It was known that her deck armor needed substantial reinforcing, and that her secondary armament and her control system needed bringing up to date. By the thirties, however, it was too late. As one crisis succeeded another throughout the world it became unthinkable that the “Mighty Hood” should be put out of commission for a long time.

The Hood’s life must be seen against the background of her times. Politics and conferences may seem remote from the lives of her officers and men, yet in fact they were not. Just as political considerations determined her movements throughout the years, so they determined her strength and her fitness. The Washington Treaty insured that the Hood remained the greatest ship afloat, the most powerful unit in the world—but it was a world whose balance had almost imperceptibly shifted.

“When men come to like a sea life they are not fit to live on land,” remarked Dr. Johnson, but then the Doctor was, for an Englishman, curiously averse to the sea. The “sea life” of a great warship like the Hood was indeed a far remove from life ashore. Although there are still great ships like aircraft carriers afloat, it is strange to think that, less than a quarter of a century later, the type of life lived by the sailors aboard the Hood already seems remote. Even by 1939 the sailor s life was fast changing, and in recent years many of the old ways and traditions have gone forever.

In peacetime the average establishment for the Hood was some 70 officers, 480 seamen, 60 boys, 180 marines, 300 engine- room ratings, and 60 to 70 nonexecutive ratings (which included supply branch assistants, sick berth attendants, etc.). The officers had their wardroom below the main searchlight platform, forward of the captain’s and the admiral’s quarters. They were served from their own separate galley and pantry, as were the warrant officers in their mess and the midshipmen in the gunroom. The catering for the officers’ messes was usually left in the hands of a petty officer steward, known as the messman. He was responsible for all the special buying and provisioning, as well as organizing the basic rations. (Lowerdeck legend had it that all messmen salted enough away to buy themselves a quiet pub ashore to which one day they would retire!)

Chief and petty officers had their own messes, Spartan in their simplicity, but allowing each man some room for his private effects and gear. The bulk of .the ship's company lived in large open spaces, known as broadside messes, with a leading seaman responsible for each mess and presiding over each table. The tables themselves were scrubbed white every day and could be detached from the deck and secured by lashings to the deckhead if need be. Like the chief and petty officers, the sailors slept in hammocks, but this was no hardship. When the ship was in a seaway the man in his hammock slept safe and sound while the officer with his “comfortable bunk” was forced to wedge himself in with pillows and clothing.

The sailors hammock contains a mattress with a mattress cover and is lashed up every day before the hands fall in, and stowed in a hammock netting. At night after * pipe down,” when all the hammocks are slung in a messdeck, a visitor must make his way, stooping, under the dark bundles that sway from the hammock hooks over his head. When it is cold the hammock makes a snug bed, its canvas sides closing up round the sleeper and keeping him in a warm nest. In hot weather some of the sailors prefer to lay their hammocks out on the deck, but the majority keep themselves cool by putting a wooden “spreader" bar between the “nettles” or lashings at each end of the hammock, so that it is kept open and presents a flatter surface. Each sailor has two of these canvas hammocks which must be changed and scrubbed regularly, and the hammock lashing and the "nettles” at head and foot must also be kept scrupulously clean.

As always where there are old-time sailors, devices or “tiddley* work have been invented to improve a standard issue. No long- service able seaman worth his salt would have a hammock lashing that was not beautifully pointed and grafted, so that it became more than a simple rope but a minor work of art.

Throughout the ship, wherever there was the opportunity for such rope work, a leading seaman or an old A.B. would make it a matter of pride to show the “youngsters” how it was done. The tiller handles of the boats were enlivened by fancy rope work, Turk’s-heads, and diamond patterns; the heads of gangways were also ornamented; so too were boat hooks, fenders, and fender lanyards.

The natural instinct of man is to adorn his surroundings, and the sailor was adept at it at a time when most of his relatives ashore in an urban society were forgetting the exercises of the crafts that had once made the villages of England beautiful. The hammock itself was a legacy from the West Indies, and had been adopted by British warships in the eighteenth century, after their sailors had found the native Caribs taking their ease in hammocks slung between the trees.

Another Carib contribution to civilization which played an important part in a sailors life was tobacco. Although an able seaman’s pay during these years was only 3s. a day, he was issued every month with tobacco at only is. 10d. a pound.