Horace Hood
Encyclopedia
Rear Admiral
the Honourable Sir Horace Lambert Alexander Hood KCB, DSO
, MVO
(2 October 1870 – 31 May 1916) was a British Royal Navy
admiral of the First World War, whose lengthy and distinguished service saw him engaged in operations around the world, frequently participating in land campaigns as part of a shore brigade. His early death at the Battle of Jutland
in the destruction of his flagship HMS Invincible
was met with mourning and accolades from across Britain.
Admiral Hood was a youthful, vigorous and active officer whose service in Africa won him the Distinguished Service Order
and who was posthumously raised to a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in recognition of his courageous and ultimately fatal service in the Battle of Jutland, during which his ship was constantly engaged from its arrival at the action and caused fatal damage to a German light cruiser. He has been described as "the beau ideal of a naval officer, spirited in manner, lively of mind, enterprising, courageous, handsome, and youthful in appearance … His lineage was pure Royal Navy, at its most gallant".
, who won numerous actions against the French in the American Revolutionary War
and the French Revolutionary Wars
. His father was Francis Wheler Hood, 4th Viscount Hood
and his mother Edith Lydia Drummond Ward. Born in South Street, London, Hood joined the navy aged just 12, attending HMS Britannia
cadet training ship at Dartmouth
in 1882. Graduating top of his class in September 1885, Hood joined HMS Temeraire
as a midshipman
and served on her for a year in the Mediterranean Squadron before joining HMS Minotaur
. In 1887 he was attached to HMS Calliope
, a small cruiser which sailed for the Pacific Ocean
. It was aboard her that Hood experienced the Samoan Hurricane in which Calliope was the only survivor of seven foreign warships in Apia Harbour.
, and qualified first time. He served in HMS Trafalgar
for a time before taking three years out to study gunnery and staff duties. On his return to the sea, he spent brief periods aboard HMS Royal Sovereign
, HMS Wildfire, HMS Sans Pareil
and HMS Cambrian
. He performed well at these duties and in 1897 was recommended to the Egyptian government who provided him with a Nile gunboat to command on the Nile Expedition of 1898 in the Mahdist War
. During these operations, Hood was conspicuous in his duty as second in command to Captain David Beatty
and saw action for the first time, providing artillery support at the Battle of Atbara
and Battle of Omdurman
. For his services in these operations, he was promoted to commander
, skipping the intermediate rank.
During the Second Boer War
, Hood was given command of transport ships taking supplies to South Africa before being transferred to Admiral Lord Charles Beresford
's flagship HMS Ramillies
in the Mediterranean. In July 1903, Hood was given promotion to full captain
and placed in command of HMS Hyacinth
, flagship of Admiral G. L. Atkinson-Willes on the East Indies Station. In April 1904, Hood was given his first independent command as he led a force of 754 sailors, marines and soldiers of the Hampshire Regiment against the Ilig Dervishes of Somaliland
. Landing his men on an opposed beach in the dark, Hood led from the front, personally engaging in hand-to-hand combat and driving the dervishes into the hinterland, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order
.
Distinguished by his action, Hood was given command of the armoured cruiser HMS Berwick
in 1906 and the following year was made naval attaché to the British Embassy in Washington D.C. It was there he met Ellen Touzalin Nickerson, a widowed mother, whom he later married in 1910. The couple had two sons, Samuel Hood, 6th Viscount Hood (1910–1981) and Alexander Lambert Hood, 7th Viscount Hood (1914–1999). In 1908, Hood was given command of the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Commonwealth
, in which he served for a year before receiving a shore appointment to command the Royal Naval College, Osborne, where he stayed until 1913 when he was raised to flag rank. For three months Hood raised his flag in the dreadnought battleship HMS Centurion
before becoming Naval Secretary
to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill
in July 1914.
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At the outbreak of the First World War, Hood's experience with coastal operations recommended him to serve with a small flotilla of Humber class monitors
on the Belgian coast, bombarding German positions and troop formations during the Siege of Antwerp
and then the Battle of the Yser
, assisting Belgian forces to hold the coastline during the Race for the Sea.
