If the Diamond Shoals had not been lying off Hatteras last Saturday, it is likely that the bageye schooner “Wild Duck” of Norfolk, Va., would have been lost, together with all four members of her crew, when she was swept down the coast from Chesapeake Bay.
The “Wild Duck”, ostensibly bound from Norfolk to Washington, met a terrible gale in Chesapeake Bay, and the crew, unable to manager her, she was swept out past the Virginia Capes to sea. Coast Guard stations along the coast noticed the “Wild Duck” wildly flying before the breeze with distress signals up, but no Coast Guard crew could reach the boat until it got leeward of the Diamond Shoals at Hatteras.
How Captain R. Roby and his crew of three came to be so near Hatteras happened like this. Dreading the Diamond Shoals, yet fearing to stand out past them, the crew piloted the vessel near the coast preferring to run ashore than to be swept so far out at sea. At Hatteras the coastline sweeps in to the south and the southwest, and here the water is smoother. Captain Roby happened to strike this smooth water, after accidentally getting thru the channel with his shallow draft vessel.
In the smooth water, Capt. Bernice Balance and the crew of Cape Hatteras Coast Guard station were able to get to the schooner, and they showed its skipper the way thru Hatteras Inlet.
Tuesday, the “Wild Duck” came to Elizabeth City, got its seams patched up, and beat it to Norfolk that night. The “Wild Duck” is 33 years old, 56 feet long, 17 feet wide and has a draft of a little more than five feet. The shallow draft enabled her to get across the Diamonds.
The “Wild Duck” has the appearance of a rum-runner and the fact that she was bound from Norfolk to Washington and got caught out at sea looks suspicious.
From page 3 of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, April 6, 1923
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