4 pence hood

This Gibraltar stamp from 1969 has HMS Hood on it. HMS Hood was a WWI designed battle-cruiser, and as a result of the lessons learned from the Battle of Jutland was the only ship in the class to be completed and was was also considerably modified both during construction and afterwards. For nearly 20 years it was the largest warship afloat, and was considered the pride of the Royal Navy, even though it was always a bit of a glass-javelin....

A battle-cruiser was a special kind of ship that was designed to be as fast and maneuverable as a cruiser, with cruiser levels of protection, but the firepower of a battleship. So basically it could outgun any warship of cruiser size or smaller, and was safe from being shot at by them, and while it could fire at a battleship it wasn't designed to resist being fired at by a battleship, instead it was designed to use it's superior speed to run away.

However by the time the Royal Navy had built a lot of battle-cruisers, everyone else (including the Royal Navy) had made their battleships faster, so in practice if a battle-cruiser ran into a fast battleship, it couldn't run away, so in a fire fight it was in serious risk of not coming off very well. Basically the Imperial German navy won the Battle of Jutland in part because of this, though politically they took no advantage so it was judged a draw.

By the time WWII rolled around the Hood was still a symbol of Britain's sea power, but in practice it was a badly designed ship that was now very old and out of date. Other than it's high speed, it really wasn't an appropriate ship to face off to a modern fast battleship like the Bismarck, long range plunging fire caused an ammunition store to catch fire and when that spread to the aft magazine, the explosion destroyed the ship and it sank in less than three minutes with all hands bar three survivors.

To be fair the Royal Navy didn't have a lot of options of what to throw at the Bismarck, but they must have known there was a strong chance that the Hood wouldn't come back...

History can sometimes be glum reading...