A 70-year-old photograph has emerged that appears to show the crew of HMS Jervis Bay enjoying a cricket match in Bermuda.

Earlier this month a Remembrance Day service was held at the Bermuda memorial to the men of the armed merchant cruiser who perished during what is regarded as one of the bravest naval confrontations of the Second World War.

HMS Jervis Bay visited the Island on a number of occasions before she was eventually sunk while escorting a merchant convoy from Canada to Great Britain on November 5 1940.

A sundial memorial to the lost sailors was erected at Albouy's Point within a year of the incident and is annually honoured on Remembrance Day in a service nowadays led by the Bermuda Sea Cadets.

The newly revealed old photograph was taken by gunner Tom Rainsbury, one of the 189 sailors who lost their lives when the 14,000 former passenger liner Jervis Bay engaged the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer in the mid-Atlantic in order to buy time for the unarmed ships of the convey she was guarding. The brave action against a far superior warship ended with the Jervis Bay being sunk and only 65 men surviving in lifeboats. The sacrifice made by the Jervis Bay allowed most of the 37 unarmed merchant ships in the convoy to scatter into the darkness of night before the German warship could pick them off. The German raider managed to sink only five of the ships.

The cricket game picture is one of a selection eventually were passed on to Mr. Rainsbury's nephew, also called Tom Rainsbury, by a family relative. The pictured was first published in the Scottish newspaper the John O'Groats Journal and appears to show the crew of the Jervis Bay during one of their visits to Bermuda.

The Scottish town of Wick, which is near John O'Groats, is the latest community to create a dedicated memorial in honour of the sailors of HMS Jervis Bay. Eighteen of the crew were from the county of Caithness in north-east Scotland, of whom nine died when the ship was sunk.

As well as Bermuda and Scotland, there is a memorial to HMS Jervis Bay in Nova Scotia, Canada from where she sailed on her final voyage.