The Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals

foreign on January 31st 1921 a U.S Coast Guard surfman noticed a ship foundering off of North Carolina's Infamous diamond shoals owing to the weather the Coast Guard wasn't able to board the vessel until February 4th and when they did the Portland Maine Gazette wrote no man held her wheel no hand stood to slacken her sheets or empty the wind from her tortured canvas and ease her death struggle she was a dead ship no living thing saw her end how the Ghost Ship of diamond Shore came to be stranded there and what happened to her crew is a mystery that deserves to be remembered the Schooner Carol a Deering was launched on April 4th 1919. the ship was built by the Gigi Deering company of Bath Maine Gigi was Gardner during a veteran shipbuilder who found financial success at a time when the trade of shipbuilding in the U.S was changing in an era of competition from steel hold and steam driven vessels guard Deering continued constructing wooden hold Schooners built for the U.S Coastal trade Tilbury House Publishers writes Deering Schooners were built for hard use in America's coastwise trade filling a vital need as the nation modernized and urbanized the Bangor Maine Daily News wrote in 1911 Gigi Deering in the last half century has built nearly 100 vessels and owns it present what are the largest fleets on the New England coast the Carol a Deering was guard deering's crowning achievement the Boston Globe reported on April 18 1919. the five masted Schooner recently launched at bath as the largest vessel ever constructed at the Deering yard being 2114 tons grows remarkably the globe wrote on April 5th Deering himself managed the construction the Deering is the 29th vessel built by the concern since the head of the firm Gardner G Deering commenced to build he is considered the veteran builder of the country being now 86 years of age and having superintended the entire construction of the vessel a wooden vessel that size launched in 1919 seems an anachronism but Tilbury Publishers continue although rooted in our cake sailing vessel Traditions they grew even larger four than five Masters using size speed structural Innovation and ease of operation to hold their own against the future in fact the new sconer sported a particular Innovation as the Richmond Vermont Gazette wrote on April 25th the Deering has three decks and no supporting knees were used the beams resting on stringers and clamps an idea which is likely to be tested thoroughly during the next few months the use of a rigid longitudinal shelf upon which the decking sat was a revolutionary idea eliminating the use of knees supports made from naturally bent wood and thus strengthening both the deck and the ship the bidford Journal of bidford Maine wrote on April 5th 1919 the five masted Schooner Carol R Deering named for the youngest son of Gardner G Deering was launched Friday from the yards of the Gigi Deering company her managing owners said bath she was christened with roses and pinks by Mrs Carol R Deering the craft the globe noted on April 5th is for General Cushing trade hails from Bath would be managed by her owners his three decks and measures 255 feet long 44 feet beam 25.3 foot depth with gross tonnage of 2114 in net of 1878. it would be one of the last large cargo ships in the United States to be built with a wooden hole was the last that Gardner Deering or the Deering Shipyard would build he passed away on October 23 1921 reporting on his death The Baltimore Sun wrote Mr Deering was known by a fleet of coasting vessels that have made the American Schooner famous but by the time of his passing his great ship was already at the center of one of the most intriguing mysteries in Maritime history at first the ship seemed destined to be as profitable as other during projects the Richford Gazette noted that when launched the ship had already been chartered to carry a load of coal from a Virginia port to Rio Janeiro a charter that The Gazette noted was expected largely to pay for the schooner The Voyage was a success with the globe reporting on July 3 that the Schooner had made The Crossing for Virginia to Brazil in 44 days rutting that the first trip of the Schooner was very satisfactory and the ship would continue its very satisfactory service making successful trips to Spain in Puerto Rico but the ship's luck changed in September 1920. from its launch the Carol a Deering had been captained by William H Merritt a veteran sea captain with the Deering company he had been captain of another Gigi during ship that Dorothy B Barrett when she'd been torpedoed by a German submarine in August of 1918 and had been commended for getting his entire crew off safely but as the Deering planned another Voyage carrying coal to Rio De Janeiro Captain Merit fell ill just five days into the voyage he decided he could not complete the voyage his son Sewell was first made and decided to stay and take care of his father the company had to find a replacement captain and Merit suggested a veteran Schooner captain from Maine William B warmel wormell was 66 years old and retired and described in the Portland Maine evening