I represent Richard Hardman. I was a sailor on HMS Port Royal. The Port Royal was a sloop captured from the French in 1778. It spent 1780 and 1781 patrolling the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. As the Spanish invasion of Pensacola began it was decided that our guns, ammunition, and men were better spent defending Pensacola on shore. I was one of the crew stationed at the Queen’s Redoubt at Fort George on May 8, 1781. From Robert Farmar’s journal of the siege of Pensacola for that day: “About 9 o’clock a.m. a shell from the enemy’s front battery was thrown in at the door of the Magazine at the Advanced Redoubt (as the men were receiving powder) which blew it up and killed 40 seamen belonging to H.M. Ships the Mentor and the Port Royal and 45 men of the Pennsylvania Loyalists were killed by the same explosion.” This disaster was the final nail in the coffin of Pensacola’s defenses against the Spanish, and Gen. Campbell raised the white flag that very day. I was wounded in the attack and passed away three days later on the 11th, the day after the surrender was signed.
Sources: 8, 28