As a followup to last week's article describing the effort by Museum volunteers to support the Commemorative Air Force's Bring the Boys Back Home project, our Museum's Director and CEO, Keegan Chetwynd ventured down to North Carolina to capture headstone rubbings for British wartime personnel who are buried in coastal cemeteries. His report below describes the circumstances involved in the wartime loss of these brave young men.
A War Close to Home:
For many - particularly those in the United States - the study of World War II compartmentalizes quite easily. There is the homefront, replete with stories of aircraft construction, Rosie the Riveter, and the immense factories which became the Arsenal of Democracy – churning out tanks, ships, airplanes, rifles, untold varieties of munitions, and everything else imaginable in between. And then there is the range of combat theaters spanning the globe, where our intrepid citizen warriors fought a ‘battle-hardened and determined enemy’. However, standing on the windswept shores of North Carolina’s Outer Banks while gazing over a pair of Portland Stone grave markers huddled to form a tiny military cemetery, makes it clear that the brutality of both World Wars reached far closer to home than many of us now realize.
Cape Hatteras is well known today due to its iconic 1870 lighthouse (see above). Banded in broad, black and white bands creating its daymark pattern, the lighthouse was constructed - by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - to ward away ships from the Diamond Shoals, a twelve-mile-long sandbar just offshore. Countless ships, perhaps more than 5,000, have foundered upon those shoals over the past half millennium – earning the area a grim nickname, Graveyard of the Atlantic. Just a few hundred feet away from Cape Hatteras Light, however, lies an oasis of serenity - at least on a calm day. Hemmed in by rosemary bushes, we find the final resting place of two British sailors - separated from their loved ones and their homeland by a vast, cruel expanse of grey ocean.
Sadly, one of the sailors remains unidentified, his body having washed ashore on May 21, 1942. At the time of his body’s recovery, it was presumed he had been aboard HMT (His Majesty’s Trawler) Bedfordshire when the German Submarine U-558 torpedoed her, with the loss of all 37 hands, near Ocracoke Island on May 11, 1942. The unknown sailor is buried alongside his fellow Briton, Michael Cairns, Fourth Engineer of the armed British tanker, SS San Delfino (sometimes referred to as MV San Delfino), which succumbed to a German torpedo on April 9, 1942. Cairns was just 28 at the time of his death, his body not being discovered until almost a full month had elapsed May 7, 1942.
A closeup of the unknown British sailor's grave at Cape Hatteras. (image by Keegan Chetwynd)
A closeup of Michael Cairns' grave at Cape Hatteras. (image by Keegan Chetwynd).
Keegan Chetwynd creating a rubbing of the unknown British sailor's grave at Cape Hatteras. (image via Keegan Chetwynd)
San Delfino
The SS San Delfino was an 8,702-ton tanker built in Britain during 1938 for the Eagle Oil & Shipping Co Ltd of London to move petroleum products from Mexico and the Southern United States to the United Kingdom. Impressed into the British Merchant Navy soon after war broke out, the ship was modified to fit a 4-inch, stern-mounted artillery piece and multiple machine gun positions both fore and aft. While these defenses may seem like window dressing, Britain's Admiralty - at the time - deemed them sufficient to allow the ship to fend off surfaced enemy submarines. U-Boats regularly used their deck gun to sink unescorted merchant ships during this period due to their limited number of torpedoes. U-Boats had also laid mines off the eastern US coast near major ports (during both WWI and WWII) and these often caused havoc. San Delfino herself had already struck a mine in the North Sea during early 1940, her captain having to beach the vessel in order to prevent it sinking. Two years later, after repairs, the tanker was again playing her trade when fate intervened yet again...
Commanded by Master Albert Edward Gumbleton, the San Delfino departed the Port of Houston in Houston, Texas on April 3, 1942, freshly-laden with 11,000 tons of aviation fuel bound for Britain. The unescorted ship initially sailed up the US coast towards Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, where it was due to join a convoy for the North Atlantic crossing to Hull, in Yorkshire, England. Although sources vary regarding the date on which the attack took place, Cairns’ gravestone indicates that U-203 (commanded by Kapitänleutnant Rolf Mützelburg) sank San Delfino on April 9, 1942. It should be noted here that Mützelburg was a highly successful U-boat commander, having sunk 17 vessels before his somewhat bizarre death in September 1942.
