# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Hood, Arthur William Acland

​HOOD, ARTHUR WILLLAM ACLAND, first Baron Hood of Avalon (1824–1901), admiral, born at Bath on 14 July 1824, was second son of Sir Alexander Hood, second baronet (1793-1851), by his wife Amelia Annie, youngest daughter and co-heiress of Sir Hugh Bateman, baronet. Alexander Hood (1758–98) [q. v.] was his grandfather. Entering the navy in 1836, he saw early service on the north coast of Spain, and afterwards on the coast of Syria and at the reduction of Acre. In January 1846 he was promoted to be lieutenant of the President, on the Cape station, from which he was paid off in 1849. In 1850 he was appointed to the Arethusa, with captain (afterwards Sir Thomas M. C.) Symonds [q. v.], and in the Channel, Mediterranean, Black Sea, and in the Crimea in front of Sevastopol, remained attached to her for nearly five years. On 27 Nov. 1854 he was promoted to be commander, especially for service with the naval brigade, and in 1856 went out to China in command of the Acorn brig. In her or her boats he was engaged at Fatshan on 1 June 1857, and at the capture of Canton on 27-28 Dec. 1857, for which he received his promotion to the rank of captain, 26 Feb. 1858. After nearly five years on shore he was appointed in December 1862 to the Pylades, for the North American station, from which in the autumn of 1866 he was ordered home to take command of the Excellent and the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth. This may be described as to a great extent the turning-point in his service, leading him to settle down almost entirely as an administrator. The Excellent was, and is, the school of scientific gunnery, and after three years in her Hood was appointed director of naval ordnance. Here he remained for five years; a careful, painstaking officer, though without the genius that was much needed in a period of great change, and clinging by temperament to the ideas of the past, when they had ceased to be suitable. In May 1871 he was nominated a C.B.; and in 1874, as he still wanted some sea time to qualify him for his flag, he was appointed to the Monarch in the Channel fleet. In March 1876 he became rear-admiral, and from January 1877 to December 1879 was a lord commissioner of the admiralty. He was then appointed to the command of the Channel fleet, which he held till April 1882, becoming vice-admiral in July 1880. In Juno 1885 he was named as first sea lord of the admiralty in succession to Sir Astley Cooper Key [q. v.], being promoted to the rank of admiral on 1 July 1885, and nominated K.C.B. in the December following. The four years which followed were years of great change and great advance, but it was commonly supposed that Hood's efforts were mainly devoted to preventing the advance from becoming too rapid. Like his predecessor, he scarcely understood the essential needs of England as a great naval power; and several of his public declarations might be thought equivalent to an expression of belief that, useful as the navy was, the country could get on very well without it. On 11 July 1889, having attained the age limit of sixty-five, he was placed on the retired list, and at the same time resigned his seat at the admiralty. He continued, however, to take an active interest in naval affairs, and somewhat curiously showed, in occasional letters in 'The Times' and elsewhere, a more correct appreciation of the problems of naval supremacy than he was supposed to have done during his official life.
In September 1889 he was nominated G.C.B., and in February 1892 was raised to the peerage as Lord Hood of Avalon. He died at Wooten House, Glastonbury, the residence of his nephew. Sir Alexander Hood, fourth baronet, on 16 Nov. 1901. He married in October 1855 Fanny Henrietta, third daughter of Sir Charles Fitzroy Maclean; she survived him with two daughters.
[Royal Navy Lists; The Times, 18 Nov. 1901; Burke's Peerage; Clowes, Royal Navy, vol. vii. 1903.]
J. K. L.