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FILE 084 · VOL XV · The Crew Is Still Aboard
306 Men Vanished at Sea. Their Radio Still Calls In.
Only God and the sea know where she went. One of them has started to talk.
Based on: The USS Cyclops
Intake record
| Recovered from | Basement of a former Coast Guard radio station, Virginia Beach |
|---|---|
| Contents | A ham radio logbook (2019 to 2023), a reel of audio tape, a 1918 Navy telegram in a picture frame |
| Finder | Gloria Pettaway, the radio operator's daughter |
| Status | USS Cyclops vanished in 1918 and has never been found. The transmissions in this file are not on record. |
Recovered file
On March 4, 1918, the US Navy cargo ship Cyclops left the island of Barbados in the Caribbean, bound for Baltimore. [1] She was one of the biggest ships in the Navy, a collier built to carry coal, and on this trip she was carrying something heavier. Nearly 11,000 tons of manganese ore, used to make steel for the war. [2]
She had 306 people aboard. [3]
She never arrived.
No distress call was ever received. No wreckage was ever found. No bodies. No lifeboats. No oil slick. Nothing. [4] One of the largest ships in the US Navy simply vanished somewhere along a route that ships traveled every day.
The Navy investigated for years. They considered a storm, a structural failure from the heavy cargo, an attack by a German submarine, even mutiny. The ship had been overloaded, and one of her two engines had been damaged. [5] Her captain, George Worley, was known as a strange and difficult man.
They never found out what happened. It remains the largest loss of life in US Navy history not involving combat. [6]
President Woodrow Wilson is reported to have said: "Only God and the sea know what happened to that great ship." [7]
Earl Pettaway had been a radio man his whole life. Navy radioman in Korea. Coast Guard operator for thirty years. Ham radio hobbyist in his basement for twenty after that. When he died at eighty-eight, his daughter Gloria found his logbook on the desk, open, his pencil lying in the fold.
The early pages were normal ham radio. Call signs from Japan, Brazil, Finland. Weather. Signal strength.
Then, in October 2019, a new entry.
7:52 p.m. 500 kHz. Morse. Weak. Old operator style, very slow. Station identifies itself as CYCLOPS.
Gloria did not know what that meant. Her father's next note explained it.
USS Cyclops. Navy collier. Lost March 1918 with 306 aboard.
Joke or ghost. Either way, I answered.
He answered every night after that. The logbook was full of it. The slow, old-style Morse code, always at 7:52 p.m. Always on 500 kHz, a frequency ships stopped using for distress calls decades ago. [8]
Position follows.
Heavy seas.
Cargo shifting.
Starboard engine out.
Taking water.
And then, three weeks in, the messages changed.
Who is there.
Earl had answered with his name and his call sign.
Earl. We are cold.
Earl. Where are we.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 084 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
Built on real, cited records. The stories are dramatized. Disclaimer · If you are in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988.