Carroll A. Deering (schooner)

Carroll A. Deering
Career
Owner	G.G. Deering Company Bath, Maine
Shipyard	Deering Co. shipyard Bath, Maine
Authorized	1918
Keel laid	1918
Launched	April 4, 1919
Status	Abandoned, wrecked January 31, 1921
Characteristics
Displacement	1,879 tons
Length	255 feet
Beam	44 feet
Draft	25 feet
Crew	11

Carroll A. Deering was a five-masted schooner built by the G.G. Deering Company of Bath, Maine, and in use as a bulk cargo carrier from 1919 to 1921, operating in the Atlantic Ocean. The wreck of the vessel off North Carolina and the disappearance of the crew - in addition to the disappearances of several other vessels at roughly the same place and time - sparked accusations of murder, mutiny, piracy, and the paranormal, with the case reaching the highest levels of the United States Government.

Construction

Gardner G. Deering was a shipbuilder in Maine, with over one hundred vessels built either through a partnership with William T. Donnell, or later by the company he took over in 1886, renaming it after himself. Twenty-five ships came out of his yards in Bath, all of them schooners, and all large by the standards of the day, as they were designed to carry large amounts of cargo, principally coal. Carroll A. Deering, named for his son, was the last, and launched in 1919. A smaller company, N. Blaisdell & Sons of Bath, had built the small boats. No expense was spared to make Deering luxurious, despite her being a cargo ship. Oregon pines made up the masts, while the decking and interiors were a combination of mahogany, oak, hard pine, ash and empress woods. Plumbing, steam heat, and electricity - rarities in large sailing vessels - ran throughout the cabins.

History

From commissioning, Carroll A. Deering was under the command of Captain William M. Merritt, with his son, Sewall E. Merritt, appointed first officer. In the summer of 1919 the schooner left Newport News, Virginia with some 3,500 tons of coal, and made her maiden voyage to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Another trip followed in February 1920, with almost 3,300 tons of coal carried from Newport News to the Spanish port of Huelva, with further journeys taking her to other South American and Caribbean ports. In August 1920, Carroll A. Deering loaded up with 3,300 tons of coal and left for her last voyage to Rio de Janeiro. Shortly after the departure, however, Captain Merritt fell ill and had to go ashore in Lewes, Delaware, with his son accompanying him.

The Deering Company had to quickly find a new captain and a new first officer, and within two days hired Captain Willis T. Wormell, an experienced and respected 66-year-old sailing master, as well as Charles B. McLellan as first officer. The onward journey to Rio de Janeiro went smoothly. On the way back, however, Carroll A. Deering ran to Bridgetown in Barbados to take over provisions and water. McLellan got drunk during the stay and was arrested by local authorities for rioting, with Wormell bailing him out of jail. Apparently there was a violent dispute between the two later, with McLellan said to have threatened Wormell. With this tense situation on board, the ship left Barbados on January 9, 1921 and headed for Newport News.

On January 29, 1921, around 4:30 p.m., Carroll A. Deering passed U.S. Coast Guard lightship no. 80 at Cape Lookout, about 85 nautical miles south of Cape Hatteras, whereby a man on board the schooner informed the commander of the lightship, Captain Thomas Jacobson, with the help of a megaphone that the schooner had lost two of its anchors in the storm and requested that information transmitted to their company. This man was described as an unknown, lanky man with red hair and spoke with a Scandinavian accent; he was clearly not the captain. Jacobson later noted in the logbook that he would have been surprised that no officer, and not even the captain himself, would have called him with the megaphone, and that there must have been a certain lack of discipline on board the schooner, as crew members were seen milling about the quarter deck at random, a place on the ship in which the crew was not allowed.

The crew is seen on the foredeck in the last photograph of anyone alive on board Carroll A. Deering, taken from the Cape Lookout lightship on January 29, 1921. (US Coast Guard)

Since the radio system on board the lightship was out of order due to storm damage, the message could not be passed on immediately. It was probably the last contact with Carroll A. Deering, even though later that evening the American cargo steamer Lake Elon sighted a five-masted schooner about 25 nautical miles south of Cape Hatteras in bad weather. It was noted in Lake Elon's logbook that the sailing ship was running on a course that would bring it too close to the shallows off Cape Hatteras. If the sighted ship was indeed Carroll A. Deering, it remained unclear whether or not the crew was still on board at that time.

