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Clan Cochrane (Tartans, Crest) and The Story Behind

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Cochrane

Clan Crest: A horse passant, Argent

Clan Motto: Virtue Et Labore (By valour and exertion)

Origin of Name: Territorial

Region: Lowlands

Historic Seat: Lochnell Castle, Argyll

Clan Chief: The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Dundonald

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Cochrane Clan history

This family's ancestry is thought to have begun with a Viking warrior who settled in Renfrewshire in the ninth century. There are several theories as to how this Viking's descendants got their name.

An early family member was praised as a 'brave fellow' by his leader after fighting so fiercely in a battle. He would have pronounced him 'coch ran' in the Gaelic they spoke. Another Gaelic twist on the words 'battle cry' or 'the roar of battle' leads to Cochrane.

The three boars on the chief's shield represent the game of a Cochrane warrior who killed three wild boars who were terrorizing the countryside.

Thomas Cochrane built Auchindoun Castle in Moray in the mid-15th century.

Allan Cochrane of Cochrane inherited the Cochrane lands from his father Robert in 1456. The lands were then granted to him by James II through a charter. Before his death in 1594, William Cochrane of that ilk added a tower to the manor house.

Cochrane Castle was the name at the time.

When William Cochrane of that ilk had no male children in the early 1600s, the chiefship was jeopardized. He insisted that whoever married his daughter Elizabeth take the Cochrane surname and coat of arms as their own. The first Earl of Dundonald, William's grandson and heir, was appointed in 1669.

However, it was Elizabeth's eldest son Alexander who became a colonel for Charles I and established the recurring 'fighting Cochranes,' a line of chiefs who consistently served their country with distinction, both at sea and on land. The most famous of these was Thomas, the tenth Earl, who took command of a brig and only fifty-four men in 1801 and boarded and captured a Spanish frigate with thirty-two heavy guns and 319 crew.

Clan Cochrane Places & People

Clan Cochrane Individuals

Cochrane-Johnstone, Andrew James (1767-1833)

Andrew James Cochrane-Johnstone's criminal activities before becoming an MP included tyranny, extortion, slave trading, gun running, and pimping while Governor of St Dominica. Following his time in Parliament, he orchestrated a massive stock exchange fraud in 1814.

Cochrane and his criminal associates made large stock market purchases just before a 'French Royalist' arrived at Dover with the great news that Napoleon had been killed. Government stocks skyrocketed, and Cochrane sold all of his at higher prices. When the 'French Royalist' disappeared, the market crashed. Cochrane was discovered to be the perpetrator of the fraud, and he also fled to Europe.

His nephew, Admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane, was a Captain at the time and was named as one of Cochrane's co-conspirators. Despite his obvious innocence, his political opponents took full advantage of the situation.

Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, Marquess do Maranhão, GCB, ODM (Chile) (14 Dec. 1775 – 31 Oct. 1860)

Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald, and Anna Gilchrist gave birth to Thomas Cochrane in Annsfield, near Hamilton, South Lanarkshire. He spent much of his childhood in the Fife coastal town of Culross.

From 1778 until his father's death in 1831, Thomas was known as Lord Cochrane, and after his father's death, he was known as the Earl of Dundonald. Thomas was listed in the books as having been a crew member on four Royal Navy ships beginning at the age of five, thanks to his uncle's (Alexander Cochrane) influence. This early start would pave the way for a distinguished career in the Royal Navy.

Thomas married Katherine Francis Corbet Barnes, a noted beauty and orphan more than twenty years his junior, in 1812. They had six children together. During the Napoleonic Wars, Cochrane earned a reputation as an aggressive, daring, and successful Captain, earning him the nickname Le Loup des Mer, or 'Wolf of the Seas' by the French Navy.

However, Lord Cochrane was dismissed from the Royal Navy in 1814 on charges of stock exchange fraud. As a result, he became a mercenary, serving in the rebel navies of Chile, Brazil, and Greece during their respective independence wars. Chile was where he received his Order of Merit.

