Mr Barron claims he overheard the concerns of a warrant officer

The Wreck Commissioner investigating the sinking in the Barents Sea in 1974 says new evidence has come to light since the hearings ended in March.

An ex-Royal Navy officer says he heard a submarine captain refer to his vessel being entangled in the Gaul's nets.

Ex-chief petty officer Derek Barron has been invited to give oral evidence to the commissioner in Hull on 8 October.

In June, Mr Barron spoke to government officials and relatives of the 36 seamen who died on the Gaul at a meeting in Leeds.

He claimed that in 1983 when on a course at the Royal Navy Submarine School in Hampshire, he heard a conversation between a warrant officer and another serviceman in the officers' mess.

The inquiry will hear the Gaul may have been sunk by a submarine

He told BBC Look North in June: "I heard the warrant officer say to the army guy that there was something bothering him that he wanted to get off his chest.

"He said to the guy that back in 1973, when on board the Polaris submarine, they had come into contact with a trawler which was sunk.

"He specifically named the trawler as being the Gaul."

At the new hearing, the Wreck Commissioner will also hear further evidence obtained from the Ministry of Defence concerning military exercises and deployment of naval vessels and submarines at the time of the tragedy.

Statements obtained from the chief engineer of a Swedish vessel, the Anaris, which was in the Barents Sea in February 1974, will also be considered.

After the one-day sitting, the commissioner will complete his report, which is expected to be published later this year, a spokesman for the Attorney General's office said.