Ghost ships have fascinated people for centuries. They symbolise the unknown at sea, stories that defy any clear explanation. Some are based on real events, others are pure legends, passed on by generations of sailors. In his book "Maritime myths" collected numerous of these puzzling cases.
A tall ship aground
On 31 January 1921, Coast Guardsman C. P. Brady is on duty in Cape Hatteras on the island of the same name in the state of North Carolina. Hatteras is one of the islands of the Outer Banks, a region on the east coast of the USA known for its storms and shoals, the Diamond Shoals. Countless ships have run aground there, giving the area the unenviable nickname "Graveyard of the Atlantic".
Brady was not surprised when he discovered the wreck of a five-masted merchant ship stuck in a difficult-to-access spot early that morning. The ship had obviously run aground and its sails were set in such a way that it must have been heading for Diamond Shoals. Due to the bad weather that prevailed at the end of January 1921, the salvage operation had to wait until 4 February before the unknown ship could be approached. Finally, an attempt was made to board the ship.
An abandoned ship
The ship was named "Carroll A. Deering". Now that the name was known, it was possible to retrace part of its journey. The sailors of the "Manning", a coastguard cutter, were initially amazed at what they found. The ship was abandoned, the steering gear badly damaged, as was the rudder, which had come loose from its mount. The navigation instruments, the logbook and the crew members' personal belongings had disappeared. The two lifeboats were missing. The crew must have used them to abandon ship. Strangely, there was still food in the galley, suggesting that a meal was being prepared at the time the ship was abandoned. The distress signals were still switched on.
The Coast Guard made several attempts to salvage the "Carroll A. Deering", but had to give up. As the wreck was classified as a danger to shipping, it was finally blown up with dynamite on 4 March. Part of the bow then drifted towards Ocracoke Island. Much later, in September 1955, Hurricane Ione moved the remains of the hull about 14 kilometres from Ocracoke Island to Hatteras Island. Some of the planks were even used to build houses.
Review of the itinerary
It goes without saying that the US government launched a comprehensive investigation into the disappearance of the crew. No fewer than five departments - Commerce, Treasury, Justice, Navy and State - were involved in the case. Initially, all available information about the ship and its voyages before the tragic discovery was collated.
It turned out that the "Deering" was still brand new at the time of her sinking. She was built in Bath, Maine, and launched in 1919 by the G. G. Deering Company for commercial use. She bore the name of the company owner's son and was one of the last large merchant ships under sail before motorised vessels became the dominant form of transport.
The investigators traced the last voyage. On 19 July 1920, the "Carroll A. Deering" sailed from Puerto Rico, bound for Newport News, located at the southwestern end of the Virginia peninsula on the north bank of the James River. There, the schooner loaded a cargo of coal into its holds for delivery to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Captain William H. Merritt was at the helm. His son Sewall was first mate. Ten men, mainly Danes, completed the crew. Merritt was no stranger to the ship. He was a true hero of the First World War, who was honoured for his bravery and the rescue of his crew when the schooner "Dorothy B. Barrett", which he commanded, was sunk by the German submarine "U-117" off Cape May in New Jersey in 1918.
Change of captain in Delaware
A week after leaving Newport News, there was a first setback: Captain Merritt fell seriously ill. The "Deering" therefore had to turn back and travelled to the port of Lewes in Delaware, where the sick man and his son disembarked. The Deering Company then turned to 66-year-old retired Captain Willis B. Wormell. A certain Charles B. McLellan was recruited as first mate.
Outward and return journey to Brazil
On 8 September 1920, the "Deering" resumed her original course to Brazil, where she arrived without any significant incidents. The cargo was safely delivered and Captain Wormell dismissed the crew. With nothing more to do, he looked for something to do and met up with an old acquaintance, Captain Goodwin, whose freighter was also anchored in Rio de Janeiro. The two men spent time together, sharing their experiences and discussing the seafarers with whom they had travelled the seas. According to Goodwin, Wormell spoke of his last crew with a certain disdain. The only one who seemed to find favour in his eyes was the engineer Herbert Bates, whom Goodwin also knew.
Finally, a new order arrived, and the "Deering" left Rio de Janeiro on 2 December 1920, bound for Norfolk, Virginia. On the way, she had to dock in Barbados to refuel. In the evening, an incident occurred which was reported by Hugh Norton, captain of another ship, the "Snow". In a bar in Bridgetown, he is said to have found Officer McLellan completely drunk and speaking badly about his own Captain Wormell. According to McLellan, all his initiatives to lead and discipline the crew were thwarted by Wormell's inappropriate interventions. The latter could see so badly that McLellan was forced to take over the navigation of the "Deering". Overcome with rage, the officer is said to have told Norton and several other officers present that he would "take on the captain" before arriving in Norfolk. Afterwards, McLellan, still drunk, is said to have caused a scandal, which earned him imprisonment for drunkenness. When Wormell learnt of this, he is said to have taken him out of custody and forgiven him, whereupon they both embarked for Virginia.
