Great, Great Uncle Samuel

Peggy’s Thoughts on her Great, Great Uncle Samuel

The best place to start is always at the beginning, so I will begin with the birth of Samuel Hawken. I have the certificate of his baptism dated 17th September 1833. He was baptised in the parish church of St Petroc in Padstow, Cornwall, so his birth would have been a short time before that.
Samuel was the second of the two children of Jane and John Hawken, a seafaring family in Padstow. Jane had been a servant in the local stately home, Prideaux Place. She was born in Bodmin. John was a seafarer, almost certainly a fisherman. He was fortunate enough to own his own boat,
Fishing was a hazardous profession then as it still is. Samuel following in his father’s footsteps took to the life of a seafarer, Every voyage had its danger as the crossing of the Doom Bar, an extremely hazardous sand bank at the mouth of the harbour had to be negotiated every time they sailed out to the fishing grounds. The sea is a hard master.
I think Samuel would have gone to school and received a basic education. He would have left school at fourteen, or maybe younger, whereupon he would have gone to sea with his father. I am sure that before this age he would have learnt the trade of fishing.
Now that he had left school the sea would have become his life and he would quickly have become a man.
There is a difficult question now that, unfortunately, is not an easy one to answer. Samuel’s father, John, my great grandfather, seems to have disappeared from the scene. What was his fate? Was he alive when the momentous decision was made that was to take the Hawken family from Padstow on a perilous voyage to what was hopefully to lead them to a more prosperous and happy life.
I feel that John had died at some time before this venture, maybe from illness or from drowning. Many seamen were drowned in those dangerous days. This would have left Samuel as the man of the family while still at an early age.
Eleanor, still working at Pridaux Place, would have joined the discussions of what should be their next move. Times were hard and a move would have seemed the right choice.
Having their boat, and being people of the sea, travelling by sea would have seemed the right option to follow. What was to be their destination?
Dover became the place though whether it was their chosen destination we can never know. It is known that they sank in Dover Harbour. I can imagine that their boat had some bad trouble which caused them to sink in the harbour. It is possible that John was drowned there. By great good fortune the Hawkens must have been rescued and taken to some place of shelter. After recovering from shock and possible injury there must have been much discussion as to whatever they should do next.
I believe that Eleanor found a position “In service”, probably where Richard Jarvis worked as coachman.. What did Jane do? What could she do in such a situation? Whatever she did, at some point Eleanor married Richard Jarvis, the aforesaid coachman, a widower with one son. Probably Jane went to live with them.
At this point Samuel disappears. Where could he have been during this difficult period?
In my heart of hearts I feel that he went back to sea obviously not with his own boat but working for someone else. Was the sea his life till leaving it as an elderly man, or did he find a new life elsewhere? I am afraid we shall never know.
The next thing I know about Great Great Uncle Samuel is his death in 1914 and his burial in Croydon.
There is also the mystery of his wall clock with his name printed inside it. This was at Long Acre the last time I visited my cousin Frank. Probably this clock came to my Great Uncle Fred and his wife, Auntie Flo on Samuel’s death. Why didn’t I ask Frank?
This, I’m sorry to have to say, is where I shall have to leave my thoughts on Sam Hawken. I will say “ Farewell Samuel, I hope your life was a good one.”