25 OCTOBER 1930, Page 42

If Dr. J. A. Williamson had not produced his masterly

study of Hawkins, and put that great Elizabethan in a new light, it is improbable that Mr. Philip Gosse's vivacious new book on Sir John Hawkins in the ` Golden Hind" series (Lane, 12s. 6d.) would have been half as informing as it is. However, Mr. Gosse acknowledges his debt to the standard biography, and rightly accepts Dr. Williamson's conclusion,. Hawkins was a brave sea-captain, a shrewd man of business and an honest and competent administrator of the Navy, and it is all to the good that Mr. Gosse should show once again how grievously Hawkins has been misjudged and underestimated by comparison with Drake and others.