The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering

The early 1920's was a time that saw numerous vessels vanish in the Atlantic Ocean. The Carroll A. Deering didn't vanish, but its crew did, and then washed up on the dangerous Diamond Shoals off the coast of North Carolina.

Was it mutiny? Captain Wormell and his first mate did not get along and everyone knew it. German U-boats were a thing of the past, and so were pirates, right? Was it Russians? Or the work of the not-yet-known Bermuda Triangle? 

We may never know. The Carroll A. Deering (along with the nearby disappearance of the S.S. Hewitt) may go down as one of the greatest unsolved mysteries ever. 

Transcript

Welcome to Year Four of the Curator135 Podcast

I’m your host, Nathan Olli and 

This is Episode 67 “The Mystery of the Carroll A Deering” 

To begin our story, we need to go back to the final years of World War I. The battle began in 1914 with the Central Powers, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey fighting against the Allies, France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, and Japan. In 1917, the United States joined the war, bringing much needed support to the Allies.  

Imagine living along the East Coast in 1918 and knowing that just below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, German soldiers were keeping an eye on the United States from inside their U-boats. 

U-boats were German naval submarines used in both World Wars. In German they were called U-boots, which is shortened from Unterseeboot. When World War I began, U-boats were considered to be quite advanced. They were able to go more than 150 feet below the surface, they could travel at 16 knots at surface level and 8 knots underwater. These subs also had a range of up to 25,000 miles. 

In those days, U-boats carried torpedoes, usually around 16, but they were unreliable. Because of this, they relied mostly on surface attacks using their deck mounted guns to take down boats. Being on the surface also allowed the Germans to board merchant ships, steal their supplies before the ship sank and then return underwater for a fast getaway. 

On May 7th of 1915, the German vessel U-20 sank the passenger liner RMS Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. 1,198 passengers died that day, 128 of those people were Americans. Sensing that the United States was upset, the Germans backed away from the East Coast. On April 6th, 1917, the United States joined the war, devoting manpower, supplies, and naval forces to help the Allies in Europe. Unfortunately this left the East Coast exposed and the U-boats returned. From April of 1917 until November of 1918, four German U-boats visited the East Coast and by the end of the war, those submarines had managed to sink nearly 200 American ships. 

On August 14th, 1918 one of those American ships destroyed was a five-masted schooner named the Dorothy B. Berrett. The ship, which was built by the G.G. Deering company in 1905, weighed over 2000 tons and was captained by a man named William Merritt. His son’s Ray and Sewall were his first and second mates. It wasn’t going to be a long voyage. The ship had a cargo hold full of coal and was traveling from New York down to Norfolk, Virginia. 

During the trip, German submarine U-117 surfaced nearby and opened fire on the schooner, sending its crew of 11 into the lifeboats and the ship itself down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Captain William H. Merritt, a hero of World War I, would eventually be cited for bravery under fire for saving his entire crew.

As they rowed their lifeboats towards Cape May on the southern tip of New Jersey, American seaplanes and submarine chasers went after the U-boat, forcing it to quickly submerge to avoid the onslaught of depth charges.

While Ray Merritt went on to become a manager with Standard Oil, his brother, Sewell continued to sail with their father who was now the captain of a ship named Carroll A. Deering. Like his last boat, the Carroll A. Deering was a five-masted schooner and one of the last large commercial sailing vessels made in America. The cargo ship was built in Bath, Maine, in 1919 by the G.G. Deering Company and named after the son of the company's owner.

The crew consisted of Captain William Merritt, First Mate Sewell Merritt, a Finnish bosun named Johann Frederickson, a 51-year-old cook from the West Indies, an American engineer from Maine named Herbert R. Bates and six Danish men. 

On July 19th, 1920 the Carroll A. Deering sailed from Puerto Rico to Newport News, Virginia to pick up a load of coal for delivery to Rio de Janeiro.

On August 26th, the crew boarded the Deering and set sail for Brazil. The ship soon cleared the Virginia Capes, Cape Charles to the north and Cape Henry to the south. The two capes define the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay on the east coast. It wasn’t long after that Captain Merritt fell seriously ill and a decision was made to delay the delivery and turn back. 

