The Ghost Ship Carroll A. Deering

It's the most wonderful time of the year. Booking Hero on the beach does way more than beach holidays. We know of a millions of combinations of beach holidays, city breaks and cruises. So whether you fancy swimming, sightseeing or sitting on the top deck of a ship, we've got your cupboard. So stop booking around and whatever your next holiday looks like, get searching at onthebeach.co.uk. After an atoll protected. Everybody shush! William Shatner has something to say. Cat and Jethro, box of oddities. The show is examined. Weird things. What do you do when the woman you love dies? Well, of course you dig her up and you live with her. Aww. That is really mysterious. The strange, the bizarre, the unexpected. Cat and Jethro, box of oddities. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. The box of oddities. In January of 1921, a five-mastered schooner was discovered run aground off the coast of North Carolina with no crew aboard and no clear signs of struggle. Personal belongings, navigation equipment and the ship's lifeboats were all missing, leaving investigators with more questions than answers and a trio of cats, which had been the only signs of life aboard the abandoned ship. Rumors of piracy, mutiny, rushing conspiracies and even supernatural involvement quickly spread, but no definitive explanation ever emerged, earning the wreck the enduring title of The Ghost Ship of the Diamond Shoals. This is Dark Histories, where the facts are worse than fiction. Hello and welcome to Dark History, Season 10, Episode 6. I'm your host, Ben. As always, it's good to be back on the mic. This week, I've got a crack in episode, which, weirdly enough, has probably been one of the most requested episodes. Since the start of Dark Histories, it's easily in the top, sort of, five, four or five episodes that get requested. And I always sort of intend to do it and I always end up putting it on the back burner for one reason or another. And then finally this week, I just somehow managed to slip into it and get around to doing it. So hopefully this will satisfy, or, you know, fingers crossed, it will satisfy a lot of people who have been asking this for quite a while. Before we start, I'd like to give another quick heads up about the Ask Me Anything episode. I've still been getting loads of great questions, but if you would like to ask a question for that episode, say it'll be like a little bonus episode that's come in probably in two weeks or so. So, yeah, if you would like to ask me anything about anything, like the kind of behind the curtains of the podcast, or, you know, me or my dog or what, I don't know, Ask Me Anything. Yeah, if you would like to ask about anything, then please feel free to do so. So that episode will be in a couple of weeks, so probably now is really about the sort of time you want to get in touch if you're planning on doing so. It'd be great to get you involved and have you involved in the bonus episode. So, yeah, if you would like to, please do get in touch. You can do so. Probably the best place is the email, which is contactatdarkhistories.com. Anyway, enough about all that. Let's get started. This episode is called The Ghost Ship, Carol A. Deering. The weather off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in the early hours of the morning on 31st January 1921, was finally calm. For the best part of three days, the Cape had been in the line of a raging storm that had tossed waves over the lighthouse and churned the sea into a boiling cauldron and chilled the bones of all of the keepers working at the various Coast Guard stations and dotted along the sandy islands that made up the island chain, arching out into the Atlantic Ocean. The Cape could be a busy place for the men of the Coast Guard. The islands emerged from a long bed of shoals that ran shallow and shifted with the storms, claiming ships at a rate that had earned them the moniker of the graveyard of the Atlantic. Still at 4am on the morning of the 31st January, surfman Brady, who was just beginning his lookout duty at Cape Hatteras Coast Guard station, had little to worry about. The seas were smooth with just a calm southwesterly wind blowing over the surface. Cape Hatteras station was a small two-story wooden building with a lookout tower poking through the center of the roof that stood in the shadows of the nearby lighthouse, the tallest in the US standing at 210 feet, a testament to the dangers of the seas that it illuminated. For the first two hours of his shift, Brady set himself against the chill wind, drinking coffee and allowed his mind to wander, losing himself in his own thoughts to past aloney hours. The occasional glimpse of surfman Gray, who was on lookout patrol on the beach below, was the only other sign of life. By 6.30am, the dawn light had begun to break over the horizon and the whole atmosphere shifted as a dim glow filled the station. From his vantage point in the perch above the roof of the station, Brady picked up his telescope and scanned the horizon. All was clear as it had been all night. Collecting his mug, he took a sip of coffee and then placed the cold metal of the telescope back to his eye. He drifted the lens across the horizon lazily until suddenly he was halted in his tracks. There, just on the horizon, lodged in the sands of the diamond shoals, sat a fully rigged schooner, the sails of its five masts straining in the easy winds. He had to drop the eyepiece for a moment and rub his eyes before he looked again. The angles made the ship blink in and out of existence, but it was certainly there. It hadn't been there just minutes earlier when he had checked prior to making his coffee, but it was definitely there now. Springing into action, he jumped up and thrust his head out the lookout perch and yelled down to grey on the beach below him, the dreaded cry of shipwreck phrasing through the coastal winds. Surfman Brady's first priority was then to contact the station keeper, Baxter Miller. Like the other veteran coastguards on the Cape, Miller had a long history of dealing with shipwrecks during his duty and had even been recognised by both Germany and the United States for his role in rescuing flailing ships on the shoals by his station. Miller followed Brady back up to the lookout perch to see the ship for himself, and then after confirming the emergency, he telephoned the neighbouring stations of Big Kinneke, Creeds Hill and Hatteras Inlet, notifying them all to stand by for action. Placing the receiver down, it was now time for the more perilous part of his duty. He called down to the men and told them to prepare for launch and then collected his sailing jacket and boots and made his own way out onto the beach to command the lifeboat into the waves. The coastguard's boat was not especially robust given the size of the waves that she was often put out into. It was a 20 