Descendants of the lost Hampshire crew travelled to Orkney to pay tribute from all over the UK and further afield.
Among them was Jackie Baynes from Portsmouth who brought a photograph of her grandfather William Cake. He had been serving as an acting stoker petty officer at the time of the tragedy.
Mrs Baynes said: “The picture goes with me everywhere in my purse.
“It is a copy of a large framed photograph that hung proudly in my grandmother’s front room.
“As a young child I vividly remember being told that this was my grandfather who died when the Hampshire went down.”
William Cake’s body was found on a beach with his fingers and nails badly cut and broken through desperate efforts to pull himself ashore through the shingle.
His family believe he was on one of only two life rafts that managed to make the one-and-a-half miles through rough seas to the shore.
It is thought that he ultimately succumbed to hypothermia.
He was buried at the Royal Naval Cemetery at Lyness on Hoy, aged 38-years-old.
His widow, Minnie, was left with seven children, aged from two to 20, to care for at their small terraced house at East Cowes on the Isle of Wight.
Mrs Baynes added: “They would have been hard times for my grandmother.
“It was heart breaking for them that he was buried so far away, with no possibility of her and the children being able to afford to travel to Orkney to visit his grave.
“It wasn’t until 1988 that one of the daughters, who was then 82, finally managed to visit Lyness.”
She added: “I feel very close to my grandfather despite his early death. The family often spoke of him and called him fondly ‘our father’.
“Today the picture in my purse keeps his story alive for me and I am very proud to see his name on the new memorial wall alongside those of all the unfortunate seamen lost in the sinking.”