User:SaltedSturgeon/sandbox/Robert Hood (Royal Navy officer)

Robert Hood (c. 1797 – 20 October 1820) was a British naval officer and explorer of the Arctic. He participated in John Franklin's 1819–1822 Coppermine expedition as a midshipman and surveyor.

Early life
Robert Hood was born around 1797 in Portarlington, County Laois to an Anglo-Irish family. He was the son of Richard Hood, a scholar and curate, and Catherine Roe. He had at least one sibling, a brother named George, who died of a fever on 6 February 1823 off the East African coast. As a child he was educated in Bury St Edmunds, probably by his father.

Royal Navy career
Hood joined the Royal Navy on 5 February 1809 as a first-class volunteer. At the age of 14 he became a midshipman, and from 1811 to 1812 he served on the HMS Imperieuse, under the command of Henry Duncan. From 1815 to 1816 he was stationed on the HMS Spey. He passed his lieutenant's exam in October 1816, but his promotion was not confirmed, and Hood was unemployed on half-pay from 1817 to 1818.

In 1819, Hood was one of two midshipmen chosen to accompany John Franklin on his expedition down the Coppermine River, alongside George Back. The expedition included one other naval officer, John Richardson, and an able seaman named John Hepburn. They sailed from Gravesend on a Hudson's Bay Company ship on 23 May 1819, with orders to explore the northern coast of North America eastwards from the mouth of the Coppermine River. Arriving at York Factory at the end of August, the group spent the next year travelling by standard fur trading routes to the country north of Great Slave Lake, where they built a residence named Fort Enterprise to see them through the winter.

On 1 January 1821 Hood was promoted to lieutenant, but news of his promotion would not reach the expedition until after his death. The party set out from Fort Enterprise in June, reaching the mouth of the Coppermine on 18 July. From there they explored and surveyed 675 mi of coastline never before seen by Europeans.

Death
By 7 October, Hood was so weakened that he could not go on; Richardson and Hepburn volunteered to stay behind with him at a temporary camp, while Franklin and the rest of the group continued to Fort Enterprise. The next day, four of Franklin's men declared themselves too weak to reach the fort, and requested permission to return to the temporary camp. Franklin consented, but only one, an Iroquois voyager named Michel Terohaute, reached the camp on 9 October.

On 20 October 1821, Hood was shot in the head and died at the age of 24. By then he was unable to swallow more than a few spoonfuls of tripe de roche, and was so enfeebled that his vision was failing and he could barely sit up. It is generally accepted that he was killed by Terohaute after an argument, and that the voyager had also murdered the three other men who had left Franklin with him and subsequently cannibalized their flesh. Terohaute was later executed by