The SS San Delfino's ship's manifest from April 1942 showing the names, ages and nationalities of forty of the forty nine civilian crewmen aboard when the vessel arrived in Texas to fill up with her cargo of aviation fuel. The ship's deck gun was manned by members of the 2nd Maritime Anti Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, so they were listed within a separate document due to being members of the British Army. Some of the men who died when the ship sank, including John Latto Fisher, are listed here.
The remaining civilian crewmen who served aboard SS San Delfino when she was sunk in April, 1942.
Accounts describing the attack vary dramatically as well. Some state that U-203 set loose as many as seven torpedoes in its effort to sink San Delfino - beginning with a single weapon which struck the ship, albeit to no effect, at 3:47AM, then ramping up to a spread of torpedoes, most of which missed, before a 5:08AM strike finally claimed the tanker.
However, San Delfino’s surviving crewmen stated afterwards that the weapon which sank the ship seemed to be a lone torpedo catching them all by surprise, rather than the culmination of a multi-hour, sustained attack. The torpedo struck the San Delfino’s starboard side roughly where the number 2 and 3 tanks were located, setting fire to the vessel.
The crew abandoned ship in two lifeboats, however as San Delfino sank it sucked one of the fleeing boats into a pool of burning fuel, immolating those aboard (24 crew and 4 artillerymen). The ship’s Master, 19 crew and 2 gunners aboard the other boat were spared that horrific fate, thankfully; the converted trawler, HMS Norwich City (FY-229), effecting the rescue and landing them ashore at Morehead City, North Carolina.
Morehead City, NC
In Morehead City we found the graves of three more men lost in San Delfino’s destruction, the sailor John Latto Fisher, Royal Artillery gunner Maldwyn Jones, plus one unnamed mariner - ‘known only to God’. Given the fiery conflagration which consumed SS San Delfino, one can easily grasp how the bodies from some of her sailors recovered from the water may have defied identification, or why some who'd initially survived the inferno later succumbed to their wounds as HMS Norwich City docked at Morehead City.
Today, Morehead City is a sleepy town in the Bogue Banks area of North Carolina. The port is largely involved in the export of phosphates these days, but SpaceX payload fairing recovery vessels Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief occasionally call it home too. However, during the early months of 1942, as the war raged just offshore, Morehead City was the most important reception and processing center for sailors arriving aboard sinking or heavily damaged merchant shipping along the North Carolina coast.
Base facilities were available for making small-scale repairs, minor refitting, and supplying ammunition to the beleaguered Allied ships. Manned by a mixture of US Navy Sailors and Coast Guardsmen, Morehead City was also home port to a small fleet of anti-submarine vessels. They swept for mines, tended anti-submarine netting at the Beaufort Inlet, and patrolled the waters for sailors in trouble. On occasion, they also did battle with German submarines.
This anti-submarine effort was more notional than it was any real threat to German submarines upon America's entry into WWII. It was a sad fact that the US was dangerously underprepared to defend its eastern coastline at that time. The Fifth Naval District, headquartered in Norfolk, VA, lacked the appropriate vessels to assign the task of defending merchant shipping in the region - even asking civilians to donate their pleasure craft to support the cause!
The German’s referred to their effort to sink Allied Shipping off the US coast as Operation Paukenschlag, which loosely translates to Drumbeat in English. The U-Boat crews knew it by a different phrase, Zweite glückliche Zeit, or The Second Happy Time, due to their initial successes… although they must later have viewed the phrase ironically after the Allies perfected their ability to hunt U-Boats with far greater lethality. But in January, 1942, U-Boats waged war almost imperviously along the Outer Banks, claiming 35 ships in that month alone. The Royal Navy, seeing their American ally struggling to maintain control over its coastal waters in those initial dark days, did everything it could to support their effort, despite suffering from their own resource constraints. They sent 24 converted trawlers to aid in the U-Boat hunt. Dispatched in March, and entering operations in April, these ships wasted no time making a difference. The Norwich City, which rescued San Delfino’s surviving crewmen, was one such ship.
HMT Bedfordshire (FY 141)
HMT Bedfordshire was commanded by Lieutenant Russell Bransby Davis, RNR, who operated the ship out of Morehead City, North Carolina. Throughout the middle of April, Bedfordshire took part in search and rescue efforts for tankers which had disappeared through areas known as Sectors 2 and 3. On April 18, Bedfordshire searched for survivors of U-85. A frequent companion of the Bedfordshire, USS Roper had attacked and successfully sunk the U-boat on the night of April 13/14. With the conclusion of the search (several bodies were found and buried at Hampton National Cemetery in Virginia), the Bedfordshire remained on station to support a salvage effort. The submarine was in less than 100 feet of water, just off the Bodie Island Lighthouse. On April 22, that effort was called off.
