Editing Robert Hawker (poet) (section)

===Shipwrecks===
[[File:Hawker's Hut, Vicarage Cliff, Morwenstow - geograph.org.uk - 1369016.jpg|thumb|[[Hawker's Hut]]]]
Hawker was regarded as a deeply compassionate person giving Christian burials to shipwrecked seamen washed up on the shores of the parish, and was often the first to reach the cliffs when there was a shipwreck. Formerly, the bodies of shipwrecked sailors were often either buried on the beach where they were found or left in the sea. The figurehead of the ship ''Caledonia'', which foundered in September 1842, marks the grave in Morwenstow churchyard of five of the nine-man crew. Hawker described the wrecking in his book ''Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall''. Nearby stands a granite cross marked "Unknown Yet Well Known", close to the graves of 30 or more seafarers, including the captain of the ''Alonzo'', wrecked in 1843.

Another notable rescue effort was occasioned by the ''Martha Quayle'' of Liverpool on 4 December 1863. This vessel was seen dismasted off Hennacliff with the crew making the best of their situation; two boats were lowered from the side of which one was driven northward by the heavy seas while the other came ashore unmanned. The first boat was seen by Hawker being rowed by five men but did not make a landing until [[Clovelly]]. An attempt to launch the Bude lifeboat or bring her along the land failed but by riding along the coast as far as Clovelly Hawker found the mate and four crewmen safe. He failed to persuade the men of Clovelly to launch a skiff but a customs officer from Bideford happened to be there and was able to send a message to the Appledore lifeboatmen to assist if they could. The ''Martha Quayle'' was unlighted by Saturday nightfall. On the Sunday he sent a man towards Clovelly and sometime later that man brought thanks for their deliverance from the captain and crew back to Hawker. A rowing boat crewed by 19 men went north and jointly with the Appledore lifeboatmen who had brought their boat by land got the ''Martha Quayle'' on shore ready to be sold by auction the next day.<ref>Hawker, R. S. (1879) "Prefatory notice" by J. G. Godwin, in: Hawker's ''The Poetical Works of Robert Stephen Hawker''; [ed.] by J. G. Godwin. London: C. Kegan Paul; pp.vii-viii (included in this is a letter Hawker addressed to Godwin about this wreck, pp. xiv-xvi</ref>