The Hawke Papers

Book excerpt: Edward Hawke (1705-1781) had a long and distinguished career in the Royal Navy, serving for over half a century and finally becoming First Lord of the Admiralty. This book is a selection of his papers chosen from between 1743 and 1771, providing information on every significant stage in Hawke's career combined with a connected sequence of documents for the outstanding campaign of 1759-60 during the Seven Years War. His peacetime command at Portsmouth between 1748 and 1754 is also documented together with his post of First Lord from which he retired in 1771. Hawke has been the greatest naval commander of his generation, of whom Horace Walpole wrote ’Lord Hawke is dead and does not seem to have bequeathed his mantle to anybody’. This volume brings together papers to and from Hawke; the sources are the Public Record Office, the National Maritime Museum and the British Library.