Grave mission for warships

Crews of three U.S. vessels to do cleanup of Deadmans Island

Three U.S. warships sailed into Halifax Harbour on Tuesday.

The USS Barry and USS Donald Cook are destroyers, and the USNS Big Horn is an oiler. The ships, based in Norfolk, Va., are expected to stay here for several days.

"They’re going to be sending work crews from the Barry and the Cook down to Deadmans Island to do a cleanup on the island so it’s ready for our Memorial Day ceremony next Monday," said Marcia Seitz-Ehler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate General in Halifax.

"They’re probably going to branch out and do some work on the other parks in town, too, because so many people volunteered to help. I think they have more people than can fit on Deadmans Island volunteering to help clean it up right now."

Sailors and marines will work today with equipment and materials provided by Halifax Regional Municipality. They will repair the path to and from the island and do some other maintenance on the memorial.

"Given the time, effort, and resources the city put into creating the park, we are happy to once again have a chance to contribute labour to help with the upkeep of the site," U.S. Consul General Harold Foster said in a news release.

For almost 200 years, the bodies of 195 U.S. servicemen who died in British custody during the War of 1812 and were buried in unmarked graves on the Northwest Arm island went unnoticed by their own government. But in May 2005, U.S. officials dedicated a plaque to the memory of the prisoners buried there.

Now the U.S. Consulate General in Halifax and local U.S. navy exchange officers hold an informal ceremony to honour those American servicemen every Memorial Day. This year, the ceremony will take place May 26 at 9:30 a.m.

The three American warships that just arrived in Halifax recently participated in Joint Warrior 08-1, a multinational exercise held in the North Atlantic.