HAWKE 





591 



In the disgracefully-conducted battle of the llth 

 Felmmry of tliiit \i-ar tin- />'/ //// was one of the 

 lew ihiM which were handled with spirit. Hawke 

 followed hi.- admiral in tawing down out of the 

 lint- of l>attle to attack tlie Spanish ships which 

 formed the roar of tin- allied He, t. This movement 

 i-on-idored irregular according to the pedantic 

 tactical rules of the time, ami, con joined with his 

 O\\M violent conduct to his subordinate Lestock, 

 pioM-d ruinous to Admiral Mathews. Hut Hawke 

 established his reputation as a daring officer. 

 Tin- Spanish line of -battle ship, the Poder, the 

 only ve el captured, surrendered to the Berwick; 

 and it was not Hawke's fault that she was re- 

 taken by the enemy. In 1747 he was made rear- 

 admiral of the white squadron, and the same year 

 \\ns despatched with a fleet of fourteen sail to 

 intercept a French convoy of 252 merchant ships 

 known to be leaving for the West Indies. On 

 the 14th October Hawke caught the convoy off 

 ('ape Finisterre. It was guarded by a squadron 

 of nine ships of war under M. L'Etenduere. The 

 French admiral formed line of battle, and fought 

 heroically to save his charge. The odds were 

 great fourteen English' ships with 784 guns to 

 nine French with 556 and after desperate fighting 

 six of L' Etenduere's ships struck. But he saved 

 his convoy, which fled during the battle. In the 

 same year Hawke became member of parliament 

 for Bristol. By 1755 he had attained the rank of 

 full admiral. In the following year he was sent 

 out to supersede the unhappy Byng, who had just 

 disgraced himself and his country at Minorca. 

 There was, however, nothing to do in the Mediter- 

 ranean. During 1757 and 1758 he was in command 

 in the Channel directing the naval half of the 

 combined operations on the French coast sent out 

 by the elder Pitt. His great feat one of the 

 greatest ever performed by a British admiral 

 came in 1759. During that* year the French were 

 preparing fleets at Brest and Rochefort to cover an 

 invasion of England. The Brest fleet, the more 

 powerful of the two, under the command of M. de 

 Conflans, consisted of twenty ships carrying 1412 

 guns. It was watched by Hawke with a fleet of 

 twenty-three ships carrying 1666 guns. On the 

 14th November tne English fleet was driven off its 

 station by a succession of furious gales, and M. de 

 Conflans seized the chance to slip to sea. Hawke, 

 who had anchored at Torbay, had, however, left 

 lookout frigates, by whom he was informed of the 

 sailing of the French admiral. Concluding at once 

 that M. de Conflans would make for Rochefort, 

 Hawke steered to cut him off at Quiberon. His 

 calculation proved accurate. On the 20th November 

 he caught the French, and, although it was blowing 

 a fresh gale, attacked at once. The battle was one 

 of the most heroic ever fought on sea. In a gale 

 of wind, on the afternoon of a November day, and 

 with one of the most terrible coasts in the world 

 under his lee, Hawke forced on a close action. A 

 famous story tells how his sailing-master expostu- 

 lated at the order to take the flagship, the Royal 

 George of 100 guns, into the dangerous Bay of 

 Quiberon in such a gale and in the dark, and 

 how Hawke replied : 'Mr Robinson, you have done 

 your duty in pointing out the danger ; you are now 

 to obey my orders, and lay me alongside the French 

 admiral.' The result was the destruction of the 

 French fleet, and the collapse of the invasion 

 scheme. It is curious that Hawke, who had been 

 made a knight for the capture of L' Etenduere's 

 squadron, did not receive the peerage this victory 

 so well deserved till 1776, when lie was made 

 Baron Hawke of Towton. It is just possible that 

 the freedom with which he rebuked the Admiralty 

 for its management of the fleet may have had some- 

 thing to do with the delay. He was First Lord 



Id in-e|f in the administration of 1765, but had no 

 further chance of distinguished sea service. He 

 died at Sheppert.m, Middlesex, 17th October 1781. 

