(Image: Gruppo Alpini Scozia sezione ANA GB)
An event for the first national commemoration of the sinking of the Arandora Star has taken place in Glasgow.
The ship was torpedoed in the Second World War while taking people, mostly Italians, who had been interned as enemy aliens to Canada.
Built on Merseyside, the ship was refitted and renamed Arandora Star by the Fairfield company in Glasgow in 1929.
In June 1940 she was despatched to take mostly Italian and Austrian citizens who had been interned without trial due to the war, many of whom had immigrated to Britain decades earlier, across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada along with 86 German prisoners of war.
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On July 2, off the north-west coast of Ireland, the Arandora Star was hit by a German torpedo and sunk.
More than 800 people, 446 of them Italians, died of which around 100 were Scots-Italians. Many of their bodies washed up in Ireland and the Hebrides over the following weeks.
Among the victims were Luigi Gonzaga, aged only 16, and Silvestro D'Ambrosio who had lived in England since 1898 and had two sons in the British army.
Teesside-Italians were among hundreds who died on the Arandora Star, which was sunk during WWII (Image: Tony Fox/North East Volunteers for Liberty)
One of the survivors, Uberto Limentani, was Jewish and had emigrated to Britain to flee Benito Mussolini's racial laws and later worked as a translator for anti-fascist propaganda on behalf of the allies.
In February the Italian parliament agreed to an official memorial day on October 11, the date the last survivor of the disaster, Rando Bertoia from Glasgow, died in 2013.
The law was officially passed in July, "in order to preserve and honour the memory of our compatriots, innocent victims of the dynamics of war".
A commemoration organised by Italy's consulate general in Edinburgh, alongside the honorary consulate in Glasgow and Italian Scotland featured a mass at St Andrew's Metropolitan Cathedral in Glasgow, followed by a presentation of 'La Nostra Storia' (Our Story), a book about the tragedy, and a moment of reflection.
The consulate general said: "A large and heartfelt turnout testified to the importance of preserving the memory of a tragedy that has deeply affected the Italian community. Among those present were also some relatives of those who left Glasgow in June 1940 and never returned.
"Remembering the victims of the Arandora Star means paying tribute to their lives, their families, and the memory of an entire community."