Alan Hawke

“ In the great struggle for Anglo-Saxon predominance, which had begun under William III., but was now approaching its crisis and final decision in the Seven Years War, the determining factor was to be the maritime strength of Great Britain. It is, therefore, the distinctive and distinguished significance of Hawke's career that during so critical a period he not only was the most illustrious and able officer of her navy—the exponent of her sea-power—but that by the force of his personality he chiefly shaped the naval outcome. ”

“ You said I was dreaming. I have waked up, that's all. It is not the sleeper's fault if he hits the man who wakes him."
Gordon bent over as he spoke, and shot the words into Hawke's ear with a savage intensity. In a moment, however, he resumed his former composure.
"But we are wasting time, and we have not much time to waste, have we? I want three letters."
Hawke dropped the pole of the axe and instinctively moved his right hand to protect his breast-pocket.
"Thank you," said Gordon. ”

“ Hawke could gain no end by sustaining the feud. There was, in truth, no reason why they should not shake hands over the matter. So he argued to himself, desire pointing the argument and stifling certain uneasy reflections as to the tenacity of Hawke's nature.
He sat down to resume his breakfast. The third member of the trio which for years had made the farmhouse the resort during Easter vacations claimed Mrs. Jackson's attention.
"And Mr. Arkwright?" she asked.
"He's dead," Gordon replied after a pause. "He died last year in Switzerland. It was an accident. ”

“ HAWKE, EDWARD HAWKE, Baron (1705-1781) , British admiral, was the only son of Edward Hawke, a barrister. On his mother’s side he was the nephew of Colonel Martin Bladen (1680-1746) , a politician of some note, and was connected with the family of Fairfax. Edward Hawke entered the navy on the 20th of February 1720 and served the time required to qualify him to hold a lieutenant’s commission on the North American and West Indian stations. ”

“ He was received in England with acclamations and with honors; yet the most conspicuous mark of approval conferred on admirals before and after, the grant of the peerage, was not given to him, who had wrought one of the very greatest services ever done for the country. Recent precedent—that of Anson—demanded such recognition; and popular enthusiasm would have applauded, although the full military merit of the man could scarcely be appreciated by the standards of his generation. That no such reward was bestowed is most probably attributable to Hawke's own indifference to self-advancement. ”

“ Keeping just within the fringe of the wood, Dennis shouldering the gun, while Hawke and Tiddler carried the field mount and the spare magazines, the adventurous three soon reached the angle in front of the ridge.
The stump of a well-grown beech stood up there, towering above the ground twenty feet or more. Its crest [Pg 166] had been carried away by a shell, but one stout branch jutted out like the arm of a gallows; and Harry Hawke had a brain wave.
"'Arf a mo, sir," he said, laying his wallet down. ”

“ Had he been opposed to a commonplace officer, he would probably have succeeded. Hawke was too bold a man to turn his mind to considerations of superfluous prudence in the presence of an enemy who was manifestly seeking to avoid battle. ”

“ Neither government was scrupulous in abstaining from the use of force while peace was still nominally unbroken. Hawke was sent to sea to intercept a French squadron which had been cruising near Gibraltar, but a restriction was put on the limits within which he might cruise, and he failed to meet the French. The fleet was much weakened by ill-health. In June 1756 the news of John Byng’s retreat from Minorca reached England and aroused the utmost indignation. Hawke was at once sent out to relieve him in the Mediterranean command, and to send him home for trial. ”

“ He did not answer Hawke's exclamation at once, for the sudden check had aroused him to the need of wariness. A struggle had to be avoided at all costs, he thought; for it would land them both, locked together, on the screes below. It was very pleasant to him, besides, to watch the shrinking fear visible in his enemy's attitude. The very lanthorn was rattling in his unsteady grasp, and the sound of it was music to Gordon's ears. ”

