# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Walker, Hovenden

​WALKER, Sir HOVENDEN (d. 1728), rear-admiral, second son of Colonel William Walker of Tankardstown, Queen's County, by Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Peter Chamberlen (1601–1683) [q. v.], is said to have been born about 1656. It would seem more probable that he was quite ten years younger. Sir Chamberlen Walker, described as ‘the celebrated man midwife,’ was his younger brother. His grandfather, John Walker, married Mary, daughter of Thomas Hovenden of Tankardstown, apparently the grandson of Giles Hovenden, who came to Ireland in the train of Sir Anthony St. Leger [q. v.] Hovenden Walker's early service in the navy cannot now be traced. The first mention of him is as captain of the Vulture fireship on 17 Feb. 1691–2, from which date he took post. In the Vulture he was present in the battle of Barfleur, but had no actual share in it, nor yet in the destruction of the French ships at La Hogue. He was shortly afterwards appointed to the Sapphire frigate on the Irish station; and, apparently in 1694, to the Friends' Adventure armed ship. In 1695 he commanded the Foresight of 50 guns, in which, when off the Lizard, in charge of convoy, with the Sheerness frigate in company, he is said to have fought a gallant action with two French ships of sixty and seventy guns, on 29 April 1696, and to have beaten them off (Charnock). In June 1697 he was appointed to the Content Prize; in September to the Royal Oak, and in February 1697–8 to the Boyne as flag-captain to Vice-admiral Matthew Aylmer [q. v.], going out to the Mediterranean as commander-in-chief, with local rank of admiral—a condition that led Walker afterwards to raise the question whether he ought not to be paid as captain to an admiral. The navy board, he complained, would only pay him as captain to ​a vice-admiral. On the return of the Boyne to England in November 1699 the ship was ordered to pay off, and Walker asked for leave of absence to go to Ireland, where, he explained, he had a cause pending in the court of chancery, in which his interests were involved to the extent of a thousand pounds. As the admiralty refused him leave till the ship was safe in Hamoaze and her powder discharged, he begged to ‘lay down’ the command.
In December 1701 he was appointed to the Burford, one of the fleet off Cadiz under Sir George Rooke [q. v.] in 1702; and afterwards of a squadron detached to the West Indies with Walker as commodore (Burchett, pp. 599, 603). After calling at the Cape Verd Islands and at Barbados, he arrived at Antigua in the middle of February, and was desired by Colonel Christopher Codrington [q. v.] to co-operate in an attack on Guadeloupe. The first part of the co-operation was to provide the land forces with ammunition, which was done by making up cartridges with large-grained cannon powder and bullets taken from the case-shot. Of flints there was no store, nor yet of mortars, bombs, pickaxes, spades, and such like, necessary for a siege. With officers who had allowed their troops to be in this state of destitution, it was scarcely likely that a warm-tempered man such as Walker could act cordially; and it is very possible that this want of agreement was in a measure answerable for the failure, though the account of the campaign seems to attribute it mainly to the inefficiency of the land forces. The ships certainly took the men over to Guadeloupe, put them safely on shore, cleared the enemy out of such batteries as were within reach of the sea, and kept open the communications. When the French, driven out of the towns and forts, were permitted to retire to the mountains, the English were incapable of pursuing them, and finally withdrew after destroying the town, forts, and plantations. ‘Never did any troops enterprise a thing of this nature with more uncertainty and under so many difficulties; for they had neither guides nor anything else which was necessary’ (Burchett, pp. 603–4; Walker's letters to Burchett, Captains' Letters, W. vol. vii.). In the end of May the squadron returned to Nevis, where, a few weeks later, it was joined by Vice-admiral John Graydon [q. v.], with whom it went to Jamaica, and later on to Newfoundland and England.
