Carroll A. Deering was a
five-masted commercial schooner that was
found run aground off Cape Hatteras
, North
Carolina
, in
1921. Its crew was mysteriously missing.
The Deering
is one of the most written-about maritime mysteries in history,
with claims that it was a victim of the Bermuda Triangle
, although the evidence points towards a mutiny or
possibly piracy.
Overview
The
Carroll A. Deering was built in Bath, Maine
, in 1919 by the G.G. Deering Company for commercial use. The
owner of the company named the ship after his son. The vessel was
designed to carry cargo and had been in service for a year when it
began its mysterious final voyage.
It was soon going to go to Rio de Janeiro
, Brazil
.
The Deering’s fateful voyage
On August
19, 1920, the Deering prepared to sail from Norfolk,
Virginia
to Rio De Janeiro
with a cargo of coal.
The ship was captained by William H. Merritt. Merritt's son,
Sewall, was his first mate. He had a ten-man crew made up entirely
of Scandinavians (mostly Danes). On August 22, 1920, the
Deering left Newport News.
In late August, Captain Merritt fell ill
and had to be let off at the port of Lewes, Delaware
, along with his son. The "Deering Company"
hastily recruited Captain W. B. Wormell, a 66-year-old veteran
captain, to replace him. Charles B. McLellan was hired on as first
mate.
The vessel set sail again for Rio on September 8, 1920, and arrived
there, delivering its cargo without incident. Wormell gave his crew
leave and met with a Captain Goodwin, an old friend who captained
another cargo vessel. Wormell spoke of his crew with disdain,
though he claimed to trust the engineer, Herbert Bates .
The
Deering left Rio on December 2, 1920, and stopped for
supplies in Barbados
. First Mate McLellan got drunk in town and
complained to Captain Hugh Norton of the
Snow that he
could not discipline the crew without Wormell interfering, and that
he had to do all the navigation owing to Wormell's poor eyesight.
Later Captain Norton, his first mate and another captain were in
the Continental Café and heard McLellan say, "I'll get the captain
before we get to Norfolk, I will". McLellan was arrested, but on
January 9 Wormell forgave him, bailed him out of jail, and set sail
for Hampton Roads.
The ship
was next sighted by the Cape Lookout
Lightship in North Carolina on January 28, 1921, when the vessel hailed the
lightship. The lightship's keeper,
Captain Jacobson, reported that a thin man with reddish hair and a
foreign accent told him the vessel had lost its anchors. Jacobson
took note of this, but his radio was out, so he was unable to
report it. He noticed that the crew seemed to be "milling around"
on the fore deck of the ship, an area where they were usually not
allowed.
The wreck
On January
31, 1921, the Deering was sighted run aground on Diamond Shoals
, an area off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, that has long been notorious for
its reputation as a common site of shipwrecks. Rescue ships
were unable to approach the vessel owing to bad weather. The ship
was not boarded until
February 4, and it
became clear that the ship had been completely abandoned. The
ship's log and navigation equipment were gone, as were the crew's
personal effects and the ship's two
lifeboats. In the vessel's galley it
appeared that certain foodstuffs were being prepared for the next
day's meal at the time of the abandonment. The
Coast Guard vessel
Manning attempted to salvage the
Deering, but
found this impossible. The vessel was scuttled using dynamite on
March 4 to prevent her from becoming a
danger to other vessels.
Investigation
The U.S. Government launched an extensive investigation into the
disappearance of the crew of the
Deering.
Five departments of
the government—Commerce
, Treasury
, Justice
, Navy, and State
—looked into the case. Herbert Hoover, then
Secretary of Commerce, was intrigued
by the fact that several other vessels of various
nationalities—most notably the sulfur freighter
Hewitt—had
also disappeared in roughly the same area. Though most of these
vessels were later revealed to have been sailing in the vicinity of
a series of particularly vicious
hurricanes, the
Hewitt and
Deering were proven to have been sailing away from the
area of the storm at the time. Hoover's assistant,
Lawrence Richey, was placed in charge of the
investigation. Ritchey tried to chart what happened to the vessel
between its last sighting at Cape Lookout and its running aground
at Diamond Shoals by reading the log books of the Coast Guard
lightships stationed at those places.
Theories
There were a number of theories which became popular during the
course of the investigation and after it. It seemed at first that
an external force was responsible for the disappearance.
On April 11, 1921, a man named Christopher Columbus Gray claimed to
have found a message in a bottle floating in the waters of Buxton
Beach, North Carolina; he swiftly turned it over to the
authorities. The text of the message goes as follows:
DEERING CAPTURED BY OIL BURNING BOAT
SOMETHING LIKE CHASER. TAKING OFF
EVERYTHING HANDCUFFING CREW. CREW HIDING
ALL OVER SHIP NO CHANCE TO MAKE ESCAPE.
