With equally little hesitancy, though without breach of subordination, he overbears the Admiralty when they wish to pay what he considers exaggerated care to cleaning the bottoms, traceable, no doubt, to the prejudices of the Sea Lords.  “If the ships take up a month by cleaning, from the time they leave me to their return, it will be impossible for me to keep up the squadron.  The only practicable way is to heel, etc., and confine them to ten days in port for the refreshment of their companies in case they should miss the spring tide.”  “Their Lordships will give me leave to observe that the relief of the squadron depends more on the refreshment of the ships’ companies than on cleaning the ships.  By the hurry the latter must be performed in, unless the ship continues a month or five weeks in port, which the present exigency will by no means admit of, the men would be so harassed and fatigued that they would return to me in a worse condition than when they left me....  However, I shall endeavor to comply with all their Lordships’ directions in such manner as, to the best of my judgment, will answer their intentions in employing me here.”  The words italicized strike the true note of subordination duly tempered with discretion.

To the Navy Board, a civil adjunct to the Admiralty, but possessed of considerable independent power to annoy officers in active military service, he took a more peremptory tone.  He had discharged on his own authority, and for reasons of emergency, a mutinous surgical officer.  For this he was taken to task, as Nelson a generation later was rebuked by the same body.  “I have to acquaint you,” he replied, “that there was no mistake in his being ordered by me to be discharged.”  He then gives his reasons, and continues, “For the real good of the service I ordered him to be discharged, and his crime noted on his list of pay, for your information.  I shall not enter into any dispute with you about my authority as a Commanding Officer, neither do I ever think of inconveniences or prejudices to myself, as a party, according to your insinuations, where the good of the service is concerned.”  It must be added that to subordinates he was as liberal with praise as he was with censure, where either was merited; nor did he fail in kindly personal intervention upon due occasion for deserving or unfortunate men.  More reserved, apparently, than Nelson, he seems to have been like him sympathetic; and hence it was that, as before observed, it was his spirit that he communicated to the navy rather than a system, admirable as was the strategic system embodied in his methods of blockade.  It was by personal influence rather than by formulated precept that Hawke inspired his service, and earned a just claim to be reckoned the greatest force of his century in naval development.