A film record of a special remembrance ceremony for the hundreds of US servicemen who died in a wartime exercise disaster is to be sent to the president of the United States.

The Exercise Tiger Remembrance at Sea was conducted aboard the former wartime motor launch Fairmile owned by the Dart based Greenway Ferry Company.

It was organised by the ferry company and Dartmouth-based Paul Potgieter of Heritage Media TV.

A short film of the event will be sent to Barack Obama and Princess Anne – who officially opened the Greenway Ferry Heritage Cruise operations.

More than 700 US soldiers and sailors are thought to have died in the Exercise Tiger disaster off the South Devon coast when tank landing craft were sunk by German E-boats as the Allied forces practice for the D-Day landings in France just two months away in June 1944.

In fact more US servicemen died in the tragedy than died storming the beach codenamed Utah which the soldiers and sailors had been training for.

The Fairmile sailed from Dartmouth to a position off Slapton for the ceremony which was conducted by Rev Andrew Hillier RN, the chaplain of the Britannia Royal Naval college and Father Will Hazelwood, the vicar of Dartmouth.

Guests aboard the Fairmile included the mayor of Dartmouth, Cllr Paul Allen; Kingswear parish councillor Graham Sowerbee; Steve Lawrence and Malcolm Crowe of the Exercise Tiger Trust; Dartmouth councillor Melvyn Stone; Ralph Howard Williams and David Lingard of the Royal British Legion; Commander Andrew Hancock RN. of the naval college, and Lt Matt Kenfield of the US Navy.

Mr Potgieter said the service had been 'delivered in sombre mood'.

He said the youngest voice taking part in the service was eight-year-old Anna Potgieter, who read the lines from the famous Ode of Remembrance: 'At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.'