Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Cindy Bullard
Taken: November 24, 2010
Caption: Story of the Crosses
Additional Description: These crosses were cast by the T. A. Loving Construction Company for the United States Navy in 1942. For forty-one years, they marked the graves of the four Bedfordshire crewmen. In 1983, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission replaced them with regulation British grave markers. David Esham was President of the newly formed Ocracoke Preservation Society and managed to save the crosses from being destroyed. They were stored under the Pony Island Motel and, subsequently, under the Ocracoke Preservation Society Museum until 2001. In May of that year, at the request of the United States Coast Guard, the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum and the Ocracoke Preservation Society; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission gave permission to display the crosses on site. In May 2005, the people of Ocracoke Island donated the black granite memorial commemorating the loss of HMT Bedfordshire and her crew in action against U-558. This gallant ship and crew were lost protecting our coast during World War II.
Submitted: December 6, 2010, by David Bullard of Seneca, South Carolina.
Database Locator Identification Number: p139394
File Size: 2.269 Megabytes

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