GRAVE MARKER MYSTERY
Rannie Gillis looks into a Second World War mystery.
“This granite cross once marked the graves in Sydney, Nova Scotia, of 34 Mariners and Navy Armed Guard members from the Liberty Ship J. Pinckney Henderson. On August 19, 1943, the vessel was in collision with a Panamanian tanker in North Atlantic Convoy with a total loss of 63 men, including two Academy Cadet midshipmen.”
This inscription, from a memorial plaque at the American Merchant Marine Museum in New York, refers to a collision at sea, after midnight and in thick fog, that took place between Cape Breton and Newfoundland.
When this large American cargo ship was towed into Sydney harbour, several days after this particular incident, it was still on fire, and was beached on the west side of Point Edward, directly across from the Seaview Golf and Country Club. It took another three weeks before the fire was extinguished, and when it was, the navy could only find the remains of 34 sailors, out of the 63 men in the crew.
These 34 individuals were all buried in a common grave, in the cemetery on the side of Hardwood Hill, off George Street in Sydney. Six years after they were buried, and four years after the end of the Second World War in 1945, the remains were removed by the United States Navy, and returned for burial to the United States.
This was a story that has always fascinated me, ever since I first read about it in the well-researched book “Guardian of the Gulf: Sydney, Cape Breton, and the Atlantic Wars” by historians Brian Tennyson and Roger Sarty. First published in 2000, it remains the definitive record of all things military with regard to this historic seaport.
Further research at the Beaton Institute at Cape Breton University, and several other locations, indicated that shortly after the mass burial, a group of concerned citizens from Sydney and the surrounding area raised a substantial amount of money and erected a large granite cross on the grave site.
What happened to this granite cross, after the bodies were returned to the United States?
Nobody seemed to know, and I could find no reference to it during my various research inquiries. Only one thing was certain. There was no trace of it, or any record of what happened to it, at the Hardwood Hill Cemetery.
Fast forward to May 8. On that date I received an email from Colin Darlington, Commander Royal Canadian Navy (retired), Royal United Services Institute of Nova Scotia. It was addressed to 14 individ- uals (myself included), and the American Merchant Marine Museum in New York.
Darlington explained that while doing research at the Naval Museum in Halifax, he found a photo of a burial parade for U.S. Merchant Marine sailors that was held in Sydney in September, 1943. Further research led him to believe that it was for the deceased sailors from the burning Liberty ship, and he referenced three articles from our newspaper that I had written about this unlucky American vessel.
He also mentioned that a monument had been erected at the site of the mass grave on Hardwood Hill, and that after the war the monument was moved to the American Merchant Marine Museum in Kings Point, New York.
A few days later Darlington and I received an email from Joshua M. Smith, a professor of humanities at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. Smith
stated that “The American Merchant Marine Museum does indeed have possession of this grave marker.”
He went on to explain that the 800-pound granite cross remained in Hardwood Hill cemetery until the late 1960s, when it was returned to the United States. It then went missing for more than 30 years, before being found in 2003. It is now on display on the grounds of the American Merchant Marine Museum.
Next month: How was this monument returned to the U.S., by whom, and how did it go missing?
“Further research at the Beaton Institute at Cape Breton University, and several other locations, indicated that shortly after the mass burial, a group of concerned citizens from Sydney and the surrounding area raised a substantial amount of money and erected a large granite cross on the grave site. “