foot long white wooden rowboat and it had already been attached to the horse and cart by the surfman who were ready to roll her down to the water's edge, eight on each side. Miller took his position at the front of the ship and ordered the launch. Unfortunately, since spying the wreck on the shoals earlier that morning, the winds had started to pick up once more and now the waves were rolling up onto the beach, already far too strong for the small boat to break through. Accepting that they needed to look for an alternative launch location, the crew began the slow march south down the beach, the three foot high cartwheels creaking behind the horse that heaved the vessel quietly along. Before long, the men of Cape Hatteras Station met with those of the neighbouring stations who had also been looking for a safe launch point and Miller picked seven of them along with the two Bosons of Big Kinneke and Creeds Hill and finally by 10am they were pushing out into the sea. It had taken everyone's full effort to get the boat out past the violent breakers but once they were through they were able to make their way out across the shoals towards the wreck ship. It was another hour and a half before they could begin any sort of approach but with the state of the weather any effort was soon cut short and the rescue crew were unable to get any closer than 500 yards. From this vantage point though they can at least make out a little more about the ship. As they had originally believed all of the boat's sails were fully rigged, whipping and tearing in the winds. The decks appeared to be completely abandoned and it looked as if any lifeboats that may have once been on the deck were long gone. With little else they could do the rescue boat turned back to shore arriving just after 1pm. Once back at the station Miller notified the Coast Guard Superintendent of the morning's fence and logged them into the station diary before finally sitting back and taking a long breath. There was little more to do now except to wait for help from a larger lifeboat which he was sure would be on its way after his telegram would reach headquarters later that day. It had been a fairly brief message but then what else was there to say at the current time? Unknown 5-masted schooner, stranded, diamond shoals, sail set, boats gone, no signs of life, sea rough, stations number 183, 184, 186, unable to board schooner. As Miller was sitting back the Seminole, a much larger Coast Guard ship from the Norfolk Division moored at Cape Fear 130 miles north of Cape Hatteras had already begun its journey south to supply assistance. A steel 845 ton steam ship, the Seminole had much less to fear of the diamond shoals breakers than the small wooden lifeboat that the surfman had been sitting in earlier that morning. The small mechanical issue delayed the journey somewhat but the ship arrived to much relief at around 2pm on the afternoon of Tuesday 2nd February. Miller took his small lifeboat out to the ship and he explained the situation to the Seminole's captain and then spent the night aboard as the crew waited for the high winds to calm before they would attempt any approach to the stranded ship, which still seemed to be just about holding itself together as the storms continued to pick back up. The next morning was no better either and the rain continued to lash against the side of the Seminole, pattering like a tin drum as the water rang across the hull. By afternoon the weather had improved just a little and whilst the rescue ship cracked ever closer they were still painfully just out of reach. The wrecked ship had still showed no signs of life and no one could yet make out her name but now they could at least supply a slightly better description with which they hoped could be matched against a known ship. The boat was large, about 3,500 tonnes and probably 250 feet in length. It was painted grey with a black stern and whilst it still looked to be in good condition the wind whistled through its five masts which were creaking under the strain of the torn sails. A tense atmosphere rippled across the Seminole, whose crew watched on at a distance unsure of how much longer the wreck would stay in one piece. Unfortunately all the waiting in the stormy weather was not doing much for the Seminole either and after two days the captain ordered her return to Cape Fear, accepting that with the weather as it was they were not going to get any closer for any sort of rescue. In its place the Coast Guard ship Manning sailed for Diamond Shoals along with a burly tuck aptly named Rescue from the local wrecking company Merritt & Chapman. When they reached the wreck at 9.30am on Friday morning the weather had finally eased up and what had been a herculean task until now became a much smaller matter as the conditions grew more and more favourable. Finally the crews could confirm the name of the wreck ship. She was the Carol A. Deering from Bath, Maine. The Coast Guard inquired after the ship and discovered that she had been due to port in Hampton Roads, Virginia after recently sailing out South America. It was a journey that they were sorry to report she was not going to complete. Launched on Friday 4th April 1919 the Carol A. Deering was the last of almost a hundred ships built by the second generation master shipbuilder Gardening A. Deering. By the time of its construction Gardening A. Deering was 86 years old and had all but retired after gearing up to hand his company over to his children Frank, Harry, Lydia and Carol all of which had been working in the family company since 1905 and who by now had all had ships named after them. As it hit the water for the first time that April the late spring snow still frost in the ground the Carol A. Deering was the largest ship that Gardner had ever built and in many respects it was the culmination of his life's work. At more than 250 feet long its five masts compromising more than 6000 yards of sail thrust up into the sky the tallest at 108 feet. Its three decks were all beautifully oiled hardwoods with the captain's quarters all a dark mahogany. Valued at $240,000 its ownership was a complicated mix of shareholders from across the country. Shares were $3,750 a piece in which gave the owner a 1.64th share of any profits made from the goods that it would haul up and down the American coast. The first captain of the Carol A. Deering was William Merritt who himself held two shares of the vessel. Hungry Bill as he was known to his friends Merritt had a long naval career behind him having sailed with the US Navy during the First World War where he was cited for bravery after his ship was torpedoed by a German submarine off Cape May in New Jersey. With its huge tonnage the Carol A. Deering quickly began making a profit for its many owners. In the first year of service she sailed mainly down to South America where she hauled coal from Virginia to Brazil