By 1832, Cochrane had been re-instated into the Royal Navy as Rear Admiral of the Blue. Cochrane was promoted several times during the rest of his navy career, and he retired only a few years before his death with the rank of Rear Admiral of the Red and the honorary rank of Rear Admiral of the United Kingdom.

Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, died on October 31, 1860, while undergoing surgery for kidney stones, at the age of 84. His career and exploits in the navy influenced naval fiction of the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey.

Main image: Captain John Dundas Cochrane (1793-1825).

After serving in the Napoleonic Wars, the illegitimate son of Andrew James Cochrane-Johnstone set out to walk around the world. He hoped to confirm the existence of a land bridge between Russia and Alaska, as well as a North-West passage over America, by using a horse sled as little as possible.

He had been robbed of everything he owned except two waistcoats when he arrived in St Petersburg eighty-three days after leaving Dieppe. He wore one as a kilt and completed the final 96 miles in 32 hours on his way to Moscow. He spent a twenty-night stretch battling through the snow 'without even the comfort of a blanket - a great oversight' while walking along the Arctic coast in great physical pain.

He fell in love and married a 14-year-old girl from Kamchatka while trying to get permission to cross the Baring Straight. He took her across Russia by boat from St. Petersburg to London. His adventures were widely published and sold well.

He died after contracting a fever while visiting his Cousin Charles Stuart Cochrane's copper mining project in Columbia.

Captain Charles Stuart Cochrane was born in 1796.

Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane's second son, also known as 'Senior Jean de Vega, a Spanish minstrel,' was born on HMS Thetis, a ship with five Cochranes on board at the time. After fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, he left the navy to go copper mining up the Magdalena River into Columbia. The venture was unsuccessful, and after traveling through Europe, he returned to Britain in 1828.

He spent the next year and a half touring the country with a guitar, posing as a Spanish troubadour. He was described as 'a little cracked' in Edinburgh, where he finally revealed himself.

In 1830, he demonstrated his ability to think clearly by obtaining a patent in France for a machine for spinning Cashmere, a new wool to the western world. To meet the demand for spun Tibetan goats beard, he built a mill in Glasgow for his machines.

His exploits were chronicled in the 'Journal of a Tour Made by Senor Jean de Vega, a Spanish Minstrel of 1828-29 Through Great Britain and Ireland'.

Cochrane Clan Tartans

The Cochrane tartan is said to have been inspired by a portrait, but in 1974, the 14th Earl of Dundonald used his prerogative as Chief to change the design so that the groups of four red lines were reduced to three. The sett was then changed back to the original groups of four red lines by the 15th Earl of Dundonald in 1984. The tartan sett is based on the old Lochaber district, which was also home to the MacDonald and Cameron of Erracht families.

The term 'ancient' refers to lighter dye shades, whereas'modern' refers to darker colors.

Threadcount G/68 R8 G6 R4 G8 R4 G6 R8 G34 K34 R4 B34 R8 B8 Y/6

Cochrane Historic

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Cochrane Contemporary

Clan Cochrane Crest & Coats of Arms

Clan Cochrane Coat of Arms

Worn by everyone with the same name and ancestry

Description of the Crest:

Argent, a horse passant

Coat of Arms of Clan Cochrane

A word about Coats of Arms:

A coat of arms is granted to an individual under Scottish heraldic law (with the exception of civic or corporate arms). A 'family coat of arms' does not exist. With the exceptions noted above, the arms depicted below are personal arms. Only the person who has been granted these weapons has the right to use them.

COCHRANE (simple)

Argent, a chevron, Gules, erased between three boars' heads, Azure

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William Cochrane's Stone Coat of Arms. Mounted in a modern tower near the Renfrewshire town of Johnstone. The Cochrane family's original lands were first occupied in the early 1100s.

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