In March 1915 Hood was in command of the Dover forces in the Channel, tasked with preventing German ships and submarines passing through. He was transferred to command of Force E at Queenstown by orders of Churchill and Fisher, for his perceived failure to do this as submarines continued to pass the Channel to threaten shipping in the Irish Sea. Force E consisted of obsolete cruisers and boarding vessels whose task was to patrol the area south west of Ireland to give instructions to arriving merchant vessels and guard against attacks by armed merchantmen. In February their operating area had been moved 200 miles further west as they were considered in themselves to be tempting targets for submarines. After his transfer, intelligence reports based on intercepted messages from German submarines showed that they had indeed had extreme difficulty passing the Channel, and as a result their orders were changed to travel around Scotland instead. Before Churchill was replaced as First Lord he corrected his mistake by appointing Hood to command of the Third Battlecruiser Squadron operating out of Rosyth
in Scotland
. Hood's command was the three battlecruisers of the Invincible class
: HMS Indomitable
, HMS Inflexible
and his flagship HMS Invincible
.
In late May 1916 came the only opportunity for the British battlefleet to engage the German main force at the Battle of Jutland
. Hood's squadron was attached to Jellicoe's main battlefleet and thus had not witnessed the destruction of two British battlecruisers at the guns of their German counterparts. Arriving as the action was well underway but ahead of the main fleet by advantage of their greater speed, Hood's force's first action was to rescue the light cruiser
HMS Chester
, which had been separated from the main fleet to provide a signal relay but was then ambushed by four German cruisers and was in danger of sinking. Hood's timely arrival scattered the German ships and caused fatal damage to SMS Wiesbaden
, which sank later that night with 589 of her crew.
Hood's intervention had far greater effects than were realised at the time however. In diverting his squadron to the North-West to aid Chester, Hood had inadvertently confused the German battlecruiser commander Admiral Hipper
into believing that the main British force was approaching from the North-West and prompting his withdrawal to the main German fleet, an act which has been claimed saved the British battlecruiser fleet from destruction. Hood meanwhile attached his squadron to the British battlecruiser squadron of Admiral Beatty
and with them formed the vanguard of the British battlefleet, which was now heading directly for the approaching Germans.
, an old armoured cruiser commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, was blown up with all 903 hands, and the fast battleship HMS Warspite
was badly damaged and forced to limp back to Britain. Hood's squadron was heavily engaged, Invincible facing the combined batteries of SMS Lützow
and SMS Derfflinger
and inflicting damage on Lützow, which would force her abandonment and scuttle during the night. The combination of the two ships proved too tough for Hood's flagship however, and a shell from Derfflinger penetrated the "Q" turret of Invincible, the same mortal wound which had destroyed the HMS Queen Mary
a few hours before and almost claimed HMS Lion
.
The unstable cordite
ammunition carried by Invincible, coupled with the weakness of her turret design and armour, and bad ammunition handling practices, resulted in a catastrophic explosion from "Q" turret's magazine, which blew the ship into two halves which sank separately, each protruding from the sea as the inner end settled on the shallow bottom. Of Invincible's 1,021 crew, there were just six survivors, pulled from the water by attendant destroyers. Hood was not amongst them. The Battle of Jutland was ultimately an expensive stalemate; both sides suffered further losses during the night action but the strategic situation remained unchanged. The Royal Navy however had suffered over 6,000 fatal casualties, three times the German losses.
. Admiral Hood was posthumously knighted in the Order of the Bath
. He had previously been made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order. His collected papers were donated by his family, with those of his ancestor Samuel Hood, the Churchill Archives Centre
in 1967. In 1918, Hood's widow was asked to launch the ill-fated battlecruiser HMS Hood
, named for Horace Hood's ancestor. The ship was lost in the Second World War, sunk with 1,415 hands fighting the Bismarck
.
