Reviewing the Hawes Memorial Prize Contest in 1925, The New York Times observed that "his adventure stories of the sea caused him to be compared with Stevenson, Dana and Melville".

Born in Clifton Springs, New York, he was raised in Bangor, Maine, and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1911 where he was "editor of The Quill and a devoted student of the classics".

[2] He had recently delivered the completed manuscript of The Dark Frigate: wherein is told the story of Philip Marsham [...], a 17th-century adventure set in England and Barbados as well as at sea.

[4] The Atlanta Constitution remarked, "Mr. Hawes' great gift was the ability to write sea stories ... His literary skill in capturing the style and atmosphere of the eighteenth century gained him many adult admirers ...

[11] In September 1923, Atlantic Monthly Press opened a contest with $2000 prize, plus royalties, for "an adventure story of not less than 60,000 words, of the characters and excellence of the works of the late Charles Boardman Hawes" (quoting a newspaper)[9] The winner was a novel by Clifford MacClellan Sublette, The Scarlet Cockerel (March 1925).