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Continuing my installment of old and “lost cases” I concentrate on the mysterious disappearance of the yacht Driftwood here. Contemporarily, its disappearance was covered more than most cases of missing vessels. In January 1949 it remained a top news story in Florida. But by the time of the 1970s, it rated only an entry in a list of missing boats in Charles Berlitz’s sequel Without a Trace (1977), a list largely gleaned from his collaborator J. Manson Valentine’s vast archive.
In the 1970s, society was incredibly nostalgic but not retrospective. Societal interest was fixated on “current events” while bemoaning a lost, happier past. Old news is, after all, old cabbage, in the argo of newsmen. Approach to the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon was no different. Famous cases like Flight 19 merited attention. But something like a missing yacht in 1949 was worthy only of being entered into a list. The disappearance of the Saba Bank in 1974, for instance, was constantly regurgitated, even rating a segment on In Search of . . .with Leonard Nimoy. Yet there was truly more mystery in the disappearance of the Driftwood in 1949. Piracy and hijacking are indeed inferred in the disappearance of the Saba Bank, but in 1949 there were no such worries. The 40-foot Driftwood with a noteworthy crew aboard vanished without trace or reason.
I enter the case here in my series of old and forgotten but significant cases for irony sake. To my chagrin, even though I have added upwards of 100 cases to the litany, I had to accept that cases made famous during the hype and hyperbole of the 1970s remain “reexamined” to this today in new episodes of “reality TV.” By the standards of economic rehash, they have cachet. But in my search I’m interested in the substance of mystery. . . and where it can lead us.
So let us go back in time.
To follow the spirit imbued into the case by the south Florida newspapers, I begin with the praise of the crew’s standing. Preeminent among the 5 men was Nashville manufacturer Logan Eisele. He was the owner and developer of Dania Beach Yacht Basin. Along with him was fellow Nashville “prominent “ physician Dr. Albert Sullivan. They joined with local friends “pioneer” Dania, Florida, real estate and insurance broker A.M. Labree, and Dania building inspector Paul Heckert. The owner  and captain of the Driftwood was a Hollywood, Florida, car dealer John A. Pellett.
The Driftwood was a nice 39-foot cabin cruiser. From the looks of it an Owens or Wheeler. Fully loaded with fishing equipment and supplies, Pellett skipper’d the vessel out of the Dania yacht basin (developed by Eisele) on the night of Friday, January 14, 1949, and they headed to Bimini, only 50 miles offshore.
An photo of Driftwood, reproduced in the newspapers.
For those who know the geography of the Triangle, Bimini is the gateway to the Bahamas from Florida. It is perfectly situated. It is far enough from the tumultuous conveyor belt of the Gulf Stream to allow boats to coast in the shallow waters and still be close enough to partake of the deep sea fishing that comes with this unique highway in the sea.
The Driftwood was expected at Bimini Saturday morning and was  expected to return Tuesday the 18th.
The old ad shows a sedan cruiser which approximates the Driftwood, though the actual yacht was larger.
Wednesday (17th) the Dania dockmaster Lincoln Frost was worried. He discovered a Chalk Flying service ferry plane was going to Bimini. He asked the pilot to check on the status of the Driftwood since it was supposed to have been back the day before. There the pilot learned from the dockmaster (and it was confirmed by the Bimini commissioner) the cruiser had never been there. Upon returning Thursday, he told Frost.
John Alexander Pellett, captain and owner of Driftwood.
By Friday the 21st there was alarm at Dania. There had been no sign of the vessel. Frost, who knew the men aboard, boarded a plane in Miami and personally started a search. The Coast Guard was notified and so was the British Colonial government in the Bahamas. All inter-island boats were put on the alert to watch for the vessel. By Friday night six US Coast Guard and 1 Navy aircraft plus Frost’s private plane were searching.
Relying on the Chalk Flying service pilot’s report, the searchers naturally scoured the narrowed Gulf Stream in between Florida and Bimini. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. That’s a 90 mile per day drift northward. The vessel, presumably, hadn’t altered its course and headed to another island. Therefore it or its debris had been drifting for a week. The search went as far north as Brunswick, Georgia.
“An immediate and far flung search was thrown into high gear and has been steadily intensified as the island group and east coast shoreline was scanned  thoroughly with no evidence of the missing craft discovered.” (Fort Lauderdale News)
An early (and not very good) passport photo of Logan Eisele.
The possibility the cabin cruiser went elsewhere rang true when a phone call came in from Nashville. A Nashville friend of Logan Eisele informed the Coast Guard that Eisele had said he intended to fish around Memory Rock, which is far north of Bimini and Grand Bahama.