From 1705 to 1707 Walker commanded the Cumberland, in which, in the summer of 1706, he took out a reinforcement to Sir John Leake [q. v.] in the Mediterranean, and had part in the relief of Barcelona. In December 1707 he was appointed to the Royal Oak; in January 1707–8 to the Ramillies, and in June, under a recent order in council (18 Jan.), to be captain resident at Plymouth, to superintend and hasten the work of the port, and to be commander-in-chief in the absence of a flag-officer. On 15 March 1710–11 he was promoted to be rear-admiral of the white; about the same time he was knighted; and on 3 April he was appointed commander-in-chief ‘of a secret expedition,’ with an order to wear the union flag at the main when clear of the Channel. The ‘expedition’ intended against Quebec, consisting of ten ships of the line, with several smaller vessels and some thirty transports, carrying upwards of five thousand soldiers, commanded by Brigadier-general John Hill [q. v.], sailed from Plymouth in the beginning of May, and arrived in New England on 24 June. The supplies and reinforcements which were expected to be waiting for it were not ready, and the fleet did not sail for the St. Lawrence till 30 July. As they entered the river it began to blow hard, and on 21 Aug. a dense fog and an easterly gale compelled them, on the advice of the pilots, to lie to for the night. By the next morning they had drifted on to the north shore, among rocks and islands, where eight transports were cast away with the loss of nearly nine hundred men, and the rest of the fleet was saved with the greatest difficulty.
The stormy weather continuing, the pilots, ‘who had been forced on board the men-of-war by the government of New England, all judged it impracticable to get up to Quebec with a fleet.’ The ships, too, were short of provisions; the design of the expedition had been ‘industriously hid’ from the admiralty till the last moment; ‘a certain person—probably the Earl of Oxford is meant—seemed to value himself very much that a design of this nature was kept a secret from the admiralty’ (Burchett, p. 778), and the ships were neither victualled nor fitted for what was then a very exceptional voyage. A council of war was of opinion that if they had been higher up the river when the gale came on, they must all have been lost; and that now, being left, by the loss of one of the victuallers, with only ten weeks' provisions on short allowance, nothing could be done but to return to England as soon as possible. They arrived at St. Helen's on 9 Oct., ‘and thus ended an expedition so chargeable to the nation and ​from which no advantage could reasonably be expected, considering how unadvisedly it was set on foot by those who nursed it up upon false suggestions and representations; besides, it occasioned the drawing from our army in Flanders, under command of the Duke of Marlborough, at least six thousand men, where, instead of beating up and down at sea, they might have done their country service. There may be added to the misfortunes abroad an unlucky accident which happened at their return; for a ship of the squadron, the Edgar of 70 guns—Walker's flagship—had not been many days at anchor at Spithead ere, by what cause is unknown, she blew up and all the men which were on board her perished’ (ib. p. 781). When the Edgar blew up, Walker was happily on shore; but—among other things—all his papers were still on board and were lost, a circumstance which afterwards caused him much trouble. On 14 March 1711–12 he was appointed commander-in-chief at Jamaica, and sailed finally from Plymouth on 30 April with the small squadron and a convoy of a hundred merchant ships. The command was uneventful, and is mainly important as showing that nothing in the conduct of the expedition to the St. Lawrence was considered by the admiralty as prejudicial to Walker's character as an officer. On the peace he was ordered to England, and arrived off Dover on 26 May 1713.
Shortly after the accession of George I Walker was called on by the admiralty to furnish them with an account of the Canada expedition. He replied that they had his official letters written at the time, that all his journals and other papers had been lost in the Edgar, and that any account he could write would be necessarily less perfect than what they already had. He was told that he must make out the best account he could, and was occupied with this when, apparently in April 1715, he received notice from his attorney that his half-pay had been stopped. His name had, in fact, been removed from the list of admirals; not probably, as he then and many others since have believed, for imputed misconduct in the Canada expedition, but—as happened also to many others [cf. Hardt, Sir Thomas; Hosier, Francis]—on suspicion of Jacobitism; the more so as the Canada expedition was certainly intended at the time as a blow to the Marlborough power. Walker, in disgust, left the country and settled in South Carolina as a planter. In a few years, however, he returned to England, and in 1720 published ‘A Journal, or Full Account of the late Expedition to Canada’ (London, 8vo), as a justification of himself against the statements that had been busily circulated.
After this he seems to have resided abroad and in Ireland. In or about 1725 Thomas Lediard [q. v.] was well acquainted with him in Hamburg and Hanover. ‘I found him,’ he says, ‘a gentleman of letters, good understanding, ready wit, and agreeable conversation; and withal the most abstemious man living; for I never saw or heard that he drank anything but water, or eat anything but vegetables’ (Lediard, p. 855). He died in Dublin, of apoplexy, in 1728. He was twice married, and left issue, by the second wife, one daughter, Margaret, who died unmarried about 1777.
J. K. L.