On the morning of January 31, 1921, surfman C. P. Brady stood watch at the Coast Guard station at Cape Hatteras and spotted something wrong. A five-masted schooner sat hard aground on the outer edge of Diamond Shoals, every sail still set, riding the swells like a ship expecting a crew that was no longer there. When rescuers finally boarded the Carroll A. Deering four days later, they found meals laid out in the galley, the ship's steering wheel shattered, and the rudder disconnected from its stock. The crew of eleven men had vanished completely. More than a century later, no one knows what happened to them.
The Carroll A. Deering was built in Bath, Maine, in 1919 by the G.G. Deering Company, one of the last great commercial sailing vessels constructed in a nation that was quickly abandoning canvas for steam. The company's owner named the five-masted schooner after his son. She was designed to haul cargo across the Atlantic trade routes, and for her first year of service she did exactly that without incident. Her final voyage began in the summer of 1920, when she sailed from Puerto Rico to Newport News, Virginia, to take on a load of coal bound for Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her captain was William H. Merritt, a World War I hero who had been cited for bravery after saving his entire crew when a German submarine sank his previous command off Cape May, New Jersey, in 1918. His son Sewall served as first mate, and the ten-man crew was entirely Scandinavian, mostly Danish.
Captain Merritt fell seriously ill after clearing the Virginia Capes on August 26, 1920, forcing the schooner to turn back to Lewes, Delaware, where Merritt and his son disembarked. The Deering Company brought in Captain Willis B. Wormell, a retired 66-year-old sea captain, and hired Charles B. McLellan as first mate. The replacement crew made it to Rio de Janeiro without incident, but tensions were already simmering. While in port, Wormell confided to a friend, Captain Goodwin, that he held his crew in disdain. The Carroll A. Deering departed Rio on December 2, 1920, stopping at Barbados for supplies. There, McLellan got drunk and complained loudly that Wormell interfered with his authority and that he was doing all the navigation because the old captain's eyesight was failing. In the Continental Cafe, multiple witnesses heard McLellan declare: "I'll get the captain before we get to Norfolk, I will."
The schooner was next seen on January 28, 1921, passing the Cape Lookout lightship off North Carolina. Captain Jacobson, the lightship keeper, watched a tall, thin man with reddish hair and a foreign accent hail his vessel through a megaphone, reporting that the Deering had lost her anchors in a storm off Cape Fear and asking that the owners be notified. Jacobson's radio was broken, so the message went nowhere. But something else caught his attention: the crew seemed to be milling around on the quarterdeck, an area where ordinary sailors were not normally permitted. The man speaking was clearly not Captain Wormell. The following afternoon, the crew of another passing vessel spotted the Carroll A. Deering sailing on a course that would carry her straight onto Diamond Shoals. They saw no one on deck. They assumed the crew would spot the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse or the Diamond Shoals Lightship and correct course. No one did.
The disappearance triggered the largest maritime investigation the U.S. government had ever mounted. Five federal departments -- Commerce, Treasury, Justice, Navy, and State -- joined the inquiry. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, was intrigued because several other vessels had vanished in roughly the same waters. Theories multiplied. The National Weather Bureau blamed powerful Atlantic hurricanes, but both the Deering and the sulfur freighter Hewitt were proven to have been sailing away from the storms. Captain O. W. Parker of the Marine Shipping Board was certain it was piracy. A police raid on the United Russian Workers Party in New York turned up alleged plans to seize American ships and sail them to the Soviet Union. Rum runners were suspected of stealing the vessel for Prohibition-era smuggling. Senator Frederick Hale of Maine called it a plain case of mutiny, pointing to McLellan's threats and the strange scene Jacobson witnessed at Cape Lookout. A message in a bottle, purportedly from the ship's engineer, described the crew being handcuffed by men from an oil-burning boat, but handwriting experts proved it was forged by a local fisherman seeking publicity. The investigation closed in late 1922 without an official finding.
No official explanation was ever offered. The Carroll A. Deering sat on Diamond Shoals until she was eventually broken up, though her hull lingered for decades. In September 1955, Hurricane Ione shifted what remained from Ocracoke Island to Hatteras. The man for whom the ship was named, Carroll A. Deering himself, died in March 1967 at the age of 84, never knowing what happened to the crew that sailed his namesake on its final voyage. Today, the ship's bell and capstan are displayed at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, the only tangible relics of a mystery that has resisted every attempt at resolution. The waters off Cape Hatteras have always been a place where ships go to die. The Carroll A. Deering is different. The ship survived. It was the people who disappeared.
Located at 35.26N, 75.49W off Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Diamond Shoals, where the Deering ran aground, extend southeast from the cape and are visible from the air as lighter-colored, turbulent water. The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras Village displays artifacts from the ship. Best viewed at 2,000-4,000 feet AGL. Nearest airport: Billy Mitchell Airport (KHSE) on Hatteras Island, approximately 5 nm southwest. Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is a prominent visual reference nearby.