The partner of a diver who vanished during an dive club expedition off Dartmouth a year ago has said he 'died doing something he loved'.

Samantha Kiley, along with a small party of friends and dive buddies from the Swansea club, returned this week, exactly one year since the tragedy, to take part in a memorial service to 43-year-old Mr Hughes whose body has never been found.

They travelled by boat to the spot above the wreck of the Belstone Castle where Mr Hughes and other club members had been diving when he disappeared on May 20 last year. They took part in a short memorial service before laying garlands of flowers on the sea.

Afterwards Ms Kiley said: 'He loved diving. He always enjoyed new adventures. He died doing something he loved.'

The service, led by Dartmouth vicar Father Will Hazlewood, took place on board dive boat skipper Tony Hoile's Falcon II – the boat from which Mr Hughes and the rest of the Welsh diving club members were conducting a dive when the tragedy happened.

Ms Kiley said the service was a helpful thing to have done and she was grateful to all the people of Dartmouth, including Mr Hoile who had been so supportive.

The Dart inshore lifeboat, which took part in the search for Mr Hughes a year ago, also took part in this week's memorial service.

The RNLI all-weather lifeboat, along with several other dive boats and HMS Mersey, also took part in the search.Lifeboatman Darren Hopley was one of the Dart lifeboat crew involved in the search and he helmed the Dart lifeboat for the service as the RNLI members paid their respects to Mr Hughes.

The family and friends of Mr Hughes donated £150 to the Dart lifeboat in his memory.

Last week, a Torquay inquest was told Mr Hughes had been a fastidious and careful diver. But just what happened to the diver who vanished while exploring a wreck off Dartmouth will probably never be known, the inquest has heard.

Mr Hughes was part of a group of seven divers who had dived on the wreck of a First World War trawler almost exactly a year ago when he disappeared.

The inquest was told he had become separated from his diving buddy while preparing to surface.

After hearing evidence from Mr Hughes' friend and diving buddy Nick King, who was leading the group from the Llwchwr Sub Aqua Club, the deputy coroner Philip Spinney said he could not be sure how Mr Hughes died.

He said it had been a well planned and organised trip and conditions had been good enough to dive.

He recorded an open verdict and said: 'There is no evidence to know what exactly happened in those few minutes.'

The dive went ahead on the wreck of the Benton Castle, which had hit a mine and sunk during the First World War, in May last year.

Mr King told the inquest the pair were the last to surface and were about to move to the stern of the boat when they got separated.

Visibility was about three metres and he said that one moment Mr Hughes was swimming behind him and the next he was gone.

'I don't know how we became separated,' he said.

He said it was standard practice for divers to surface when they became separated but when he did Mr Hughes was nowhere to be seen.

He thought he would meet him in the boat but nobody had seen him.

His float, which should have indicated his position below the surface, was visible about 100 metres away. Another diver dived 20 metres down from the float but could not find Mr Hughes.

The skipper of the Falcon II, which the group was diving from, called the coastguard.

Mr King wanted to go back into the water, thinking his friend was stuck on the wreck, but was told by the skipper that the current was then too strong.