and then bought cornback from Argentina to New York. At times she did sail further afield but for the most part coal was the cargo and yo-yoing between South and North America was where the big profits were. In July of 1920 the Carol A. Deering set sail for Virginia where she was due to collect a full cargo of coal which would then be hauled south to Brazil. Unfortunately just as they were clearing the Virginia capes Captain Merritt fell unwell forcing the ship to divert to the port of Lewis in Delaware where Merritt along with the first mate Merritt's son were forced to disembark. With the boat now stalled the G. G. Deering company quickly set about sorting out a new captain to take on the remainder of the journey. Finally settling on Merritt's own recommendation, William B. Wormall. Captain Wormall had also had a long naval career behind him and was at 66 years old now officially retired. The Deering's request for him to make just one last journey aboard their new ship seemed to be just a little bit too much of a strong pull for Wormall however. And so he signed aboard for the trip rushing to leave his home in Maine immediately and he headed south to meet up with his new ship and crew. Travelling by rail Wormall stopped off in Boston where he collected his new first mate Charles McClellan and then the two men continued on to Lewis where they met with the rest of the crew in early September. Like many sailors working up and down the coast of America at the time, much of the Deering's crew were foreigners who had all spent years skipping across the globe in search of a different life or running from something a little darker. Abored to Carolee Deering, there was the Boson, John Fredrickson from Finland, the Stuart, James Benjamin from the French West Indies, Herbert Bates, an engineer from Maine and six Danish Abel Seaman, Niels Nielsen, Niels Olsen, Christian Pedersen, Peter Serenson, Alfred Jurgensen and Hans Charles Jensen. For Wormall, the multinational crew was nothing unusual and it was no problem at all. Before long, the Carolee Deering was once again out at sea, back en route for Rio de Janeiro where it arrived in November. The trip south had not all been completely plain sailing however. The first mate, McClellan, had not exactly proven himself worthy of his position and though Wormall liked the engineer Bates, he had taken a fall and sprained his ankle which had rendered him practically crippled for the majority of the journey. By the time they docked in Barbados on the return journey north in late December, the tensions aboard the ship were at breaking point. Wormall had only grown to dislike McClellan more and more. His treatment of the crew had been far too violent for Wormall's tastes and as far as McClellan was concerned, the crew were just all lazy and Wormall's interference with his command was undermining his authority. What's more, he was quite sick of having to take on all of the captain's navigation work due to the captain's failing eyesight. When matters came to a head, the confrontation led the mate to pick a fight with the captain where he threatened to kill him. In turn, Wormall ordered him off the ship. McClellan wasn't especially upset by this and he spent his waking hours drinking as much as possible eventually winding up getting himself arrested by the Barbados authorities and tossed into jail. Wormall chose to leave McClellan in his cell to rot until the last minute, bailing him out on the morning of their departure, 5th January 1921, where thankfully they were bound for Virginia on the last leg of their journey. Perhaps even more fortunate for Wormall, they would have no cargo, so the ship could sail easy all the way, which was probably for the best. By now, the turbulent journey had drained Wormall deeply and he was beginning to look quite ragged by the whole thing. Perhaps he was too old for the captain's life after all, he thought to himself. It took just over two weeks for the Carrelle Deering to reach the coast of South Carolina and whilst the ship was nearly home, the final leg was as taxing as any as storms blew in from the north surrounding the ship in deep fogs, hail, rain and even snow. On Saturday the 29th January, the Deering coasted past a caped lookout lighthouse ship. The crew of the light ship called over to the crew of the Deering who they thought looked a little bit ragged and perhaps something of an undisciplined bunch. One of the men, a red-headed sailor with a foreign, possibly Scandinavian accent called back via a megaphone, that the Deering had lost both its anchors in the storms and they asked the ship to radio ahead to the GG Deering company to let them know. Unfortunately for the Deering, the light vessel's radio was out so instead they chose to pass the message on to the next ship that passed. Fortunately this didn't take too long and soon after the Deering had sailed over the horizon, another steamer was creeping into view. The light ship said its signal flags to let them know that they had an important message to pass on and they blew four long blasts on their horn. Strangely though, the steamer just sailed on past them, never even slowing down to acknowledge their presence. The next day, Sunday the 30th of January at 5.45pm, the Karel-A-Deering was sighted by the steamship Lake Elon with all sails set and steering somewhat unusually straight for Cape Hatteras. It was the last time the ship was to be seen until Sirfman Brady spied her wrecked on the shoals during the morning of his watch almost 12 hours later. At 9.30am on Friday morning, Captain James Coulson of the Tugboat Rescue yelled out across the small current of ocean that separated his vessel from the wrecked Karel-A-Deering. After waiting for a few moments and receiving no reply, he assembled four of his crew and dropped the small yule boat from his deck down into the water to cross over and mount the floundering ship. As they approached the port side of the Deering, the lack of life on board only became more and more apparent. Using a rope that was hanging from the side of the ship, they climbed up onto the deserted deck. The ground beneath their feet rolled in unusual waves and it was clear that the ship was completely totaled with no hope of rescue, so deeply was it lodged in the sandbanks beneath the waves. The sails, still rigged to the masts, were shredded from the days of high winds that had ripped through them and both anchors had been lost. Below deck appeared to be almost entirely flooded from the waves that had continuously slammed against her, blowing over the ship and running across their decks. Inside the forecastle, which sat partially above deck, everything looked to have been stripped bare, though a pot of pea soup sat atop the stove in the galley, half prepared and abandoned, along with a pot of coffee and a pan of some half-cooked ribs. The ship's wheel was broken and the wood was