Express as one of the best known Skippers on the coast for many years he commanded large five and six masted schooners the Kansas City time reported on July 22nd 1921 Captain wormell had not treaded the deck of a vessel in five years for a number of days he considered then the Tang of the salt air blowing up across the Portland Harbor has Home Port for more than 30 years tempted him he was 65 years old it would be his last Cruise he told his family wimble traveled to Delaware where the ship had stopped to disembark the ailing Merit and with a new first mate Charles B McClellan boarded the ship on September 8th there was every reason to assume the voyage would be fine wimble was an experienced Captain the Deering arrived in Rio at the end of November the times reported that from that South American city came letters from the captain to the folks at home back in Maine but the return trip did not go as planned on February 3rd 1921 the evening Express reported some anxiety is felt here for the safety of Captain Willis B wormell and the crew of The Five massed Schooner Carol a Deering the paper in order to report that the Coast Guard had found a derelict ship and identified it as the Deering according to the report The Vessel had been abandoned it was in grave danger being pounded to pieces on the diamond shoals the national park service's Cape Hatteras National Seashore explains in days gone by it was the wooden sailing ship carrying goods and passengers that kept the nation's Commerce afloat to follow Coastal trade routes thousands of these vessels had to round not only North Carolina's Barrier Islands so it's like 30 miles off the mainland but also the infamous diamond shoals treacherous always shifting series of shallow underwater sandbars extending eight miles out from Cape Hatteras outer banks.com writes virtually hidden beneath the waves and always changing formation and depth the diamond shoals are estimated to be responsible for up to 600 shipwrecks along the Hatteras Island and Outer Banks shorelines earning the region the grisly nickname of the graveyard of the Atlantic the Deering was foundering on the Shoals and when the Coast Guard managed to reach the vessel there was no sign of the crew the evening Express reported on February 4th according to advice received by the Gigi during company of bath owners of the Schooner today the vessel has been abandoned at Sea and was swept ashore with sails set when the life-saving crews went on board the only sign of life was a pet parrot which had been left in the main cabin on March 11th the paper gave a more poetic description of how the vessel was found Sunset was drawing down the Gloom of night on a Sunday evening when patrols from the life-saving station looked their last for the day across the storm fronted Shoals the surges ran white over the lurking Menace of the Sands headstones with relics of many a stout craft but there was no sale in sight the wide reach of CE Beyond was empty in the Gathering Gale in the morning the Deering lay before them and a grip of the sand her canvas sat and sliding to Ribbons in the wind her boat gear hammered overside her boats and her people vanished all day the Lifesavers sought to reach her some of her crew might still be aboard time and again they were beaten back by Wind and Sea and it was a day later before it was known positively that she was an empty ship stripped of all life before she had plunged into the death trap there was no mark on her to show why she had been abandoned she was apparently undamaged until the Wind and Sea and Sand had their will of her and slowly ripped her Timber from Timber on the show the evening Express reported on the fourth that the owners of The Vessel said this afternoon that they could not figure out why the vessel had been abandoned but expressed the belief that the vessel may be saved but on February 7th the evening General reported that word was received from Norfolk Sunday from Captain William H Merritt part owner who had been temporary relieved by Captain wermal that it would be impossible to save the schooner in fact after attempts to tow the vessel failed the Coast Guard destroyed the less than two-year-old ship with dynamite to eliminate it as a navigational hazard the evening Journal reported that the Deering company Advanced the theory that Captain worm on his crew of 11 took to their boats and were swamped in the surf the mystery of what had happened to the crew continued to deepen on March 7th the evening Express reported that another vessel for the steamberg Hewitt under the command of Captain T H Bicknell and with a crew of 54 men including a second mate from the Portland area with several days overdue although the Hewitt is equipped with wireless no report has been received from her more information came out in April by which time the Press had taken to calling the Carol a during the Ghost Ship of diamond shoals the evening Express reported on April 2nd that less than 24 hours before being found stranded and abandoned crew had been aboard the ship the Deering had passed a coast guard light ship at Cape Lookout so close to the light ship that she was spoken the crew of the light