HISTORY

Photo: Eric Friedebach

ttleship HMS Hood dated from 1891. In 1914

she was sunk on purpose in the port of

Portland to block one of the approaches in

the case of an attack by submarines or torpedoes. Before that however the bell was

removed and presented to Rear Admiral

Horace Hood. After his death in the battle

of Jutland, his widow presented the bell

to the new battle cruiser HMS Hood. There are two inscriptions on its bottom edge.

The top one states: This bell was preserved

from the battleship HMS Hood 1891–1914

by the late Admiral Horace Hood, killed in

action at Jutland on May 31, 1916. There is

another inscription under it which states:

As per Lady Hood’s wishes, in the memory

of her husband, this bell is presented to the

battle cruiser HMS Hood, a ship launched

on August 22, 1918.

Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum in Everett, Washington state.

example research of the ocean fauna and

mapping of the ocean bottom for Google

Earth. In January 2015 he set sail for the

first large scale search in the Iron Bottom

Sound near Guadalcanal and discovered 29

sunken American and Japanese ships. In

March 2015 he discovered the wreck of the

largest battleship in the world, Japanese

Musashi.

Bell from HMS Hood

Allen’s ship was constantly busy. In September 2015 for example she was mapping

the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea

around Malta. Several sunken ships and

shot down airplanes were found. In 2016

the billionaire bought a 76 meters long ship

Petrel which originally served for the construction and maintenance of the under the

surface facilities, for example the oil drilling rigs. It took a year to convert her to

the research vessel. At that time, she was

the only privately owned ship in the world

which could search as deep as 6,000 meters. She was equipped with several sonars, one remote control submarine and

one self-sustained robot submarine. She

also featured the system of the electric

motors which compensated for the drift

and maintained the vessel in the stable position during the research. The first Petrel’s

“catch” was an Italian destroyer Artigliere

Photo: State Library of Victoria

Allen did not only search in the Pacific.

In August 2015 he helped the British Navy

to retrieve the ship bell from the wreck of

battle cruiser HMS Hood. She lies almost

three kilometers deep on the bottom of the

Atlantic Ocean. Hood was sunk on May 24,

1941, in the duel with the German battleship

Bismarck. The German shells penetrated

the ammunition storage and caused the

explosion that only three sailors survived

out of 1,418 crew members. It took a year

to restore the bell after its long stay at the

bottom of the ocean and on May 24, 2016,

exactly on the 75th anniversary of her sinking the bell rang again. The bell was revealed by princess Anne during the ceremony in Portsmouth. It rang to the honor

of the fallen sailors in the presence of their

families. Since then, it has been exhibited

in the National Museum of the Royal Navy,

next to the bell from HMS Prince of Wales.

This battleship accompanied Hood on her

last voyage and couple of months later,

on December 10, 1941, she herself became

a victim of the Japanese aircraft at the

Malaysian coast.

The original blue paint was preserved on

the bell’s crown and inner surfaces. Originally the bell was installed on the old ba-

No charm third time

HMS Hood in the picture dated from 1924. This British battle cruiser ispired the design of USS Lexington.

November 2022

INFO Eduard

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