[Daily Sketch.
FLORAL TRIBUTES BEING TAKEN TO HARRY’S GRAVE, AT HOOK, SURREY, ON THE 225 H.P. SUNBEAM, BY MY BROTHER, CAPTAIN L. PEATY.
[Facing p. 318.
“Hawker’s one ambition was to get more from an internal combustion engine of given size than anyone else had succeeded in getting, and his perpetual success became a byword.... It was in this particular that Hawker shone most brilliantly, and never an engine passed through his hands but it showed an increased power capacity of from 20 per cent. to 100 per cent. when he had finished with it. The same applied to his work in aeroplane and motor-car design. He began where others had left off, and carried what they considered the final stage of development to a point that they had either not dreamed of or had definitely decided to be impossible of achievement.... No one but Hawker could have avoided death at the end of that skid. It took place on a car which, originally capable of some sixty miles an hour, regularly accomplished, when he had finished with it, over a hundred.”
“If ever there was a trier, Hawker was one. Once he made up his mind to do a thing, he would try, and try, and try again until he succeeded. Failures served to spur him on to new effort.... He loved to do things that were worth while, and did them for the sake of doing them, not with any sort of gain in view.”
“The nation has lost one of it most distinguished airmen, who by his skill and daring has contributed so much to the success of British aviation.”—H.M. King George V.