Edinburgh show explores real Master and Commander

EDINBURGH -- An exhibition devoted to one of Scotland's most colourful sailors, and inspiration for such fictional heroes of the Napoleonic wars as Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey, is giving visitors a taste of a bygone age at the national museum in Edinburgh.

The exhibition devoted to Admiral Lord Cochrane (1775-1860) has brought together a number of documents and memorabilia never seen in public before, and includes portraits, weaponry and charts from the Napoleonic wars. It runs to next February 19.

Through a turbulent career, Fife-born Thomas Cochrane went from naval hero as a famed frigate commander and a Radical member of parliament to scandal and disgrace over an 1814 stock market fraud.

He reinvented himself to command Chile's rebel navy in its fight to overthrow Spanish colonial rule - he remains a national hero in Chile to this day - and finally to participate in the Greek war of independence from Turkish rule....