So this is based off of Jingles' video right? Well in part his description of the Victorian Ward Room IS from contemporary naval history.

Well his combination of being lifer in the RN, and rather well read makes it hard to parse exactly where he picked up that particular interpretation from. But it isnt too far off from the version laid out on Dr. Gordon's widely read Rules of the Game which seeks to examine the successes and failures of Jutland through the leadership culture of the Royal Navy before the war. In particular it looks at the types of officers promoted, with an eye on Beatty, Jellicoe, and Hugh Evan-Thomas who had the 5th Battle Squadron of 4 Queen Elizabeth class BB's(Warspite and her sisters) attached to the Battlecruisers.

And yes in those golden years of the Empire the Senior Service did very little actual fighting. And in some ways institutions got lazy, or got bogged down in rapidly changing technology. For instance the signal books and flag hoists for specific maneuvers(now that steam propulsion meant ships didnt have to care about the wind) bloated to several thousand pages. Not particularly useful in the heat of battle if your specially trained signals officer goes down. And there was an inborn focus on polish, cleaning, and make work. Jingles mentions that officers would use their own pay to supplement paint and cleaning supplies. Well in the aftermath of the Camperdown Victoria collision the future Admiral Jellicoe was just a mid level officer who survived the sinking but who had lost most of his stuff. His friends and peers took up a collection, because he was very short of funds, having done just that. It also meant drills of decreasing utility were held onto. A real argument in some circles for keeping full masts and rigging on ships with mechanical propulsion was that without them the crew would grow soft from not having to race through complex drills aloft. We should also note that it wasnt just the XO that would be swept up in this. A Captain of a smaller ship looking for the Captain slot of a major warship, a Captain looking to make Admiral, XO looking for his own command, a Department Head or Division Officer looking to stand out in a very seniority based force all might try to make their little slice of the ship the best it could for what the inspectors or graders cared about.

And yes at times it meant that gunnery exercises were curtailed, especially in flagships, or other vessels which might expect to receive visitors or VIP's. Which could be a problem for say the Mediterranean Fleet, which for much of the latter 1800's was the premier command in the Royal Navy. But also had an expected level of social commitments, be it state visits to various nations, or some ships shepherding British Royals around the various ports, or showing the flag in hot spots.

But there are some MAJOR caveats we need to note in this picture of the Royal Navy.

The first being that in the immediate 10 years before the war gunnery did take on a whole new importance for the force. In large part because of the ascendancy of Jackie Fisher to the Admiralty. While he may not have been the best at designing a coherent "system of systems" to use the modern phrase, or at philosophizing on how his revolution in naval affairs ought to be brought into real usage. He was absolutely right on one thing, the Navy needed more gunnery practice. In the decade before 1914 awards were given to the best shooting ships, and competitions to expand the range of drills meant that while a ship in 1900 might have to try to engage an enemy at 5k yards, come 1914 15k or more wasnt out of the question. But the British still took a decidedly "Spray and Pray" approach to gunnery in the big picture. And in the end it got them some absolutely abysmal hit rates at Jutland, and did lead to some fundamentally unsafe practices which the fleet was eager to obscure, like the stacking of easy to reach cordite everywhere it would fit. However we should also note that the Battlecruisers during the war got very little opportunity for gunnery drills, and Scapa Flow offered some chances for the main body but still nothing like going to sea for it and risking U-Boats.

While many lessons were learned, and the art of Fire Control evolved immensely following 1916, along with other aspects of constructing and fighting the ship, her crew and her design though very much reflected the Navy during the war, who were themselves of course a reflection of the Navy before the war.

For instance the first three commanders of the Battlecruiser Squadron in the 1920's, which Hood was flagship of, were Admiral Roger Keyes, Walter Cowan, and Fredrick Field. Both had commanded battleships at points during the war, Field even had the first KGV at Jutland, while Cowan had the Battlecruiser Princess Royal during the battle.While Captain Kerr, the CO of Hood when she sank had been an JO on HMS Benbow at Jutland.

1939 was a far different time than 1914, which was itself far different than 1900(in large part because of Fisher). But in 1914 many of the senior officers were products of a very much "peace-focused" force, with a more focused attention on the war fighting profession really only taking over in the later half of their careers and even then not completely.

For more I might suggest:

Gordon's Rules of the Game I mentioned earlier, it is a fine read, if overstating some points I would suggest.

Also Arthur Marder's seminal 5 volume From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow is just about the definitive work on the RN in the era.