heavy gale off Oran, Algeria on 16th May 1799. According to the records in the naval archives at Madrid,'... three or four other [ships] entered the port of Cartagena dismasted ... [but he] was able to return his ship to the fleet within 40 days ... perfectly repaired.'

Churruca's prowess as a ship-handler impressed France, Spain's ally, even though the French Navy found it hard to learn lessons of seamanship from the Spanish. When Churruca was attached to the Franco-Spanish squadron at Brest he was often on duty in Paris as a consultant to the French Navy and technical institutes on naval science, especially after Spanish ships of the line were assigned to the French Navy. "The reputation of the Conquistador was so great," says Manuel Marliani in his classic study of the Spanish captains of Trafalgar written half a century after the battle, that "he was considered as a model by the French sailors."

Churruca opposed the offer of fifteen of Spain's ships of the line to France under the San Ildefonso Treaty of 1796 especially since those sent included his beloved Conquistador. In time he came to dislike both the French and the upstart Corsican (Napoleaon) who by 1800 had become First Consul of France. 'But his sadness knew no limits,' wrote Marliani 'when he had to separate himself from his beloved ship in which he had, in a certain manner, created changes after a course of three years of constant effort.' Churruca returned to Cádiz as a passenger in the ship of the line Concepción, arriving there on 25 May 1802. He asked for - and received - permission to return to his birthplace in the small Basque village of Motrico. He there busied himself with family and financial matters. His home there remains in his family to this day.

Churruca also requested authorization from the king 'that he might detain himself'in Madrid for four or five days also to resolve personal affairs in the summer of 1803. By November of that year, he had returned to sea in command of the San Juan Nepomuceno. He requested her in place of the Principe de Asturias, the ship to which he was originally assigned as captain. Prior to his leave in May 1802 and his return to active service 18 months later, Churruca was consistently at sea or busy with the fleet as he had been since 1799. In that year, he was promoted to full Captain and was made Chief-of-Staff to Vice Admiral Jose de Mazarredo's squadron.

Nevertheless, home leave in Motrico was no rest and Churruca soon returned from the sea. The local citizens poured honours on him including a short stint as Mayor in a town that knew earlier Spanish naval heroes. The leading maritime families of the Basque province of Guipiizcoa had been involved with shipbuilding, fishing and sea commerce for centuries. Motrico was also the birthplace in 1656 of Admiral Antonio Gaztafieta, the first great architect of the new eighteenth century Spanish Navy. Not far from it lies the equally tiny villages of Guetaria and Zaraiiz. From Geutaria, 250 years before Churruca's birth, came Juan Sebastián Elcano, the first man to circumnavigate the earth, in 1522. His historic, tiny and fragile ship Victoria was launched from Zaraiiz. Shipbuilding in the region extended back to the fifteenth century, when the plentiful oak forests of that time restricted agriculture and the growing of olive trees.

If oil for the lamps of late medieval Spain could not be acquired at home then small ships constructed by the energetic seamen of Motrico, Guetaria and Zaraiiz would bring back the whale oil from as far away as the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. These voyages strained to the limits the ships, navigational skills and stamina of Basque sailors at the dawn of the age of exploration. The list of famous Guipiizcoans who added to the splendour and performance of Spain at sea begins with Elcano and continued through Churruca. From Pasajes, another village of Guipiizcoa, came Admiral Bias de Lezo, the defender of Cartagena in 1741 against the British. So too, from Zumárraga, yet another village of the region came Miguel López de Legazpi, senior civil servant of the Spanish crown in Mexico City, chosen by Philip II to complete the conquest of the Spanish Philippines in 1564. Legazpi remained as governor of the Philippines and died in Manila, never to see his homeland again.

