The Three Dorset Captains at Trafalgar - Thomas Masterman Hardy, Charles Bullen, Henry Digby #228225

Of all the subordinate characters in the tragedy of Trafalgar, the personality of Thomas Masterman Hardy is unquestionably by far the most interesting, striking, and attractive. The "Kiss me, Hardy" of the dying Nelson has perhaps taken a firmer hold on the popular imagination than either the "Remember" of Charles Stuart, or the real or supposed "My country, oh my country" of William Pitt.<br><br>Another of the "greatest sailor's" utterances during the brief interview which preceded Hardy's return to his duties on deck, within about half an hour of "his Lord's" death, is scarcely less distinctly graven on men's minds. It was, as we are told by the able author of Nelson and his Captains, the timely quotation of the words, "Anchor, Hardy, anchor," more than forty years later, by which Sir Herbert Edwardes steadied in a moment of supreme difficulty the iron nerve of the worn-out and over-wrought Sir John Lawrence.<br><br>No sooner did the belated news of the battle reach England than the whole kingdom was flooded with popular mementoes of the great event which had saved her from the long-feared foreign invasion, while depriving her of her foremost sailor. In all these souvenirs — songs, broadsides, glass-pictures, engravings, or pottery — the favourite theme was that of the most familiar death scene in naval history — Nelson expiring in the arms of Hardy.