The Deering was steered towards the port city of Lewes, Delaware roughly 170 miles to the north. There, Captain Merritt exited the ship and was joined by his son, Sewell who wanted to look after his father. The Deering Company would have to hire a new captain and a new first mate in order to complete the voyage. 

Eventually they landed on a 66-year-old, veteran captain by the name of Willis B. Wormell. Wormell was solidly built at 6’1” and 198 pounds. He had salt and pepper, wavy hair, a mustache and stained yellow teeth from years of tobacco use. 

He was a religious man who adhered to the old ways of the sea. Despite his worsening vision he was considered to be a reliable man to helm the Carroll A. Deering. 

A gentleman named Charles B. McLellan was hired on as first mate. Whether or not the two had a history is unknown but right away there were problems between the new hires. Wormell and McLellan were at each other’s throats not long after they came aboard. 

The Deering, with Wormell now in command, set sail for Rio de Janeiro on September 8th and arrived at the port city with its cargo in tow without incident. Once in Rio, Wormell awarded the crew some leave time. During that time, Captain Wormell met up with an old friend, another cargo ship captain named Goodwin. 

It became apparent to Goodwin rather quickly that Wormell didn’t love the crew he was placed with. Out of all the men aboard, he seemed to think he could only trust the ship's engineer, Herbert Bates. Goodwin agreed, he and Herbert had worked together in the past.  

The Carroll A. Deering finally left Rio on December 2nd with no cargo aboard. Being onboard a ship with close quarters didn't help the conflict between Wormell and McLellan. The two immediately got under each other’s skin. Tempers continued to flare all along the over 3000 nautical mile trip to Barbados, where they planned to stock up on supplies before the return trip to North America. Sometime before they docked, McLellan yelled at the captain, "I'll kill you before it's over, old man." 

While in Barbados, Wormell commented to another old friend, Captain Hugh Norton, that his First Mate McLellan, was habitually drunk while ashore. “He treats the men brutally, it’s totally uncalled for." Wormell was asked by Norton if he was worried about mutiny. Wormell didn't believe that all of the men would turn against him but the two captains agreed that it wouldn’t take the whole crew to start a rebellion. 

Later, First Mate Charles McLellan bumped into that same Captain, Captain Norton, while getting drunk at the Continental Cafe in town. McLellan complained to Norton that Wormell wouldn’t let him discipline the lazy crew properly. Wormell was always interfering, McLellan said, adding that he “had to do all the navigation on his own thanks to Wormell's poor eyesight.” That evening, Captain Norton overheard McLellan say to another man, "I'll get the captain before we get to Norfolk, I will." McLellan’s drunkenness and threats towards his captain landed him in jail. 

Wormell, always the bigger man, in size and spirit, hoped that McLellan might have learned his lesson, so he paid to have his first mate bailed out of jail.

On January 9th of 1921, the dysfunctional crew left Barbados and set sail towards the port of Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Meanwhile, on January 20th, at Sabine Pass, Port Arthur, Texas the S.S. Hewitt left port and entered the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, headed for the East Coast. The S.S. Hewitt was a steel hulled bulk freighter built for the J. S. Emery Steamship Co. of Boston, Massachusetts, and purchased by the Union Sulfur Company in 1915. 

Under the command of Captain Hans Jakob Hansen, the ship was fully loaded with sulfur and held a crew of 42. Captain Hansen’s final destination was to be Portland, Maine with a scheduled stop in Boston, Massachusetts. The ship made regular radio calls everyday up until January 25th and reported nothing unusual. 

The S.S. Hewitt was last spotted 250 nautical miles north of Jupiter Inlet, Florida.

Back aboard the Carroll A. Deering according to the ship’s logs, everything seemed to be going about normally. Something, though, was amiss. 

