It looks like I’m not the only Golden Acorn fan who loves a good mystery, and thanks for the other three who follow the site. My monthly payment has been sent out, and you should be receiving it soon. BACK TO THE MYSTERY. I have a doozy for you this week. Having just moved to North Carolina, I figured it was time to investigate some of the strange things going on around here.
When you say North Carolina, most people think of the many beaches that can be found in this state, and they are great, so for your family vacation, please come to North Carolina. (My public service announcement for N.C.) Where you have beaches, you have sailing vessels, and some of these either sink or turn into Ghost Ships, and the eastern seaboard is filled with these stories and boats. From Black Beards, Queen Anne’s Revenge, which ran aground near present-day Beaufort Inlet in June of 1718 to the USS Monitor, which sank on December 31, 1862, off Cape Hatteras. The Graveyard of the Atlantic has a long and treacherous history for these boats and their crews. You can add to this list the story of the Carroll A. Deering, and the story goes like this.
On January 31, 1921, the impressive five-masted, 225-foot commercial schooner named the Carol A. Deering was found wrecked on Diamond Shoals off Cape Hatteras. At the time, she was returning to Newport News from a trip to Brazil.
Built-in 1919 by the G. G. Deering Company in Bath, Maine, a town known for its Boatworks, the ship was among the last wooden schooners built before their eclipse by iron shipbuilding. The age of the grand sailing ship was dying out, and the Carol A. Deering was one of the last great wooden vessels built.
The Carroll A. Deering left Boston to pick up coal in Norfolk then head to South America. While a commonly traveled route, the crew, and ship had a smooth drop off, but their return is still debated to this day.
Two days before the wreck’s discovery, the Cape Lookout lightship reported seeing the Carol A. Deering. On the morning of the 31st, the Coast Guard discovered the foundered boat, apparently abandoned with all the lifeboats missing. When the seas calmed four days later, the Coast Guard reached the ship, and the apparent abandonment was confirmed, crew, navigational equipment, belongings, and most of the ship’s documents were gone. All the signs of life left seemed eerie and rushed, like food on the galley stove, clothing in lockers, many different sized boots in the Captain’s quarters, and a recently slept in bed. The only living creature on board the ship was a six-toed cat that the crew used to keep the rodent population down.
A few months later, the ship was hauled from its position and dynamited to eliminate the hazard to other vessels. Some people believe that this was the cover story of the Coast Guard to make this evidence go away and blowing it up is a very convenient way of doing this.
The mystery of how the crew and Captain simply vanished into thin air was so serious at least five government agencies, including the FBI and Coast Guard investigated the cause while families prayed for an answer to the whereabouts of the crew.
The Bath, North Carolina, Daily Times reported in June of 1921 that some shipping officials believe the Deering was raided by pirates and the crew killed. Another explanation cited that papers found at a Russian communist office in New York City called for members to seize U.S. ships. At the time the Deering was discovered, three other vessels vanished, leading to speculation of Bolshevik pirates.
Other explanations by many were the Bermuda Triangle, or a hurricane in the Atlantic caused the crew to abandon the ship at sea and try to take the lifeboats to safety. Yet, the one major pitfall to this was that the Deering was found on the shoals in good condition.
Still another theory involves mutiny by First Mate McLellan, who had been overheard by dockworkers in Barbados threatening the life of Captain Wormell. This theory suggests that the Captain was killed and thrown overboard. This mutiny would have happened on January 23 because one of the few navigation charts left onboard the ship ceased on this date with the Captain’s handwriting. After this date, different people’s handwriting plotted the course of the doomed Carol A. Deering. This could also account for all the different sized boots in the Captain’s quarters and how the ship ended up where it did, because of the inexperience of the remaining crew.
Now, almost a century later, there’s still no clear answers on precisely what happened to the crew of the Deering. Searches along the eastern seaboard never resulted in any recoveries of bodies or evidence of any type. Many locals salvaged parts in the years to follow as portions of the ship would wash up on local beaches after being blown up, and some still say you can see parts of the ship poking through the sand during low tide with the shifting of the sandbars.
The ship has been named one of the greatest maritime mysteries in the United States. Today, the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum has artifacts, including the ship’s bell, while everyone else is left with an uncertain mystery with no clear explanation of what happened. Some locals believe that a descendant of the six-toed cat has been spotted around the Hatteras Ferry Docks today.
Thanks for reading my blog and stick around for some other great mysteries that I’m sure I will run across in the future. If you like, tell me what you think happened to the crew of the Carol A. Deering. As for me, pirates might be the best answer out of all the information that we have and keep looking for those six-toed cats running around and if you have a good mystery, let me know about them.
Until then, Good mystery hunting.