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Mystery of the Missing Crew of Carroll A. Deering
Nobody knows what really happened to the ship until a message in a bottle was found one day.
In late January 1921, a coast guard on Cape Hatteras spotted a five-mast sailing ship. The ship was wrecked and appeared to be abandoned. The rudder was destroyed, the direction box was damaged, navigation disappeared, and the most mysterious thing was the disappearance of 8 crew members.
The ship was named Carrol A. Deering, after the son of the owner. Built-in Bath, Meine in 1919, Deering was a five-mast sailing ship that was intended for commercial activities.
Chronology
On July 19, 1920, Deering sailed from Puerto Rico and arrived at Newport News. There the ship loaded the goods, which would later be delivered to Rio de Janeiro. The voyage was led by an experienced ship captain, William H. Merritt.
William H. Merritt himself was a fighter in World War I, where he was told courageously managed to save the entire crew when his ship, Dorothy Barrett, was sunk by the German submarine U-117 in Cape May 1918.
