Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/199

H does, and returned to England with him in the following January. The Portland was paid off on 17 March, and was soon afterwards broken up.

In June 1743 Hawke was appointed to the Berwick, a new ship of 70 guns. The war with Spain, the imminence of war with France, and the large fleets already on foot in the West Indies, the Mediterranean, and the Channel, rendered seamen scarce, and increased the difficulty of manning a newly commissioned ship. 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. ‘A great number of them,’ he wrote, ‘are lately come from the East Indies, and others are raw men picked up by the press-gangs in London.’ Towards the middle of November the Berwick arrived at Port Mahon almost disabled; but a few weeks' care and rest did wonders, and she finally joined the fleet in the roadstead of Hyères on 11 Jan. 1743–4. It was the first time that Hawke had seen a fleet since he had been with Ogle in the Edinburgh; nor, though the war had been going on for upwards of four years, had he yet seen a shot fired in anger. On 8 Feb., when the allied fleet put to sea from Toulon, the English fleet also getting under way to follow them, the Berwick was in the squadron under the command of Rear-admiral Rowley, which led on the port tack, formed the van of the fleet in the action of the 11th [see ; ; ], and in an intermittent manner, though in fairly good order, engaged the French division of the allies, with which were two or three of the leading Spanish ships. The others astern were much scattered; but the English centre, opposed to them, was also in disorder, and there was no directing head. The Berwick beat her immediate antagonist, the Spanish Neptuno, out of the line, and was left without an opponent. Astern the Poder, by herself, was keeping at bay a number of the English ships, which ‘were a-barking’ at her (Narrative of the Proceedings of His Majesty's Fleet in the Mediterranean, by a Sea-Officer, 1744, p. 60), feebly endeavouring to obey Mathews's contradictory signals. Hawke, on his own responsibility, wore out of the line, ran down to the Poder, and engaged her within pistol-shot. His first broadside is said to have killed twenty-seven men, and to have dismounted several of her lower-deck guns. In twenty minutes she was dismasted; after a brave but unavailing defence she struck her colours, and was taken possession of by a party from the Berwick under Mr. Lloyd, her first lieutenant. They were scarcely well on board her when it was seen that the French had tacked and were standing towards them; the English fleet had also tacked, and was retiring to the northward. The Berwick and her prize were left alone, and Hawke, hailing Lloyd to return to his ship, was, without waiting for him to do so, obliged to make sail after the fleet. Lloyd, after an extraordinary and adventurous cruise in a boat full of Spanish prisoners, succeeded in getting on board the Royal Oak, while the Poder, with the prize crew on board, was retaken by the French. The next morning Lloyd rejoined his ship, and in the afternoon was sent to give Rowley an account of his proceedings, and to acquaint him that seventeen men had been left on board the Poder. Rowley promised to ‘endeavour to save the prize and give Captain Hawke the honour of carrying her to Minorca,’ and spoke in high terms of Hawke's conduct. He directed the Berwick and Diamond to go down to the Poder, then some distance astern of the allied fleet, in company with a French ship, which, on the approach of the English, left her to her fate. The Essex, however, by Mathews's order, had anticipated Rowley's ships, and set the Poder on fire, much to Hawke's annoyance. He wrote to Mathews complaining that another should have been ordered to burn the prize which he took, and asking him to order Captain Norris and his officers to restore the colours and things which they had taken out of her. Norris, however, kept the trophies; and a few months later fled into Spain to escape a probable sentence of death for cowardice.

For the next eighteen months Hawke continued attached to the Mediterranean fleet, though often on detached command at Gibraltar, off Cadiz, or on the coast of Genoa. The service is now chiefly noticeable because the severe drill accustomed him to the routine of squadrons. On 3 Aug. 1745 he was moved by Rowley, then commander-in-chief, into the Neptune, with orders to return to England in charge of the homeward trade. He arrived in the Sound on 20 Sept., and for the next year was on shore, apparently not in very good health. In June 1746 he was summoned as a witness on the trials of Lestock and Mathews, but did not attend. On 30 March