Rear Admiral
Rear admiral is a naval commissioned officer rank above that of a commodore and captain, and below that of a vice admiral. It is generally regarded as the lowest of the "admiral" ranks, which are also sometimes referred to as "flag officers" or "flag ranks"...
the Honourable Sir Horace Lambert Alexander Hood KCB, DSO
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
, MVO
Royal Victorian Order
The Royal Victorian Order is a dynastic order of knighthood and a house order of chivalry recognising distinguished personal service to the order's Sovereign, the reigning monarch of the Commonwealth realms, any members of her family, or any of her viceroys...
(2 October 1870 – 31 May 1916) was a British Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
admiral of the First World War, whose lengthy and distinguished service saw him engaged in operations around the world, frequently participating in land campaigns as part of a shore brigade. His early death at the Battle of Jutland
Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...
in the destruction of his flagship HMS Invincible
HMS Invincible (1907)
HMS Invincible was a battlecruiser of the British Royal Navy, the lead ship of her class of three, and the first battlecruiser to be built by any country in the world. She participated in the Battle of Heligoland Bight in a minor role as she was the oldest and slowest of the British battlecruisers...
was met with mourning and accolades from across Britain.
Admiral Hood was a youthful, vigorous and active officer whose service in Africa won him the Distinguished Service Order
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
and who was posthumously raised to a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in recognition of his courageous and ultimately fatal service in the Battle of Jutland, during which his ship was constantly engaged from its arrival at the action and caused fatal damage to a German light cruiser. He has been described as "the beau ideal of a naval officer, spirited in manner, lively of mind, enterprising, courageous, handsome, and youthful in appearance … His lineage was pure Royal Navy, at its most gallant".
Early career
Horace Hood was descended of one of the most influential and experienced navy lines, being a great-great-grandson of Admiral Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount HoodSamuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood
Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood was a British Admiral known particularly for his service in the American War of Independence and French Revolutionary Wars...
, who won numerous actions against the French in the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
and the French Revolutionary Wars
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
. His father was Francis Wheler Hood, 4th Viscount Hood
Viscount Hood
Viscount Hood, of Whitley in the County of Warwick, is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain that was created in 1796 for the famous naval commander Admiral Samuel Hood, 1st Baron Hood...
and his mother Edith Lydia Drummond Ward. Born in South Street, London, Hood joined the navy aged just 12, attending HMS Britannia
HMS Prince of Wales (1860)
HMS Prince of Wales was one of six 121-gun screw-propelled first-rate three-decker line-of-battle ships of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 25 January 1860...
cadet training ship at Dartmouth
Dartmouth, Devon
Dartmouth is a town and civil parish in the English county of Devon. It is a tourist destination set on the banks of the estuary of the River Dart, which is a long narrow tidal ria that runs inland as far as Totnes...
in 1882. Graduating top of his class in September 1885, Hood joined HMS Temeraire
HMS Temeraire (1876)
HMS Temeraire was an ironclad battleship of the Victorian Royal Navy which was unique in that she carried her main armament partly in the traditional broadside battery, and partly in barbettes on the upper deck.-Design and construction:...
as a midshipman
Midshipman
A midshipman is an officer cadet, or a commissioned officer of the lowest rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Kenya...
and served on her for a year in the Mediterranean Squadron before joining HMS Minotaur
HMS Minotaur (1863)
HMS Minotaur was the lead ship of the armoured frigates built for the Royal Navy during the 1860s. They were the longest single-screw warships ever built. Minotaur took nearly four years between her launching and commissioning because she was used for evaluations of her armament and different...
. In 1887 he was attached to HMS Calliope
HMS Calliope (1884)
HMS Calliope was a Calypso-class corvette of the Royal Navy which served from 1887 until 1951. Like all the remaining frigates and corvette extent in 1887, she was re-classified as a third-class cruiser in the year she was completed, and exemplified the transitional nature of the late Victorian navy...
, a small cruiser which sailed for the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
. It was aboard her that Hood experienced the Samoan Hurricane in which Calliope was the only survivor of seven foreign warships in Apia Harbour.