shattered, as was the steering gear. The sledgehammer was lying on the floor, suspiciously nearby. The ship's rudder was also completely disengaged, though the damage was so complete that Carlson couldn't tell if it had been done before or during the wreck. Back up on deck, both the ship's small boats, a yule and a dory, were completely absent. The running lights, along with both red emergency lights, had been completely burned out and aside from the peculiar setting of the galley, there was no sign of life anywhere aboard. There were a few messy, unmade beds below deck, including the bed in the captain's cabin, as well as a few pairs of scattered rubber boots, but otherwise the captain's trunk, his bible and all the navigational instruments were all gone. Three small cats were found, half starved to death, which were quickly adopted by the steward of the rescue. Otherwise, though, there was little to salvage. It was clear that the boat couldn't be saved, so the men took what they could, a couple of sails, a US and a Union flag, a few cabin chairs and the ship's bell, and headed back to the tugboat, and then all the way back to shore. Over the next few days, words quickly spread of the strange fate of the carolede deering. William Merritt was informed of the boat's fatal condition, as too was the Gigi Deering Company, along with Captain Wormel's family, his wife and daughter, Lula. The press quickly leapt on the story, captivating as it was, filling their front pages with tantalising snippets of the mystery, many of which were completely fictional, like the presence of a parrot that had been found abandoned by the rescue team. Over the next few days, local salvers worked out on the remains of the ship, and nine days later, a public auction got underway, selling off everything from the ship's galley table, which sold for $12, to the chairs and the food stocks of flour and sugar. Amongst the highlights were a bedstead that sold for $22.50, and the captain's desk that fetched a cool $35. In total, the salvage team raised $309.60 for the owners of the Deering. The ship itself had been sold for immediately $25. As it turned out, even that was not exactly a bargain, nor was it money well spent, as a few days later, the wreck split in two and fell apart into the ocean, the waves finally gaining their hard-fought victory. The two sections of the ship were then judged to have been a danger to the shipping lanes, and so after a short effort to tow them back to shore, they were blown up using mines, so that the much smaller pieces could float off without threat of doing any more damage. The news of the wreck of the Carole Deering had persisted throughout, and it was not especially surprising. The shipwreck had posed so many problems that nobody seemed to have any answers for. Amongst the earliest articles, questions like, how did an experienced captain run full steam, sail set, into the well-known dangers of the Diamond Shoals? Why would he also then order the crew to abandon ship in the middle of a storm, deep in the middle of the night? If a captain had done none of those things, then where were the crew? Before long, the Deering had been renamed to the enigmatic Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals, which rather matched stories in the press that surrounded the shipwreck, and then on the 11th of April, a new discovery was made that turned the whole story on its head. Christopher Columbus Gray was an old Navy seaman, who at a relatively young age of 35 had long left service and taken to fishing rather than sailing. Living just off the beach in a small wooden house not far from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, he and his wife and son lived a quiet existence, making a modest living from mullet fishing and selling the occasional lumber and merchandise that routinely washed ashore from one wreck or another. On the morning of the 16th of March, just two weeks after the wreck of the Deering, Gray was out on the sands when he saw the remains of the ship float by, having just been blown up by the salvers. He hadn't really given the story of the wreck too much thought since, at least no more than what he had read in the newspapers. But then, three weeks later, when he was back out on the beach, he stumbled across a small green glass bottle, corked and with a small scrap of paper rolled up inside. Snatching it up and taking it home, he used a thin stick to tease the damp paper out of the bottle and unrolled it, leaving it on his kitchen table to dry out near the fireplace. That afternoon, he looked down at the scrolled letter, written in ink with a fluid loopy hand and read the short message. 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 of Deering. This, he figured, was pretty big news and he set about writing a letter to the Customs House in Virginia. Dear sir, if you know anything of the Headquarters or owners of the Six Master Schooner, Carol A. Deering, that came ashore on Diamond Shoals, I wish you would notify them that I have found a letter in a bottle on Cape Hatteras Beach telling how the ship came to be lost from one of the crew. For information concerning this letter, write to me. Christopher C. Gray, Buxton, NC. The Customs House received the letter, but somewhat surprisingly chose not to follow it up. Instead, they forwarded the news of the note to Captain Wormel's family. As it happened, Lula Wormel, the daughter of the captain, had not been quite ready to accept the news of the death of her father when it had been delivered a few weeks earlier. Feeling that there had been far too much left unexplained, she set about pushing the government to launch an official investigation into the crew's disappearance, and the note from Gray, which she now received, seemed almost too good to be true. Enlisting the aid of some local academics, Ralph Rowe, the supervisor of penmanship and drawing for Portland Public Schools, and H.W. Shaler, the one-time supervisor of writing for public schools, she had the handwriting compared to a letter that was written by the Deering's engineer, Henry Bates, when they had been docked in Rio de Janeiro. All three of the academics concluded that the note was genuine and had almost certainly been penned in a hurry by the panicked engineer. This was just the result that Lula had been hoping for, and so, armed with her new evidence, she pulled a favour with the Republican Senator for Maine, Frederick Hale, who arranged for her to meet with the Secretary of Commerce and future President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, in Washington, D.C. This may have seemed like quite an escalation, but Lula Wormel had her own theories as to what had happened to her father, and she was quite sure the government would want to know all about it. It was her belief that the Karel-A Deering had been commandeered by Russian pirates, and that was nothing less