 Hawker was regarded as a deeply compassionate person giving Christian burials to shipwrecked seamen washed up on the shores of the parish, and was often the first to reach the cliffs when there was a shipwreck.Formerly, the bodies of shipwrecked sailors were often either buried on the beach where they were found or left in the sea.The figurehead of the ship "Caledonia", which foundered in September 1842, marks the grave in Morwenstow churchyard of five of the nine-man crew.