e second to Sir Peter Warren,
commander-in-chief of the "Western Squadron." This cruised in the Bay of
Biscay, from Ushant to Finisterre, to intercept the naval divisions,
and the accompanying convoys of merchant and transport ships, with
which the French were then seeking to maintain their colonial empire in
North America and in India: an empire already sorely shaken, and
destined to fall finally in the next great war.

Hawke was now in the road of good luck, pure and unadulterated. His
happy action in capturing the _Poder_ illustrates indeed opportunity
improved; but it was opportunity of the every day sort, and it is the
merit that seized it, rather than the opportunity itself, that strikes
the attention. The present case was different. A young rear-admiral had
little reason to hope for independent command; but Warren, a well-tried
officer, possessing the full confidence of the First Lord, Anson,
himself a master in the profession, was in poor health, and for that
reason had applied for Hawke to be "joined with him in the command,"
apparently because he was the one flag-officer immediately available. He
proposed that Hawke should for the present occasion take his place, sail
with a few ships named, and with them join the squadron, then at sea in
charge of a captain. Anson demurred at first, on the ground of Hawke's
juniority,--he was forty-two,--and Warren, while persisting in his
request, shares the doubt; for he writes, "I observe what you say about
the ships abroad being under so young an officer. I am, and have been
uneasy about it, though I hope he will do well, _and it could not then
be avoided_." Anson, however, was not fixed in his opposition; for
Warren continued, "From your letter I have so little reason to doubt his
being put under my command, that I have his instructions all ready; and
he is prepared to go at a moment's notice." The instructions were issued
the following day, August 8th, and on the 9th Hawke sailed. But while
there was in this so much of luck, he was again to show that he was not
one to let occasion slip. Admiral Farragut is reported to have said,
"Every man has _one_ chance." It depends upon himself whether he is by
it made or marred. Burrish and Hawke toed the same line on the morning
of February 22d, and they had had that day at least equal opportunity.

Hawke's adequacy to his present fortune betrayed itself again in a
phrase to Warren, "I have nothing so much at heart as the faithful