Hawes, Charles Boardman 1889-1923

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HAWES, Charles Boardman 1889-1923

PERSONAL: Born January 24, 1889, in Clifton Springs, NY; died July 15, 1923; married Dorothea Cable, 1916; children: two sons. Education: Graduated Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME), 1911; attended Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), 1911-1912.

CAREER: Author, editor, and educator. Harrisburg Academy, Harrisburg, PA, teacher; Youth's Companion, Boston, MA, staff member; Open Road, Dayton, OH, associate editor.

AWARDS, HONORS: Longfellow fellow, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA,; John Newbery Medal, American Library Association, 1924, for The Dark Frigate.

WRITINGS:

juvenile

The Mutineers, Atlantic Monthly Press (Boston, MA), 1920 reprinted, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1941.

The Great Quest, illustrated by George Varian, Atlantic Monthly Press (Boston, MA), 1921.

The Dark Frigate, Atlantic Monthly Press (Boston, MA), 1923, illustrated by Warren Chappell, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1996.

other

(With Dorothea Hawes) Whaling, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1924.

Gloucester: By Land and Sea: The Story of a NewEngland Seacoast Town, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1923.

ADAPTATIONS: The Dark Frigate was recorded by Newbery Award Records, 1972; an abridged version was recorded on audio cassette, narrated by Domenick Allen, Bantam Books Audio, 1999.

SIDELIGHTS: Much of Charles Boardman Hawes' work is out of print, but his Newbery Award-winning The Dark Frigate has been reissued in book and audio form. In the St. James Guide to Children's Writers, Eric A. Kimmel compared the novel to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. The Dark Frigate is a tale of seventeenth-century life on the high seas, a story of bold buccaneers and bloody battles. Philip Marsham must flee London and signs on with the frigate Rose of Devon, bound for Newfoundland. Philip is a seaworthy addition whom the captain admires. When adrift pirates are pulled from the sea, they take control of the ship, and Philip is forced to align with them, and so becomes a wanted man.

Hawes died at age thirty-five. "His work showed promise of great things to come," Kimmel wrote. "Had he been allowed to live longer, had he been less bookish, had he actually sailed before the mast himself like Jack London and Herman Melville, he might stand today as one of the great writers of the sea. As it is, he is not very far behind them."