John Clarke Hawkshaw | |
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![]() J. Clarke Hawkshaw. Steel engraving by W. H. Gibbs from a photograph by Witcomb | |
Born | 17 August 1841 |
Died | 12 February 1921 |
Nationality | British |
Occupation | Engineer |
Engineering career | |
Discipline | Civil |
Institutions | Institution of Civil Engineers (president) |
John Clarke Hawkshaw (7 August 1841 – 12 February 1921) was a British civil engineer.[1][2]
Hawkshaw was born in Manchester, England in 1841 and was the son of civil engineer Sir John Hawkshaw and Lady Ann Hawkshaw.[3][4] He attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was president of the University Boat Club and rowed in the annual Boat Race against Oxford University in 1863 and 1864.[5] On 9 December 1862 John Clarke Hawkshaw was commissioned as an ensign in the Third Cambridgeshire Rifle Volunteer Corps a Volunteer Force unit stationed at Cambridge University.[6][7] He resigned his commission as ensign in the unit on 1 December 1863.[8] Hawkshaw graduated with a Master of Arts degree and lived at Liphook in Hampshire.[9] By 1876 Hawkshaw was a partner in his father's civil engineering firm.[10]
In March 1876 Hawkshaw was elected a member of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, an institution that he would become president of in 1889.[10][11] He served as the 39th president of the Institution of Civil Engineers from November 1902 to November 1903.[12] In holding that office he followed in the footsteps of his father who had been the 11th president from December 1861 to December 1863.[13] The largest civil engineering project undertaken by the firm which was initiated by John Clarke Hawkshaw was the Puerto Madero docks in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1887–98).
On 4 October 1884 Hawkshaw was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel in Command of the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps, an unpaid Royal Engineers volunteer unit which provides technical expertise to the British Army.[14] He was granted the honorary rank of Colonel on 25 October 1902,[15] and on 6 February 1903 received the Volunteer Officers' Decoration (VD), a reward for more than 20 years of volunteer military service.[16] He continued as Lieutenant-Colonel in Command when the regiment became part of the Territorial Force on 1 April 1908.[17] Hawkshaw also served as a Justice of the Peace.[9]
In 1903 he was appointed a member of the Royal Commission to decide the British submission to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904.[18]
Hawkshaw was married to Cicely Mary Wedgwood the daughter of Francis Wedgwood of the famous pottery firm.[2] He died on 12 February 1921, Cicely had died on 6 September 1917[19].[1][2]