Officers and men gathered on
Hood’s forecastle in the autumn of 1940.
How to do a total history of a warship? A ship’s company is the oddest of communities. It sails the oceans for months or years before being scattered or destroyed by recommissioning, enemy action or the scrapyard. More than likely a large proportion of the offical documentation recording the life and work of a ship will die with her. So where to begin? Because a warship is nothing if not a gigantic machine the first goal is to master the technical environment, to grasp her structure, layout and functioning, for which detailed plans are an esential requirement. Once you can appreciate the extent to which the crew lived in their place of work, can conjure the sights, smells and sounds which filled their days and nights, then you are on the way to understanding their world, so intense and detached from our own.
The next challenge is to discover how the naval day was regulated, how work gave way to leisure and sleep, how the terror of battle yielded to the boredom of war. Then to the experiences of the men as related in their letters, diaries, memoirs, reminiscences and photos or—if you are very lucky—through conversation and correspondence with veterans. What was the precise nature of their work and living conditions? How did they get on with each other and with authority? What were their hopes and dreams? Did they love their ship or else hate her and every moment of every day they had to sail in her? The union of these things, of structure, routine, work, life and morale, at length reveals that special something which sets a ship apart from all others. To capture that spirit in all its vast, fascinating and ephemeral complexity must be the ultimate goal of a warship biographer, one very seldom attained. Unless writers are capable of returning the human element to naval history then the field is destined to remain on the margins of history. The Battlecruiser HMS Hood is an important step on the road back to the mainstream.