WHILE the world celebrated the end of fighting, a VE Day tragedy was unfolding for two little North-East girls and their mother.

Sixty years on, sisters Celia Turnbull and Pamela Harper, chose the VE Day anniversary weekend to say a final farewell to the sailor father they never knew.

Mrs Turnbull, 60, from Thornley, east Durham, and Mrs Harper, 63, from Spennymoor, made an emotional journey to Scotland to lay flowers on the sea off Edinburgh where George Anderson's ship, the SS Avondale, still lies.

Mr Anderson, the ship's chief engineer, was sharing the atmosphere of jubilation on board when the Avondale was struck by a U-boat torpedo and sank in two minutes.

Other ships in the same convoy had chased the German submarine for five hours, but it eluded their own strikes and hit back at the Avondale, perhaps because the euphoric crew had switched on its lights.

As they cast their wreath into the waves on Saturday, the sisters both felt close to their father for the first time in their lives.

They knew little of the tragedy, relying on old newspaper cuttings they found in a shoe box to piece together the story.

Mrs Harper said: "This was something we felt we had to do. It was a peculiar feeling to think that the ship was down there below us. It is out in the open sea and the boatmen who took us out were divers who had visited the wreck."

Mrs Harper has a vague recollection of her father, a tall man, at her sister's christening, but, like many war widows, their mother was unable to speak of the tragedy.

She said: "It has taken us a long time, but I think we feel more at peace ourselves. It closed a chapter for us and we were pleased that we went."