Anomaly•Registry
AR-0129

The Carroll A. Deering

Unsolved
Date 31 January 1921
Location Diamond Shoals, off Cape Hatteras, Dare County, North Carolina, United States. The sources give no exact position for the grounding; the coordinates mark the Outer Diamond Shoal.
Coordinates 35.1444, -75.4536
Category Disappearances and Unsolved Deaths

Summary

On 31 January 1921 the five-masted schooner Carroll A. Deering was found aground on Diamond Shoals, off Cape Hatteras, with her sails set and her crew gone. None of the men aboard was ever found.

Five government departments looked into the case. The one document that pointed to pirates, a note in a bottle, was forged by the man who said he had found it. The Commerce Department's investigators thought mutiny the most likely explanation, never proved it, and left the case open.

The Deering is often counted among the losses of the Bermuda Triangle. Her crew were last seen alive off North Carolina.

every recorded sighting, in order, and what followed 28 or 29 Jan next day 31 Jan 4 Feb April from May 1921 passes Cape Lookout Lightship; crew seen on deck about 5.45 pm, passes the Lake Elon off the shoals 6.30 am, seen aground, sails set, no sign of crew boarded: three cats; log, boats and effects gone bottle note reported: a forgery by its finder inquiry: mutiny most likely; case kept open no further sighting is recorded THE CREW WERE LAST SEEN OFF NORTH CAROLINA. the shoals lie north of Bermuda, the triangle's northern corner. the only clue pointing to pirates was forged by its finder.
Figure Drawn by Anomaly Registry from the National Park Service's account, the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library's account of the 1921 investigation, and newspaper reports of 1921 quoted by the Library of Congress. It sets out every recorded sighting of the Deering in order, then what followed: the boarding, the forged note and the inquiry's view.

What is documented

The ship and the voyage. The Carroll A. Deering was a five-masted schooner built at Bath, Maine, in 1919. In January 1921 she was returning in ballast from Rio de Janeiro, where she had delivered a cargo of coal, and was bound from Barbados for Hampton Roads, Virginia. Her master was Captain Willis B. Wormell. The Library of Congress puts the number of men aboard at twelve; other accounts give eleven.

The last sightings. On 28 or 29 January 1921 (the sources differ) she passed the Cape Lookout Lightship off North Carolina. According to the lightship keeper, the crew were milling about on deck, and a crewman who did not look or act like an officer called across that the ship had lost its anchors. The next day, at about 5.45 pm, she passed the steamer Lake Elon south-west of the Diamond Shoals Lightship. It is the last recorded sighting before she was found.

Found. At 6.30 am on 31 January, C. P. Brady of the Cape Hatteras Coast Guard Station saw a five-masted schooner aground on the shoals. Heavy seas turned back the surf boats. On the morning of 4 February the wrecker Rescue and the cutter Manning reached her, and Captain James Carlson of the Rescue went aboard and confirmed that she was the Carroll A. Deering.

What was aboard, and what was not. No one was aboard except three half-starved cats. The ship's log, the navigation equipment, the crew's personal effects, certain papers, the two main anchors, and the ship's motor boat and dory were gone. In the galley, food had been set out as if in preparation for the next day's meal.

The wreck. In March 1921, with the hull breaking up on the shoals, the ship was towed off and dynamited so that she would not endanger other ships.

The note in the bottle. In April 1921 Christopher Columbus Gray, of Buxton, North Carolina, reported finding a note in a bottle. It read, in part, "Deering captured by oil-burning boat." Handwriting experts matched it to the ship's engineer, Herbert Bates. Federal examiners later showed that Gray had written it himself, and he confessed the forgery to Lawrence Richey, the official leading the Commerce Department's inquiry.

The investigation. In May 1921 Lula Wormell, whom the National Park Service's account describes as the captain's wife and the Hoover Library's account as his daughter, went to Washington with Captain Merritt, the ship's former master, and the Rev. Dr. Addison Lorimer, and persuaded the Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, to open an investigation. Hoover put his assistant Lawrence Richey in charge. By the Hoover Library's account, five government departments looked into the case. In July 1921 an agent named Thompson, of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation (it became the FBI in 1935), visited Dare County. The leads he followed included pirates sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, rum-running gangsters and mutiny. No trace of the crew, the log or the navigation equipment was found. Richey and Hoover concluded that mutiny was the most likely explanation, and kept the case open in case new evidence appeared.

The other missing ships. Other ships went missing off the East Coast that winter. Among them was the steamer Hewitt, carrying sulphur from Sabine, Texas, to Portland, Maine, which sent her last message off Florida on 25 January. Newspapers raised the possibility of a Bolshevik plot to seize American ships and take them to Russian ports.