African service
Hood gained a record score in his exam for lieutenantLieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
, and qualified first time. He served in HMS Trafalgar
HMS Trafalgar (1887)
HMS Trafalgar was one of two Trafalgar class battleships commissioned in 1890 and 1891, the other being HMS Nile.-Design:They were designed to be improved versions of the Admiral and Victoria classes, having a greater displacement to allow for improved protection...
for a time before taking three years out to study gunnery and staff duties. On his return to the sea, he spent brief periods aboard HMS Royal Sovereign
HMS Royal Sovereign (1891)
HMS Royal Sovereign was a Royal Sovereign class battleship of the Royal Navy, the lead ship of the class, and the largest warship in the world at the time of her construction. The ships were designed by Sir William White and were the most potent battleships in the world until HMS Dreadnought...
, HMS Wildfire, HMS Sans Pareil
HMS Sans Pareil (1887)
HMS Sans Pareil was a Victoria Class battleship of the British Royal Navy of the Victorian era, her only sister-ship being .In deciding upon her design configuration the Board of Admiralty took what history shows was a retrograde step by requesting the reversion from barbettes to turrets for her...
and HMS Cambrian
HMS Cambrian (1893)
HMS Cambrian was a second-class protected cruiser, of the Royal Navy, built at the Pembroke Dockyard and launched on 30 January 1893. She was the last flagship of the Australia Station....
. He performed well at these duties and in 1897 was recommended to the Egyptian government who provided him with a Nile gunboat to command on the Nile Expedition of 1898 in the Mahdist War
Mahdist War
The Mahdist War was a colonial war of the late 19th century. It was fought between the Mahdist Sudanese and the Egyptian and later British forces. It has also been called the Anglo-Sudan War or the Sudanese Mahdist Revolt. The British have called their part in the conflict the Sudan Campaign...
. During these operations, Hood was conspicuous in his duty as second in command to Captain David Beatty
David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty
Admiral of the Fleet David Richard Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO was an admiral in the Royal Navy...
and saw action for the first time, providing artillery support at the Battle of Atbara
Battle of Atbara
The Battle of Atbara took place during the Second Sudan War. Anglo-Egyptian forces defeated 15,000 Sudanese rebels, called Mahdists or Dervishes. The battle proved to be the turning point in the conquest of Sudan by a British and Egyptian coalition....
and Battle of Omdurman
Battle of Omdurman
At the Battle of Omdurman , an army commanded by the British Gen. Sir Herbert Kitchener defeated the army of Abdullah al-Taashi, the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad...
. For his services in these operations, he was promoted to commander
Commander
Commander is a naval rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service. Commander is also used as a rank or title in some organizations outside of the armed forces, particularly in police and law enforcement.-Commander as a naval...
, skipping the intermediate rank.
During the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
, Hood was given command of transport ships taking supplies to South Africa before being transferred to Admiral Lord Charles Beresford
Lord Charles Beresford
Charles William de la Poer Beresford, 1st Baron Beresford GCB GCVO , styled Lord Charles Beresford between 1859 and 1916, was a British Admiral and Member of Parliament....
's flagship HMS Ramillies
HMS Ramillies (1892)
HMS Ramillies was a pre-dreadnought battleship of Royal Navy and part of the seven ship Royal Sovereign' class.-Technical Characteristics:...
in the Mediterranean. In July 1903, Hood was given promotion to full captain
Captain (naval)
Captain is the name most often given in English-speaking navies to the rank corresponding to command of the largest ships. The NATO rank code is OF-5, equivalent to an army full colonel....
and placed in command of HMS Hyacinth
HMS Hyacinth (1898)
HMS Hyacinth was one of the Highflyer class cruisers of the Royal Navy. She was built by the London and Glasgow Shipbuilding Company in Glasgow, being laid down in January 1897, launched on 27 October 1898 and commissioned in September 1900....
