This is the first chapter from the book, The Three Dorset Captains at Trafalgar: Thomas Masterman Hardy, Charles Bullen, Henry Digby by Alexander Meyrick Broadley, R. G. Bartelot and published by J. Murray, 1906.
Although Dorset is one of the smallest of the maritime counties of England, she has played an important part in our naval annals ever since the far-off days of the ninth century, when the Wessex fishermen and peasantry looked down with dismay from the cliffs of Golden Cap and Thorncombe Beacon on the destruction of the fleet of King Ethelwulf by their Danish adversaries. The disaster of A.D. 843 was evidently taken to heart by the vanquished Saxons, for thirty-four years later it was signally avenged by the brilliant victory won by the marine forces of King Alfred in Swanage Bay, when no less than 120 Danish ships were sunk and the few vessels which contrived to evade pursuit were dashed to pieces on the Peverel Rocks. The Dorset littoral from Liliput Hill and Canford Cliffs on the east to Lyme Regis and Charmouth on the west, measures about 70 miles. In the centre the peninsula of Portland, assuming the shape of a booted foot, apparently kicking contemptuously at any possible invader of England’s shores, helps to form West Bay on one side of the Chesil Beach and Weymouth Bay on the other. The latter terminates in the chapel-crowned headland of St Aldhelm (commonly known as St Alban), while further eastwards, towards the Hampshire borders, lie the smaller bays of Swanage and Studland, and the land-locked harbour of Poole, once securely guarded by the castle of Brownsee or Branksea Island. Lines of lofty cliffs, bare of verdure, inaccessible and often well-nigh perpendicular, broken here and there by verdant valleys and stretches of golden sand, are the characteristic features of the Dorset sea-board, the scene of some of the most terrible shipwrecks of history and the home of many generations of sturdy sailors. The Dorset smuggler was in his day quite as adventurous as his Cornish confrere, and in the beautiful and picturesque hinterland hidden behind the yellow cliffs, all sorts of cleverly-contrived hiding-places and over-spacious cellars still keep the memory of their prowess green. In the print-room of the British Museum may be seen a set of maps portraying the coast of Dorset as it was in Henry VIII.’s time. They are embellished with rude drawings of towns, castles, churches, ships, and beacons, to say nothing of sundry stately swans and stags with enormous antlers. The greater part of the names (notwithstanding the primitive spelling) are easily recognisable, and the “Cobbe ” at Lyme Regis looks very much like what it is now and what it must have been two hundred and twenty years ago, when the luckless Monmouth stumbled and fell as he set his foot upon it on his way to Sedgemoor and Tower Hill. These charts demonstrate sufficiently the importance of Dorset as a naval centre in the middle of the sixteenth century, which was to close with the complete discomfiture of the Armada called ” Invincible,” off Portland Bill.
We must not forget, however, that long before that “crowning victory” was achieved, Weymouth, Poole, Lyme Regis, and Wareham had all made notable contributions of men and ships to the force which crossed the Channel to win the battle of Crecy and cover the English arms with glory. In this expedition, at least 31 Dorset ships and 479 Dorset mariners took part. As far back as King John’s reign the best cordage came from Bridport, which, as ” Byrportte,” figures conspicuously in the suggestive sketches of the Tudor hydrographer. In 1322 Sir Nicholas Cheney, Sheriff of Dorset, sought in vain to recover from the king his out-of-pocket expenses — 70 shillings and some odd pence — incurred by the dispatch of six ” ropers ” from Bridport to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. About the time of the elaboration of these early maps of the Dorset littoral, an Act of Parliament made short work of unauthorised ” ropers ” on the ground that ” Time-out-of-mind Bridport (’ Byrportte ‘) had made all the great cables, ropes, hawsers, and other tackling for the Royal Navy and the most part of other ships within this realm.”The ingenious Leland came to Bridport and was evidently taken in by the ancient joke arising out of the varied uses to which good rope was put, for he asserts gravely that ” at Bridportt be made good daggers.” The old saw about being ” stabbed by a Bridport dagger ” (i.e., hanged), was evidently in vogue in the days when Sir Richard Bingham [1528-1598-99], the first of Dorset’s famous sea- dogs, was giving proof of his skill as a sailor, soldier, and statesman. The captain of the Swiftsure eventually became Marshal of Ireland, but died before he could assume the reins of office. As Governor of Connaught, ten years before, he had mercilessly butchered the Spanish sailors who had survived the engagement off Portland Bill, only to meet with a still more terrible fate on the rock-bound shores of Ireland. Bingham’s native county had placed 8 ships and 340 men at the disposal of the Lord High Admiral, who commenced the destruction off the Dorset coast, on which various relics of the Armada have been cast up by the waves ever since.