Several hours after the schooner disappeared over the horizon, an unknown steamship following the same heading passed by the Cape Lookout lightship. Captain Jacobson hoped that the ship would be able to send Deering's message ashore, yet the steamer ignored the signals of the lighthouse, even ignoring the blasts of the lightship's horn when sounding the international distress signal.

The wreck

On the morning of January 31, 1921, a rescue worker from the Hatteras Inlet lifeboat station discovered a sailing ship that had run up on the sandbars in Cape Hatteras, also known as Diamond Shoals, and informed the surrounding rescue centers. Stormy weather and high seas prevented rescue personnel from getting closer than 1,500 feet to the ship. They did observe that the stranded ship had her sails set, as well as seeing no one on board the upper deck.

The next day, February 1, 1921, USCGC Seminole arrived at Diamond Shoals and tried several times to get to the distressed vessel. These attempts also failed due to the stormy weather. Nevertheless, Seminole discovered that there were no lifeboats on board. On February 2 USCGC Manning and the civilian tug Rescue joined Seminole; still unable to board her, the ship was positively identified as Carroll A. Deering. Meanwhile, the action of wind and waves forced the ship deeper into the sandbar and caused a great deal of damage.

It was only on February 4, 1921, after the weather had calmed down somewhat overnight, that a small boat from Manning was able to approach Carroll A. Deering and around 10:30 a.m. several Coast Guard men climbed aboard the schooner. During the inspection of the wreck it was found that the ship had been completely abandoned by its crew, with the only other sign of life a hungry cat. Furthermore, all lifeboats had disappeared and Jacob's ladders were hanging down on the sides of the ship.

When Deering was searched, it was also found that the chronometer, the logbook and all navigation instruments, including the sextant, were no longer on board. In addition, both main anchors were missing and two red lights were placed on top of each other on the main mast, which is a visual signal of a ship's inability to maneuver. The binnacle was smashed, the ship's wheel damaged. Scraps of paper were scattered in the washroom and three different pairs of boots had placed prints on the deck of the captain's cabin. In the galley there was also a meal prepared, albeit untouched. In the course of the investigation, it was also apparent that numerous hull frames had been broken, part of the bow as well as the rudder had been significantly damaged and that the wreck was already deep in the sand, which made salvage hardly possible. After about six hours, the Coast Guard men left the wreck.

An attempt was made to tow the ship off the rocks, to no avail. After she suffered further damage from a new storm at the end of February 1921, the order was given to destroy the wreck with explosive charges because she was considered to be a shipping risk. The explosion was carried out by the U.S. Coast Guard in March 1921, with the bow section floating to Ocracoke Island, where it remained visible until the late 1950s. No trace of the eleven crew members and the lifeboats was ever found, although the Coast Guard and the United States Navy continued to search until mid-March 1921.

Piracy theory

"The crew of an American ship is missing, and what seems to be conclusive evidence has been obtained that the men were taken as prisoner to another vessel and carried away to parts unknown, if they were not murdered," read the first paragraph of an article published in the New York Times on June 21, 1921. Five levels of the United States government - State, Commerce, Treasury, Justice, and Navy - looked into the Deering case; the head of the Commerce Department (and future U.S. President) Herbert Hoover was intrigued by the fact that a number of ships disappeared within roughly the same area within a short time of each other:

• SS Hewitt, last heard from on January 25, 1921, carrying 42 crewmen and a cargo of sulphur from Sabine, Texas to Portland, Maine.
• SS Ottawa, registered in Canada, sailed from Norfolk, Virginia on February 2, 1921 with 33 crewmen and 3,600 tons of Mexican fuel oil, bound for Manchester, England. Ottawa would last be heard from on February 6, sending a message to another ship.
• SS Monte San Micelle, registered in Italy, sailing for Europe
• SS Esperanza de Larrinaga, registered in Spain, sailing for Europe
• SS Florino, registered in Italy
• SS Svartskog, registered in Norway
• SS Albyn, registered in Denmark
• SS Steinsund
• SS Yute

Hoover’s assistant, Lawrence Richey, was the man placed in charge of the investigation. Of interest to him was the logbooks of the lightships at capes Lookout and Hatteras; these were perused to plot the dates, times, and course of Deering. Of particular interest was the entry by Captain Jacobson, who gave a specific date and time of sighting. He was the last individual to see Deering's crew alive:

"4:30 PM. 5 mast schooner Carrol A. Deering, in passing bound North, reported having lost both anchors and chains off Frying Pan Shoal, asking to be reported, but ship's wireless out of commission. Was unable to get in touch with passing vessels."