What was said at the time. The Washington Herald of 3 February 1921 likened the unmanned schooner to the Flying Dutchman. On 4 February the Evening Star of Washington called mutiny "the latest theory". Captain R. L. Gaskill of the Coast Guard, one of the first to see the ship on 31 January, called the piracy stories "so much newspaper bunk": in his view the crew had taken to the boats in winds of 90 miles an hour, nine miles from shore, and could not have survived. Captain Ballance of the Cape Hatteras station said: "I believe they abandoned her after taking everything of value", adding that they had run her onto the shoals on purpose.

Leading explanations

Abandonment by boat, followed by loss at sea (the view of Coast Guard officers at Hatteras in 1921; consistent with the evidence, not confirmed). Gaskill held that the crew left the stranded ship in the storm and were lost. Ballance believed they left deliberately, with everything of value, and put her on the shoals. Either version accounts for the missing boats, log, instruments and personal effects. No boat, body or piece of the boats was ever found, so neither can be tested.

Mutiny (the Commerce Department investigators' preferred explanation; not proven). Richey and Hoover judged it the most likely scenario. The documented evidence for it is circumstantial: the lightship keeper's account of a crewman who did not act like an officer and of the crew milling about on deck. Nothing was established about what happened to the captain.

Piracy, rum-runners or Soviet agents (investigated in 1921; no evidence found). These theories circulated in 1921, and the Bureau of Investigation's agent followed them up. The only document that ever supported piracy was Gray's forged note.

Anything anomalous (no evidence). The case entered Bermuda Triangle writing decades later. Nothing in the record calls for an unusual explanation.

What the popular version gets wrong

"The Deering is one of the Bermuda Triangle's victims." Her crew were alive and on deck when she passed the Cape Lookout Lightship off North Carolina, and she was seen under way off Diamond Shoals the next day. Whatever happened to the men happened off the Outer Banks. Diamond Shoals lie north of Bermuda itself, the northernmost corner of the triangle as it is usually drawn (see AR-0014). The name Bermuda Triangle was coined in 1964, 43 years after the grounding.

"A message in a bottle revealed that pirates had seized the ship." The note was forged by the man who reported finding it. The handwriting experts who first matched it to the engineer were wrong, and Gray confessed.

"Everything aboard was in order, as if the crew had vanished in an instant." The things missing were the things a crew leaving by boat would take: the log, the navigation equipment and their own belongings, along with the boats themselves. The Coast Guard officers at Hatteras read the ship that way at the time. The galley was not seen until four days after she was found aground.

Current status

Unsolved. The end of the voyage is well documented, from the lightship sighting to the boarding. The fate of the crew is not. The investigators' preferred explanation, mutiny, rests on circumstantial evidence and was never tested against a survivor, a body or a boat. The files of the 1921 inquiry are preserved in the Lawrence Richey Papers at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. The recovery of the Deering's boats, log or any of her crew, or new documents, would change this standing.

Sources

  • National Park Service, Cape Hatteras National Seashore. "The Ghost Ship of the Outer Banks." nps.gov, last updated 14 April 2015.
  • Howard, S. (2016). "The Wreck of the Carroll A. Deering." Hoover Heads, blog of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives, 27 January 2016, updated 3 July 2023.
  • Walker, M. (2023). "The Mysterious Disappearance of Ghost Ship Carroll A. Deering's Crew." Headlines & Heroes, Library of Congress blog, January 2023. Quotes The Washington Herald, the Evening Star, the New-York Tribune and Captain R. L. Gaskill.
  • The Washington Herald, 3 February 1921, and Evening Star (Washington), 4 February 1921, as quoted by Walker (2023).
  • Lawrence Richey Papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum: the files of the 1921 investigation, as described by Howard (2016). Not consulted directly.
  • Federal Bureau of Investigation. "FBI History: Timeline." fbi.gov. The Bureau of Investigation became the Federal Bureau of Investigation on 1 July 1935.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.

Related records
AR-0009 Mary Celeste A merchant ship found adrift, her crew gone, cargo and provisions intact. 1872 Unsolved
AR-0014 The Bermuda Triangle No statistically anomalous rate of disappearance. Retained because the debunking is the record. Popularised 1950s to 1970s Debunked
AR-0048 SS Ourang Medan The famous ghost ship. No record exists that the vessel was ever registered, anywhere. Alleged 1947 or 1948 Debunked
AR-0001 Dyatlov Pass Incident Nine hikers cut their way out of their tent from the inside and walked into a night of extreme cold. All nine died. 1959 Partially explained

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