Champions of the fleet : $b Captains and men-of-war and days that helped to make the empireFraser, Edward
History
Champions of the fleet : $b Captains and men-of-war and days that helped to make the empire
Fraser, Edward
Great Britain -- History, Naval; Naval battles -- Great Britain
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.”
* * * * *
These were Captain Hardy’s officers on board Nelson’s flagship, a
complete list of the lieutenants and other quarter-deck officers serving
in the _Victory_ on the 21st of October, 1805:—
Lieutenants—John Pasco [Flag-Lieutenant] (wounded); John Quilliam; John
Yule; Edward Williams; Andrew King; George Miller Bligh (wounded); George
L. Brown; Alexander Hills; William Ram (killed).
Master—Thomas Atkinson.
Surgeon—William Beatty.
Purser—Walter Burke.
Chaplain—Rev. John A. Scott.
Secretary—John Scott (killed).
Gunner—William Rivers.
Boatswain—William Wilmet.
Carpenter—Wm. Bunce.
Marine Officers—Captain—Charles W. Adair (killed); Lieutenants—Lewis
Buckle Reeves (wounded); James G. Peake (wounded); Lewis Roteley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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