In his biography of Elcano, the English writer Mairin Mitchell sees these tiny Basque villages as a lyrical kind of haven for their great seamen, who drove the ships and men to the far corners of the globe to make new discoveries and conquests and to open new markets for Spain. 'They look down from the heights of heroes onto the pleasantly protected urban life ... whose unruffled waters would have seemed Elysium to them at any moment in the tempests of their lives at sea.' For Churruca at the beginning of his career, there would not be such a dreamy growing-up. Then as now, becoming a naval officer meant joining the naval academy at Cádiz, there to start the long gruelling path of shore and sea training which could led to a coveted command at sea. All of Churruca's letters home from 1778 until his final correspondence shortly before Trafalgar, indicate that 'dreamy' was far from his response to life at sea. Rather, his 168 surviving letters to his family, twenty-seven years of personal correspondence from cadet to commodore, reveal him to be tough-minded, filled with self-examination and a deep sense of duty and honour. He was seventeen when he wrote to his father in 1778:

You will know that the French Gazette carries [information] that six English ships of the line, some frigates, continue cruising throughout the Bay of Biscay, observing the Spanish armament. There is no doubt that an armament like the one in Cádiz (to which they are adding navios) has no equal in Spain. They explain why war [will be] bloody with the English ... it is the time, my father, that we all wish to be men or be finished like the wretched [who won't fight]. It would please me very much if more of the peasants would volunteer for the King's service. It is the most honourable career. No one has to tell me that he has a better career than I, nor how they may better service the King,...

           Your most humble son, Cosine.

Cosmé Damiáin Churruca y Elorza was born on 21st September 1761 into a Motrico family already distinguished by the role of its forebears in the military and civilian life of the province as far back as the fifteenth century. At fifteen, after a short period of study in the Conciliar Seminary at Burgos, he joined the newly expanding Armada Española as a cadet, graduated as a midshipman in 1778 and joined his first ship, the navio San Vicente, as a sub-lieutenant. Having completed his basic sea time, Churruca then fought in the long and unsuccessful Spanish blockade of Gibraltar, 1779-1782. During that event, he showed not only his skill in gunnery, but personally rescued the crews of some of the floating batteries which the Spanish launched unsuccessfully against the British defences of Gibraltar. On returning to Cáidiz in 1783 Churruca embarked on a period of advanced studies in mathematics and navigation. In time, this would bring him almost as much fame in the fleet as his skills in seamanship.

Another early letter, written to his father from Lansana on 12th February 1782 (near the end of Spain's naval involvement in the American Revolutionary War) not only speculates on the movement of Admiral Rodney's fleet, but relates what happened to Churruca in port from 'the strongest wind since a year ago, from which we surely might have been crippled ... I am sure that yesterday being on duty when another frigate was breaking its moorings gave me a bad enough day.' The 'bad enough day' resulted from a larger frigate almost colliding with his own but doing much damage to her nevertheless.

This letter, like so many others of his, reveals to us technical information about ships' histories that apparently is not recorded in the official documents. One is surprised to read here that as early as 1782, Santisima Trinidad was completely refitted and coppered a short thirteen years after her launching in Havana. Churruca writes:
'The squadron includes four navios . . . taking in enough water that they needed docking. Santa isabel went to Cartagena to be careened, the navio Trinidad is entirely refitted and coppered and soon we would find her at [our] disposal and able to sail with us, though she still lacks artillery and rigging.'

At the naval school at El Ferrol in Galicia, Churruca continued to study astronomy, mathematics, geography and mechanics until 1788, when he was assigned to the first of several naval scientific expeditions to Spanish America that consumed his career until the mid- 1790s. Under the command of Captain (later Vice Admiral) Antonio de Córdoba, this New World expedition completed a re-examination of the dangerous waters of the Straits of Magellan. Churruca's diary of this voyage was published in Madrid in 1795 as an appendix to a book about the first voyage of Fernando Magellan. It was this publication which brought Churruca to the attention of the Spanish public as well as to a wider community of his fellow officers.

A second scientific expedition sailed from Cáidiz on 17th June 1792. It consisted of two brigantines, Descubridor and Vigilante, bound for the Spanish-owned island of Trinidad in the eastern Caribbean. A small observatory was built on the island to mark meridians for navigational purposes and to help in the making of new maps of the Spanish Antilles, especially the island of Puerto Rico.

These important activities were interrupted by the outbreak of war between the new French revolutionary regime and the royalist states of Western Europe, including Spain. The Spanish naval units already in the Caribbean prepared to defend their territories against possible French attack. For the Spanish Navy, there was much irony in a brief alliance with Britain and a declaration of war against France. Although that country had been an ally of Spain in all the major naval battles of the eighteenth century, for a brief time at the beginning of the French Revolutionary War (in 1793-95) it was the enemy of Spain.

