Date Published:
March 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Sir Hovenden Walker

Walker , Sir Hovenden (d. 1728), rear-admiral, is said to have been born in Ireland about 1656, but was probably born later than this. He entered the service of the royal navy. On March 15, 1710-11, he was promoted to be rear-admiral of the white; and about the same time he was knighted. In 1711 he was appointed to command an expedition against Quebec, consisting of ten ships of the line, a number of smaller vessels, and about thirty transports, with 5,000 troops on board. On August 11, 1711, part of this fleet was wrecked in the St. Lawrence as a result of fogs and gales; and Walker, after a council of war, decided that the only course open to him was to return, with the remnant of the fleet, to England. On 1715, after the accession of George I, he was dismissed from the service, ostensibly because of his conduct of the Quebec expedition, but more probably because he was suspected of Jacobite sympathies. He went to South Carolina, and became a planter; but after a few years he returned to England, and he died in Dublin, Ireland, in 1728. He was the author of A journal or full account of the late expedition to Canada (London, 1720).

[For more information on Walker and his failed 1711 expedition, consult his biography at the site of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.]

Source  : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. VI, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 398p., p. 252.