Ever since the battle of the Nile Hardy had followed Nelson’s fortunes as his flag-captain in the various ships on board which Nelson had his flag—in the _Vanguard_ first of all, then in the _Foudroyant_, the _San Josef_, and the _St. George_. It was Hardy also who, on the night before the attack on Copenhagen, with cool daring, pulled with muffled oars close alongside the ships of the Danish line and took the soundings which practically enabled Nelson to win the battle.
“A bachelor of 35, rather stout in build, with light eyes, bushy eyebrows, square broad face, plenty of chin, and a mouth whose corners played between humour and grimness,” is the portrait that a contemporary gives of Captain Hardy in 1805.
Hardy—he lived to be Sir Thomas and K.C.B.—now lies in the mausoleum of the old pensioners’ burial ground at Greenwich Hospital—a veteran laid to his rest among veterans. No more fitting last abode surely could have been found for “Hardy of the _Victory_” than amongst those with whom he had lived and fought and had his being.
And this be the verse that you grave for me, Here he lies where he wished to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.
He has his monument elsewhere: in his native Dorset, where there stands a massive column of stone, which the men and women of his county in their pride and affection subscribed for, and set up on a spur of Blackdown (or Blagdon) Hill, overlooking the little village of Portisham where Hardy lived as a boy, whence also he set out to accompany Nelson to Trafalgar. It stands in sight of the house where the Captain of the _Victory_ was born, on the one hand; while on the other it looks out across the vales towards the sea, not many miles away: a lonesome, wind-swept spot; a place to visit by oneself, say on some calm December afternoon, a little before the shortening winter twilight closes round, and look out from, seaward for choice—
... where afar The grey sky pales to the dim horizon, And the murm’ring Channel with its wand’ring sails, Drifts down through the winter’s day.
Looking seaward from the top of the monument, standing there over nine hundred feet above the sea—twice and a quarter the height of St. Paul’s Cathedral—“the eye rests on an unbroken panorama of coast-line, extending from the Isle of Wight and St. Katherine’s Point on the east, to Start Point and the Tors of Dartmoor on the west.... Far down below lie, clearly spread out as if on a map, Weymouth and the Backwater, as well as Portland and the Chesil Beach, whilst St. Aldhelm’s Head and the Purbeck Hills to the left, and Thorncombe Beacon with Golden Cap beyond it to the right, stand out in prominent grandeur.”