Case file · Anomaly hotspot

Carroll A. Deering

A five-masted schooner found run aground off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in January 1921 with no crew aboard.

1921 CE · 35.26, -75.49 · status: unexplained

The account

Built in Bath, Maine, in 1919, she had delivered coal to Rio de Janeiro and was on the return voyage. The crew's fate was never established.

An unexplained loss of a crew at sea; nothing in the record points to a supernatural cause.

A schooner found aground with no crew. Mutiny, piracy or a storm abandonment explain it; the bottle message was a hoax.

Explanation	Weight	Why
Secret human technology	35%	Mutiny or foul play (the first mate had made threats) or rum runners and pirates were investigated by several US agencies; the crew’s fate fits deliberate human action, which here is covert human action rather than secret technology.
A known natural phenomenon	35%	Storms off Cape Hatteras; the crew may have abandoned ship in a blow and drowned.
A hoax or fabrication	12%	A message in a bottle claiming capture by pirates was confessed by its writer as a forgery.
Perception, memory or mind	8%	The Bermuda Triangle label added later inflates the mystery.
Something known, misidentified	4%	An ordinary navigation or seamanship error that ran her onto Diamond Shoals, after which the crew left in the boats, would also leave an empty grounded ship.
A poorly understood natural phenomenon	3%	No unusual natural event needed.
Genuinely anomalous	3%	Mutiny, piracy or storm explain the empty ship.

Official position: A multi-agency federal investigation reached no conclusion.