BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF COMMODORE SIR SAMUEL HOOD, K.B., K.S.F., AND M.P. FOR THE CITY OF WESTMINSTER

Summary

“The heart of a sailor can feel,

For his friend's, for his country's repose;

To these it presents the smooth peel,—

And the rough oak beneath, to their foes.”

Ogilvie.

IT is recorded, on the sepulchral monument of a certain noble family, that “all the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous.” With the female branches of the Hood family, we have not the honour of being acquainted; but, as far as our knowledge extends, respecting the males, we can with confidence assert them to be all “valiant.”

Already has it been our task to emblazon the virtues and exploits of Sir Samuel Hood's noble relatives, the Lords Hood and Bridport; and to embalm the respected memory of his deceased brother: it now becomes our pleasing duty to exhibit the more prominent traits of his own professional life—a life, of which upwards of thirty years have been spent in the service of his beloved country.

This gentleman, whose nautical career we are about to disclose, was born in the month of November, 1762; and consequently is now in his forty-fifth year. Sir Samuel's grandfather was the Rev. Arthur Hood, of Dawlish, Somersetshire, elder brother of the father of the Lords Hood and Bridport: his father was the late Mr. Samuel Hood, an opulent farmer, of Kingsland, in the parish of Netherby, Dorsetshire.