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The State of Scotland - The Old Jetty at Culross

This hybrid Scottish/American flag was flying at the jetty at Culross today, making me wonder if self-styled Scottish President, Alex Salmond had abandoned membership of both the U.K. and the European Union and had persuaded his friend Donald Trump to make Scotland the 51st state of the U.S.A?

 

However the answer is that you can find hybrid flags of Scotland/USA, Scotland/Brazil, Scotland/Chile and Scotland/Greece flying at that jetty at various times. This is to commemorate the connection between Culross and the charismatic, Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, 1st Marquess of Maranhão. His links to Culross go back to old mining days when he was involved in the design of the Caissons system which was used here to extract coal from under the River Forth. As a Member of the UK Parliament he was responsible for the abolition of underground mine working for women and girls. Cochrane was a senior British naval flag officer and radical politician. He was a daring and successful captain of the Napoleonic Wars, nicknamed Le Loup des Mers ('The Sea Wolf') by the French. His life and exploits served as one source of inspiration for the naval fiction of nineteenth and twentieth-century novelists, particularly C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey.

 

Cochrane, was dismissed from the Royal Navy in 1814, following a conviction for fraud on the Stock Exchange. In 1818, Cochrane patented, together with the engineer Marc Isambard Brunel, the tunnelling shield that Brunel and his son used in the building of the Thames Tunnel in 1825–43. He then served in the rebel navies of Chile, Brazil and Greece during their respective wars of independence. I think the US flag comes from him once capturing a town whilst falsely flying the Stars and Stripes from his ship. In 1832, he was pardoned by Britain and reinstated in the Royal Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral of the Blue. After several further promotions, he died in 1860 with the rank of Admiral of the Red, and the honorary title of Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom and is buried in West Minster Abbey. Cochrane was an early supporter of steamships. He attempted to bring steamship Rising Star from Britain to Chile, but its construction took too long; it did not arrive until the war was ending. In 1851, Cochrane received a patent on powering steamships with bitumen. He seems to have been a larger-than-life character!

 

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Uploaded on April 21, 2012
Taken on April 21, 2012