On January 22, the Coast Guard and official searchers stood down due to bad weather. However, 2 private planes continued on their own. Lincoln Frost piloted one, and Logan Eisele Jr. had come from Nashville and was flying the other plane in search of his father. Landing after a fruitless search, Eisele Jr. put up a $1,000 reward  through the Broward Co. Sheriff’s Office as an incentive for searchers to continue on their own.
Fellow Nashville friend of Logan Eisele, Dr. Albert Sullivan
A clue spurred hope when the dockmaster of Daytona Beach, Captain Tom Joynes, called Dania police chief Monte Smith to report he had overheard a conversation between 2 shrimp boats off the coast. One was reporting to the other the sighing of a 35 + foot yacht having trouble with its engine. It would start and stop, apparently heading southward. The location was 50 miles southeast of Cape Canaveral. The Fort Lauderdale News does not state the date that Joynes overheard the conversation. But the location off Cape Canveral could be explained by the drift of the Gulf Stream, depending on when the yacht had been sighted by the shrimper.
Although Coast Guard Miami could not confirm this conversation and the time at which it occurred, an aircraft did leave Fort Pierce to go look for any disabled craft in the area. It was soon joined by Frost and Eisele Jr’s plane.
There was no immediate worry about supplies aboard the vessel. T.W. Palmer, also  of Dania and a friend of the men aboard, said there was enough food and water for a month. (Miami Herald)
A.M. (Albert Marshall) “Burt” LaBree
As time goes by, of course, the news reaches out, sometimes far out, for explanations and angles. On January 23, the Miami Herald reports that E.M. Christian, a “garageman” of Dania, was supposed to sail with them (as a grunt) but had decided not to go. He had helped stock the boat and had a drink with the men before they left.
“Christian thinks that the boat might have caught fire. He said he smelled strong gasoline fumes in the bilge and recalled Pellett had only recently installed a new gasoline stove.
Others think the craft became disabled and drifted north in the strong Gulf Stream. The search was extended to the North Carolina coast on that theory.”
A collective 500 fishing vessels from Jacksonville to the Carolinas had been notified to be on the lookout. Interestingly, the Miami Herald groped for some explanation to maintain hope, declaring the boat may be at a small river in the Bahamas— it was a  known fishing spot— though it does not name it or the island.
Paul Heckert, Dania building inspector.
“Families of the missing men still held out hope but in the minds of experienced boatmen along the coast, that hope was growing dim. Another mystery of the sea appeared in the making.”
And indeed the Miami Herald’s dramatic ending was prescient. No trace was found of the Driftwood. The search, which had reached as far north as Delaware, was discontinued on January 29. A minor search would continue 200 miles off St. Augustine where what appeared to be some “debris” (flotsam) had been sighted.
Engine failure was actually very unlikely. T.W. Palmer had clarified that the vessel had two engines and even an outboard for emergency purposes. The possibility the Driftwood was the cabin cruiser turning over its sputtering engine off Cape Canaveral is thin.
Yet there are indirect factors which may have contributed to the disappearance. Most of the search craft potentially available were actually busy searching for any sign of the missing British South American Airways airliner Star Ariel, which had vanished on a flight to Kingston, Jamaica, from Bermuda.
However, the principle intangible is this: the location and timing of whatever happened is really not known. The Driftwood, presumably, disappeared the very first night, never having arrived at Bimini Saturday the 15th. But this is a big presumption. T.W. Palmer also clarified that the vessel carried a receiving radio, but could not transmit, so that Driftwood would have no way of updating anybody on its position. Obviously, it couldn’t send an S.O.S either.
Red line is Dania to Bimini. Yellow line is Dania to Memory Rock. Ignore the yellow thumb tacks— they are in my system for another case, the Southern Districts.
Weather would not have been a problem, not between Dania and Bimini anyway. Whichever direction the Driftwood went, the night of January 14 is the final date of certainty. This would, 7 years later, be the date given for the death of the men aboard when their families petitioned the court to declare them dead. When they did so, newspapers declared: “Court Petition Recalls Great Sea Mystery.” As late as 1965, the case found remembrance in Bill Moake’s article touching on 37 Broward county residents who had vanished. The December 1964 case of the Dottie, which also left Dania Yacht Basin for Bimini and vanished as of that date inspired the retrospective on the Driftwood. Thereafter the boat and its 5 men simply vanished again, ignored largely unto this day.
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