Details
DOB: September 29, Michaelmas, 1842
POB: Troy
Commenced seafaring: 1856, aged 14
Retired: 1896, aged 54
Marital status: single
Status: Captain and majority owner of the barquetine Hannah Hoo
Crew: Nathaniel Berry, Ben Price and William Tregaskis
Returned to port: April 1896
Lodges: Mr Oke of the Ship Inn, Trafalgar Square, Troy
Residence from May, 1896: 2 Harbour Terrace, leased from Mrs Bosenna of Rilla Farm, through John Rogers, at £25 per year, paid quarterly.
Financial position: Various investments handled by ship’s-chandler John Rogers of Troy. Holds 30 shares as majority owner, probably with John Rogers, of the Hannah Hoo, to be redeemed following sale. Rogers advises proceeds in’safe ord’nary investments’ at 4%, bringing in £300 per year (p.17)
First meeting with Tobias Hunken: November 21, 1880, Rotterdam.
Only meeting with Robert Samuel Bosenna: in a boxing tent at Summercourt Fair.
Positions held after April 1896:
- Member of the Regatta Committee
- School Manager (co-opted to replace John Rogers) from September 1896
- Steward at the Agricultural Demonstration run by the Technical Instruction Committee of the County Council.
- President of the Stevedores’ Regatta, 1897
- Chairman of the Parish Council (elected) with responsibility for the Jubilee celebration of June 1897
Has lessons in elocution from Peter Benny.
Literary forerunner: Captain Caius Hocken is a recreation of Captain John Barker of His Majesty’s Frigate Wasp in The Blue Pavilions, a novel of 1891. On October 11, 1673, Barker retired from the sea to the port of Harwich. In the local barbers he hears of the death of Roderick Salt and decides to seek the hand of his widow, Margaret. He finds himself in competition with friend and neighbour Captain Jeremy Runacles, who has also just retired.
Captain Caius Hocken is similar in some respects to Farmer Boldwood in Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. He abjures women, being committed to his profession, until late in life, when a female advance leaves him smitten to the point of folly. He recovers while Boldwood does not. Mrs Bosenna enjoys the attention of the sea-captains while having her eye on wealthy Farmer Middlecoat. Hocken is a more balanced person than Boldwood with interests in the community and a sanguine temperament. At the close of the novel the damage withCaptain Hunken is repaired and harmony is restored. In Hardy, fate brings Boldwood to despair.
Hocken is not a deep character. He is not introspective and does not analyse his emotions. There is an honesty and integrity, as with his renunciation of Mrs Bosenna in chapter twenty-five, about him which makes him popular in Troy in spite of his follies regarding Mrs Bosenna. Hocken is a man who acts and shows his character through his actions.