Sixty years to the day that her forebear was lost to a human torpedo, mine countermeasures vessel HMS Quorn hosted a group of widows, daughters, brothers and survivors of the tragedy at an emotional memorial service.

Wartime destroyer HMS Quorn sank with 130 men when she was struck amidships in the Seine Bay as the Battle for Normandy raged on land in the summer of 1944.

Six decades on around 30 people, from as near as Waterlooville and as far as Norfolk, gathered in Portsmouth Naval Base with the present ship’s company to honour Quorn’s sacrifice.

The destroyer sank in less than a minute, the victim of an act of bravery – and sacrifice – by a German ‘kamikaze’ riding a human torpedo.

It is a loss still felt deeply, as is demonstrated by the remembrance service in St Ann’s Church to mark the tragedy in the early hours of August 3 1944.

Leading the service, chaplain Father David Yates said: “It is very difficult in this day and age to put ourselves in a mindset of how it was in 1944.

“There was a sense we were in the endgame, coming towards the end of the war, and no one serving in HMS Quorn would have expected the ship to be sunk underneath them. Today we remember all those who didn’t make it.”

After the service, the guests, including Lady Rosemary Thompson, the present ship’s sponsor, were invited back to Quorn for refreshment and a tour of the ship.

“We couldn’t let this day go past without some special form of commemoration,” said Quorn’s Commanding Officer, Lt Cdr David Wilkinson.

“When I put the idea to the ship’s company, to a man they were keen.

“Today is about the meeting of two parts of Quorn’s life, and today we bring them together. This is your ship, you are part of Quorn’s family, a really friendly and family-oriented ship.”

Among those with poignant memories of the sinking was Lilian Evans, a former Wren who served at HMS Dryad.

“It’s an honour to have been asked to come,” she said.

Her husband, LSTD Percy Evans, went down with the ship at the age of 26.

Lilian, who had travelled from Norwich with her 60-year-old daughter, showed photographs of Percy’s immaculately-tended grave in France, which she visits as regularly as possible.

“You couldn’t wish for him to be brought back,” she said. “It’s a peace beyond all understanding.”

Survivor Christopher Yorston, an AB at the time, told Navy News: “I had to grow up fast.”

Already having been torpedoed twice while serving in the Mediterranean earlier in the war, Christopher, in Portsmouth with his wife of 54 years, was up in the gunnery tower when Quorn was hit.

“Within seconds I was in the water, looking up at the ship split in half,” he said. “If I had been in a cruiser, where the gun turret is completely sealed, I’d have been a goner.

“I grabbed hold of the first thing in the water, a lump of wood, and a converted trawler picked me up. It’s the luck of the draw.

“Today has been marvellous. It helps to enlighten people about what went on.”