British sailors helped defend Outer Banks in WWII

U.S. anti-submarine patrols received a much-needed boost during World War II with the arrival of 24 Royal Navy vessels from Great Britain in April and May of 1942.

These British ships were assigned to help patrol the Outer Banks region of North Carolina and counterattack the German U-boats that were wreaking havoc in our coastal waters.

The Bedfordshire was built in 1935 as a 162-foot commercial fishing trawler by Smith’s Dock Company of South Bank, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, England. She was owned by Bedfordshire Fishing Company of Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England.

The Admiralty acquired the Bedfordshire in August 1939 and converted her to wartime service. In America, she was stationed at Morehead City, N.C.

 

While on patrol off Cape Lookout on May 11, 1942, the Bedfordshire was attacked by Germany’s U-558. The first two torpedoes fired from the U-boat missed the target, but a third torpedo blew up the trawler. All 37 hands aboard died. 

Carteret County, N.C., people were both stunned and greatly saddened about the sinking of the Bedfordshire. Sub-Lt. Thomas Cunningham, 27, of Blackpool, Lancashire, England, had become quite well-known around Morehead City, recalled local historian Rodney Kemp.

 

Only weeks prior to the tragedy, Aycock Brown, a former editor of The Beaufort News, had been Lt. Cunningham’s guest aboard the Bedfordshire while it was docked in port at Morehead City. 

According to Carlton Harrell, author of “Ocean Ablaze: War Reaches the Outer Banks,” published in 2013, Lt. Cunningham and Brown had even shared a tumbler or two of British rum.

 

During World War II, Aycock Brown worked as a special civilian agent for the Naval Intelligence Office. The purpose of his meeting with Lt. Cunningham was to collect a supply of British Royal Navy Flags for use by town leaders at Bayview Cemetery in Morehead City. 

The flags were needed to carry out a memorial service and burial there on April 30, 1942, to honor a pair of British sailors who were killed when their ship, the San Delfino, a British merchant tanker, was attacked by U-203 on April 9, 1942.

 

It sunk off Cape Hatteras, due east of Rodanthe. Two bodies washed ashore on Core Banks and were delivered to the morgue in Morehead City. (The San Delfino lost 24 crew members and four gunners who were aboard; 22 survivors were rescued and returned safely to the port at Morehead City.) 

Lt. Cunningham gladly gave Aycock Brown flags for the two deceased San Delfino sailors as well as several spares. 

Kemp noted that one of the ironies of war is that one of the extra Royal Navy Flags that had been donated by Lt. Cunningham would be used to commemorate his own gravesite in Ocracoke. 

Lt. Cunningham’s body was one of four bodies from the Bedfordshire that washed ashore on Ocracoke. 

Also identified was 2nd Class Telegraphist Stanley Craig, 24, of London, England. The other two bodies were buried as unknown sailors. 

The British Cemetery at Ocracoke as well as one at Buxton on Hatteras Island are distinguished as the smallest in the world administered by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

 

The North Carolina State Property Office granted a perpetual lease for land contained within the two cemeteries in 1976, thereby designating the properties as “British soil.” Royal Naval Flags fly above both cemeteries at all times.

 

A story that circulated after the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 8, 2022, was: “The people at Ocracoke and Buxton made the meaningful gesture of lowering the British Royal Navy Flags to half-staff.”