The relatives of Scots sailors lost when the battlecruiser HMS Hood went down have marked the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Denmark Strait.

Family members gathered around a 9ft model of the battlecruiser on the Frigate Unicorn in Dundee on Tuesday.

Shortly before 6am on May 24, 1941, the Royal Navy vessel had sailed into action against the German battleship Bismarck in the waters between Greenland and Iceland.

Less than ten minutes later, hit by one or more shells from Bismarck, MHS Hood exploded and sank in just three minutes, taking all but three of her 1418 crew with her.

HMS Hood, for many years the largest warship in the world and the pride of the Royal Navy, was long past her prime in 1941 and her loss was the worst single-ship loss suffered by the Royal Navy during the Second World War.

One of the relatives who attended the gathering on the Unicorn was 92-year-old Duncan Knox from Montrose.

He lost his brother John, then aged 18, when the ship went down,

Mr Knox said John was "full of life all the time, very generous in his nature".

He said: "He was sadly missed, still is, to this day, and I am sure along with a lot of other people who had sons and husbands on the Hood. War is a sad way of doing, really."

A number of commemorative events took place on the 75th anniversary of the disaster, not least the unveiling in Portsmouth of the iconic ship's bell, recently recovered from the debris field around the wreck by Microsoft founder Paul Allen.

HMS Hood had strong Scottish connections, having been built at the famous John Brown shipyard on the Clyde.

She sailed on her fateful last mission from Scapa Flow off Orkney with 106 Scots sailors among her crew.

Midshipman William Dundas, 18, from Crieff, was one of only three survivors rescued from the North Atlantic.