ship reported that a man at the wheel of the five-masted Schooners shouted to those aboard the light ship that the anchors and chains of the Schooner had been lost in the Gale he asked the light ship report the Deering by Wireless but the light ship's Wireless had been out that day and the encounter with the Deering had not been reported the report from the light chip offered another possibility there had been rumors the paper wrote that Mutiny occurred and Captain wormwood had been made victim of Foul Play the man who had spoken to the light ship spoke in broken English the crew except for the officers had been Scandinavian and the light ship had not seen the captain the Mutiny theory was given extra weight when it was revealed that in December Captain wormell had spoken to another captain from Maine while in Rio and had complained about his crew's discipline and that the first mate McClelland had been arrested in Barbados for drunkenness on January 9th after the ship had put in for supplies wormell had bailed him out of jail still Albert frost a Portland Sea Captain who had gone to discover the fate of the vessel found the mutineers story to be questionable if the ship had mutinied he reasoned the mutineers would have turned towards Europe they would have continued sailing North nor would they have hailed the light ship another stunning new development came in April a fisherman in North Carolina found a bottle with a note inside it read Deering captured by oil burning boat something like Chaser taking off everything handcuffed crew crew hiding all over ship no chances to make Escape find her please notify headquarters Deering Captain Merritt recognized the handwriting is belonging to the ship's engineer Herbert Bates and various handwriting experts to cleared the note to be authentic this revealed two new theories the first that it was the crew of the Hewitt that had mutinied and that they had taken the crew of the Deering hostage because they needed a new Navigator but the second theory was even more surprising had the Carol a Deering in 1921 been taken by Pirates the evening express route on June 21st that five of the great U.S government departments had expert investigators at work on the case and astoundingly the paper writes the piracy which was in Vogue years ago on the Spanish main is hinted at in the preliminary reports of the evidence at hand and the opinion is also freely expressed that the seizure of the Deering and other vessels which are now missing have been carried out by the devotees of Soviet Russia that is the opinions of investigators from the Department of Commerce treasury Justice Navy and state was that the Deering and other vessels which had gone missing at the time was commandeered by Bolshevik Pirates and sailed off the Soviet Russia Bolshevik Buccaneers because don't all good stories involve Pirates but the red pirate story lost its steam the following August when it was revealed that the man who found the note won Columbus gray admitted to government agencies that it was a forgery he had apparently thought that finding such a note would make it more likely that it would be able to attain a position at the Hatteras Lighthouse pirate ships faked to fool all Washington the Buffalo Evening News lamented on August 26th no sign of the crew of The Carol a Deering has ever been found their disappearance is still officially unexplained and their fate a matter of conjecture the speculation about communist Corsair is pretty much faded with the discrediting of the note and still the most likely scenarios that they climbed into the ship's boats and were somehow lost at sea though that doesn't explain why nearly in sight of shore no remains were ever found some people still hold to the Mutiny Theory and some have even tried to tie the Ghost Ship of the diamond trolls to the fabled Bermuda Triangle which doesn't make a lot of sense since the vote was seen with crew on board well after they would have passed the triangle which is nowhere near the diamond shoals the Hewitt also disappeared and was never found but that has received far less attention because the ship that merely is lost at sea is less surprising than one that is found intact with no crew on board there were other ships that also disappeared in January and February of 1921 but most of those can be explained by storms at sea but the Hewitt and the Deering were last seen heading away from those storms but barring some Revelation coming more than a century after it happened it seems that the fate of their Crews has become forgotten history and yet those who are lost deserve to be remembered I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guide check out our community on the historyguideguild.locals.com our webpage at thehistoryguy.com and our merchandise at teespring.com or book a special message from the history guy on Cameo and if you'd like more episodes of Forgotten history all you have to do is subscribe [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 77,355

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy, carroll A Deering, ghost ship

Id: S6XPAYjCCAc

Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 02 2022