Last contacts
After that, the "Deering" was only sighted sporadically and under strange circumstances. First, the lightship from Cape Lookout off the coast of North Carolina reported her sighting on 28 January 1921.
The lighthouse keeper, Captain Jacobson, reported that a tall, slim man with red hair spoke to him over a megaphone. He spoke with a foreign accent. He told Jacobson that the "Deering" had lost her anchors in a storm off Cape Fear, not far from there. He had asked the lighthouse keeper to inform the G. G. Deering Company, the owner of the ship. Jacobson had taken note of this, but as his radio was not working, he was unable to pass on the warning. The watchman had noticed that sailors were walking around on the aft deck of the ship and were visibly agitated.
The mysterious steamship
That was not all. A mysterious steamship is said to have appeared in the wake of the "Deering", which Jacobson tried to call in order to pass on the message from the "Deering". But the steamship did not respond to his calls. In addition, Jacobson was unable to read the name of the ship, as the crew had stretched a cloth to cover the name, which was rather suspicious.
The next afternoon, another ship travelling in the region also crossed the course of the Deering, which was heading directly for the famous Diamond Shoals shoals. The crew did not see anyone on deck, but assumed that they would see either the Cape Hatteras lighthouse or the Diamond Shoals lightship, so they altered course to avoid heading directly for the shoals. After that, the "Deering" was only found stranded and abandoned.
The message in a bottle
An unexpected discovery caused quite a stir. On 11 April 1921, a local fisherman named Christopher Columbus Gray presented a message that he had allegedly found in a bottle that had been lying in the water off the coast of Buxton Beach in North Carolina. He handed the message over to the authorities:
"Deering hijacked by oil-burning boat. Something like a hunter boat. Everything is taken. Crew put in handcuffs. Crew hides everywhere on the ship. No chance of escape. Finders please notify Deering control centre."
Thanks to Captain Wormell's widow, the handwriting of Henry Bates, the ship's engineer, was quickly recognised and it was established that the bottle had been made in Brazil. At first glance, this message seemed to point the investigators to a crime, and a connection was made to the mysterious steamship that had chased the "Carroll A. Deering" had been chasing. But curiosity quickly gave way to suspicion: Apart from the disturbing content of the message, assuming one of the crew members had found paper, writing materials and a bottle in their haste to throw them into the sea, why would they ask to notify the shipping company first and not the police or coastguard?
Experts in graphology ultimately came to the conclusion that the document was forged. After an intensive interrogation, Christopher Gray finally confessed to being the author of the attempted deception. He had staged it to attract attention and get a job at the Cape Hatteras lighthouse.
Failure of the investigation
The investigation lasted almost two years. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, was concerned because several other ships had disappeared in the region. Most of these ships had passed too close to a series of very violent hurricanes. In the case of the "Deering", however, it was clear that she had travelled away from the storm area at the time. Hoover commissioned his assistant Lawrence Ritchey to investigate the matter. He attempted to retrace the route of the missing ship between its last sighting at Cape Lookout and the stranding at the Outer Banks, in particular by analysing the logbooks of the Coast Guard lightships stationed in these areas. However, at the end of 1922, he had to discontinue the investigation without reaching a final conclusion about the causes of the accident and the fate of the crew.
Speculation
The US government has tested several interesting hypotheses to explain the mysterious disappearance of the crew, but none of them could shed light on what exactly happened.
Hurricanes
A series of very violent hurricanes had swept across this area of the Atlantic and offered an explanation for other shipwrecks. The "Deering", however, had been outside the storm. And several authors, including Larry Kusche and Richard Winer, pointed out that the condition in which the ship was found indicated an orderly evacuation rather than an emergency evacuation.
Piracy
This thesis is supported in particular by Captain O. W. Parker of the United States Marine Shipping Board, who denounces an act of piracy as the cause of the stranding. In his opinion, "piracy undoubtedly still exists, as it has since the time of the Phoenicians". Captain Wormell's widow was a supporter of this theory. However, no pirate was ever arrested and there was never any evidence to support this hypothesis.
Attack by communists
This explanation may seem absurd at first glance, but during a police raid on the New York headquarters of the United Russian Workers' Party, a communist organisation, officials are said to have found documents in which party members were urged to hijack American ships and take them to the Soviet Union. Some therefore made a connection to the "Deering" accident, but again, there was not a shred of evidence linking the sinking to any of these criminal activities.
