SHE was the pride of the Royal Navy and the most powerful warship afloat the day she slid down her slipway and entered the waters of the Clyde.

Brought to life by the toil of hundreds of Clydebank shipyard workers, HMS Hood entered service just as the First World War was coming to a close – and would meet her demise during the next great war in battle with one of the era’s most notorious warships.

Struck in her ammo magazine by a shell fired from the German battleship Bismarck on May 24 1941, Hood was torn apart by a cataclysmic explosion which cost the lives of 1,415 members of her crew, leaving just three survivors.

And although her guns have long fallen silent, the suddenness of the ship’s demise still resonates today as those with a connection to the “Mighty Hood” gathered to mark the 100th anniversary of her launch.

A product of John Brown’s shipyard, HMS Hood – ship 460 in the company’s order book –was an 860 foot long armour-plated behemoth designed to outmatch any other warship afloat when she was launched in 1918.

During the inter-war years the battlecruiser visited every corner of the globe as the flagship of the Special Service Squadron, including a complete circumnavigation of the planet.

Yet it took fewer than four minutes for the ship to sink beneath the icy waters of the Denmark Strait following the disaster of her final battle.

The ceremony to mark the centenary of the launch was held at West College Scotland’s Clydebank Campus, which now sits on the spot where HMS Hood was built.

Among those who attended the event, organised by the HMS Hood Association, was Jane Johnston, of Hamilton, whose uncle William Pennycook served as a stoker on HMS Hood and died in the disaster.

She said: “My uncle William was posted to HMS Hood as a stoker in the engine room. He was just 22 and it was his first time at sea.

“My grandparents were devastated when he didn’t come home again. They never got over it.

“Uncle Willy was known as the gentle giant in our family. He was a big man, 6ft 2, and everyone loved him.”

The pensioner, who joined the Hood Association along with her daughter Carol, 53, said that it was important to keep the memory of the ship and her tragic sinking alive.

She said: “It was a tragedy, all those young men gone in an instant. They should never be forgotten.”

The remains of HMS Hood were found in 2001 by shipwreck hunter David Mearns. A decade later, he was able to recover the ship’s bell and laid a plaque with the names of the dead on the site.

He said: “It’s an accurate description to call it a wreck because it suffered not just one magazine explosion, but two – which ripped the ship apart and really obliterated major portions.

“The only identifiable sections are the bow, which is lying on its starboard side, the stern – which is lying at a strange angle upright – and then the middle of the ship is turned upside down. The areas where the magazines were are essentially obliterated. There is wreckage strewn over a very large area with two distinct debris fields over nearly two and a half kilometres.”

The ceremony saw the Association receive a scale model of HMS Hood from the Polderhuis Museum in Holland, which had been gifted the item by an enthusiast.