The next time that the Deering is seen is on January 29th. Captain Thomas Jacobson sees the vessel from his post aboard the Cape Lookout Lightship. Lightships were boats used as floating lighthouses to warn sailors of dangerous conditions. The Cape Lookout Lightship was posted off of the coast of North Carolina to warn ships about the nearby Diamond Shoals area. And what are the Diamond Shoals? The Shoals refer to an area of shallow, shifting sandbars located off the coast of North Carolina. The area is known for its dangerous conditions, with strong currents, frequent storms, and shallow water depths that cause ships to quickly run aground or sink.

Captain Jacobson was hailed by a crewman on board, shouting through a megaphone. The crewman, surrounded by other members of the crew, was not Captain Wormell. He knew this because the tall, thin man with reddish hair did not look or act like an officer.

Whoever it was shouted to Captain Jacobson that “the schooner had lost her anchors while riding out the gale south at Cape Fear and to please tell the Deering company.” 

Unfortunately for Jacobson, the Lightship's radio is out and he watches the Carroll A. Deering drift out of sight along the coast. Not long after, a steamer passes by and Jacobson does his best to make contact with it. He’s hoping that he can relay the Deering’s message to the steam ship and that they will then get the message delivered.  He blows the ship’s horn numerous times, and although the ship is required to answer the call, they don’t. 

The steam ship ignored the horn and continued on its way, following along the same path as the Deering. Another thing Jacobson found peculiar was that the crew had covered the steam ship’s name with a tarp.

Jacobson does the only thing he can do and pulls out his log book.

“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 vessel.”

The following day Captain Henry Johnson, of the SS Lake Elan reported seeing a five-masted schooner moving slowly, on what he considered to be a strange course. They couldn’t be sure that it was the Carroll A. Deering but the description matched. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to Captain Johnson, other than the apparent course. 

On January 31st, surfman C.P. Brady began his shift on lookout duty at the Coast Guard station at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. He quickly spotted the Carroll A. Deering, resting hard aground with all of its sails set. The ship sat on the outer edge of Diamond Shoals. They were an all too common site of shipwrecks for centuries and had come to be known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic."

He can see, from his vantage point, that the lifeboats are gone. 

By mid-morning, two lifeboats were sent out from nearby stations. Due to the waves and wind and the strength of the tide, the lifeboats could only get as close as a quarter-mile away. The following day was February 1st, the sea was still rough, with breakers crashing against the hull of the Carroll A. Deering. A Coast Guard cutter ship, named Seminole, approached the schooner but stopped near where the lifeboats had been. It was still too dangerous to approach the shoals. Then on February 2nd, the Coast Guard cutter Manning along with a wrecking tugboat joined in but the conditions were still too hazardous. 

Regarding the S.S. Hewitt, which had not been heard from for nine days now, Coast Guard officials in Atlantic City reported hearing an explosion and seeing a flash approximately 20 miles offshore on the evening of February 3rd. They initially believed that it could have been the sulfur filled Hewitt but no debris was ever found. 

Finally the weather cleared and on February 4th the Carroll A. Deering was boarded. Tugboat Captain James Carlson took his crew on to the ship which was now battered from days on the shoals and taking on water. 

What they found created new questions instead of answering any of the existing ones. The ship was completely abandoned. The steering was damaged, the wheel was shattered, and the rudder was broken, most likely resulting from the ship being pounded by waves for the past few days. The ship’s log and navigation equipment, the crew’s personal effects, and the ship’s two lifeboats were all missing. But the galley had also been recently used. There was still food on the stove as if the cook had left in a hurry. 

In the captain’s private quarters, they noticed three different sets of boot prints going in and out. The spare bed was also slept in.

On Captain Wormell’s desk there was a large map charting the ship’s movements. They found daily notes in the captain’s handwriting up until January 23rd and then for some reason a second person, with completely different handwriting took over from there.

Captain Carlson also noticed that red lights had been run up the mast which was an indicator that the Deering was derelict or out of control. 

After an attempt to tow the boat to shore proved unsuccessful and resulted in needing to cut the tow line it was decided that they would need to destroy the vessel. On March 4th, after a series of storms passed through the area, the Carroll A. Deering was dynamited. 