than a matter of national security. Following the immediate end of the First World War, the United States was thrown into a period of acute tension. Soldiers were returning home with a need for jobs that simply weren't there, as the economy stalled and inflation bit hard. At the same time, labour movements across several major industries, including coal and steel, saw strikes breaking out, as unions fought for improved workers' rights. Unfortunately, in the public eye, many of these unions had directly and indirectly been lumped together with several other radical movements that were prevalent at the time, from the communists, sympathetic to the recent Russian revolutions, to the anarchists, who, via a campaign of terrorist bombings, had vowed to end the class war that they believed was being perpetrated by the American elite. The government, in response, had pushed back in a campaign to round up and depour or detain in camps, anyone that they believed to be of a radical persuasion, largely ignoring civil liberties in the process and causing more fear and violence to spread in the minds of the population. Naturally, the press had been happy to jump on board, widely covering the political struggles on both sides, especially after most openly recognised a notable uptick in readership for sensational and fear mongering articles that manufactured threats of radical uprisings, communist plots, and the apparent constant threat of foreign infiltration of the American homeland. Before long, the first red scare was well underway. As government surveillance increased, civil liberties were pushed aside, restrictions on free speech were actioned, and labour movements were suppressed, all in the name of suffocating the communist conspiracy to overtake America. As far as this affected the wreck of the Karelai Deering, a police raid on the United Russian Workers Party in New York had allegedly uncovered a plot for members to seize American ships off the coast and sail them, along with their cargo, to Russian waters. And it was this particular plot, whether conspiracy or not, that Lula Wormel found herself becoming a big proponent of. She was now convinced that her father, a skilled seamen, would not have left the sails set on the ship at any sign of danger. This, she tied in along with the facts that the weather on the morning of the wreck had been relatively calm. The presence of the Sledgehammer was also suspiciously believed, especially being so close to the broken ship's will. All of this, she said, showed obvious signs that her father had been captured by pirates. What's more, the mysterious steamer who had ignored the signal flags of the light ship had also been just a bit too suspicious. No, she had thought to herself, he simply had to be pirates. Unlike many of the American population in 1921, her first suspicions fell on the overarching enemy of the Russians. With her letter of introduction from the Judea Deering Company in hand, along with the results of the handwriting analysis, Lula Wormel made her way by rail to Washington DC. Alongside her, Captain Merritt and the Wormel's neighbour and local main pastor, Reverend Addison Benjane Lorimer, made the trip in an effort to back up the captain's daughter, both emotionally and they hoped officially. When they arrived in the capital, Lula first presented the case to prove that her father was almost certainly still alive, and that the shipwreck of the Carolate Deering had been the outcome of foul play. She met Herbert Hoover himself and handed over the written results of her own investigations into the note found by Christopher Columbus Gray on the beaches of Cape Hatteras. The whole presentation had been no small effort and it was aptly rewarded. Impressed by the case, Hoover agreed to open an official investigation into the shipwreck, assigning his secretary and special assistant, Lawrence Ritchie, as the lead investigator. He instructed him to get to the bottom of whatever it was that had happened out on a cape. In truth, it wasn't only the wreck of the Carolate Deering that had troubled the Secretary of Commerce. Over the previous few years, there had been dozens of ships disappearing off the east coast of America, and with all the press the Deering wreck was receiving, connecting lines were being drawn and questions were beginning to be asked. Ritchie kicked off the investigation almost immediately by trying to determine the history of all of the crew members of the Carolate Deering, in order to see if any of them had harboured any radical political opinions or were members of any radical groups. Unfortunately, he soon found out that the history of many sailors was not exactly what one might call watertight. The first mate of the Deering himself, McClellan, had only received his Siemens papers in Portland, Oregon in late March of 1920, a year prior to the wreck, and at that time he had given his address as the Sailors Union, with no records of having ever shipped anywhere prior. As it turned out, this was a common theme for the men aboard the Deering, and several were found to have no records of any previous work whatsoever. He came upon a similar dead end when he put out a request for all lighthouses up and down the coast to report any and all bodies that had been washed up on ashore since the end of January, and found that the total was exactly zero. Meanwhile, Lula Wormel was continuing her own investigation into the paper that the note found by Gray had been written on. She visited several paper companies throughout Norfolk in an effort to try and determine the scrap's provenance, though she only really discovered that none had ever stocked that particular pattern of line and ink colour. She was, however, handed a lead when one paper company directed her to a man named Captain Williams, who, after retiring from a life at sea, had taken on a business of supplying ships. He also just so happened to be an expert on foreign paper. Lula visited him straight away, and listened intently as he poured over it, concluding that it was almost certainly manufactured in Scandinavia and sold from a supplier in Brazil. At the same time, Lula's mother was carrying out a similar investigation into the bottle itself, which she had discovered had likely been manufactured in Buenos Aires. For both women, these results all seemed to point to them being genuine. Whilst all of this was happening, the press were beginning to heat up their stories of the go ship. There were, according to reports, two prevalent theories. Firstly, that a gang of Russian pirates had sacked the ship in search of cargo, and possibly even the skills of the crew itself. And secondly, that there was a rogue German submarine operating off the coast of America under the charge of a German captain who had refused to accept the outcome of the war. Both vessels, they believed, could easily have been headquartered in some