On March 14, 1942, Chris Gaskill was walking the beach on the
south end of Ocracoke Island when he spotted a rectangular
object washing up with the surf. He decided to investigate and
discovered it was a large frame that held an official‑looking
certificate. To Gaskill, it looked like other documents may have
once been inside the frame, but now there was only one. He
examined it more closely. The document was a license issued by
the U.S. Department of Commerce to certify the qualifications of
a third mate aboard an ocean or coastwise steam vessel. When
Gaskill read the name of the person to whom the license was
issued, he was at first puzzled then gravely worried. "How did
this end up here," he might have wondered. The license belonged
to his cousin, Ocracoke native son Jim Baughm Gaskill, third
mate on the SS Caribsea, a 250-foot-long steam freighter, which
was operated by a New York shipping company. Chris Gaskill
hadn't known of his cousin's whereabouts since the war began,
but finding the license washed-u