During the first six months of 1942, beaches along this coast revealed crude oil, twisted metal, and corpses from the Atlantic Ocean, grim evidence of the toll inflicted by German Navy Unterseeboote, or U-boats. Paukenschlag was the first of Germany's campaigns aimed at striking a devastating blow on the United States, with attacks intended to be as sudden and startling as a beat on a kettledrum. These attacks choked the delivery of badly needed food and war materiel to England as U-boats hunted along the world's busiest sea lanes near New York, Cape Hatteras, and Florida, sinking nearly 400 lightly armed and unescorted merchant vessels during this period. Unprepared for war on this coast, America accepted the services of the British Royal Navy to patrol against the German submarines. H.M.S. Bedfordshire was one of the vessels assigned to patrol the North Carolina coast, and it was destroyed by U-552 in May 1942. The remains of four of her crew rest in a small cemetery on Ocracoke Island, where two other British subjects who died in the war are also interred nearby. One was Fourth Engineer Officer Michael Cairns of the Royal Merchant Navy, who served on the British merchant vessel San Delfino and died when it was destroyed by a torpedo from U-203; his remains were discovered along this beach nearly a month after the attack. The other was an unknown sailor of the Royal Navy whose remains were found two weeks after Cairns.