Bedfordshire patrolled Currituck Island to the north (just a few miles from the Museum), and Hatteras Island to the south, and on to Cape Lookout, still further south. May 10 saw the vessel dispatched with HMT St. Loman to search for a U-boat rumored to be operating around Ocracoke Island. As the ships entered the area nearby the island, they were spotted by the German submarine U-558, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Günther Krech. Believing he had been detected, Krech fired upon St. Loman, but keen lookouts aboard the sub-hunter spotted the torpedoes and the ship maneuvered to avoid them.
The British vessels began deploying depth charges, but the submarine escaped serious damage. At 5:40AM on May 11, U-558 fired a single torpedo at Bedfordshire, which missed, but their second attempt scored a direct hit. All 37 men aboard were killed. By rights, it should have been 38 men who perished, but a young stoker named Sam Nutt was not aboard the ship, having previously been detained by Morehead City police for an infraction which prevented him from reporting for the ship’s final patrol. Sometimes getting in trouble with the law has its upside…
On May 14, US Coast Guardsmen patrolling the shoreline of Ocracoke Island found two bodies lying on the sand. Identified as Sub-Lieutenant Thomas Cunningham (age 27) and Ordinary Telegraphist Stanley Craig (age 24), the men were buried in a small plot next to the cemetery in Ocracoke Village. The flag draped over Cunningham’s coffin was one that he personally had presented to Aycock Brown (see later section) upon his ship's arrival in North Carolina. With two more unidentified bodies washing ashore in the coming days, these sailors, also presumed to be from Bedfordshire, were interred in what eventually became known as the Ocracoke Island British Cemetery.
Although the identities of the other two men buried in the plot are unconfirmed, the cemetery now bears two small plaques placed there by family members of the men believed to occupy those graves. One marks the passing of Engineman Frederick William Barnes (age 31), and the other of Ordinary Telegraphist Charles William White (age 29). As you approach this small patch of land, where a Royal Navy White Ensign still flies, Rupert Brooke’s famous words are marked on a plaque:
"If I should die, think only this of me,
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England"
The graves of Lieutenant Thomas Cunningham (front right), Ordnance Telegrapher Stanley L. Craig and two unknown sailors who perished aboard HMT Bedfordshire on May 11, 1942 seen here in the British cemetery on Ocracoke Island along North Carolina's Outer Banks. (image by Keegan Chetwynd)
A closeup of Lt Cunningham's grave in the British Cemetery on Ocracoke Island. (image by Keegan Chetwynd).
Memorial Markers for two sailors Frederick William Barnes (top) and Charles William White (bottom) who died when HMT Bedforshire was torpedoed on May 11, 1942. It is believed that the bodies of these two men lie beneath the tombstones of the unknown sailors buried nearby. (image by Keegan Chetwynd).
Charles Brantley Aycock Brown
The grim task of identifying and arranging the burials of British sailors and service personnel who washed ashore along the North Carolina coast fell to a representative of the U.S. Navy named Charles Brantley Aycock Brown. Indeed, it was Aycock Brown who performed this task for the men of the SS San Delfino and HMT Bedfordshire buried at Ocracoke, Morehead City and Cape Hatteras. There was a poignant story linking Brown to two of the men aboard Bedfordshire, as related below in his own, lightly-edited words from an article he published in the April 20, 1946 edition of News and Record, a local newspaper based in Greensboro, North Carolina.
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“I received an assignment from Norfolk to catch a plane at Cherry Point and go to Cape Hatteras immediately to identify and bury a body which had come ashore there. Anticipating that it was another British sailor, I contacted the local liaison officer, a Lieutenant Commander Bruford, and requested that he give me a flag. He did not have one in the office, but he gave me an order to get one off a trawler which was then at the local piers coaling up.
At the piers, I contacted a pleasant-talking, heavily bearded young sub-lieutenant. He said his name was Cunningham and he shouted to a seaman on deck to bring me a flag - a Union Jack. Thanking Cunningham, I rushed to Cherry Point, caught the plane, flew to Cape Hatteras and identified the body as Michael Cairns, third engineer aboard the late San Delfino. He was given a Christian burial.
