Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood

Sir Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood, GCB (* October 12, 1724; † January 27, 1816 in Bath ) was an admiral of the British Royal Navy.

Life

He was the son of Samuel Hood, Vicar of Butleigh in Somerset, and the older brother of Admiral Alexander Hood, 1st Viscount Bridport. Samuel Junior joined the Royal Navy on 6 May in 1741. As a midshipman, he served part of his time with George Brydges Rodney on the Ludlow and he became a lieutenant in 1746. He was lucky that he served under very active officers, including those in the North Sea. In 1753 he was appointed commander of the sloop HMS Jamaica, and he served on her in the mission area North America. In 1756 he was appointed temporary commander of HMS Antelope. He drove a French ship in the Bay of Audierrie on land and could capture two privateers. His zeal was known to the Admiralty, so that he soon got an own ship. In 1759 he was the captain of the Vestal and boarded after a hard battle the French ship Bellone (later renamed Repulse ). During the war he served all the time in the English Channel, and it was used under Rodney to 1755 to sink the ships that were gathered by the French to transport troops for a planned invasion of England. In 1778 he took over a command which would normally have ended his active career at sea. He was overseer of the shipyard Portsmouth and governor of the Naval Academy. These offices were regularly awarded to officers who retired from seafaring.

During the royal visit to Portsmouth in 1780, he was appointed Baron Hood of Catherington ( Peerage of Ireland). Many admirals had refused to serve under Lord Sandwich the then first lord of the admiralty, and Rodney, who held the command in the Caribbean at the time, complained about lack of support from his subordinates, whom he accused of lacking commitment. The Admiralty was eager dealt the services deserved old officers to secure and upgraded Hood on September 26, 1780 to Rear Admiral (Rear Admiral ) and sent him to the Caribbean, so that he should serve as deputy commander under the personally known to him Rodney. He met Rodney in January 1781 on his flagship Barfleur and remained in the Caribbean or on the North American coast to the end of the Revolutionary War.

The expectation that he would cooperate harmoniously with Rodney, was not entirely justified. The correspondence shows that they had not a particularly friendly relationship; but Hood always did his duty, and so never gave the question to pull him from his post. The unfavorable outcome, which the campaign of 1781 took resulted largely from the non-observance of the Council by Rodney Hood. Had this Hood allowed to choose his post himself, he would possibly have prevented the Comte de Grasse in mind with reinforcements from France to reach Fort Royal in April. When Rodney returned for health reasons in the fall of 1781 to England, Hood was ordered to return to the hull of the fleet during hurricane season in the North American coast. Here, Hood Admiral Thomas Graves joined the unsuccessful relief attempt for the trapped army in Yorktown. The British fleet of De Grasse during the Battle of the Chesapeake was expelled.

In 1793 he was commander in chief of the Mediterranean squadron. He got the job Toulon, the main city of the French in the Mediterranean, because there was their Mediterranean fleet to block. Due to the royalists, he was even able to take the city. But in December he had to leave the city because it was taken by the French army, especially the artillery under a young captain named Napoleon Bonaparte, under fire. In 1794 he occupied Corsica and achieved some success.

In 1796 he was created Viscount Hood of Whitley, raised ( Peerage of Great Britain).

Lord Hood died in 1816 in Bath, and left a son.

Others

George Vancouver named Mount Hood, the highest peak of the current U.S. state of Oregon, and the Hood Canal, an arm of Puget Sound, according to the admiral.

The British Navy named their largest battlecruiser HMS Hood and " The mighty Hood", according to him. The ship was built in 1918 and placed into service two years later. The Hood was sunk on 24 May 1941 the German battleship Bismarck.

Parts of this text are based on the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911.