After 1796, royalist Spain soon found itself once again an ally of France with Napoleon as first consul. As observed earlier, Churruca served in senior capacities in Paris and with the Ocean Squadron at Brest, alongside a French naval ally for whom he had little respect. As with many of his contemporaries, Churruca nurtured a lifelong dislike and suspicion of the French, not only as allies but as competent ship-handlers. In his case, these attitudes towards the French appear throughout all the years of his correspondence home. The following is one of the very few letters he wrote at sea, this time on board the frigate Santa Barbara, referring to the failure of a joint Spanish-French blockade to prevent three English ships from reaching Gibraltar:

The certainty is that if the French had done what they were ordered, we would have taken to Cádiz three other enemy frigates that entered [the Straits of Gibraltar] the following day with powder and artillery troops. In Gibraltar, we found out later that one of them was a warship of 38 guns, the other a packet ship of 28 guns, and the third a merchant ship. You can see what a nice little action we have lost. I can assure you that in all my life [at that time, he was only twenty-one] I have not had a worse time than that of the night of the 19th. With the sole consideration that we lost such a neat fight and a certain victory ... the fault of others, I was so disgusted that my bad mood has lasted until now. The same [was true] with the other officers, and the commander [ship's captain] was extremely vexed that night.

Churruca agrees that the failure of the French to coordinate with his squadron could have been even worse. 'I give thanks to God for having been released from the shame of seeing myself a prisoner [after] having lost my frigate.'

Given his lifelong antipathy to the French it is small wonder that Churruca was so unhappy about fighting with them as allies at Trafalgar. In 1782 he did not like the prospect of the peace that was about to come although it did not take place formally until the following year with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

I have never heard so much talk of peace as in these days ... if this news turns out to be certain, it is good for the nation; hut for those who make their career with sword in hand, it [the talk] is not good.

In 1794, worn out from his labours, Churruca - not always physically strong and beset with a melancholia that would increase in later life- was invalided home.

A complete version of Churruca's scientific and navigational studies of the early 1790s was finally published in 1802 and reproduced again in the Almanaque Nautico. Among Churruca's less-publicized activity on behalf of navigation was his improvement of the maritime chronometer, a super-accurate timepiece essential for calculating longitude. Today, the name of Churruca is preserved in the Straits of Magellan region at the entrance to a canal with the more prosaic name of Smyth.

The navio San Juan Nepomuceno which Churruca asked to command, was already thirty-seven years old when he first came aboard in 1803, a warship not excessively ancient by the longevity standards of ships of the line of that time. For example, Santisima Trinidad was thirty-four years old in that year. Churruca's movements at this time are outlined in detail, with some frank comments, in a letter to his brother from El Ferrol on 13 February 1804. He reveals much of the pre-Trafalgar composition of Spain's navy as well as its substantial unpreparedness for new hostilities:

Dear brother,
In the last mail arrived an order from the Generalissimo Godoy (the Prince of Peace) relieving me of the command of the Principe with that of the San Nepomuceno confirmed, accordingly as I had requested it - and authorizing me without reference to the regulations - to arrange the interior fittings and to arm her to my entire satisfaction.

The rear admiral of this squadron is the squadron's chief, Cisneros, who must come from Cartagena. Gravina has left Madrid to command the Cádiz squadron that must be twelve navios, and his rear admiral is Escaflo, who is here and has orders to go to Cáidiz] by land. The Cartagena squadron should be made up of six navios under the command of Vice Admiral Juan de la Nava, and the one here of eight. I doubt that one can find crews for a strength of twenty-six ships that make up the three squadrons, despite the fact that we have sent some 1200 seamen to Cáidiz from Galicia. ... In Cádiz, the trades in that place are being given one million pesos fuertes for [ships'] supplies. But here in El Ferroll there is neither flour, nor meats, nor wine, nor olive oil, nor firewood, nor charcoal for the forges. Iron is very scarce, and in such a way that there is a lack of the most essential articles; it is impossible that one can confirm the departure of the squadron until next winter.