When I returned to Morehead City, Lieutenant Cunningham’s ship, the Bedfordshire, had sailed for patrol duties in the sub-infested waters off shore. I never saw the Bedfordshire again. I did see Lieutenant Cunningham and also the seaman who had handed me the Union Jack the day I had called for it at the coaling pier. It happened this way:
About the middle of May, a message came through that two bodies had washed ashore on Ocracoke Island. I was instructed to hop a plane and fly to Ocracoke immediately to identify and see that the bodies were given the usual Christian burial - on privately owned ground.
Arriving at the island, the coast guard officer in charge took me to an equipment house where the bodies were covered with sheets. Removing the sheets, I exclaimed: “Ye Gods, I know both of these men. They are British and off one of the trawlers which bases down at Morehead City.” Yes - those two bodies were Lt. Thomas Cunningham and a seaman whom I quickly identified as Stanley R. Craig - Cunningham the man who had told me very cheerfully a few days before, “Sure - we have a ‘Jack you can borrow,” and Craig, the seaman who had handed me the flag.
I called the office in Norfolk and reported. At first the senior officer with whom I talked said that I must be mistaken in the identity, that the Bedfordshire had not been reported lost. As it turned out though, she had not been reported for four or five days, and just what happened to the ship was never definitely determined - because there were no survivors. In the inquiry which was held a few days later, it was assumed that a sub’s torpedo had made a direct hit on the ship’s magazine and that she had been blown to pieces. Sometime later, adding to the theory, was the discovery of a battered nameplate of the ship which washed ashore near Atlantic. Eventually, three other bodies came ashore, two were not definitely identified, and then a third, three months later, was found on a lonely shore near Swan Quarter. The last body was identified by a dog-tag [as Seaman Alfred Dryden].
Cunningham and Craig were given Christian burials. Finally, markers were erected - markers which were made by the contractors building the Ocracoke section base. Then a fence was built around the graves, and the little cemetery was named in honor of Cunningham…
What happened to the Union Jack? I loaned it to an ensign who had charge of the firing squad at one of the memorial services we conducted a couple of years later at Cunningham cemetery. He never returned it.”
A closeup of Maldwyn Jones grave at Bay View Cemetery in Morehead City, North Carolina. (image by Keegan Chetwynd).
A closeup of the unknown sailor's grave at Bay View Cemetery in Morehead City, North Carolina. (image by Keegan Chetwynd).
A closeup of John Latto Fisher's grave at Bay View Cemetery in Morehead City, North Carolina. (image by Keegan Chetwynd).
Epilog: Bringing the Boys Back Home
One can’t stand at the foot of these graves of Allied sailors and not feel a sense of gratitude. A story of courage and sacrifice unfolds as one looks across the stones, and towards the communities which still care for them. This should fill anyone with the desire to know more – how did these men come to rest here? What happened just a stone’s throw from our front door during World War II?
As teams from the Museum are working to support the nationwide effort to locate, identify, and create gravestone rubbings to help memorialize these men – and to see them flown to the United Kingdom onboard a WWII-era US Navy R4D in time for the 80th Anniversary of VE-Day – it has given us all an opportunity to pause for a moment and offer our thanks. In our nation’s darkest hours, these men laid down their lives, buying time for the US Navy to drive the submarine menace back offshore.
It is heartening to see that in the coastal North Carolina communities where these graves are located, they are still viewed as objects of reverence. They are clean - not overgrown. They are protected with white picket fences, and annual ceremonies still occur to remember the fallen. At the cemetery on Ocracoke, each May brings a commemoration joined by representatives from the US Coast Guard, US Navy, Britain’s Royal Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy. The crewmen’s names are read, bagpipes are played for the fallen, and a 21-gun salute is offered. On Hatteras, the small, two-grave plot sees similar commemorations each year as the US National Park Service and US Coast Guard are joined by representatives from the Royal Navy.
These tributes are not just a fitting way to honor the fallen along what became known as Torpedo Junction, they also celebrate the spirit of the alliance which fought for a free world. These men fought for all of us, for the 80 years of relative peace we have enjoyed, and for the spirit of friendship that has existed between our nations.
So it seems only correct to suggest to museum supporters that the next time you visit the Outer Banks, take a little time to stop by these sailors’ graves and pay your respects. And the next time you find yourselves looking out across a cold, grey ocean, remember to raise a glass for those heroes lost at sea – and offer your thanks.