Sailors from two Devonport-based ships have been helping to restore historic burial grounds at opposite ends of the earth.

The ship’s company of HMS Cumberland, on anti-terror operations in the Middle East, braved scorching temperatures in Oman to smarten up the final resting places of RN and RM dead buried in the isolated cemetery at Sa’ Ali Cove.

The graveyard is only accessible by sea, so sailors from the Type 22 warship hopped in a boat provided by the British Embassy in the Omani capital, Muscat, to reach the cove.

There they found graves damaged by the weather and some minor vandalism, and spent a day tidying the site and improving the tombs for future visitors.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles to the west, HMS Monmouth’s crew found an even older burial ground in an even worse state of neglect.

The Cliff graveyard in Barbados is the last resting place of pioneering Quaker settlers who set out to the West Indies in the 17th Century hoping to spread the word.

The community blossomed for more than a century, such that there were at least five meeting houses on Barbados at the height of the movement’s power.

Quaker numbers, however, have been on the decline since the 1800s and of the four burial grounds used by the Quaker community, only Cliff remains.

The graveyard was buried by undergrowth for two centuries – added to by locals using the site as an unofficial dump, and few islanders knew the role the cemetery played in Barbadian history.

Sailors of the Black Duke, in the midst of drug-busting duties in the Caribbean, found most of the graves overgrown or collapsed, so they set about clearing some of the neglect as part of a project supported by the Barbadian High Commissioner, Rob Holland.