Sir George Summers or Somers [1554-1610], the shipmate of Raleigh and the discoverer of the Bermudas, was born at ” Lyme of the King.” Summers was one of the boldest and most successful of the early sixteenth-century “adventurers.” Having taken many prizes, .including a particularly rich ” carrack ” off Lisbon, he came home to be knighted by James I., and sit in Parliament for Lyme Regis. Having escaped the perils of the Gunpowder Plot, he once more crossed the Atlantic to colonise Virginia and discover the Bermudas, where he unfortunately died ” of the surfeit of eating of a pig.” His nephew and heir, Matthew Summers, brought his embalmed body back to Berne Manor, the mansion on the banks of the Char which he had purchased with the proceeds of his ” prize-taking.” The house still exists, but American travellers look in vain for his grave or any memorial of him in the beautiful church of St Candida and Holy Cross, where he was laid to rest. Forty-three years after the death of Summers, the Portland waters were again the scene of another memorable engagement. For three entire days (February 18-20), Robert Blake maintained a death-struggle with Van Tromp, upon whom he finally inflicted a complete defeat, capturing 11 men of war and 30 merchantmen.
Within easy walking distance of Summers’ home at Whitchurch is the modernised farmhouse of Little Windsor, where, in Charles II.’s reign lived Alexander Hood, from whom the six seamen bearing that name are descended. Lieutenant Arthur Hood, R.N., lost on the Pomona, Captain Alexander Hood, who fell in the naval duel between the Mars and the Hercule on the 2ist April 1798, and Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, were his great-grandchildren, through his eldest son and namesake ; while from the youngest, the Rev. Samuel Hood, Vicar of Thorncombe and Master of the Beaminster Grammar School, sprang the much more celebrated Admiral Samuel Hood, Viscount Hood, and Admiral Alexander Hood, Viscount Bridport. From the cliffs of West Bay (the modern name for what was only twenty years ago generally known as Bridport Harbour), one can see Thorncombe Beacon to the west, as well as the heights of Levvesdon and Pillsdon (the ” Cow ” and “Calf” of the sailors of Nelson’s time), which rise above the aboriginal home of the Hoods at Little Windsor and the old-fashioned town of Beaminster where SamuelHood, the schoolmaster, espoused Mary Hoskins the mother of two naval peers — Lord Hood and Lord Bridport. The Bullens, from whom came Admiral Sir Charles Bullen, who commanded the Britannia at Trafalgar, have long been associated with Charmouth, which immediately adjoins both Lyme Regis and Whitchurch — the birthplace and burial-place of Summers.
Close to Thorncombe, Charmouth, and Whitchurch is Hawkchurch, whence came Admiral Sir William Domett [1752-1828], another hero of the Great War, who distinguished himself as flag-captain to Lord Bridport, assisted Thomas Hardy to promotion in the earlier days of his career, and eventually represented the united boroughs of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in the House of Commons. Sir William Domett sleeps in his native village, in one of the most romantic of Dorset God’s acres, where a lengthy inscription on a tablet inside the church sets forth all his professional achievements.
Admiral Robert Digby [1752-1815], the first instructor of William IV. in his “jolly young tarry breeks” days, and Admiral Henry Digby [1770-1842], who commanded the Africa at Trafalgar, are both associated with Minterne in central Dorset, but turning eastwards on the rising ground above West Bay, a massive column some seven miles away at once arrests the view. It stands out boldly on the grassy summit of Blagdon on Blackdown Hill, where, as at Thorncombe, Norchard, Lewesdon, Cerne Abbas, Badbury, Bubb Down, Blackdown (in Hawkchurch), Bulbarrow, Frampton, Lytchett, Ridgeway, Woodbury, and Penbury Hills, the Dorset yeomen in 1805, and the years which preceded it, guarded and watched the beacons which were to announce the always-expected arrival of the ” Corsican ogre” on these shores. The obelisk in question commemorates the valour and virtues of Dorset’s favourite naval hero, Thomas Masterman Hardy, captain of the Victory, at once the most intimate and the most trusted of all Nelson’s companions in arms, and to whom the dyingadmiral murmured his last words on the afternoon of the 2 1st October 1805, while the shadows of night were falling fast on distant Dorset, and Joseph Hardy, the captain’s elder brother, unconscious of what was taking place off the coast of Spain, was climbing up the steep sides of Blackdown Hill to tend the beacon, the lighting of which was no longer necessary.
The Hardy Monument (as it has been called for nearly three-quarters of a century) possesses no artistic or architectural merits, but its position is singularly appropriate. It dominates the greater part of that Dorset littoral and its hinterland which has given England so many brave sailors in the past and from which the crews of His Majesty’s fleet are still largely recruited. It is in immediate proximity to Kingston Russell, where Hardy was born in the same eventful year as Napoleon and Wellington, while his parents lived in the old home of the Dukes of Bedford, as well as to Portisham, the ” Possum ” of his correspondence, where Hardy spent the greater part of his boyhood, and which, almost unchanged and untouched since Hardy left it, still shelters many of the most characteristic and interesting relics and mementos of Thomas Masterman Hardy. The object of the following pages is to tell as briefly as may be, and as much as possible in his own words, the hitherto unrevealed story of the life of the captain of the Victory — Nelson’s “dear Hardy,” on many ships and in many lands.
