766 



HOOD 



his entry into the service was 1741. Both the 

 Hoods entered under the patronage of Admiral 

 Smith, called 'Tom of Ten Thousand.' There 

 has been some confusion between the exploits 

 of the brothers thus a victory at Hyeres, in com- 

 mand of the Antelope in 1757, has been erroneously 

 attributed to the younger brother. In 1746 

 Alexander Hood became lieutenant, and in 1756 

 attained the command of the Prince George (90 

 guns). After service in the Mediterranean and 

 Channel under Saunders and Hawke, he again 

 distinguished himself in 1760, while in command 

 of the Minerva frigate (32 guns), by recapturing 

 from the French the Warwick, a 60-gun ship, 

 formerly English, but now armed with 34 guns. 

 During the war of American independence he 

 served much under Keppel, Rodney, and Howe in 

 the Channel and the Strait of Gibraltar. In the 

 notorious Keppel court-martial he appeared not 

 wholly to his credit. During the French revolu- 

 tionary war he served in the Channel with distinc- 

 tion, having a share in 1794 in the 'glorious first of 

 June ' off Ushant, and afterwards in command of 

 blockading squadrons. He attained flag rank in 

 1780, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Brid- 

 port of Cricket St Thomas, Somerset, in 1796, and 

 Viscount Bridport in 1800. He died 3d May 1814. 

 See the Naval Chronicle, vol. i. ; the Rev. T. 

 Keppel's Life of Lord Keppel ; and Lord Brid port's 

 Letters, edited by Hannay for the Navy Records 

 Society (1895). 



Hood, JOHN BELL, an American general, was 

 born at Owingsville, Kentucky, 1st June 1831, 

 graduated at West Point in 1853, and saw some 

 service against the Indians. He entered the Con- 

 federate army, commanded a brigade, and was 

 severely wounded at Gaines's Mill, at Gettysburg, 

 and at Chickamauga, where he lost a leg and was 

 made lieutenant-general. He commanded a corps 

 under General J. E. Johnston in the retreat to 

 Atlanta, and in July 1864 succeeded him in com- 

 mand of the army. On September 1 he was com- 

 pelled to evacuate the city, and leave the road free 

 for Sherman's march to the sea. He yet made a 

 bold attempt to cut Sherman's communications, 

 and, though worsted at Franklin on November 30, 

 pushed as far north as Nashville ; but here he was 

 again defeated by Thomas on December 16, and 

 at his own request he was relieved of command. 

 He died in New Orleans, 30th August 1879. His 

 personal experiences were published posthumously 

 as Advance ami Retreat ( 1880). 



Hood, ROBIN. See ROBIN HOOD. 



Hood, SAMUEL, Viscount Hood" of Whitley, 

 admiral, elder brother of Lord Bridport, was born 

 at Thorncombe in 1724, and entered the navy in 

 1740 under Commodore Smith on board the Romney. 

 He was promoted lieutenant in 1746, commander 

 in 1754 after seeing good service, and post-captain 

 in 1756. While in that rank he commanded the 

 Vestal frigate of 32 guns, in which he took a 

 French frigate of equal force after a fiercely-con- 

 tested - action. After much other service at sea 

 he was made commissioner of Portsmouth dock- 

 yard in 1778. In 1780 he was promoted to flag 

 rank, and sailed almost at once in command of 

 a squadron to reinforce the North American and 

 West Indian stations under the orders of Rodney. 

 He remained in these waters till peace was signed ; 

 and, as they were the great scene of the naval war, 

 he had many opportunities of distinguishing him- 

 self. In April 1781 he fought an action with 

 De Grasse off the Diamond Rock, and in July 

 of the same year Rodney having gone on 

 leave was engaged under Admiral Graves in 

 the battle off the Chesapeake. In January 1782 

 he was back in the West Indies, and showed 



himself a tactician of the most brilliant kind by 

 the masterly series of manoeuvres by which he 

 outwitted De Grasse in the actions fought in the 

 Basseterre Roads off the island of St Kitts. When 

 Rodney arrived to take command with the re- 

 inforcements from England, Hood became again 

 his second in command. In that rank he had a 

 conspicuous share in the winning of the decisive 

 victory of the 12th April, commonly called the 

 battle of Dominica. The brunt of the preliminary 

 action of the 9th fell on his division, and on the 

 12th he led the rear of the English line. For his 

 services on this occasion he was made Baron Hood 

 of Catherington in the Irish peerage. In 1784 

 he stood against P'ox for Westminster, and was 

 elected. He became a Lord of the Admiralty in 

 1788. When the great revolutionary war broke 

 out in 1793, he was appointed to the Mediter- 

 ranean. In that position he directed the occupa- 

 tion of Toulon and the subsequent operations in 

 the Gulf of Lyons and on the coast of Corsica. 

 He hauled down his flag in 1795. In 1796 he 

 was made Viscount Hood in the peerage of Great 

 Britain, and he died at Bath. 27th June 1816. 

 Lord Hood had the reputation of being a con- 

 summate tactician. Nelson, who served under 

 him, considered him the ablest of our admirals in 

 the early years of the war, and it is said that a 

 plan he drew up for an attack on a French fleet 

 at anchor, which was prevented by foul winds, 

 had some share in inspiring the plan of attack 

 adopted in the battle of the Nile. See Naval 

 Chronicle, vol. ii. pp. 1-46; Mundy's Rodney; 

 Nelson's Letters and Despatches; James's Naval 

 History. 



Hood, THOMAS, poet and humorist, was born 

 on the 23d of May 1799, at No. 31 the Poultry, in 

 the City of London, where his father carried on the 

 business of a publisher in partnership with a Mr 

 Vernor. Thomas Hood the elder was a native of 

 Scotland, the son of parents in humble circum- 

 stances, near Errol, on the north bank of the Tay, 

 between Perth and Dundee. Originally bound 

 apprentice to a bookseller in Dundee, he had pro- 

 ceeded to London, and finally became member of 

 the firm just mentioned. He was himself a man of 

 some turn for authorship, and even wrote a couple 

 of novels now forgotten, so that his more dis- 

 tinguished son was born, as he expressed it, ' with 

 ink in his blood.' The elder Hood married the 

 sister of Mr Sands, an engraver of some repute, 

 from whom Thomas Hood probably received his 

 first impulse towards art and artistic associations. 

 To Thomas Hood, the publisher, and his wife, were 

 born a family of six children, two sons and four 

 daughters, of whom Thomas was the second son. 

 There was a tendency to consumption on the 

 mother's side, for the malady was fatal to the elder 

 son James and to two of the daughters, and in the 

 sequel to Mrs Hood, and was at the root of those 

 complicated disorders which made the life of 

 Thomas Hood ' one long disease. ' The father con- 

 tracted a chill while nursing his elder son, and died 

 after a few days' illness in 1811, when Thomas was 

 only twelve years old, leaving the widow and re- 

 maining children in reduced circumstances. 



In his Literary Reminiscences, a discursive 

 autobiography written by Hood in 1839, and pub- 

 lished in the first series of Hood's Own, he tells us 

 that he owed his earliest instruction to two maiden 

 ladies, of the name of Hogsflesh, who had a small 

 school in Token House Yard ; that he was then 

 sent to a suburban boarding-school ( the ' Clapham 

 Academy ' of his famous Ode ), and ultimately to a 

 day-school at Clerkenwell, where his mother went 

 to reside after her husband's death. His education, 

 ordinarily so called, closed at this point ; and after 

 the age of thirteen or fourteen his own keen and 