The initial theory was that the ship had run aground along the Diamond Shoals and the crew abandoned ship in the life boats and then perished in the rough seas. Other sailors knew this to be untrue. The crew would have known to drop the sails in order to steady the ship. It was determined that the crew would have more than likely abandoned ship before it ran into the shoals. 

Captain Wormell’s wife and daughter, Lulu believed that it was pirate activity. Modern day pirates or rum runners overtook the crew, perhaps kidnapping them. 

The story held so much interest that the U.S. government launched an extensive investigation. Five different departments of the government including, Commerce, Treasury, Justice, Navy, and State all looked into the case. The current Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, was so intrigued that he placed his assistant, Lawrence Ritchey, in charge of the investigation. Ritchey made numerous attempts to chart what happened to the vessel between the 29th and 31st of January. 

It was soon discovered that a total of nine ships had disappeared around the same time and in the same area. The SS Hewitt disappeared on a course from Sabine, TX to Portland, ME. The ship was following a course and speed that supposedly put her close to the Deering. Was it possible that the Hewitt had taken the Deering’s crew aboard after they’d run into trouble and together, the two crews died in a terrible explosion? 

There were steamships like the Monte San Micelle of Italy and Esperanza de Larrinaga of Spain. The cargo ship Steinsund, the Italian cargo ship Florino, the Norwegian cargo ship Svartskog, and others all vanished in late January. In early February 33 men disappeared from a tanker sailing from Norfolk to Manchester, England. 

Most of the ships listed were found to have been sailing in the vicinity of a series of strong hurricanes. The Hewitt, which would remain interwoven with the Deering throughout the investigation, had been sailing away from the area of the storm at the time.

A British insurance company suggested that it was possible that the Hewitt may have collided with the Carroll A. Deering and sunk. After examining the Deering, however, it was determined that there wasn’t damage to the vessel consistent with a collision.

On April 11th of 1921, things took a wild turn. A man named Christopher Columbus Gray claimed to have found a message in a bottle floating in the waters of Buxton Beach, North Carolina. The note appeared to be in the hand of the Deering’s engineer, Herbert Bates and the bottle had been made in Brazil. He turned the bottle over to authorities. The note inside the bottle read, 

“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 DEERING.”

This made sense to some investigators, perhaps the "mysterious" steamer following the Deering, that had refused to respond to the Cape Lookout lightship was in fact chasing the Deering. 

Skeptics wondered though, if a crew member did manage to get ahold of paper, pen, and a bottle and write a letter, why would he request that the company be notified, as opposed to the police or Coast Guard? 

It didn’t take long for handwriting experts to conclude that the message in the bottle had been forged. Soon, Christopher Columbus Gray confessed to writing the note to an undercover operative. Gray had wanted a job with the Cape Hatteras light station and thought that ‘finding the bottle’ would gain him enough fame and recognition to secure employment.

Investigators soon arrived at Buxton Beach to take Gray into custody. Gray managed to get away before they arrived. 

Lawrence Richey, assistant to Herbert Hoover, was able to track down Gray by tricking the man. After learning of Gray’s application for a job at the Lighthouse Keeper's Station, Richey leaked a message to some of Gray’s acquaintances that he should come to the Lighthouse Keeper's Station concerning his job application. When Gray arrived, he was greeted by Federal agents who took him into custody.

As the investigation continued throughout 1921, Russian Bolshevik piracy soon became the leading theory. Was Russia sending out crews to confiscate cargo that Russians could not buy under the new embargo on the Red regime? Rumors began to circulate that numerous vessels with their names painted over had been seen in Russian ports. 

During a police raid on the headquarters of the United Russian Workers Party in New York City, officers allegedly found papers that called on members of the organization to seize American ships and sail them to the Soviet Union. The U.S. Navy was ordered to look for the crews of the ships. Nothing was ever found. 

The investigation ended without answers in 1922 and still now, more than 100 years later we have no answers. 

One idea that believers in the supernatural have held onto is that something happened to the crew when it passed through the area known as the Bermuda Triangle. The three points of the triangle are Miami, Florida to the west, Bermuda to the northeast and San Juan, Puerto Rico to the south. 

