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Sunday, June 27, 2021

Message in Bottle Indicates Pirates Roam Atlantic, Capturing Ships, 1921

Believe Pirates Roam in Atlantic. . . Maine Fisherman Gives Credence to Theory of Cape Hatteras Sailors

Portland, Maine, June 21—The theory that pirates are afloat in the North Atlantic has found credence here. Believe in this explanation of the fate of the recently missing shops has grown with the establishment of the fact that a message in a bottle picked up two months ago north of Cape Hatteras purposing to explain the disappearance of the crew of the five-masted schooner Carroll A. Dearing, mystery ship of Diamond Shoals, was written by Henry Bates of Isleboro, Maine, a member of that crew. Questions of its genuineness was settled today by handwriting experts who compared it with letters written by Bates.

The unsigned note stated that the schooner had been captured by an oil burning craft, something like a subchaser, that the members of the crew who were hiding all over the ship with no chance to escape were being handcuffed and that everything was being taken off.

Through the efforts of Mrs. William M. Wormwell, of this city, wife of the captain of the Deering, and friends, the investigation was started by the State Department, the Department of Commerce, the coast guard and other government agencies to establish the fate of the missing crew, which consisted of 12 men besides the captain. They are working on the theory that the oil steamer ?? which disappeared in the same locality at about the same time while bound from Texas to Boston, was captured by the same pirate crew.

From the front page of The Dunn Dispatch, June 24, 1921

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