Colonial Despatches

Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, after whom Hardy Bay, Hardy Island, Hardy Peak, and Port Hardy were named,1 was one of the Royal Navy captains who served under Rear Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, a group known as “Nelson's band of brothers”.2 Hardy was present at the time of Nelson's death, at the battle of Trafalgar, in 1805, where Nelson's famous dying words were Kiss me, Hardy.3

In 1815, Hardy, who had a long and illustrious naval career, acquired the rank of Knight Commander of The Most Honourable Order of the Bath [KCB]; he rose to the position of first sea lord in 1830; and, in 1831, he acquired the rank of Knight Grand Cross [GCB]. During much of Hardy's late career, as governor of the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich, he desperately tried to improve the care and condition of pensioners.4

• 1. Andrew Scott, The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2009), 249.
• 2. Andrew Lambert, Nelson's band of brothers, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• 3. J. K. Laughton, rev. Andrew Lambert, Hardy, Sir Thomas Masterman, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online.
• 4. Ibid.