This cemetery contains the graves of four Commonwealth sailors (two of them unidentified) who died when the armed trawler HMS Bedfordshire was torpedoed off the Outer Banks of North Carolina on May 11, 1942. They washed up on the beach of Ocracoke Island four days later and were buried by the residents of the island. In 1976, the North Carolina State Property Office granted a perpetual lease to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for this site, making it most likely the smallest CWCG cemetery in the world. The U.S. Coast Guard maintains the cemetery on the Commission's behalf.