secret port, possibly nestled deep in the Amazon. Both theories were at least partly bolstered by Lula's own statement, which she gave to the New York Times on the 23rd of June. I am positive that Father and the other men of the Deering are captives of a pirate band which took possession of the ship, possibly with aid from part of the crew. In fact, we suspect all was not well with at least one of the men shipped on the Deering, and this information has been given to the authorities at Washington. A press conference held that same week also had Hoover expand on this theory, where he highlighted more than half a dozen ships, all that had been disappeared without a trace off the coast of America after sailing from countries across the globe, including the US, the UK, Japan and Norway. Whether or not it was his intention, the press conference did little to quell the fears of Russian pirates or rogue German captains, and this vanished fleet as the press was now calling them, tilted dangerously close to suggesting a global conspiracy. Hoover had told the press that the investigation was working to uncover the pirates wherever they were. A message had been delivered across the coast for ports to keep an eye out for a ship that matched the mystery steamer that had ignored the light ship's distress call, that many now believed had been crewed by raiders. As for the US Navy, they were less enamored with this concept, stating that it was simply impossible for a gang of pirates to be operating off the coast of the United States without the Navy being aware of their presence. Besides, they told the press, if there really were pirates, they would have to make ports sometime, and when they did, the US authorities were certain to weed them out. This was the line of the Wall Street Journal took, bucking the trend of most of the newspapers by reporting more measured coverage, suggesting the ship had simply fallen foul of bad weather that had ravaged the seats in the days prior to the wreck. And then, as if the story needed any more mystery, on the 24th of June, a postcard arrived at the offices of the Commerce Department, postmarked in San Antonio, Texas, six days earlier. The message was short and entirely cryptic. To whom it may concern, I now write to say that you will be to the good if you do not try to solve the mystery of the ship-deering. It is the 1921 mystery, and the only one to tell the tale is bound in irons, and will stay until he dies. This is all for revenge, and as we all say, revengeance is sweet. I am yours, 2323. Solve. What rich he made of the note is anyone's guess, but it is likely that, given the lack of coverage, it was chalked up to little more than a hoax. By late June, the FBI had been drafted into the investigation and had found out agents across the country, following various leads. Down in Carolina, Agent Thompson had made himself busy digging about in the Coast Guard stations along the coast to see if he could turn up anything of interest, and to get the general lay of the land. He soon discovered that as far as the men on the front lines were concerned, piracy was all but an impossibility. In fact, the story of the caroled-deering was not even that unusual as far as they could see. The currents on the coast were well known for washing evidence away, far out to sea, where it would be lost for all time, and so stories like the Go ship were just chalked up to another secret of the surf that didn't require too much thinking about. Captain Hooper, the man in charge of Big Kinneke station for more than 30 years, told Agent Thompson that he believed the crew of the deering had likely fallen to some kind of mutiny, with the men eventually abandoning the ship after they had unloaded everything of value, letting it run aground intentionally. The problem with this theory, as with all the theories, is that there was just no evidence for anything. The only single piece of evidence at all was still the washed up bottle note, found by Christopher Columbus Gray on the nearby beach, and so it was that Agent Thompson focused on that next. He journeyed down to Gray's little wooden house and spoke to the fisherman for himself, hoping to sound him out and hear his own version of events on the day he discovered the bottle. It turned out to be somewhat fruitless, however, as Gray just repeated the same story as ever. Thompson did manage to question several of the locals too, but they all assured him that Gray was a stand up chap and he had a stellar reputation. Unfortunately for Gray, there was a little bit more work being done on the bottle than just a nosy FBI agent asking questions. Analysts back in the lab had discovered that the glass of the bottle had neither sandpitting nor sun bleaching, both of which would have been expected to have been present on any bottle that had been rolling on the ocean surface for several weeks before washing ashore. Armed with this information, Agent Nickabocker was the next FBI man to arrive in Cape Hatteras in search of Christopher Columbus Gray. Straight off the bat, Nickabocker felt that Gray had seemed a little bit suspicious. Not happy to settle for just a story, he had Gray described precisely how he had got the note from the bottle without tearing it. Gray showed the agent how he had used a thin stick poked down inside the bottle to tease the rolled up paper out. Still not happy though, Nickabocker then went and asked about the Coast Guard stations to see what the men working there thought of the bottle. There he found that several were just as suspicious as he was. One, Captain Balance, said that when Gray had handed him the bottle to show him, he thought it had smelled of whiskey rather than sea water which is what he would have expected. Nickabocker then went and checked out the Deering's medicine chest that had been sold in the salvage auction after the wreck and found that there were no other bottles aboard that looked anything like the one supposedly tossed overboard with the note inside. Nor could he find any matching paper in any of the logs or salvage paperwork. When the agents returned to Washington to hand over their reports, Richie was as convinced as they were that the note had been in elaborate hoax all along. And he steeled himself to make the journey to the Cape for himself in order to get to the bottom of it. Meanwhile, Lula Wormel and her mother had been busy poring over the Deering's ocean charts which they had finally received from Richie. In an effort to decipher any secrets it might hold, she contacted a local captain who sailed on one of the Deering's rival ships, Frank Hewitt Peterson. Peterson was known as one of the best in the business and it was his expert opinion he explained to Lula that the last few days of the Deering's voyage had not been charted by Captain Wormel. Rather, it seemed to have been scrawled by a different hand entirely. Frustratingly