, flagship of Admiral G. L. Atkinson-Willes on the East Indies Station. In April 1904, Hood was given his first independent command as he led a force of 754 sailors, marines and soldiers of the Hampshire Regiment against the Ilig Dervishes of Somaliland
Somaliland
Somaliland is an unrecognised self-declared sovereign state that is internationally recognised as an autonomous region of Somalia. The government of Somaliland regards itself as the successor state to the British Somaliland protectorate, which was independent for a few days in 1960 as the State of...
. Landing his men on an opposed beach in the dark, Hood led from the front, personally engaging in hand-to-hand combat and driving the dervishes into the hinterland, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
.
Distinguished by his action, Hood was given command of the armoured cruiser HMS Berwick
HMS Berwick (1902)
HMS Berwick was a Monmouth-class armoured cruiser of the British Royal Navy. She was launched on 20 September 1902. In 1908, she collided with the destroyer Tiger when the destroyer crossed Berwicks bows during an exercise in the English Channel, south of the Isle of Wight...
in 1906 and the following year was made naval attaché to the British Embassy in Washington D.C. It was there he met Ellen Touzalin Nickerson, a widowed mother, whom he later married in 1910. The couple had two sons, Samuel Hood, 6th Viscount Hood (1910–1981) and Alexander Lambert Hood, 7th Viscount Hood (1914–1999). In 1908, Hood was given command of the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Commonwealth
HMS Commonwealth (1903)
HMS Commonwealth, was a of the British Royal Navy. Like all ships of the class she was named after an important part of the British Empire, namely the Commonwealth of Australia.-Technical characteristics:...
, in which he served for a year before receiving a shore appointment to command the Royal Naval College, Osborne, where he stayed until 1913 when he was raised to flag rank. For three months Hood raised his flag in the dreadnought battleship HMS Centurion
HMS Centurion (1911)
HMS Centurion was the second battleship of the King George V class, built at HM Dockyard, Devonport.The Battleships of the King George V class had been designed as Dreadnought Battleship....
before becoming Naval Secretary
Naval Secretary
The Naval Secretary is the Royal Navy appointment of which the incumbent is responsible for policy direction on personnel management for members of the RN. It is a senior RN appointment, held by an officer holding the rank of Rear-Admiral. The Naval Secretary's counterpart in the British Army is...
to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
in July 1914.
First World War
Humber class monitor
The Humber class monitors were three large gunboats under construction for the Brazilian Navy in Britain in 1913. Designed for service on the Amazon River, the ships were of shallow draft and heavy armament and were ideally suited to inshore, riverine and coastal work but flawed for service at sea,...
on the Belgian coast, bombarding German positions and troop formations during the Siege of Antwerp
Siege of Antwerp
The Siege of Antwerp was an engagement between the German and the Belgian armies during World War I. A small number of British and Austrian troops took part as well.-Strategic Context:...
and then the Battle of the Yser
Battle of the Yser
The Battle of the Yser secured part of the coastline of Belgium for the allies in the "Race to the Sea" after the first three months of World War I.-Strategic Context:As part of the execution of the Schlieffen Plan, Belgium had been invaded by Germany...
, assisting Belgian forces to hold the coastline during the Race for the Sea.
In March 1915 Hood was in command of the Dover forces in the Channel, tasked with preventing German ships and submarines passing through. He was transferred to command of Force E at Queenstown by orders of Churchill and Fisher, for his perceived failure to do this as submarines continued to pass the Channel to threaten shipping in the Irish Sea. Force E consisted of obsolete cruisers and boarding vessels whose task was to patrol the area south west of Ireland to give instructions to arriving merchant vessels and guard against attacks by armed merchantmen. In February their operating area had been moved 200 miles further west as they were considered in themselves to be tempting targets for submarines. After his transfer, intelligence reports based on intercepted messages from German submarines showed that they had indeed had extreme difficulty passing the Channel, and as a result their orders were changed to travel around Scotland instead. Before Churchill was replaced as First Lord he corrected his mistake by appointing Hood to command of the Third Battlecruiser Squadron operating out of Rosyth
Rosyth
Rosyth is a town located on the Firth of Forth, three miles south of the centre of Dunfermline. According to an estimate taken in 2008, the town has a population of 12,790....
in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. Hood's command was the three battlecruisers of the Invincible class
Invincible class battlecruiser
The three Invincible class battlecruisers were built for the Royal Navy and entered service in 1908 as the world's first battlecruisers. They were the brainchild of Admiral Sir John Fisher, the man who had sponsored the construction of the world's first "all big gun" warship,...