The smuggling of rum
Since our story takes place at the beginning of Prohibition, some observers have suggested that a group of alcohol smugglers active in the Bahamas may have tried to steal the ship to transport rum.
Richard Winer claims in his book "Ghost Ships: True Stories of Nautical Nightmares, Hauntings, and Disasters", that the "Deering" was large enough to carry about a million dollars worth of alcohol in its hold, which seems considerable for the time. Why would smugglers have chosen a relatively slow ship that was so visible and easy to recognise? This supposition remains pure speculation.
A mutiny
Several factors could support this theory. First, the conflict between Wormell and his chief mate was common knowledge, and McLellan's behaviour in Rio de Janeiro and later in Barbados suggests a dispute between the captain and his crew during the return voyage. At Cape Lookout it was established that the man Captain Jacobson had seen was neither Captain Wormell nor any of his officers. Senator Frederick Hale of Maine defended this theory, stating that it was an "obvious case of mutiny". While the hypothesis of a failed mutiny cannot be ruled out, nothing has ever been proven.
The intervention of the "SS Hewitt"
A month after the investigation had begun, a clue emerged that was linked to the disappearance of another ship, the steamer "SS Hewitt", at around the same time. This was en route from Sabine in Texas to Portland in Maine and was carrying a cargo of sulphur. The last message sent by the steamer was dated 25 January, when it was sailing off the coast of Florida. But it never arrived in Boston, where it was expected at the end of January. The 58-member crew of the "SS Hewitt" also disappeared without a trace. Could it have collided with the "Deering"? The lack of paddles, life jackets or other floating wreckage spoke against this theory. However, when the coastguard boarded the "Deering", they noticed that two red emergency lights had been switched on at the top of the rigging. It was therefore conceivable that the "SS Hewitt" had seen the distress signals and could have taken the crew of the "Deering" on board. But the "SS Hewitt", which had been caught in the storm or had become unable to manoeuvre, must have sunk afterwards and would have taken not only its own crew but also that of the "Deering" with it to their deaths. This hypothesis cannot be ruled out.
A paranormal explanation
The mystery of the "Carroll A. Deering" inspired authors of horror stories, including the famous Charles Fort, who in his book "Da!", original: "Lo!", 1931, German edition 2025, about unexplained phenomena, mentions this ship for the first time together with others, such as the "Mary Celeste" or the "USS Cyclops", which disappeared in 1918 with 300 people on board. The "Cyclops" had travelled an identical route to the "Deering": Departure from Brazil, stopover in Barbados, then along the American coast. Several authors then jumped on the question raised by Fort and surmised that the disappearance could be related to the famous Bermuda Triangle, even though the site of the stranding, Diamond Shoals, and the last point where the ship was seen underway, Cape Lookout, are several hundred miles from the famous triangle. In this case, a paranormal event was never reported, except in the imagination of some people.
An evacuation that turned into a tragedy
According to Coast Guard Captain R. L. Gaskill, "there is no mystery about the disappearance of the crew" of the schooner "Carroll A. Deering". The experienced captain was one of the first to spot her on her course to shore on 31 January 1921 and was among those who boarded the stranded vessel. He was quick to label the stories about piracy as "newspaper hoaxes". In his opinion, there were actually sailors on the "Deering" at the time of the stranding. He based this on the fact that the lifeboats were missing and a ladder was hanging overboard.
His explanation seems logical and plausible. The crew apparently found themselves in a situation where their ship was stuck on a sandbank in Diamond Shoals, with wind speeds of 90 miles per hour and waves as high as a house. She had to make an immediate decision: either stay with the ship and risk sinking with it, or try to save herself and take the lifeboats to shore. In these stormy seas, the crew obviously tried to manoeuvre their boats and save themselves on the shore nine miles away. But no lifeboat could withstand the raging waves.
One can imagine that the crew abandoned the ship after it ran aground on the shoals and that they were swept to their certain deaths when they tried to row to shore. The shallows of the Outer Banks have been a nightmare for sailors in the region for centuries. Numerous shipwrecks lie in the deeper water, bearing witness to the difficult conditions in this area off the coast of North Carolina.
A real case of ghost ship
"Like a flying Dutchman, the five-masted schooner 'Carroll A. Deering' emerged from the fog around Diamond Shoals today with full sails but no crew," it was reported in the "Washington Herald" of 3 February 1921.
None of the ship's sailors ever resurfaced. Beyond the traditional legends, this is the real story of a ghost ship that has still not come to an end.
If you like, I can make you another one straight away. second, somewhat more compact online version of the same text, also without any changes to the content.
The book
Lars Bolle
Chief Editor Digital