for everyone, the charts ended a week before the ship was wrecked. Lawrence Richie arrived at Cape Hatteras on the afternoon of the 21st of August. Knowing that Gray would be suspicious, if not straight out evasive, if he knew that he was there to interrogate him, Richie instead devised a plan whereby he would pretend to be there to interview him for a job at the lighthouse that Gray had recently applied for. Gray bought this ruse and almost immediately Richie dropped his act, outright accusing the fisherman of forging the note and devising the whole story. This confidence wasn't entirely baseless either. Richie had been carrying out his own handwriting analysis and he had letters written from experts from both the US Navy and the Treasury that both concluded Gray to have been the note's author. When Richie handed these to Gray, Gray broke down in tears, admitting the whole thing was a fraud. It turned out that Gray's fishing business was not doing nearly as well as it once was and he had decided to forge the note in the hopes that a scandal at the lighthouse might see a series of sackings that would open up a position for himself to step into. Deciding to exercise a degree of pity and also not quite sure if there were any laws that had been broken, Richie agreed not to prosecute Gray, provided he came clean with his hoax story publicly and published in a statement to the press, which he promptly did. The bottle it turned out had actually been manufactured in California, whilst the paper, apparently so exotic, had been manufactured right there in the USA. The discovery that the bottle note had all been a hoax was a crushing blow to the investigation of the carolade deer ring, especially for Lula Wormel and her mother who had been operating entirely on the bluf that the crew had been kidnapped by pirates. Whilst the FBI continued their own search, the Wormels stepped back from the case, except in the grim fate that their father and husband was almost certainly lost to sea. Over the next few weeks, the FBI followed several leads, all of which ended in dead ends as agents chased up reports that members of the crew had been spotted at various ports, only to discover them to be misidentifications or entirely too vague to act upon. The case eventually slipped into a state of limbo and then completely out of the public consciousness, with no explanation as to how the ship was wrecked, nor where the crew had disappeared to. Lula Wormel finally admitted defeat in October of 1922, filing for her father's life insurance with the deer ring being officially declared as a total loss. The fate of the crew unknown. So what did happen to the carolade deer ring? Theories have never been especially quiet across the years and have ranged from everything from the banal to the bazaar. The most grounded theory that persists from the contemporary investigation is that bad weather had led to a rushed evacuation of the ship, with the crew all being lost to the storms after their lifeboats were washed out to sea and overturned by the violent waves. This theory, however, does ignore that Captain Wormel was an experienced seaman who would have been unlikely to have made such an order. Some have suggested that the captain had maybe fallen so ill by the time the storms were hitting the ship that he would not have been the one to have made the evacuation order in the first place and that maybe the mate McClellan had taken command. Another variation suggests that Captain Wormel had perhaps even died earlier in the journey after reports suggested he's looking unwell whilst they've made port in Barbados. Then, of course, there is the theory of mutiny, which still also persists, follow in much of the same trajectory, only with the crew abandoning the ship once they do close to port, stealing anything of value in the process. As for the piracy theory that was so persistent at the time, there still exists little in the way of evidence to support any group of pirates, nor any Russian conspiracy operating off the coast of America at the time. Whilst it was a strong contemporary contender for the primary theory, no pirates were ever actually captured, which, given the strength and size of the US Navy, seems highly unlikely, especially given the interest on the seas thanks to run runners that were smuggling alcohol up the very same coast under the close scrutiny of the officials. Then, of course, there are the numerous alternative theories, ranging from everything from sea monsters to alien abduction or the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. It's fairly safe to say that no evidence exists for any of these more out there suggestions, though in fairness, nor does it exist for any other theory. The mystery of the Carol A. Deering is, and likely always will be, one more mystery of the sea with no answers, allowing the nickname, the Go-Ship of the Diamond Shoals, to persist until the present day. So that was the story of the Go-Ship Carol A. Deering, and I'll have just a little bit to chat about after these short advert breaks. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run, and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there, integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time, from startups to scale-ups, online, in-person, and on-the-go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Welcome back. So yeah, just a small chat, I guess, because I suppose there is quite a bit to sort of possibly discuss. Just as a quicker side, one thing that I thought was really interesting about this episode was that the newspapers, including like the New York Times, so even quite, you know, big newspapers, not just the kind of local hacks, had all noticed an uptick in their readership when they wrote sensational articles concerning the communists' plots and the red scare. And so basically they just sort of jumped on this and just made a load of stuff up, which of course now we know this happens frequently, it happens every single day, you know, with stuffed down-us-froats with, you know, news that's overly sensational and, you know, clickbait essentially, but it's always funny to see exactly the same process mirrored 100 years earlier, you know, it's, things just never change, right? It shouldn't really be a surprise, but I do always find it interesting when you see those mirrors, you know, even going back, like say, like say, more than 100 years. Anyway, that was just an interesting aside that I thought was interesting. About this episode, I said, what do we think? I have my own thoughts. I believe that the truth is probably close to like maybe a combination of a few theories. I sort of lay out my, my idea is that I think probably McClellan and Wyrmill, they were clearly at the end of their tethers with each other. Wyrmill hated McClellan, he thought he was, he said he thought he was too sort of violent with the crew and