: HMS Indomitable
HMS Indomitable (1907)
HMS Indomitable was an of the British Royal Navy. She was built before World War I and had an active career during the war. She tried to hunt down the German ships Goeben and Breslau in the Mediterranean when war broke out and bombarded Turkish fortifications protecting the Dardanelles even...
, HMS Inflexible
HMS Inflexible (1907)
HMS Inflexible was an of the British Royal Navy. She was built before World War I and had an active career during the war. She tried to hunt down the German battlecruiser and the light cruiser in the Mediterranean Sea when war broke out and she and her sister ship sank the German armoured...
and his flagship HMS Invincible
HMS Invincible (1907)
HMS Invincible was a battlecruiser of the British Royal Navy, the lead ship of her class of three, and the first battlecruiser to be built by any country in the world. She participated in the Battle of Heligoland Bight in a minor role as she was the oldest and slowest of the British battlecruisers...
.
In late May 1916 came the only opportunity for the British battlefleet to engage the German main force at the Battle of Jutland
Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...
. Hood's squadron was attached to Jellicoe's main battlefleet and thus had not witnessed the destruction of two British battlecruisers at the guns of their German counterparts. Arriving as the action was well underway but ahead of the main fleet by advantage of their greater speed, Hood's force's first action was to rescue the light cruiser
Light cruiser
A light cruiser is a type of small- or medium-sized warship. The term is a shortening of the phrase "light armored cruiser", describing a small ship that carried armor in the same way as an armored cruiser: a protective belt and deck...
HMS Chester
HMS Chester (1915)
HMS Chester was a Town class light cruiser of the Royal Navy, and one of two ships forming the Birkenhead subtype. Along with her sister ship, HMS Birkenhead, she was originally ordered for the Greek Navy in 1914 and was to be named Lambros Katsonis...
, which had been separated from the main fleet to provide a signal relay but was then ambushed by four German cruisers and was in danger of sinking. Hood's timely arrival scattered the German ships and caused fatal damage to SMS Wiesbaden
SMS Wiesbaden
SMS Wiesbaden was the lead ship of the Wiesbaden-class of light cruisers of the German Imperial Navy in World War I, the other being the Frankfurt-Specifications:...
, which sank later that night with 589 of her crew.
Hood's intervention had far greater effects than were realised at the time however. In diverting his squadron to the North-West to aid Chester, Hood had inadvertently confused the German battlecruiser commander Admiral Hipper
Franz von Hipper
Franz Ritter von Hipper was an admiral in the German Imperial Navy . Franz von Hipper joined the German Navy in 1881 as an officer cadet. He commanded several torpedo boat units and served as watch officer aboard several warships, as well as Kaiser Wilhelm II's yacht Hohenzollern...
into believing that the main British force was approaching from the North-West and prompting his withdrawal to the main German fleet, an act which has been claimed saved the British battlecruiser fleet from destruction. Hood meanwhile attached his squadron to the British battlecruiser squadron of Admiral Beatty
David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty
Admiral of the Fleet David Richard Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO was an admiral in the Royal Navy...
and with them formed the vanguard of the British battlefleet, which was now heading directly for the approaching Germans.
Destruction of HMS Invincible
The vanguards of the battlefleets, made up of battlecruisers and smaller ships, collided just before 18.00. The German fleet, possessing better gunnery and organisation, had the best of the early exchanges; HMS DefenceHMS Defence (1907)
HMS Defence was a armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1900s. She was the last armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy. She was stationed in the Mediterranean when the First World War began and participated in the pursuit of the German battlecruiser and light cruiser...