Subsequent events proved otherwise, and the El Ferrol squadron had to join the fleet at Cádiz earlier than expected. Nevertheless, Churruca, who was on the spot and given authority to restore and provision the San Juan Nepomuceno as he saw fit, was saying that the El Ferrol based navios would not be ready for sea until a year after this letter had been written. From his vantage point in El Ferrol in the north-west corner of Spain, Churruca was optimistic about the ability of Cádiz merchants (on Spain's south coast) to victual the fleet before Trafalgar. Also unknown to him at the time of this letter was the fact that, in the following year, the French fleet would join the enlarged Spanish one at Cádiz. As a result, the already hard-pressed resources for the many Spanish navios could not handle the even larger fleet replenishment needs for food and ammunition of no fewer than thirty-three navios, French and Spanish.

Churruca took over the San Juan Nepomuceno, which one mid-nineteenth century Spanish source says was 'newly docked'. Churruca the ever-conscientious naval captain was determined to train her crew to become a fighting unit as he had done earlier with the ship's company of the Conquistador. The fact that he was not able to completely prepare his crew for action, is more than hinted at in the harsh alternatives he offered his men at Trafalgar and from his own gloomy pre-battle assessment that the Spanish would be defeated by the better-disciplined British.

It is likely that Churruca was prevented from shaping up his crew, not only because of the sudden formation of the Combined Squadron of the French and Spanish fleets at Cádiz, but also because of the lack of manpower for crews, a result of malaria epidemics that had raged through the maritime regions of southern Spain since 1802. Churruca's harsh admonishment of his men before Trafalgar had much to do both with his previous record as a firm disciplinarian and because of the part he played as a member of the fleet commission that investigated the Cape St Vincent defeat 97 as has been said, a battle the Spanish should have won. Churruca wrote a hasty dispatch to his cousin on 28 March 1797 with the news of his appointment to the commission.

I write you in haste. At the moment I am charging our of bed to go and live in the León Island for in this mail we have a royal order naming me attorney general [in Spain at that time, the term meant ex-officio representing the king] with the rear admiral [not named] of the Armada and Commodore Juan Jose Garcia to form a judicial board relative to the last naval battle [Cape St Vincent] with the three having equal responsibility.

Churruca was understandably proud to serve and to be at his country's call to investigate a defeat at sea that was going to besmirch his navy's name and that of Spain. In the rest of the letter this concern emerges loud and clear:

The commission honours me greatly. But it is very delicate and [will have] much difficulty. We will have much adventure with it. But the honour of the corps, that of the nation, the expectation of all of Europe, all excite, or should excite, justice and action in us. Let us then do our duty and let the chips fall where they may.

The revelation of his great pride in his service and his nation as well as his lifelong sense of honour makes these perhaps the most moving words in all the letters Churruca wrote to his family over nearly thirty years.

British and Spanish historians differ in their accounts of Churruca's last day, as well as of the fighting record of his ship at Trafalgar. One British historian claims that Churruca's ship was put out of action and dismasted in fifteen minutes, with Churruca dead on his quarterdeck. It is true that his ship took an early pummelling immediately after the action began since she was in the lead of the French-Spanish squadron. Not only was Churruca mortally wounded on his deck but along with him, one other officer and 100 of the crew were killed; a further 7 officers and 150 crew also had been wounded. The British clearly wanted to deliver a coup de grdce to this ship but did not do so in fifteen minutes. At two o'clock in the afternoon, half way through the battle and after Churruca had been killed, his ship was still being pounded by seven English ships. According to a Spanish source, Churruca died when he returned to his quarterdeck after 'adjusting a gun' on the forecastle. His right leg was mangled by shot, a wound that haemorrhaged so badly he knew he would not live.

He had made personal pre-battle arrangements with his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Jose Ruiz Apodaca, who was on board, for his replacement as captain. On 19 October, two days before Trafalgar, Churruca advised him, '...write to your parents that you are about to enter a battle that will be bloody. Say farewell to them, that my fate will be your own'. After Churruca was killed, Apodaca approached Lieutenant Joaquin Ibáñfiez de Corbera to assume command to be told in turn by him that First Lieutenant Joaquin Núñez Falcón was the most senior officer left alive and that he should take command. Núñez then gathered together three other officers in addition to himself, including Ibáñez de Corbera, who made a joint decision to surrender the ship.