“ Hawke died October 16, 1781. On his tomb appear these words, "Wherever he sailed, victory attended him." It is much to say, but it is not all. Victory does not always follow desert. "It is not in mortals to command success,"—a favorite quotation with the successful admirals St. Vincent and Nelson. Hawke's great and distinctive glory is this,—that he, more than any one man, was the source and origin of the new life, the new spirit, of his service. There were many brave men before him, as there were after ”

“ Hawke maintained his blockade of Brest till far into November. Long cruises had always entailed much bad health on the crews, but by the care he took to obtain fresh food, and the energy he showed in pressing the Admiralty for stores, he was able to keep his men healthy. Early in November a series of severe gales forced him off the French coast, and he was compelled to anchor in Torbay. His absence was brief, but it allowed the French admiral, M. de Conflans (1690?–1777) , time to put to sea, and to steer for the Morbihan. ”

“ Even Hawke seemed to lose his individuality; he became just a detail in the sum of the mystery, a thing to be explained, not a man to be punished. Gordon, in fact, was left conscious of but one feeling--the overwhelming desire to see the woman he had worshipped face to face with him, to speak with her, and realising the necessity of getting solid ground beneath his feet, if he was to accomplish his wish, he clambered from his perch--just too soon to see Kate strike Hawke across the mouth, as her answer to the last words he had only dimly heard. ”

“ He had not time to recover his lost ground and reach the sheltering rocks and shoals of Quiberon Bay before the headmost ships of Hawke's irregularly formed line were on him. ‘All the day (in Hawke's own words) we had very fresh gales at N.W. and W.N.W. with heavy squalls. ”

“ There was no doubting the wistful sincerity of his appeal; and yet Hawke came forward but slowly, and took the outstretched hand with a watchful suspicion.
"You are a stranger here," he said.
Gordon answered the implied question.
"Well, I was only in the way at Keswick." He stopped abruptly, mindful that he trod delicate ground.
Hawke shot a rapid glance at him. "Why?" he asked.
"Bridesmaids, you know. I was a flounder in a shoal of mermaids," and Gordon laughed apologetically.
But Hawke joined in the laugh, and said--"Yes; the bridegroom is of no value until the wedding-day;" ”

“ Hawke's frigates, outrunning those heavy sea-waggons, his line-of-battle ships, hung on Conflans' rear. The main body of the British fleet followed, staggering under their pyramids of sails, with wet decks and the wild north-west gale on their quarter. Hawke's best sailers gained steadily on the laggards of Conflans' fleet. Had Hawke obeyed the puerile tactics of his day he would have dressed his line and refused to attack at all unless he could bring his entire fleet into action. ”

“ Hawke resumed. "I found rather a good glissade just behind these cliffs running into Eskdale. I spent most of the afternoon on that. You ought to try it."
"I will."
"It lands you out close to Mickledoor and not far below the chimney. So I thought I would go home this way. But if I had known it was going to grow as cold and dark as this I would have seen myself damned first."
"It is cold," Gordon assented, although his senses gave him no knowledge of the fact. He was wondering whether Hawke would ever move. If only he would set the lanthorn down!
"Suppose that we move," he went on. ”

“ The French force, under M. Desherbiers de l’Étenduère, consisted of nine ships, which were, however, on the average larger than Hawke’s. He attacked at once. The French admiral sent one of his liners to escort the merchant ships on their way to the West Indies, and with the other eight fought a very gallant action with the British squadron. Six of the eight French ships were taken. The French admiral did for a time succeed in saving the trading vessels under his charge, but most of them fell into the hands of the British cruisers in the West Indies. ”

“ The Life of Hawke was in 1883 written at full length, from official and family records, by Captain Montagu Burrows, R.N., Chichele professor of history at Oxford. To this further search in the admiralty records has enabled the present writer to add some few particulars of early service. All other memoirs have been written on very imperfect information, and teem with misstatements; the notices in Barrow's Life of Anson are more than usually inaccurate. ”

