Scale: 1:600. Waterline model of the battle-cruiser HMS 'Hood' (1918). The model has been well made, and modified, from a plastic kit and set in a realistic seascape.

Built by John Brown & Company, Clydebank, and launched on 22 August 1918, the ‘Hood’ spent the next two years being fitted out. When commissioned, she was the largest capital ship in the British fleet, at 860 feet in length and 45,200 displacement tons. She was popularly known as ‘The Mighty Hood’. Because three battle-cruisers had been lost at the Battle of Jutland she was built with an added 5000 tons of extra armour making her a grossly overweight ship, compared to her original design, with a highly stressed structure. In fact it had been seriously suggested even before her launch that she should be scrapped but post-war economies made the idea unfeasible. Because of her fame, she spent much of the inter-war years on goodwill cruises ‘flying the flag’. On one such cruise, between November 1923 and September 1924, she was visited by an estimated 750,000 people. In 1931 her crew took part in the Invergordon Mutiny.

Although ‘Hood’ had undergone a complete refit in 1929–30, she was in poor condition by the outbreak of the Second World War, but could not be taken out of service. She was initially patrolling the waters off Iceland and the Faroes, to protect convoys and to attack German raiders. News of the sailing of the ‘Bismarck’ and ‘Prinz Eugen’, in May 1941, was relayed to the ‘Hood’ and the battleship HMS ‘Prince of Wales’, and they steered a course to intercept the German ships.

In the ensuing Battle of the Denmark Strait, 24 May 1941, the ‘Hood’ was caught in a poor tactical position. As she turned to bring her guns on the enemy, she emitted a jet of fire from her deck followed by a huge explosion that destroyed the aft end of the ship. First the stern, then the rest of the ‘Hood’ sank, just ten minutes after first engaging the German ships. Of her complement of 1418 crewmen, only three survived. The dramatic loss of such a potent symbol of British sea power had a profound effect back home.