At dawn, Jan. 31, 1921, Coast Guardsman C. P. Brady climbed up to the cupola of his observation station, just down the beach from North Carolina’s famous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. He peered out at the surf, roiling and crashing on the shifting sands of the Diamond Shoals and couldn’t believe what he saw.
There, embedded in the sands of the Outer Shoal, seven miles out, was a huge five-masted schooner with all her sails set. When rescuers arrived at the massive vessel – the CARROLL A. DEERING of Bath – there was a pot of coffee and a pan of spareribs on the galley stove, but no sign of the crew.
Thus began one of the greatest mysteries of U.S. maritime history: what had become of Captain Willis Wormell of Portland and his ten-man crew? What had happened aboard what the North Carolina press quickly dubbed “the Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals”?
The CARROLL A. DEERING was the pride of the G. G. Deering Company of Bath, an enormous 2,000-ton ship launched just 20 months earlier from the company’s shipyard. The largest vessel in the Deering fleet, she was equipped with all the latest amenities: steam heat, electric lights, and “a bath room with open plumbing.” Captain Wormell, 66, was one of the most respected and experienced schooner captains in New England; when a previous command had been similarly wrecked on shoals during a storm, he had stayed with the vessel to the end.
But, apart from being lodged on the shoals, the CARROLL A. DEERING appeared in good condition, and remained intact for more than two weeks before the seas broke her up. And while the crew had apparently made no attempt to lower the ship’s sails, the ship’s two boats were gone, along with the captain’s trunk, the ship’s navigation instruments, log and many of her papers. Running lights still glowed in the rigging, but the steering gear was wrecked and both of the ship’s 6,500-pound anchors were missing. The only living creatures aboard were three half-starved cats.
Bland Simpson heard stories of the DEERING mystery while growing up on the North Carolina coast. Now the head of the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina, Simpson has written the most detailed and engaging account to date. Drawing on newspaper accounts, interviews and heretofore undiscovered documents, The Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals follows the DEERING tale from Bath and Portland to Rio, the Bahamas, and the treacherous shoals of North Carolina.
Despite Simpson’s careful research, the mystery remains unsolved to this day. Evidence supports three competing theories.
Many mariners of the day – including the DEERING’s former master, Captain William Merritt of South Portland – believed the crew abandoned the ship after she struck the shoals and were drowned when their boats overturned in the surf. “That is the way I have felt since the word first came that the schooner was found on the rocks,” Merritt told the Bath Times. The crew, he said, “have gone where they cannot be called.”
But there were also signs that foul play may have been involved. The ill-fated ship had been seen just two days earlier by the crew of the Cape Lookout lightship, her crew congregated on the quarterdeck. A crewman – not the captain – hailed the lightship and reported that the schooner had lost both anchors while riding out a gale and asked that word be passed on to the G.G. Deering company headquarters. The absence of the captain was peculiar enough that the lightship men made note of it and even photographed the passing vessel.
Shortly thereafter, a mysterious steamer passed the lightship and, in contravention of the rules of the sea, refused to respond to hails. She passed on over the horizon in the direction of the DEERING, her stern possibly obscured by a tarp. This led to speculation that the schooner might have fallen victim to pirates, possibly Bolshevik sympathizers seeking to commandeer vessels and bring them back to the newly created Soviet Union.
This theory was bolstered by the discovery of a bottle containing a note from one of the crewmembers, declaring that the ship had been hijacked. Later, however, the fisherman who turned in the note was found to have written it himself as part of a hare-brained scheme to get a government job.
There may also have been a mutiny. In the last port call before his disappearance, Capt. Wormell told a colleague that he was having serious trouble with his mate, Charles McClellan, who was “habitually drunk” and treated the crew brutally. Captain Wormell’s handwriting appears on the DEERING’s charts only until January 23, when notes begin appearing in another man’s handwriting. The notes also indicate that it took the Deering six days to sail from Cape Fear to the Cape Lookout lightship – a distance that should have been covered in 12 hours or less, given the wind direction and conditions at the time.
Many of the documents surrounding the mystery have been put up on the web by the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum (www.graveyardoftheatlantic.com), which invites visitors to decide for themselves. The truth about the DEERING may never be known, but in the 21st century we have public opinion polls to rely on instead. To date, 51 percent of the website’s visitors to the website believe the ship was captured by pirates, Bolsheviks or rumrunners. Thirty-five percent think there was a mutiny by the crew, and only 14 percent think they drowned after abandoning the stricken ship. There’s no word, as yet, on how the issue plays with independent voters in swing states.