- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: University of North Carolina Press (31 Oct 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0807827495
- ISBN-13: 978-0807827499
- Product Dimensions: 28.5 x 13 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,981,101 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Synopsis
In the misty dawn of January 31, 1921, a Coast Guardsman on watch at the Cape Hatteras Life-Saving Station sighted a mighty five-masted schooner, all sails set, wrecked on the treacherous Diamond Shoals. Rescuers rushed to the ship, but when they arrived they found the Carroll A. Deering deserted, with no trace of the captain, Willis B. Wormell, or the crew. When, several months later, a bottle was found on a nearby beach, purportedly containing a note from a crew member who ascribed the schooner's fate to its capture by pirates, a sensational panic in international shipping ensued. The captain's daughter successfully lobbied for a federal investigation, but months of inquiry failed to turn up either the missing crew or a reason for the ship's demise. To this day, the fate of the Deering has remained one of the greatest mysteries of maritime history. Bland Simpson assembles the known facts into a compelling reconstruction of the Carol A. Deering's final voyage and its baffling aftermath.Using contemporary sources including newspapers, FBI reports, ship's logs, and personal and official correspondence, he weaves together historical narrative with the voices of key participants in the drama. Simpson's haunting chronicle keeps the story of the Deering alive, an apt memorial to the ghost ship and its lost crew.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Off Carolina, where the great warm river of the Gulf Stream flirts with the cold southbound current from Labrador before spurning it and heading for open ocean, three great capes sculpted by the Stream's eddies ripple seaward and reach just beneath the waves for miles in shoal waters known the sailing world 'round and long called Frying Pan, Lookout, and Diamond. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Off Carolina, where the great warm river of the Gulf Stream flirts with the cold southbound current from Labrador before spurning it and heading for open ocean, three great capes sculpted by the Stream's eddies ripple seaward and reach just beneath the waves for miles in shoal waters known the sailing world 'round and long called Frying Pan, Lookout, and Diamond. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
31 January 1921. A ship runs aground off the coast of South Carolina with no one on board save a starving cat. A fascinating, enduring mystery which sticks in the mind after you have read it. Bland Simpson unfortunately has been seduced by the siren voice of the current cultural horror, the faction novel, an ugly hybrid of myth, supposition and reality. An interesting story is constantly smothered and broken up by unwanted, speculative babbling of surviving relatives, insurance brokers, lighthouse keepers, etc, which Mr Simpson clearly thinks makes matters more interesting. They do not. It is much to the book's detriment as a perfectly gripping story lies here under all the waffle. Mr Simpson should either write some historical romantic fiction, as he gives me the impression that he may be a frustrated romantic novelist, or strip this book of the fey speculative narrative; it would be much better for it. Let's tow this wreck of a book out to sea, scuttle it, and launch the better book within. I rather resent the time I lost and will now never get back reading this book.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
horrible writing style for a book, almost unreadable
22 Dec 2005
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I was really looking forward to reading this book over the Christmas holidays. I enjoy reading true, unsolved mysteries but after reading and rereading several pages I gave up.
Reading should be a pleasure and the reader should not have to keep rereading words and sentences to try and decipher what the author is trying to convey.
In reading this book it was like every sentence was overly long with each phrase seperated by commas when it seemed for clarity the sentences should have ended and a new sentence begun.
Also,have you every read a book when you get the impression the author is just trying to show you how intelligent he is by constantly using new uncommon words just to show you, the reader, how vast his vocabulary is? Also I noticed every noun in almost every sentence had to be preceded by about 3 descriptive words when one would have been fine most of the time.
Paragraph after paragraph has sentences like this:
"The gusting January wind blew spray and sand at them, and the damp sand gathered and caked upon the three foot, wooden spoked wheels, and the sea oats and grasses around them bent seaward, as the men and their boat slowly dragged through the dunes and over the open seabeach, the half-dozen men and the one beast drawing forward as if they next intended, like poseidon of old, to plough the very sea itself."
ALSO
"In the wet sand below the tideline the men halted and unhitched the front set of wheels from the boat carriage and led the mare forward into the shallow surf that was sheeting rapidly beneath tem, till the wheels were clear and the front fell into the water and made a skid down which the boat would go, and one of them walked the mare around and away, pulling now just the wheels, till she too was clear and unburduned and, standing alone and apart from the surfmen, looked away from them and their incompcomprehensible task".
Page after page of reading this type of writing becomes so tedious and frustrating you just give up and go on another book.
Just to be fair I want to let the readers of this review know I also ordered from Amazon two 900 page books, Shattered Swords(about the Battle of Midway) and Ultimate Sacrifice(about the Kennedy Assination)and I would wake up in the middle of the night and go back to reading both of these books because they were so well written.
Reading should be a pleasure and the reader should not have to keep rereading words and sentences to try and decipher what the author is trying to convey.
In reading this book it was like every sentence was overly long with each phrase seperated by commas when it seemed for clarity the sentences should have ended and a new sentence begun.
Also,have you every read a book when you get the impression the author is just trying to show you how intelligent he is by constantly using new uncommon words just to show you, the reader, how vast his vocabulary is? Also I noticed every noun in almost every sentence had to be preceded by about 3 descriptive words when one would have been fine most of the time.
Paragraph after paragraph has sentences like this:
"The gusting January wind blew spray and sand at them, and the damp sand gathered and caked upon the three foot, wooden spoked wheels, and the sea oats and grasses around them bent seaward, as the men and their boat slowly dragged through the dunes and over the open seabeach, the half-dozen men and the one beast drawing forward as if they next intended, like poseidon of old, to plough the very sea itself."
ALSO
"In the wet sand below the tideline the men halted and unhitched the front set of wheels from the boat carriage and led the mare forward into the shallow surf that was sheeting rapidly beneath tem, till the wheels were clear and the front fell into the water and made a skid down which the boat would go, and one of them walked the mare around and away, pulling now just the wheels, till she too was clear and unburduned and, standing alone and apart from the surfmen, looked away from them and their incompcomprehensible task".
Page after page of reading this type of writing becomes so tedious and frustrating you just give up and go on another book.
Just to be fair I want to let the readers of this review know I also ordered from Amazon two 900 page books, Shattered Swords(about the Battle of Midway) and Ultimate Sacrifice(about the Kennedy Assination)and I would wake up in the middle of the night and go back to reading both of these books because they were so well written.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Simpson's Best Yet
15 Oct 2002
Format:Hardcover
I started this book on a Saturday at 1:00 pm, and put it down, finished, eight hours later (and jumped right into "...Nell Cropsey" by author same. This is simply a must-read for any lover of shipwreck stories, mysteries, or American history...and particularly for anyone (like myself) who's fallen in love with coastal North Carolina. Thanks Bland!
Ghost Ship
7 Jun 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I bought and read this book for a book club selection. Overall, it was "not my cup of tea." I think the author did pretty well, but it becomes apparent early on what the outcome is going to be and there is not much incentive to keep reading. Having been to both Hatteras and Portland, Maine, I did enjoy descriptions of those places in the early 1900s. Think you would have to really be a shipwreck buff to like this one.
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