FINDER PLEASE NOTIFY HEADQUARTERS
DEERING.
The handwriting in the letter was matched to that of the ship's
engineer Bates by the widow of Captain Wormell, and the bottle was
proven to have been manufactured in Brazil. This, along with the
known sighting of the "mysterious" steamer that arrived at the Cape
Lookout Lightship in the wake of the
Deering, seemed to
indicate that hostile people were responsible. Yet this also caused
some controversy—if a crew member did manage to get hold of paper,
pen, and bottle and write a letter, why would he request that the
company be notified, as opposed to the police or Coast Guard?
The following theories were considered by the U.S. Government in
its investigation:
- Piracy: Captain O.W. Parker of the
United States Marine
Shipping Board certainly seemed to believe piracy responsible; he stated that, in his opinion,
"Piracy without a doubt still exists as it has since the days of
the Phoenicians". It was believed that a group of pirates were
responsible for the various disappearances; however, no real
evidence of this theory emerged.
- Russian/Communist
Piracy: During an FBI
raid on the
headquarters of the United
Russian Workers Party (a Communist
front group) in New York City
, agents found papers that supposedly called on
members of the organization to seize American ships and sail them
to Russia. These papers more or less proved that a Communist
plot was afoot, and this theory was widely believed in regard to
the Deering at the time, particularly by hardline
anti-Communists in the government. Though it is an intriguing
suggestion, no definitive proof that any of these activities were
actually carried out has surfaced.
- Rum
Runners: A similar theory to the above speculates that a group of
liquor smugglers working out of the Bahamas
stole the ship to use as a rum-running vessel (this
was during the Prohibition era).
The Deering was large enough, according to Richard Winer's
Ghost Ships, to carry roughly a million dollars' worth of
liquor in its hold. This theory is believable and certainly
plausible, but as with the above, no definitive proof has ever been
found.
- Mutiny: Wormell's known conflict with his first mate and
derisive comments towards his crew while in Rio De Janeiro
suggested that something may have been amiss between the captain
and his men on the voyage. Captain Jacobson at Cape Lookout
certainly thought it odd; the man who hailed his vessel was
definitely not Captain Wormell, and he was not an officer
by all accounts. Discontent with the captain could certainly have
caused a mutiny of the crew, but once again,
nothing definitive has ever been proven.
Perhaps inevitably, a more outlandish type of explanation became
popular within a few decades of the incident:
- Paranormal Explanation: The disappearance of the ship's crew
has been cited by innumerable authors dealing with anomalous
phenomena and the supernatural.
Charles Fort, in his book Lo! (1931), first mentioned this vessel in a
"mysterious" context, and since then many chroniclers of mysteries
of the sea have followed suit. Since this vessel sailed in the area
generally considered to be part of the so-called Bermuda
Triangle, the
disappearance of the crew has often been tied to this
fact.
Investigation ends
The investigation remained largely fruitless, but it did take an
interesting turn when, according to Kusche, Christopher Columbus
Gray admitted the letter he had recovered had been forged.
When an
Italian
inquiry into the disappearance of the vessel
Monte San Michele revealed that there indeed had been
heavy hurricanes in the vicinity, most of the conspiracy theories
were dropped and mutiny was generally accepted as the answer to the
riddle. In July 1921, the consulate general in Portugal
reported that a sailor named Augusto Frederico Martins was under
suspicion as being a member of the missing crew, until it was later
discovered that he was a cook for the vessel
Portugal.
Another potential lead turned up when a member of the crew of the
missing
Hewitt, B.O. Rainey, was found serving on another
vessel; however, when approached by State Department officials, he
claimed that he had left the
Hewitt before it left port at
Sabine, Texas.
The investigation finally wound down in late 1922 without an
official ruling on the fate of the
Deering.
Conclusion
No explanation for the disappearance of the crew of the
Carroll
A. Deering was ever officially verified, though all
of the genuine evidence seems to point to mutiny.
Still, the case is a
favorite of paranormalists and Bermuda Triangle proponents and has gained a reputation as a
successor to the Mary
Celeste
as one of the truly great mysteries of the
sea.
Notes
References
Newspapers
- "Piracy Suspected In Disappearance Of 3 American Ships," New
York Times, June 21, 1921.
- "Bath Owners Skeptical," New York Times, June 22, 1921.
- "Deering Skipper's Wife Caused Investigation," New York Times,
June 22, 1921.
- "More Ships Added To Mystery List," New York Times, June 22,
1921.
- "Hunt On For Pirates," Washington Post, June 21, 1921
- "Comb Seas For Ships," Washington Post, June 22, 1921.
- "Port Of Missing Ships Claims 3000 Yearly," Washington Post,
July 10, 1921.
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