A token of love that was lost at sea for 90 years

But when Stanley Cubiss drowned as his ship sank during the First World War, the engraved engagement ring from his sweetheart Florence went with him.

The gold band lay undisturbed at the bottom of the ocean for almost a century - but 89 years later it has been reunited with the sailor's family.

Two months ago amateur diver Peter Brady, 51, spotted the ring half-buried on the seabed during a routine dive around the wreck of HMS Opal, off the coast of the Orkney Islands.

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Initially, Mr Brady thought the find was a piece of the ship's machinery, but on closer inspection he realised it was a ring bearing the inscription: "To Stanley from Flo, March 1916."

Mr Cubiss, 25, who worked in the ship's engine room, perished with 187 other men when the Opal, along with HMS Narborough, ran aground in a snowstorm on January 12, 1918.

Mr Brady and diving partner, Bob Hamilton, 61, found the ship's casualty list on the internet and managed to track down Stanley's 78-year-old nephew, Malcolm Cubiss.

"I received a call out of the blue telling me that divers had found this ring," said the retired brigadier from York. "My uncle is often spoken of in the family and I know the tragedy of the Opal well.

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"They came to show me the ring and I was astonished. It's a million-to- one chance. Florence gave it to my uncle in 1916 and they were married the following year, but you would assume it had been lost for ever when the ship went down.

"It's a wonderful link to my past." Mr Brady said the ring was the most interesting thing he had ever found while diving.

"I saw something half-buried in the sand and thought it may have been part of the ship's plumbing," he said. "But when I got to the surface I realised it was a ring and it was perfectly preserved. It was an amazing moment."

Mr Hamilton said it was only when they read the engraving that they realised the ring's significance.

"We knew then that we had some physical contact with someone who had died on one of the ships and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up," he said.

"We scoured the internet and found a casualty list for the HMS Opal.

"There were two Stanleys on the list but one - Ernest Stanley Cubiss - was described as the husband of Florence Cubiss, so we knew it had to be his ring.

"The list mentioned that he was the son of a couple in Keighley, West Yorkshire, but we could find no trace of the Cubiss family there so widened the search to the whole of Yorkshire and there was Malcolm Cubiss near York.

I rang him and said, "Please listen to me - this may sound strange but I promise this is not a wind-up".

"As soon as I mentioned the area I had been diving in, he interrupted and said, 'The Opal'.

"It's just fabulous - it could have lay there untouched for centuries."

Brigadier Cubiss has decided to donate the piece of jewellery and some photos of the couple to a naval museum in the Orkneys which commemorates the tragedy.

"It is fitting that they are kept in a museum so people remember the events of that night," he said.