1795, and he was himself created Viscount Hood of Whitley in 1796. The titles descended to his son, Henry (1753–1836), the ancestor of the present Viscount Hood. There are several portraits of Lord Hood by Abbot in the Guildhall and in the National Portrait Gallery. He was also painted by Reynolds and Gainsborough.
There is no good life of Lord Hood, but a biographical notice of him by M‘Arthur, his secretary during the Mediterranean command, is in the Naval Chronicle, vol. ii. Charnock’s Biogr. Nav. vi., Ralfe, Nav. Biog. i., may also be consulted. His correspondence during his command in America has been published by the Navy Record Society. The history of his campaigns will be found in the historians of the wars in which he served: for the earlier years, Beatson’s Naval and Military Memoirs; for the later, James’s Naval History, vol. i., for the English side, and for the French, Troudes, Batailles navales de la France, ii. and iii., and Chevalier’s Histoire de la marine française pendant la guerre de l’indépendance américaine and Pendant la République. (D. H.)
HOOD, SIR SAMUEL (1762–1814), British vice-admiral,
cousin of Lord Hood and of Lord Bridport, entered the Royal
Navy in 1776. His first engagement was the battle off Ushant
in 1778, and, soon afterwards transferred to the West Indies,
he was present, under the command of his cousin Sir Samuel
Hood, at all the actions which culminated in Rodney’s victory
of April 12th, 1782. After the peace, like many other British
naval officers, he spent some time in France, and on his return
to England was given the command of a sloop, from which he
proceeded in succession to various frigates. In the “Juno”
his gallant rescue of some shipwrecked seamen won him a
vote of thanks and a sword of honour from the Jamaica assembly.
Early in 1793 the “Juno” went to the Mediterranean under
Lord Hood, and her captain distinguished himself by an audacious
feat of coolness and seamanship in extricating his vessel from
the harbour of Toulon, which he had entered in ignorance of
Lord Hood’s withdrawal. Soon afterwards he was put in command
of a frigate squadron for the protection of Levantine
commerce, and in 1797 he was given the “Zealous” (74), in which
he was present at Nelson’s unsuccessful attack on Santa Cruz.
It was Captain Hood who conducted the negotiations which
relieved the squadron from the consequences of its failure.
The part played by the “Zealous” at the battle of the Nile
was brilliant. Her first opponent she put out of action in twelve
minutes, and, passing on, Hood immediately engaged other
ships, the “Guerrier” being left powerless to fire a shot. When
Nelson left the coast of Egypt, Hood commanded the blockading
force off Alexandria and Rosetta. Later he rejoined Nelson
on the coast of the two Sicilies, receiving for his services the
order of St Ferdinand.
In the “Venerable” Hood was present at the action of Algesiras and the battle in the Straits of Gibraltar (1801). In the Straits his ship suffered heavily, losing 130 officers and men. A year later Captain Hood was employed in Trinidad as a commissioner, and, upon the death of the flag officer commanding the Leeward station, he succeeded him as Commodore. Island after island fell to him, and soon, outside Martinique, the French had scarcely a foothold in the West Indies. Amongst other measures taken by Hood may be mentioned the garrisoning of Diamond Rock, which he commissioned as a sloop-of-war to blockade the approaches of Martinique (see James, Naval History, iii, 245). For these successes he received, amongst other rewards, the K.B. In command next of the squadron blockading Rochefort, Sir Samuel Hood had a sharp fight, on 25th September 1805, with a small French squadron which was trying to escape. Amongst the few casualties on this occasion was the Commodore, who lost an arm. Promoted rear-admiral a few days after this action, Hood was in 1807 entrusted with the operations against Madeira, which he brought to a successful conclusion, and a year later went to the Baltic, with his flag in the “Centaur,” to take part in the war between Russia and Sweden. In one of the actions of this war the “Centaur” and “Implacable,” unsupported by the Swedish ships (which lay to leeward), cut out the Russian 80-gun ship “Sevolod” from the enemy’s line and, after a desperate fight, forced her to strike. The king of Sweden rewarded the admiral with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sword. Present in the roads of Corunna at the re-embarkation of the army of Sir John Moore, Hood thence returned to the Mediterranean, where for two years he commanded a division of the British fleet. In 1811 he became vice-admiral. In his last command, that of the East Indies station, he carried out many salutary reforms, especially in matters of discipline and victualling. He died at Madras, 24th December 1814. A lofty column was raised to his memory on a hill near Butleigh, Somersetshire, and in Butleigh Church is another memorial, with an inscription written by Southey.
See Naval Chronicle, xvii. 1 (the material was furnished by Hood himself; it does not go beyond 1806).
His elder brother, Captain Alexander Hood (1758–1798), entered the Royal Navy in 1767, and accompanied Captain Cook in his second voyage round the world. Under Howe and Rodney he distinguished himself in the West Indies, and at the victory of April 12th, 1782, he was in command of one of Rodney’s frigates. Under Sir Samuel Hood he then proceeded to the Mona passage, where he captured the French corvette “Cérès.” With the commander of his prize, the Baron de Peroy, Hood became very intimate, and during the peace he paid a long visit to France as his late prisoner’s guest. In the early part of the Revolutionary war, ill health kept him at home, and it was not until 1797 that he went afloat again. His first experience was bitter; his ship, the “Mars,” was unenviably prominent in the mutiny at Spithead. On April 21st, 1798, occurred the famous duel of the “Mars” with the “Hercule,” fought in the dusk near the Bec du Raz. The two ships were of equal force, but the “Hercule” was newly commissioned, and after over an hour’s fighting at close quarters she struck her flag, having lost over three hundred men. The captain of the “Mars” was mortally wounded early in the fight, and died as the sword of the French captain was being put in his hand. The latter, L’Heritier, also died of his wounds.
See Naval Chronicle, vi. 175; Ralfe, Naval Biographies, iv. 48; James, Naval History, and Chevalier, Hist. de la marine française sous la première république.
HOOD, THOMAS (1799–1845), British humorist and poet,
the son of Thomas Hood, bookseller, was born in London on
the 23rd of May 1799. “Next to being a citizen of the world,”
writes Thomas Hood in his Literary Reminiscences, “it must
be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world’s greatest
city.” On the death of her husband in 1811 Mrs Hood removed
to Islington, where Thomas Hood had a schoolmaster who
appreciated his talents, and, as he says, “made him feel it impossible
not to take an interest in learning while he seemed so
interested in teaching.” Under the care of this “decayed
dominie,” whom he has so affectionately recorded, he earned a
few guineas—his first literary fee—by revising for the press a
new edition of Paul and Virginia. Admitted soon after into
the counting-house of a friend of his family, he “turned his
stool into a Pegasus on three legs, every foot, of course, being
a dactyl or a spondee”; but the uncongenial profession affected
his health, which was never strong, and he was transferred to
the care of his father’s relations at Dundee. There he led a
healthy outdoor life, and also became a large and indiscriminate
reader, and before long contributed humorous and poetical
articles to the provincial newspapers and magazines. As a proof
of the seriousness with which he regarded the literary vocation,
it may be mentioned that he used to write out his poems in printed
characters, believing that that process best enabled him to understand
his own peculiarities and faults, and probably unconscious
that Coleridge had recommended some such method of criticism
when he said he thought “print settles it.” On his return to
London in 1818 he applied himself assiduously to the art of
engraving, in which he acquired a skill that in after years became
a most valuable assistant to his literary labours, and enabled
him to illustrate his various humours and fancies by a profusion
of quaint devices, which not only repeated to the eye
the impressions of the text, but, by suggesting amusing analogies
and contrasts, added considerably to the sense and effect of
the work.
