By God I’ll not lose Hardy — 11 February 1797

Generated illustration. Not a historical photograph. Ships off a Spanish port. Not a likeness.

Overview

The spoken line is already on Hardy Thomas Masterman — Captain HMS Victory. On 11 February 1797 Minerve — chased by Spanish ships off Cadiz — saw a topman fall overboard; Hardy went away in a boat to find him. Cockburn was about to abandon the boat when Nelson, by then commodore aboard, overruled him: “By God, I’ll not lose Hardy! Back the mizzen topsail!”¹

The Spoken Line

This note covers that spoken line only. A gun-count, a later career, and a Cockburn life stay on RESEARCH_QUEUE.

HMS Minerve — Frigate already used the August 1796 posting, the boat, and the recovery. Those sentences stay there. This is a Hardy-note isolate. Do not scrape leftover Nelson-career facts from this page.²

Sources

• @white2005nelson
• @beatty1807nelson
• Hardy Thomas Masterman — Captain HMS Victory

Related

Navigation

• MOC_Conflicts
• Irregular_Warfare_Index

Same Subject

• Hardy Thomas Masterman — Captain HMS Victory
• HMS Minerve — Frigate
• Cadiz — Spanish Naval Port
• Cutting-Out of La Mutine — May 1797

Cross-Domain

• Nelson Horatio — Biography Overview
• Age of Sail — Era Overview
• Age of Sail — Chronological Timeline

Footnotes

1. On 11 February 1797 Minerve off Cadiz; “By God, I’ll not lose Hardy! Back the mizzen topsail!”: Hardy Thomas Masterman — Captain HMS Victory. ↩

2. Boat and recovery stay on HMS Minerve — Frigate. Do not invent a gun-count or a Cockburn life. Do not scrape leftover Nelson-career facts. ↩