, an old armoured cruiser commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot, was blown up with all 903 hands, and the fast battleship HMS Warspite
HMS Warspite (1913)
HMS Warspite was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship of the British Royal Navy. During World War II Warspite gained the nickname "The Grand Old Lady" after a comment made by Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham in 1943....
was badly damaged and forced to limp back to Britain. Hood's squadron was heavily engaged, Invincible facing the combined batteries of SMS Lützow
SMS Lützow
SMS Lützow"SMS" stands for "Seiner Majestät Schiff", or "His Majesty's Ship" in German. was the second built by the German Kaiserliche Marine before World War I. Ordered as a replacement for the old protected cruiser , Lützow was launched on 29 November 1913, but not completed until 1916...
and SMS Derfflinger
SMS Derfflinger
SMS Derfflinger"SMS" stands for "Seiner Majestät Schiff", or "His Majesty's Ship" in German. was a battlecruiser of the German Kaiserliche Marine built just before the outbreak of World War I. She was the lead vessel of her class of three ships; her sister ships were and...
and inflicting damage on Lützow, which would force her abandonment and scuttle during the night. The combination of the two ships proved too tough for Hood's flagship however, and a shell from Derfflinger penetrated the "Q" turret of Invincible, the same mortal wound which had destroyed the HMS Queen Mary
HMS Queen Mary
HMS Queen Mary was a battlecruiser built by the British Royal Navy before World War I, the sole member of her class. She was similar to the s, though she differed in details from her half-sisters. She was the last battlecruiser completed before the war and participated in the Battle of Heligoland...
a few hours before and almost claimed HMS Lion
HMS Lion (1910)
HMS Lion was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, the lead ship of her class, which were nicknamed the "Splendid Cats". They were significant improvements over their predecessors of the in terms of speed, armament and armour...
.
The unstable cordite
Cordite
Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in the United Kingdom from 1889 to replace gunpowder as a military propellant. Like gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burning rates and consequently low brisance...
ammunition carried by Invincible, coupled with the weakness of her turret design and armour, and bad ammunition handling practices, resulted in a catastrophic explosion from "Q" turret's magazine, which blew the ship into two halves which sank separately, each protruding from the sea as the inner end settled on the shallow bottom. Of Invincible's 1,021 crew, there were just six survivors, pulled from the water by attendant destroyers. Hood was not amongst them. The Battle of Jutland was ultimately an expensive stalemate; both sides suffered further losses during the night action but the strategic situation remained unchanged. The Royal Navy however had suffered over 6,000 fatal casualties, three times the German losses.
Remembrance
As with his lost crewmates, Hood's body was never recovered and remains in the wreckage of HMS Invincible at the bottom of the North Sea. The wreck is now a protected War Grave, although it has suffered from the attentions of looters. Hood's name, with all those lost on Invincible is inscribed on the Portsmouth War Memorial administered by the Commonwealth War Graves CommissionCommonwealth War Graves Commission
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves, and places of commemoration, of Commonwealth of Nations military service members who died in the two World Wars...
. Admiral Hood was posthumously knighted in the Order of the Bath
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
. He had previously been made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order. His collected papers were donated by his family, with those of his ancestor Samuel Hood, the Churchill Archives Centre
Churchill Archives Centre
The Churchill Archives Centre is one of the largest repositories in the United Kingdom for the preservation and study of modern personal papers. It is best known for housing the Churchill Papers, the massive archive of Sir Winston Churchill, as well as the private papers of Baroness Thatcher...
in 1967. In 1918, Hood's widow was asked to launch the ill-fated battlecruiser HMS Hood
HMS Hood
Three ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Hood after several members of the Hood family, who were notable Navy officers: was a 91-gun second-rate ship of the line, originally laid down as HMS Edgar, but renamed in 1848 and launched in 1859. She was used for harbour service from 1872 and was...
, named for Horace Hood's ancestor. The ship was lost in the Second World War, sunk with 1,415 hands fighting the Bismarck
German battleship Bismarck
Bismarck was the first of two s built for the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the primary force behind the German unification in 1871, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched nearly three years later...
.