Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/259

 port-lids were rubbed off by the collision, and the anchors at the bows hooking into each other, the two ships remained actually touching, so that the guns could not be run out, but were fired in many cases from in-board. At these close quarters the action was continued for above an hour, when the Hercule, having lost 315 men killed or wounded, her sides torn, her guns dismounted, and having failed in an attempt to board, struck her colours. Hood fell early in the action, shot in the thigh by a musket-bullet which cut the femoral artery. He was carried below, and expired just as the sword of the French captain was placed in his hand. L'Héritier, the French captain, was also mortally wounded, and died in England. In point of tonnage, armament, and number of men, the two ships were almost exactly the same; but the Mars had been some years in commission; the Hercule was just out of the hands of the dockyard; and though her men stood manfully to their guns, their return to the English fire was weak, and the loss of the Mars in killed and wounded was not more than ninety.

Hood's body was taken to England, and buried in the churchyard of Butleigh in Somerset, beneath a monument erected by his widow. In the church is another, with a very long and not too felicitous epitaph by the poet Southey, whose brother Thomas, a midshipman of the Mars, was severely wounded in the action with the Hercule. By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Periam of Butleigh, Hood had two children, a daughter and a son, Alexander, who succeeded to the baronetcy conferred on his uncle, Sir Samuel Hood, and died in 1851, leaving, with other issue, Sir Alexander B. P. Hood, third baronet, and Admiral Sir Arthur William Acland Hood, G.C.B., first naval lord of the admiralty, 1885–9. 

HOOD, ALEXANDER, (1727–1814), admiral, younger brother of Samuel, viscount Hood [q. v.], entered the navy on 19 Jan. 1740–1, a few months before his brother, on board the Romney, as captain's servant, with Captain Thomas Smith, and remained in her with Captain Grenville till 22 April 1743. On 9 May he was appointed to the Princess Mary, again with Smith, who rated him midshipman; in December 1744 he followed Smith to the Royal Sovereign; in March 1745 to the Exeter, and in May 1746 to the Hawk, from which he was promoted on 2 Dec. 1746 to be lieutenant of the Bridgwater: in her he continued employed in convoy and cruising service till October 1748, when the ship was put out of commission and Hood placed on half-pay. In January 1755 he was appointed lieutenant of the Prince, with Captain Charles Saunders [q. v.] On 23 March 1756 he was promoted to the command of the Merlin sloop, fitting out in the river, and on 10 June 1756, six weeks senior to his elder brother, he was posted to the Prince George, in which Saunders, now a rear-admiral, hoisted his flag as second in command in the Mediterranean. Charnock's statement that in the spring of 1757 he commanded the Antelope, and destroyed the Aquilon in Hyères Bay, is erroneous; one of many instances of confusion between the two brothers. Alexander Hood was flag-captain to Saunders during the whole of his Mediterranean command, following him to the Prince, Culloden, and St. George. On his return to England he was appointed on 5 Jan. 1759 to the Minerva frigate of 32 guns, attached during the summer and autumn to the fleet off Brest under Sir Edward Hawke, and more particularly in October and November to the small squadron off the Morbihan under Captain Duff, with which she was present at the total defeat of the French fleet on 20 Nov. Continuing in the Minerva, on 23 Jan. 1761, in the Bay of Biscay, Hood fell in with the Warwick, a small, heavy-sailing 60-gun ship, which had been captured by the French in 1756 [see ], and was now, with a reduced armament, being utilised as a trooper and storeship. Though not superior in guns, her heavier scantling gave her a material advantage, and Hood gained well-deserved credit by her capture, after a stubborn contest of more than six hours. The loss of the Warwick in men was returned as fourteen killed and thirty-two wounded; that of the Minerva as thirteen killed and thirty-three wounded, of whom three died within four days. The Warwick, when she struck, seems to have had only the mizen-mast standing; the Minerva presented a better appearance, but her main and mizen masts went by the board a few hours after the action terminated. In the following summer the Minerva was one of the small squadron under Anson, serving as a guard of honour to bring over the Princess Charlotte, and in September Hood was moved into the Africa, which he commanded in the Mediterranean till the peace.

Hood wrote from Hagley to the secretary of the admiralty on 10 Sept. 1763, declining a commission to be captain of the Thunderer