HMS HOOD SAILS FROM PORTSMOUTH (1935) (MP033)

Frank Watson Wood (1862-1953).  Watercolour signed and dated 1935 and annotated “HMS HOOD leaving Portsmouth.”

Built on the banks of Scotland’s River Clyde, the great 860 foot long hull - already weighing some 21,000 tons - was launched on 22 August 1918 by Lady Hood, widow of Rear Admiral the Hon Horace Hood CB MVO DSO who had lost his life two years earlier when flying his flag in the battle cruiser INVINCIBLE at Jutland. It was one of his ancestors, Viscount Samuel Hood, whose brilliant actions against the French in the West Indies at the end of the eighteenth century had become legendary and so it had been decided that the name of the new ship should honour this family of great sailors: and their motto, Ventis Secundis, and crest of ‘a Cornish chough sable in front of an anchor in bend sinister’ were adopted too. Not commissioned until some eighteen months after the Great War armistice, the new ship had been too late to play any part in the first of the World Wars and would be old by the time the second one broke out. Yet by a combination of sheer size and power allied with her undeniable beauty of line and symmetry of shape she nevertheless became the best known warship of her time across the oceans of the world and played a not insignificant part in the international politics of the next twenty years. She represented not only destructive power on a grand scale but also security for those who pass on the seas upon their lawful occasions and by the time of this painting she well into middle age. But with her stunning looks still intact, her size, speed and armament unsurpassed, the world-famous HOOD had never been available, could never be spared it seemed for a much needed modernisation because she was always in demand at sea.

Commanded in this watercolour by Captain F J B Tower OBE RN who had been the battle cruiser’s first gunnery officer, HOOD had connected tugs and slipped from North Slip Jetty at 0900. After turning and then slipping the tugs at 0919 she had rung on revolutions for 10 knots for the passage down harbour: we see her here shortly after 0920 and the buoy in the right foreground shows the last of the flood tide is still making. Always a crowd puller around the world, always the centre of attention, the huge, symmetrically proportioned battle cruiser with a ‘terrible beauty and mailed might that both appals and exalts’ is giving the passengers on the Gosport ferry the treat of their lives as she glides slowly towards the narrow, crowd lined entrance. Stirring music from the Royal Marine band drawn up on the quarterdeck is adding to the occasion and above and behind HOOD’s ensign can be seen the mellifluous old red brick of Semaphore Tower, the Rigging House and the Sail Loft of the dockyard. Her log states that by 1205 she was south west of Nab Tower and thirty five minutes later, when south of the Isle of Wight, she had started to work up for a full power trial. It seems that on this occasion she achieved a little over 28 knots.

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