When traveling for fun, I expect to stumble upon info. Locals have the best stories! They know the people and the legends, the tales of yore and more. Since I expect this, and I’m not shy about asking questions or talking to strangers, I don’t do any research prior to visiting. Oh sure, I’m the geek who researches YELP for food choices and museums worth visiting, but no real historical research. I just go on daily walks, willy-nilly with no agenda, ears pricked for conversations that sound intriguing. Once I have discovered something that strikes my fancy, like every other person on the planet, I Google it! It goes a little like this…
In June of 2021, a friend and I visited the Outer Banks and Ocracoke. I’ve been coming to this area since I was a child, so I’d heard that Blackbeard buried treasure in the area and knew the Wright Brothers has flown at Kitty Hawk. I had even climbed to the top of the Hatteras Lighthouse. But until this trip, didn’t know there was also a museum at the lighthouse. Strolling through the museum, primarily because it was air-conditioned, I came across an exhibit of items recovered from a German U-boat that sank off the Outer Banks. U-boats? Here? Reading the placards of the exhibit, I learned that German U-boats patrolled the coast on this side of the Atlantic! I take some pictures of the exhibit and decide I’ll Google for more info later. Flash forward two days…
We’re now on Ocracoke with no other plan than eating all the local, fresh seafood available. While strolling from a taco truck to a coffee shop, I spied a flag with St. George’s cross. I immediately wondered, why is an English flag flying here? Meandering my way toward it, I discovered it flew over four headstones. Bingo! Cemeteries are one of my favorite places to visit. Interred were the only four souls recovered from the HMT Bedfordshire, a British armed trawler on loan to the U.S. Navy for coastal patrol. British soldiers—in America during WWII? My little brain screeched to a halt. I had seen this information before…two days before on Hatteras! Needless to say, I Googled my way through the history of this incident. I had never heard that U-boats had killed anyone on this side of the Atlantic, and I certainly was not aware that there were British soldiers buried on U.S. soil as they sought to protect us during WWII.
This—this is why I travel. While it is possible this was covered in some history class and I wasn’t paying attention, I don’t think so. Do I have any plans to turn this into some sort of story? Not immediately. But there is a kernel of one developing….
