OVERLOOKING the Forth, in the small Fife village of Culross – made famous as a filming location for the TV series Outlander – is a bronze bust of a man in the uniform of a 19th-century naval officer.

A carved stone names him as Admiral Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald and Marquess of Maranhao in Brazil, an unusual title for a Scotsman in Britain’s Royal Navy. Cochrane was granted it for his pivotal role in commanding Brazil’s navy in its war for independence against the Portuguese.

This was not even the first country he had helped to independence. Cochrane had led the Chilean navy several years earlier in their fight for independence from the Spanish, and he had supported Peru’s fight against Spain as well.

Cochrane’s story is just one of many times that Scots played a role in the history of South America. There was, of course, the Darien Scheme in the 1690s, the notorious failed Scottish colony in what is now Panama in Central America but many Scots went even further south.

The voyages of exploration of Ferdinand Magellan in 1519 and Sebastian Cabot in 1527 both included Scottish sailors among their crews.

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Other Scots settled on the continent as prisoners of war. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British unsuccessfully attacked France’s ally, Spain, by invading the River Plate, a region that is now split between Argentina and Paraguay. Many Scottish prisoners captured by the Spanish refused to be repatriated to Britain, choosing to remain in the region and settle there instead.

The first major Scottish settlement of the continent did not come until the 19th century. In the 1820s, newly independent Argentina was encouraging further European immigration.

More than 200 Scots sailed to the country, founding a colony at Monte Grande, now part of Buenos Aires. But an Argentine civil war forced the Scots to abandon the site in 1832 and flee into the city.

The community thrived there, establishing its own churches and even a Scottish school in 1838. One of its teachers, Alexander Watson Hutton, helped the spread of football in Argentina by introducing his pupils to the game. Later in the century, many Scottish immigrants would work as shepherds.

In the 1900s, some Scottish-Argentines would become important players in the cattle and transport industries.

Further north, about 200 Highlanders settled in La Guaira near Caracas in Venezuela in 1825 but the poor soil quality and conflict with the locals and the Venezuelan authorities meant that the colony soon fell apart. Most of its members left for Canada and the US.

But of all these Scottish visitors and settlers, Thomas Cochrane had by far the greatest impact upon South America.

After a childhood often spent in Culross, he joined the Royal Navy in 1793 aged 17. He fought in the Napoleonic Wars, capturing many French and Spanish ships in the Mediterranean.

Cochrane’s successes made him famous back in Britain and saw him elected to Parliament, but he was dismissed from the Navy in 1814 after being found guilty of a stock market hoax.

After serving a short prison sentence and finding himself at a loose end with his political career, he posted an advert in a newspaper saying that he was ready to serve any country fighting for its independence, whether in the Americas or elsewhere. At the time, the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas were crumbling, with independence movements springing up from Texas to Argentina.

In May 1817, Cochrane accepted an invitation from the Chilean government to lead their navy against the Spanish. Such was his reputation that Spain quickly tried to hire Cochrane for their own navy instead.

He arrived in Chile in November 1818 and was made the country’s first vice-admiral. With only seven ships, mostly old and in poor condition, Cochrane set about blockading ports held by the Spanish and raiding their coastal forts. He managed to take the cliffside forts protecting Valdivia with a loss of just seven men after scaling the rocks under cover of darkness.

Eventually, the Spanish forces were pushed back to the Chiloe Islands off the coast. But the government believed their independence could not be secured until Peru was also freed from Spanish rule.

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With a force of just 600 men, Cochrane raided the coast, finally leading to the withdrawal of the Spanish authorities in Lima. However, Cochrane feuded with the independence leader Jose de San Martin and left Chile’s service in 1822.

This was not the end of the admiral’s time in South America. In March 1823, he arrived in Rio de Janeiro, where the newly declared Empire of Brazil appointed him first admiral in its war of independence against Portugal. Again, Cochrane was commanding a small navy of outdated and badly maintained ships, but his fame meant he could hire experienced British and American sailors to crew them.

He raided the ports held by the Portuguese, blockaded their navy, and harassed their ships when they set sail back to Europe. He also tricked the Portuguese garrison at Maranhao into abandoning the city after pretending that a larger Brazilian navy was on its way. 

For this ruse, Cochrane was appointed Marquess of Maranhao by the Brazilian Emperor Pedro I. The remaining Portuguese forces soon left their strongholds. By 1824, Brazil was free of foreign troops.

Cochrane returned to Britain in 1825 and was soon hired by Greece, then fighting for independence from the Ottoman Empire. After the war, he was eventually restored to service in the Royal Navy, eventually becoming Admiral of the Red, one of the navy’s most senior ranks.

In all, Cochrane had helped secure the independence of four countries. At his funeral in 1860, one of his pallbearers was Admiral Grenfell, the Brazilian consul-general to Britain. In 1901, a delegation of Brazilian sailors laid a wreath on his grave in Westminster Abbey. Today, the Chilean navy still has a frigate named after him, the Almirante Cochrane, and navy personnel lay wreaths on his grave each year.