Missing Crewmen Emerge from Hole In Mississippi


Clinton: James Earl Graham of Boone Springs felt a little intimidated by the five men who stumbled into the Admah's Get 'n' Go the night of April 4. The hour was late, the night very foggy with a strong ozone smell permeating this small Mississippi river town. The five men, four of them white and one black, all dressed in gray oilskin rain gear looked confused and dazzled as they entered the store which lies on the east side Highway 67 and only a few yards from the levee.

     "I asked them if that was all, you know---just like I ask everybody when they come to pay," explains Graham, a 19 year old part time student at Georg von Podebrad College. "So, one of 'em asked me where they were and I told 'em Boone Springs. Well, he sort of scratches his chin and asks where that is; so I tell him it's just couple of miles out of Clinton. Then he gets a mite bit edgy and asks where that is. I figured maybe they'd got lost. So I asked them if they took the bridge over the river. Well, he frowns at me and says, 'What are you talking about?' The Mississippi, I said. They all just stared at me, then they all look at each other and then the black guy points towards the back of store and says in this thick Jamaican accent, 'You mean that's not Pamlico Sound?' So, I says, c'mon, you don't know you're in Iowa? Their eyes bulged so much out of their heads, I thought I'd need a fielder's mitt to catch 'em. One of 'em picked up a copy of the Quad City Times and pointed out the date and they all start getting jittery and shouting at each other. I got scared it was some sort of set-up for a robbery so I hit the silent alarm switch. 'Bout three minutes later the cops rolled in."

     Officer Derrick Kruger of the Boone City Police interrogated the five men and each one told him the same incredible story. Each man insisted he was a crewmember aboard the 5-masted schooner Carroll A. Deering of Norfolk, VA and that they had abandoned their vessel just off Cape Hatteras, NC, when she foundered in rough seas. All five of them had piled into a life boat and had spent the better part of that afternoon pulling oars to keep the boat heading into the treacherous rolling breakers as walls of water crashed over them. By night, the sea's temper had calmed and an odd smelling fog had risen around them. They could see nothing in any direction. The sea had washed most of their provisions over the side during afternoon, including a compass. It was well past sunset when they glimpsed lights faintly through the fog and made for them. When they clambered ashore, they had no idea where they were---only that when they left the Deering it was January 31, 1921!

     Officer Kruger told Third Eye Over Iowa that the five men have since been taken to a "medical facility" for observation and evaluation. He hoped to release more details when they became available.

     Asked if he thought the story told by the five was genuine, Kruger refused to speculate, saying, "There's been a lot of wild talk about strange things happening out in the river since the Army Corps of Engineers discovered that hole in the Mississippi last year. I don't' want to add to any of that." (see: Hole Discovered In Mississippi River Bed, February, 1997, vol. 4, Issue #2).

     According to history books, the 255 foot long, 1,879 ton Deering was launched in 1919 at Bath, Maine. On her final voyage, she sailed home to Norfolk from Rio de Janeiro on December 2, 1920. She carried no cargo and stopped only once enroute at Barbados. On the morning of January 31, 1921, she stranded on Diamond Shoals just off Cape Hatteras, NC. When the Coast Guard boarded her, they found food set out in the galley, her steering disabled, and her life boats gone. None of the eleven crewmen was ever found.





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