Edward Hawke
Edward Hawke was the admiral who won Quiberon Bay on 20 November 1759, the battle that ended the French plan to invade Britain and, with Quebec and Minden in the same year, made it the year of victories; he had kept the Western Squadron off Brest for six months in all weathers, which no fleet had done, and when a gale blew him off station and the French admiral Conflans came out for the transports at Morbihan, he came back, found him, and chased him into a bay of rocks and shoals in a rising storm with the light going, telling his master that he was to lay him alongside the French flagship and that Hawke would answer for the navigation. He was born in London in 1705, the son of a barrister, and went to sea at fifteen; he was a captain at twenty-nine and made his name in 1747 by taking six of nine French ships of the line off Cape Finisterre, the second battle of that name, for which he was knighted. His signal for a general chase, throwing out the line of battle to let each ship engage as she came up, was the tactic of Finisterre and Quiberon and of Nelson after him. In 1759 Pitt gave him the blockade. The Brest fleet was to escort twenty thousand troops from the Morbihan to Scotland and Essex, and Hawke's twenty-three ships lay off Ushant from May with victuallers bringing beef and beer and the sick landed at Plymouth, a system of supply at sea the navy had not managed before; Boscawen destroyed the Toulon fleet at Lagos in August. The gale of 9 November drove him to Torbay, Conflans sailed on the 14th, and Hawke, sailing the next day, sighted him on the 20th off Belle Ile making for the bay. The French expected no one to follow through the Cardinals rocks in a south-westerly with night coming; Hawke's van was on their rear by half past two, the Thesee capsized with all hands when she opened her lower ports in the sea, the Superbe sank under the Royal George's broadside, and by dark two French ships had struck and the rest were aground, burned or fled up the Vilaine, where seven stayed for two years. Hawke lost two ships on the rocks in the night. He was thanked by parliament and, characteristically, complained that the pension was less than Anson's. He was First Lord of the Admiralty from 1766 to 1771, made a baron in 1776, and died at Sunbury in 1781; the ships named Hawke have been in the navy ever since.
- Lived: 1705 CE – 1781 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: admiral, naval officer
