'When the _Minion_ stood off,' says Hortop, who wrote the tale on his return to England, 'our generall courageously cheered up his soldiers and gunners, and called to Samuel his page for a cup of beer, who brought it to him in a silver cup. And he, drinking to all the men, willed the gunners to stand to their ordnance lustily like men. He had no sooner set the cup out of his hand, but a demi-culverin shot struck away the cup and a cooper's plane that stood by the mainmast and ran out on the other side of the ship, which nothing dismayed our generall, for he ceased not to encourage us, saying, "Fear nothing: for God who hath preserved me from this shot will also deliver us from these traitors and villains."' Hawkins is chiefly known by his voyages and enterprises, and all that he did for his country by monotonous hard work is not so often remembered. For twenty-one years he 'toiled terribly' as Treasurer of the Queen's Marine Causes and Comptroller of the Navy, and when the ships were sent out to meet the Armada they were 'in such condition, hull, rigging, spars, and running rope, that they had no match in the world either for speed, safety, or endurance.' There is no space here to speak of Sir John's father, 'the pioneer of English adventure in the South Seas,' who made three famous voyages to Brazil, and laid a good foundation for future traffic in that he 'behaved wisely' to the natives; nor to do more than glance at the ventures of Sir John's son, Sir Richard Hawkins, the 'Complete Seaman,' whose 'high-spirited actions, had they been all duly recorded (as pity it is, they were not),' says Prince, 'would have made a large volume in themselves.' Sir Richard rediscovered the Falkland Isles, and passed the Straits of Magellan. His fleet was reduced to a single vessel, and he had taken five richly laden ships, when 'the King of Spain's vice-roy in those parts' sent 'eight ships to intercept him. Sir Richard Hawkins held the fight for three days, with but three score and fifteen men and boys, against thirteen hundred of the enemy, and those the choice of Peru.' In the end, being 'dangerously wounded in six several places,' and with many of his crew killed or wounded, he was forced to surrender upon 'honourable articles of life and liberty,' which, however, were not observed, and he was sent to Spain, where for long years he remained a prisoner. Sir Richard left an account of his 'Voyage to the South Sea'--a 'record of misfortune, but of misfortune which did no dishonour to him who sank under it; and there is a melancholy dignity in the style in which Hawkins tells his story, which seems to say that ... he respects himself still for the heart with which he endured a shame which would have broken a smaller man.' A second William Hawkins, Sir John's brother, commanded a Huguenot vessel under the commission of the Prince of Conde; and yet another William of a younger generation went as