 See the excellent Life by Professor Captain Mon- 

 tagu Borrow* (1868). 



Hawker. KOIH.KT STKPHKN, the Cornish poet, 

 was burn at Plymouth, I>eceml>er 3, 1803. HIM 

 father, then a ph\ sician, afterwards took orders; 

 his grandfather, the Rev. Koliert Hawker, D.D. 

 (1753-1827), the author of the well-known Morn- 

 ing and Evening Portion*, wan for fifty years a 

 vicar in Plymouth. He was a bright lmy, notable 

 especially for high spirits and an inveterate love 

 for practical jokes. He had his education at 

 Liskeard and Cheltenham grammar-school, and 

 entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1823; but 

 his father, now a curate, soon found himself unable 

 to keep him at Oxford. Fortunately this ditti- 

 culty was obviated by the lad's own marriage 

 (November 1824) to a laxly of some fortune. He 

 was not yet twenty-one, while his wife, Miss 

 Charlotte I'Ans, who had been his godmother, 

 was forty-one. With her he returned to Oxford, 

 migrating to Magdalen Hall. He carried ofl' the 

 Newdigate in 1827, took his B.A. in the follow- 

 ing year, was ordained priest in 1831, and was 

 presented by Bishop Phillpotts in 1834 to the vicar- 

 age of Morwenstow, a small village on the wild 

 north Cornish coast, 6 miles N. of Bude Haven. Here 

 he laboured with devotedness for forty years, lavish- 

 ing charity from his slender means upon shipwrecked 

 mariners and his own poor alike. There had been 

 no resident vicar for a hundred years, the quaint old 

 church and the vicarage were in ruins, and the par- 

 ishioners were demoralised by generations of wreck- 

 ing, smuggling, and spiritual ignorance. Hawker 

 rebuilt his vicarage, restored his church, roofing it 

 anew with shingles in spite of all advice and oppo- 

 sition ; built and maintained a school ; introduced 

 the strange innovations of a weekly offertory and 

 a harvest-thanksgiving, as well as a striking cere- 

 monial largely of his own devising, and more often 

 suggesting the usages of the Eastern than the 

 Western Church. Yet he never felt any affinity 

 with the modern Ritualists, but indeed he was in 

 every sense a man difficult to class. His zeal was 

 hot against Wesleyanism and every form of dissent, 

 for his sympathies did not range wider than his. 

 knowledge. He himself shared many of the sujMjr- 

 >t it ions of his people, believing in the manifesta- 

 tions of spirits and in the influence of the evil eye. 

 The spiritual world was very near and real to him : 

 St Morwenna was no mere member of the choir 

 invisible, but an influence that could still affect his 

 everyday life. All his eccentricities were redeemed 

 by his humanity, his humour, and his tender love 

 for children and for animals. His manner in 

 preaching is described as rapt and awe-inspiring; 

 but his theology sadly lacked logic and consistency. 

 The theologian' cannot afford to allow his judgment 

 to be dominated by fancy, but in poetry the case i> 

 altogether different. Here Hawker is absolutely 

 delightful, with simple unsought pathos and ex- 

 quisite imagery moulded into faultlessly graceful 

 form. He has both the gifts of sweetness and 

 sonority, and withal manly strength and vigorous 

 phrase at will. His Tendrils by Reuben, published 

 at seventeen, he had the good sense not to reprint ; 

 but by his Cornish ballads in Records of the II t*t< rn 

 Sh ore ( 1832 ; a second series in 1836) he stamped 

 himself unmistakably a poet. These were repub- 

 1 is lied in h'i-r/i:-iin (1840); with some additions, as 

 Reeds shaken by the Wind ( 1843 ; a second cluster 

 in 1844) ; and yet again, along with Genoveca, in 

 Echoes of Old Cornwall ( 1846). In 1869 he repub- 

 lished his earlier poems in Cornish Ballads, anu the 

 Quest of the Saiiffrcnf the latter had already 

 appeared in 1863. His Footprints of Former Men 