It was now impossible for the San Juan Nepomuceno to extricate herself from the battle. The close-in salvos from the many British ships firing into the Spanish vessel had seriously crippled her. Most of the rigging had disappeared; only the sails on the fore mast remained in order and the rudder was unworkable. The San Juan Nepomuceno surrendered to the Dreadnought and was towed to Gibraltar where she remained until 1808 as a floating museum in memory of Churruca, who was held in high esteem by the Royal Navy. Churruca's cabin was maintained intact as he had lived in it and kept closed to all but official guests, his name inscribed on the outside cabin door in large gold letters. His former ship entered the Royal Navy as the San Juan until she was paid off in 1818, three years after the end of the long Napoleonic Wars. This British recognition of Churruca as a Spanish naval hero was yet another example of the magnanimity that the English and Spanish extended to each other after battle.

Churruca's funeral was held a month after his death, on 21 November 1805 in the chapel of San Fernando de Esteiro in El Ferrol and in 1812 he was posthumously promoted to vice admiral in the Spanish Navy. Where Nelson's family descended into relative obscurity soon after his death (and in 1945 finally lost the pension granted to it by Parliament in 1805 as one of the cost-cutting measures of Prime Minister Clement Attlee's postwar Labour government), the Churruca family down the years has remained prominent in Spanish public and professional life, including the navy.

Because Commodore Churruca died childless, members of the Churruca family who have been active in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, are the descendants of his brother Julián. In 1909, King Alfonso XIII conferred the title of Conde de Morrico (Count of Motrico) on Evaristo de Churruca y Brunet the grandson of Julián, a brilliant public works engineer, for his modernization of port facilities in Spain and the Spanish Caribbean and his re-design of the harbour of Bilbao, one of Spain's busiest ports. Juliáin's son Jose Churruca, a distinguished mid-nineteenth century Basque jurist, author and congressman, had eight children, one of whom, Alejandro, spent fifty-eight years in the Armada Española between 1846 and 1904. He served as captain general of the major naval base at Cádiz and was promoted vice admiral in 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War.

The title Count of Motrico presently is held by the family of the wife of Jose Maria de Areilza y Martinez Rodas, born in the Basque province of Vizcaya. Appointed the youngest mayor of Bilbao at twenty-seven in 1937, Areilza later became one of Spain s most distinguished retired diplomats. In 1975, he was the first foreign minister of the restored Bourbon monarchy of Juan Carlos I. In 1987 as a distinguished essayist and author, he was elected a Member of the elite Royal Spanish Academy. Señora Areilza, who is the granddaughter of Evaristo de Churruca, inherited the title after her brother was killed during the Spanish Civil War. (In Spain, the female as senior in line, inherits the title.) Doña Areilza's son, Enrique Areilza Churruca, a corporation lawyer in Madrid who has served as an officer in the navy reserve, will inherit the title from his mother. Because the Churruca family name and reputation have been synonymous with the town and seaport of Motrico since the time long ago when Juan de Pérez Churruca first resided there in 1415, Alfonso XIII approved the name Motrico for the family title.

In the small world of Guipiizcoan families of renown, the Churruca ties extend further to a family association in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century with Antonio Gaztafieta, the great Basque admiral and ship designer. The Areilza family archives not only contain Commodore Cosm Damhin Churruca's many letters written to his family during a lifetime in the navy, but some of Gaztafieta's technical notes and drawings from the early years of the eighteenth century when he was designing the 60-gun San Luís class of navios. Since Trafalgar, the Spanish Navy has always named a warship Churruca, the current being the former United States Second World War destroyer Eugene A Greene, one of many former US warships acquired by the Spanish Navy during the early 1970s. A resolution passed by the Spanish Cortés (Parliament) stipulates that a ship of the Armada Españoia will always bear the name Churruca.
   SAN JUAN NEPOMUCENO

Because of the later titles and honours bestowed on his descendants and himself after death, as well as his record as one of Spain's leading seaman, Cosmé Damián Churruca's place as 'scholar, hero and man' is secure in the firmament of great Spanish and European sailors and warriors of the age of sail.

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