basically tried to stop him doing so. McClellan saw that as him like undermining his authority and also was sick of the fact that Wyrmill was not basically doing his job as a captain, I don't think, and he was, it seems to be putting off a lot of his sort of duties to McClellan, which you know, we can come back to in a moment actually. But, but so yeah, these two were clearly at the end of their tethers, they already had fights. I mean, it sounded bad. I mean, McClellan was clearly drinking a lot. He was drinking enough to have been arrested and put in prison. And the two had already also had a fight. So I wondered, you know, did they have some kind of like, altercation once they were back at sea with either one or both being killed or injured to the point where they were unable to then operate the ship or run the ship. So it ended with that an inexperienced crew trying to sail it home where they got caught in a storm and then with no voice of authority to command them, they just abandoned the ship where they perhaps shouldn't have and then got washed out to sea. That's my kind of best guess. It does leave a lot of questions open like pretty much every theory like, like why was everything worth and value taken from the ship. You would think you perhaps wouldn't do that if you were leaving in a rush. Why was the ship's wheel broken and apparently by a sledgehammer. Why was their food still cooking, you know, if it was in such a rush. There's there's all these kind of weird sort of suggestions. I don't think it was Russian pirates. I think that conspiracy is is just part of the red scare. But pirates, you know, wouldn't be a million miles away because basically the people who said it wasn't pirates and couldn't be pirates were all officials who who would have seen pirates as a mark against their authority in the region or their command over the region. Perhaps, you know, so they were publicly they would have, of course, been happy to sort of like slam that theory down. And so of course it can't be that, you know, we've got full control of the waters. Pirates have always operated as long as there have been ships sailing in the sea pirates have operated they've managed to operate. So it I don't think pirates are a million miles away. I think that is the second my sort of second best theory. But I don't think it's anything as wild as say like a gang of like Russian pirates that were hiding out in the Amazon. I don't think it's anything as crazy as a rogue German submariner that was that didn't realize the war had ended. I think if it is pirates, it's something more to do with either like the run runners, maybe, or something along those lines, you know, I don't think it's anything nearly as well coordinated as some sort of global Russian conspiracy to to have communism take over America. I don't I don't think that's likely. And then by the same merit, we could look at the mutiny theories. And I don't think they're a million miles off either, you know, that they all seem like the only reason that makes me feel that slightly less likely is that there wasn't really anything of worth for the men to have mutiny dover when they were so close to home. The ship had no cargo. So it wasn't like they were like, hey, we could take the ship. And then we can we can sail off into the sunset and be rich. There was nothing to take. So why would they have gambled with their lives and their livelihoods when they were so close to home? It makes me wonder about the mutiny sort of angle. I don't think it's as likely as pirates and and like I said, I think neither is as likely as the first theory that I suggested. As for the other theories, because because of course, there are many other theories of like, you know, the Bermuda Triangle, alien abductions and things like that. And of course, they're very interesting to consider. But I don't think it's any of those things. I don't think we need to go anywhere near as extreme of that. But you know, of course, they are very interesting to read about, especially, you know, the concept that maybe they were all just zipped away by aliens that you know, that's that's a fairly fascinating theory. But yeah, I don't I don't think it's even remotely true. But yeah, I'm not sure. As for the story, I thought it was great. I knew of the story. And of course, like I said, it was one of the the most requested stories, probably of all time for dark histories. So it was really interesting to get to read a bit more about it. The main book I read because I read a couple of books. The main one was by bland Simpson. And it was called Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals. And it was a really interesting book. He wrote it. Normally, I don't like the way he wrote it, which is, it's a nonfiction book, but it's written almost in like a fiction way. It's like it's sort of like a nonfiction novel, if you like. And I normally don't like those sort of books, but it was written well enough that actually I did really enjoy it. So I think if you wanted to read more about this, it's probably, you know, worth having a little look out for that. Otherwise, the other thing that I think was probably really interesting about working on this episode was the fact that there were so many personal statements from people involved. So it was really interesting that you could find out a lot of the thoughts of the people at the time, which was really interesting. So yeah, but otherwise, yeah, an interesting story and I'm glad I finally got around to doing it. So yeah, thanks for all the recommendations. If you would like to talk to me about this episode or indeed any other episode or anything you'd like really, you can contact me. The email is contact at darkhistories.com. There's also various social media and you can check all that out on the show notes, as well as links to the website, which is darkhistories.com, where you'll be able to see all the ways that you can interact with a podcast like signing up to the discord and getting involved with the community there, or buying merch or supporting the podcast in any other way, just by leaving reviews, that's all sort of linked off of the website. The podcast does have a Patreon if you're interested. It's $3 a month, which at the moment, I know that's, you know, everything's a tie for everybody. So, you know, obviously I don't expect anyone to jump on that offer, but it is $3 a month and you get free adverts and things like that. If you are interested to head over to Patreon for that, again, there's links for that in the show notes. So yeah, anyway, thank you for listening. I'll be back in a couple of weeks. Again, if you would like to take part with the Ask Me Anything episode, please go ahead and do so. Get your questions into me really as soon as possible. But yeah, otherwise, I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Until then, take care. Sleep tight. Thank you.