There are numerous issues with this explanation however. First and foremost, where the ship ended up was hundreds of miles away from the Bermuda Triangle. Another big issue is that hundreds of ships and planes pass through the supposed triangle everyday. In fact, people live within the borders of the triangle. The Bermuda Triangle may, in fact, be blamed so frequently due to the sheer amount of traffic it sees on a daily basis. 

When you take away the more fantastical possibilities like pirates, or russians, or aliens or a mysterious unknown triangle, it leaves us with a mutiny gone bad, the S.S. Hewitt theory or just plain bad luck. 

According to Coast Guard Captain R. L. Gaskill, in an interview with a local newspaper in 1921, “There is no mystery at all in the disappearance of the crew of the Carroll A. Deering. The idea of piracy is so much newspaper bunk.” His explanation? “Faced with a ship stuck on the outer sandbar of the Diamond Shoals, 90 mile an hour winds, and waves like mountains, the crew had to make a quick decision to either stay with the ship and risk being stranded, or try to take the life boats to shore. In such a sea as this the crew of the Deering manned their life boats and tried to make it to shore nine miles away. But no lifeboat could survive in those waters.”

So what do you believe? A boat washing ashore with no crew is mysterious no matter what the circumstances were. Signs point to Captain Wormell losing control of the ship after the 23rd. It was clear that other men had been inside his quarters and taken over the responsibility of charting their progress. But the sails being up? Dinner on the stove? The anchors? The strange man shouting to the lightship? (there wasn’t a red-haired man on the ship’s roster). 

We’ll likely never know and that’s what makes it so fascinating. The ocean is vast and unforgiving, and it holds countless mysteries and unknowns. The disappearance of the Deering Crew is up there on the list. 

Let me know what you think. Nathan@curator135.com Visit the website to see photos of The Carroll A. Deering, the Hewitt, the crew and various news articles from 1921. Curator135.com  

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TIMELINE - CARROLL A DEERING

William H Merritt - Captain Sewall Merritt (son) - First Mate

10 man crew Scandanavians (Danes)

July 19th, 1920 Deering sailed from Puerto Rico to Newport News (cargo coal) 

Newport News to pick up a cargo of coal for delivery to Rio de Janeiro.

August 26th, 1920 Cleared the Virginia Capes, for Rio

Captain Merritt becomes seriously ill. Deering turns back and lands at the port of Lewes, Delaware. 

Merritt and his son are dropped off. Captain Willis B. Wormell, a retired 66-year-old veteran sea captain, is hired to replace him. Charles B. McLellan hired as first mate. 

September 8th, 1920 Deering leaves for Rio

December 2nd, 1920 Deering departs from Rio, headed for Barbados, to resupply. 

January 9th, 1921 McLellan was arrested in a drunken state in Barbados, Wormell forgave him, bailed him out of jail, and set sail for Hampton Roads.

January 28th, 1921 Deering hails Cape Lookout Lightship off the coast of North Carolina. 

January 29th, 1921 The crew of another vessel transiting the area spotted the Deering sailing a course that would take it directly onto the Diamond Shoals. Deck was empty. No attempt to contact was made. 

January 31st, 1921 Deering was sighted at dawn by surfman C. P. Brady who was on lookout duty at the Coast Guard station at Cape Hatteras. The vessel was hard aground with all sails set on the outer edge of Diamond Shoals.

February 4th, 1921 after being battered by the surf for several days, the Deering was boarded. It was completely abandoned.

March 4th, 1921 The Deering was declared a hazard to navigation, and was destroyed using dynamite

April 11th, 1921 a local fisherman named Christopher Columbus Gray claimed to have found a message in a bottle floating in the waters off the beach of Buxton, North Carolina.

TIMELINE - SS HEWITT

January 20th, 1921 Under the command of Capt. Hans Jakob Hansen, Hewitt left fully loaded from Sabine Pass, Port Arthur, Texas. Crew of 42. Destination was Portland, ME with a stop in Boston, MA. 

January 24th, 1921 Radio call received. Nothing Unusual. 

January 25th, 1921 Radio call received. Nothing Unusual. 

Last seen 250 Nautical miles north of Jupiter Inlet, FL