A determination that hurricanes were responsible for most of the missing ships was made, as the tracks and dates of the vessels in question would lead them into the paths of the storms; however, both Carroll A. Deering and Hewitt were sailing away from them; they also pointed to the fact that when boarded at Diamond Shoals, the galley was set for a regular meal. The state of the ship indicated an orderly abandonment, and not one indicating a panic. As the country was feeling the effects of organized crime directly linked to Prohibition as well as the "Red scare" - as the communist takeover in Russia was called - it seemed certain that an unsuccessful attempt was made to hijack the vessel at sea; the crew seen milling about the quarter deck by the Coast Guard lightship may have been there at gunpoint. And as early as the discovery of the abandoned Deering, it was suggested that the loss of Hewitt was directly connected with the loss of Deering's crew; so intertwined were both that it was claimed that the mysterious steamer seen by the Cape Lookout lightship was the recently-hijacked Hewitt, hours away from picking up their fellow compatriots from Deering and sailing to parts unknown. Captain O.W. Parker of the United States Marine Shipping Board was a believer in the piracy theory, stating "Piracy without a doubt still exists as it has since the days of the Phoenicians".

On April 11, 1921, a month after Deering was blown apart, a local fisherman named Christopher Columbus Gray took a bottle he had found off Buxton Beach, North Carolina to the authorities, who read the message inside:

"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 of Deering"

The bottle itself was manufactured on Brazil, Deering's last port of call, and its presence seemed to strengthen a case for piracy, with Mrs. Wormell identifying the handwriting as coming from the ship's engineer Bates. However, no additional real evidence came to light which would prove piracy, and in the weeks that followed the message in the bottle would be unraveled as a hoax, with Christopher Gray admitting he had done so in order to secure a job with a nearby lighthouse.

Mutiny theory

As no definitive proof could not be ascertained concerning piracy, similar explanations quickly disappeared, yet one stood out. Based on a hostility that the First Officer had for the Captain, it was suggested that a mutiny did take place. According to the theory, McClellan was determined to take control of the ship from Wormell, and had actually killed him. The crew seen on the foredeck by the Cape Lookout lightship were those who did not take part, and were there against their will; the unknown, red-haired man speaking to the lightship was claimed to be crewman Johann Frederickson, a native of Finland who was a part of the mutiny. As if to bolster the case, when the inspectors had boarded the ship at Diamond Shoals, a navigational map had been written on daily by Wormell during the voyage, and then solely by someone else after January 23.

Yet as with the piracy theory, nothing conclusive came to the investigators that would indicate a mutiny had taken place. Still, there was a slim chance that something would turn up, most notably the appearance of one of the crew of both Deering and Hewitt at some far flung port of call. To that end, a member of the State Department, Wilbur J. Carr, sent a message to all American consulates attached to seaports world-wide:

"You are instructed to place this list among the names of suspected aliens and to check all crew lists of vessels presented to you against it before visaing them. However, if you suspect that any member of either crew is aboard any vessel, the crew list of which is presented for visa, you will refuse to visa it, but will notify the Department by telegraph of the presence aboard the vessel of the suspect in order that steps may be taken to make a complete investigation upon the vessel's arrival in the United States."

Paranormal theory

"If there is a selective force, which transports stones exclusively, or larvæ, and nothing but larvæ, or transports living things of various sizes, but nothing but living things, such a selective force might affect a number of human beings, leaving no trace, because unaffective to everything else." So stated one Charles Hoy Fort in his work, titled Lo!, one of his works in which he investigated strange or unusual phenomena, albeit in a humorous style. The term "fortean", a play on his name, refers to anyone or anything connected to subjects concerning the paranormal, such as UFOs, timewarps, ghosts, etc. Certainly, the disappearance of the crew of Carroll A. Deering fit that description, and Fort became the first writer who connected the ship to the paranormal. Other authors followed suit, and in a 1964 issue of Argosy Magazine, Vincent Gaddis would briefly mention Deering and connect it to a name which he created, the Bermuda Triangle, a place he claimed would swallow up ships and aircraft with no explanation. This in turn would create a number of books on the subject, sticking to the paranormal theme of the crew's disappearance via the abnormalities of the Triangle, and purposely leaving out the direct evidence of the storms, or the circumstantial evidence of piracy and/or mutiny.