Sir Samuel Hood and the Battle of the Chesapeake

1. Hood’s Early Career

1 Hood’s Early Career Samuel Hood came from a long-established Dorset family with their roots in South Perrott and Mosterton in the southwest of England. The family had farmed there in the time of Henry VIII. His father, also Samuel, was vicar of Butleigh, a village in Somerset near Glastonbury. It was here that Samuel Hood was born in December 1724, though some sources give his birthplace as Thornecombe, a nearby village.1 It was unusual for the firstborn son of the family to be sent into the navy, with the dangers attendant on such a career. For the eldest son of a clergyman, a career in the Church would likely have been in prospect. The eventual decision of both Samuel and his brother Alexander to go to sea has been explained by the fact that their father offered shelter to Captain Thomas Smith,2 illegitimate son of Lord Lyttelton, when the latter’s carriage broke down on the way to London. This story is unprovable, and the more plausible explanation is that the Hood brothers entered the service under the patronage of the Grenville family, the local lords of the manor.3 They did, however, first go to sea with Smith in the Romney (50 guns).4 Alexander left home first, in January 1741, but it was only four months before Samuel followed him. The navy was the only profession for which neither money nor influence was required to enter. At that time the quarterdeck was open to all men of ability, even from the lower deck.5 The Hood boys were under the patronage of Captain Smith in the same manner as Nelson later benefited from the patronage of Captain Maurice Suckling. The navy that the two brothers joined in 1741 would have represented something of a culture shock for sons of a country parson, who had to get used to lack of privacy, a rougher diet, cramped conditions, and the constraints of being the newest-joined among the Romney’s “young gentlemen .” On the Romney they were better off than they would have been on a larger ship. Although nominally rated a ship of the line, the Romney was now considered too lightly armed to serve in the line of battle. In such a small ship the newcomers had a closer relationship with the officers and 9 Hood’s Early Career warrant officers who were to teach them their trade. Their quarters were more confined than on a larger ship, and they had to accommodate themselves to sharing with a number of boys with the same ambitions. By the standards of the time, Samuel Hood was relatively old at sixteen to enter the navy. If he had joined at the more common age of twelve or thirteen, he would have had the opportunity of being made master and commander, perhaps even post captain, before the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748. This loss of early years was to prove critical when it came to the question of command of the British fleet on the fifth of September, 1781. With the country at war and with a powerful patron, there was no limit to what the future promised. The connection with Smith brought the Hood boys into contact with the Pitt family. They both formed friendships with William Pitt the Elder and later with his son. It was the friendship of the younger Pitt that is said to have kept Alexander Hood, by then Lord Bridport , as commander in chief of the Channel Fleet when by age and ability he was no longer fitted for the post. The Romney’s first duty was to escort trade to Newfoundland, where Smith had been appointed governor. Thus very early in his career Hood was to become acquainted with the coast of North America. In 1742 the Romney returned home and was sent to the Mediterranean under Captain Thomas Grenville,6 a promising officer who was later killed at the first battle of Finisterre. When Hood was transferred to the Sheerness (24) in 1743, he met George Rodney for the first time. The ship operated around the coast of Britain and in the mouth of the Channel in a time of rising invasion fever, with the Jacobites expected to land with French support. In June 1746 Samuel Hood was promoted to lieutenant and appointed to the Winchelsea (24), and it was in this ship that he first saw action. The Winchelsea pursued and took the...