I am normally a skeptic when it comes to histories that use memoirs, interviews, and other informal sources as they often introduce inaccuracies and emotions that often cloud the truth for decades at a time. However, in "The End of Glory", author Bruce Taylor uses his sources to weave a powerful story about the Royal Navy's most legendary warship. Unlike the other contender to that title, Portsmouth's HMS Victory which survives to this day as Nelson's vehicle to immortality, the Hood lies in pieces at the bottom of the Denmark Strait, a headstone to its sacrificed crew. Taylor's book discusses how the Hood ended up being Great Britain's World War II naval martyr.

Published in 2012 by the U.S. Naval Institute Press, "The End of Glory" unfolds the Hood's story in only 246 pages. Preceded by a preface, author's note, and abbreviations page, Taylor gives his reader 13 numbered chapters arranged roughly chronologically, although some of the chapters that detail life aboard the battlecruiser (Chapters 4, 5, and 6) hop around the entirety of the ship's career. After the main text, Taylor provides a crew list of those who fought Hood's last battle. The author uses some technical sources at the beginning of the book to speak to the ship's design and construction, drawing upon an earlier work of his that focused on these matters; however, in this volume the technical information is present only enough to set the table for the more personal accounts that make up the bulk of this work.

Taylor effectively uses his sources to support the themes of individual chapters. Chapter 4 (Life Aboard), tells the story of enlisted life aboard Hood, while Chapter 6 (Of One Company?) does the same for officers. Taylor pulls no punches in his telling of these individual experiences--service in any navy even in times of peace can be a grueling test of endurance. He calls them as shipmates see them--the rascals as well as the princes, and maybe a little of both. While there was glory to be had in those halcyon days between the wars, it was offset by the unthinking threats of a parsimonious government that set off the Invergordon "mutiny" of 1931 as detailed in Chapter 7. What all the chapters speaking to Hood's interwar history point to is the perception of Hood as the physical manifestation of an empire's strength in steel, steam, and firepower--the ultimate gunboat in the service of a nation that defined gunboat diplomacy.

The later chapters of the book (10-13) are about Hood's all too brief wartime service, and in these pages Taylor makes clear that by May 1941 Hood was a tired ship, both in spirit and in body. All those years of peacetime steaming and representing British interests in the numerous crises in the 1930's prevented Hood from benefiting from major refits and reconstructions enjoyed by other Royal Navy capital ships such as Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, and Renown. Most significantly, Hood's popularity with the Admiralty did not allow for the correction of fundamental flaws in her protective scheme that made her vulnerable to long-range fire made possible by improvements in naval fire control. Hood's aging hull and systems increased the burdens and stresses on her enlarged wartime complement. Never a dry ship, even when new, various additions during peacetime commissions increased the battlecruiser's draft and wetness, providing yet more discomfort in the officer and enlisted living areas and increasing maintenance problems throughout the ship. Having served in a 25-year-old ship during my Navy service I can appreciate how an ill-maintained vessel can sap crew energy and morale. And so Hood steamed into her final action with the hopes of her crew and the Fleet with her but not much else.

Bruce Taylor has put together a moving and fast-paced account that removes much of the techno-talk that seems to dominate most accounts of this ship. The book is well-written, with the author cognizant of the limitations of some of his sources (of which he warns his readers). This book is a most fitting tribute to a famous warship and the crews that served in her. ( )