“ Hawke, indeed, was at the time of the American Revolution too old to go to sea, but he did not die until October 16, 1781, three days before the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, which is commonly accepted as the closing incident of our struggle for independence. On the other hand, the two younger men, Saumarez and Pellew, though they had entered the navy before the American Revolution, saw in it the beginnings of an active service which lasted to the end of the Napoleonic wars, the most continuous and gigantic strife of modern times. ”

“ It was more than two months before the Berwick was able to drop down the river, and then with a crew largely composed, as Hawke wrote to the admiralty on 23 Aug., of ‘very little, weakly, puny fellows, that have never been at sea, and can be of little or no service.’ The passage out to the Mediterranean tried such a ship's company severely. On 27 Oct., shortly after leaving Gibraltar, Hawke reported that 123 of his working men were sick with fever or scurvy, and falling down by tens and twenties every day. ”

“ Hawke, however, pursued without hesitation, though it was well on in the afternoon before he caught up the rear of the French fleet, and dark by the time the two fleets were in the bay. The action, which was more a test of seamanship than of gunnery, or capacity to manœuvre in order, ended in the destruction of the French. Five ships only were taken or destroyed, but others ran ashore, and the French navy as a whole lost all confidence. Two British vessels were lost, but the price was little to pay for such a victory. No more fighting remained to be done. ”

“ Hawke [q. v.] and join her at Gibraltar. He seems to have brought her to England in the course of 1757 and to have had no more service, though by a confusion with Wittewronge Taylor [q. v.] —aggravated by his connection with Knowles, the Cornwall, and Hawke—he is said to have commanded the Ramillies in 1758. In 1762 he was superannuated with the rank of rear-admiral ‘in the fleet,’ or, as it was then called, ‘yellowed,’ and passed the rest of his life in retirement in Durham, where he died in 1780. ”

“ In 1775 he was advanced to be admiral of the blue, and in January 1778 became admiral of the white. In May 1780 he was appointed to command the Channel fleet, and hoisted his flag in the Victory; but, though Hawke in a private letter urged him to get to his old station off Brest, to ‘watch those fellows as close as a cat watches a mouse,’ and, if he had the good fortune to get up to them, to ‘make much of them,’ neither Geary's age nor health nor instructions permitted him to undertake so trying a service, and the season passed without any operation of importance. ”

“ These were but developments of Hawke's fine achievement of 1759; the prestige of originality belongs to him. Even their success, with better ships and the improvement of detail always accompanying habit, is foreshadowed by his. "I may safely affirm that, except the few ships that took refuge in Conquet, hardly a vessel of any kind has been able to enter or come out of Brest for four months,"—ending October 10th. "They have been obliged to unload near forty victuallers at Quimperley and carry their cargoes by land to Brest. It must be the fault of the weather, not ours, if any of them escape." ”

“ Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to outward appearance differed but little from the indifferentism from which Mr Hawke had aroused him. ”

“ Hawke learned of the escape of Conflans from the master of a victualler, which, on its way from the squadron in Quiberon Bay, saw the French fleet making for Belle Isle. It is barely possible that Paulet was the victualler and gave the information. In some way or other he certainly made money, and in his old age was generous to the poor of his neighbourhood. ”

“ Those who want the portrait of Hawker the man, not the poet merely, or the eccentric, or the ‘theologian’ (if he can be said to have had a theology) , must in future come to Mr. Byles’s work.... It is Hawker the poet, in his life more poetic than in his writings, that will live long in the memory of Cornwall and of England. ”

“ The hall was filled with a faint golden haze!
He had to get out! He jerked backwards, caught her hand, and pulled her. "Ellen! We've got to get out!"
It was a half-articulate shout, and she resisted, but he began dragging her after him. Something fumbled at the lock, and a key slipped into it. The door opened.
Hawkes didn't know what kind of an alien he expected. He knew that men could never have thrown him to the moon and back, not in another thousand years. It had to be a monster.
But he should have known that monsters here came in human form—they'd have to. ”