A deep sea explorer who located the wreckage of a famous British battleship will unveil historic footage to TV viewers tonight.

David Mearns, who is based in Midhurst, led a £2 million expedition to find HMS Hood, sunk by the German warship Bismarck in 1941.

He also located the Bismarck, and the result is two programmes which will be broadcast on Channel 4 tonight and tomorrow at 9pm.

Mr Mearns, who runs Blue Water Recoveries, used remote-controlled cameras to film haunting footage of the seabed, including images of sailors' boots and the ship's bell from the Hood.

When the Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, blew up after being shelled by the Bismarck, only three of her 1,418 crew survived, and two of those have since died.

The Bismarck was sunk a few days later with the loss of 2,246 men. Only 115 were pulled alive from the water.

Jim Mercer, electronics systems superintendent at Blue Water, said it took intensive research of wartime records to locate the Hood, which sank in 9,200ft of water between Iceland and Greenland.

But once the research was done they managed to find the wreck using sonar scanning in less than 72 hours.

Mr Mearns had to get clearance from the Ministry of Defence, the Hood Association and the German authorities before he could survey the war graves close-up.

They were ordered: "Look, but don't touch," and were allowed to place two bronze plaques on the site of both wrecks.