I read about this story and was fasinated. I feel a strange sense of horror at the thought that people just disappear never to be heard from again. What an aweful death.
I pulled this article from Wikipedia
The ship and her desertionThe Mary Celeste was a 103-
foot, 282-
ton brigantine. Originally built as the Amazon in
Spencer's Island,
Nova Scotia, in
1861, the ship seemingly had bad luck and, due to numerous misadventures, had changed hands several times. She became the Mary Celeste in
1869.
On
November 7,
1872, under the command of
Captain Benjamin Briggs, the ship picked up a cargo of industrial alcohol shipped by Meissner Ackermann & Coin in
New York City and set sail for
Genoa,
Italy. In addition to the crew of seven, she carried the captain and two passengers: the Captain's wife, Sarah E. Briggs (née Cobb), and two-year-old daughter, Sophia Matilda, making 10 people in all.
On
December 4,
1872 (some reports give
December 5, due to a lack of standard time zones in the
19th century), the Mary Celeste was sighted by the Dei Gratia, commanded by Captain David Reed Morehouse, who knew Captain Briggs. The Dei Gratia had left New York harbor only seven days after the Mary Celeste. Dei Gratia's crew observed her for two hours and concluded that she was drifting, though she was flying no distress signals. Oliver Deveau, the Chief Mate of the Dei Gratia, led a party in a small boat to board the Mary Celeste. He reported finding only one operable pump, with a lot of water between decks and three and a half feet of water in the hold. He reported that "the whole ship was a thoroughly wet mess". The ship seemed otherwise to be in good condition, but no one was aboard.
The forehatch and the
lazarette were both open, the clock was not functioning and the compass was destroyed. The
sextant and
chronometer were missing, suggesting the ship had been deliberately abandoned. The only
lifeboat appeared to have been intentionally launched rather than torn away. There were mysterious bloodstains along 3 railings, and unexplained scratches along one railing. Perhaps most mysterious of all, a sword was hidden under the Captain's bed, some say bloodied, though the official inquiry stated that the red stains were rust.
The cargo of 1700
barrels of
alcohol was intact, though when it was eventually unloaded in Genoa, nine barrels were noted as being empty. A six-month supply of food and water was aboard. All of the ship's papers except the captain's
logbook were missing. The last log entry was dated
November 24 and placed her 100 miles west of the
Azores. The last entry on the ship's slate showed her as having reached the island of St Mary in the Azores on November 25th.
The crew of the Dei Gratia split in two to sail the Mary Celeste to
Gibraltar where, during a hearing, the judge praised the crew of the Dei Gratia for their courage and skill. However, the admiralty court officer
Frederick Solly Flood turned the hearings from a simple salvage claim into almost a trial of the men of the Dei Gratia, whom Flood suspected of foul play. In the end, the court did award prize money to the crew, but the sum was much less than it should have been, as "punishment" for alleged wrongdoing which the court could not prove.
The recovered ship was used for 12 years by a variety of owners before being loaded up with boots and cat food by her last captain who attempted to sink her, apparently to claim insurance money. The plan did not work as the ship refused to sink having been run up on the
Rochelois Reef in
Haiti. The remains of the ship were discovered on
August 9,
2001, by an expedition headed by author
Clive Cussler (representing the
National Underwater and Marine Agency) and
Canadian film producer
John Davis (president of
ECO-NOVA Productions of Canada).
The fate of the crew and passengers
None of the Mary Celeste's crew or passengers were ever found. Their fate may never be known, and
rumors abound. Speculation has indicated everything from
mutiny, to the
Bermuda Triangle, to
pirates, to
space aliens. Mutiny seems to have some support among enthusiasts of the incident, but is dismissed by most authorities. Both the captain and the crew had strong backgrounds, and there is little to indicate mutiny. No reasonable inquiry includes "
Bermuda Triangle" speculation, as the ship's course would not have taken it through that area. Pirates would not have left a seaworthy ship and its cargo adrift on the open seas. The idea of extraterrestrial responsibility is doubted by the majority of the scientific and historic community.
In early
1873 it was reported that two lifeboats were grounded in
Spain, one containing a body and an American flag, the other containing five bodies. It has been alleged that these could have been the remains of the crew of the Mary Celeste. This has not been confirmed as the identities of the bodies were apparently never investigated.
Speculation on the Mary Celeste Dozens of theories have been proposed to explain the mystery of the vanished crew and passengers, ranging from the mundane and plausible, to the fantastic.
The most plausible theories are based on the barrels of alcohol. Briggs had never hauled such a dangerous cargo and did not trust it. Nine barrels leaking would cause a build up of vapor in the hold. Historian Conrad Byer believed that Captain Briggs ordered the hold to be opened. There was a violent rush of fumes and then steam. Captain Briggs believed the ship was about to explode and ordered everyone into the lifeboat. In his haste, he failed to properly secure the lifeboat to the ship with a strong towline. The wind picked up and blew the ship away from them. The occupants of the lifeboat either drowned or drifted out to sea to die of hunger, thirst and exposure.
A refinement of this theory was proposed in 2005 by German historian Eigel Wiese. At his suggestion scientists at
University College London created a scale construction of the ship's hold to test the theory of ignition of the vapor from the volatile cargo of alcohol. Using butane as the fuel and paper cubes as the barrels, the hold was sealed and the vapor ignited. The force of the explosion blew the hold doors open and shook the scale model, which was about the size of a coffin. However both ethanol and methanol burn at a relatively low temperature. A minimal spark is needed, for example from two metal objects rubbing together. None of the paper cubes were damaged, nor even left with scorch marks. This theory may explain the remaining cargo found intact and the fracture on the ships rail, possibly by one of the hold doors. This burning of the alcohol vapor in the hold would have been awesome and perhaps enough to scare the crew into lowering the boat, but the flames would not have been hot enough to have left burn marks. A frayed rope trailing in the water behind the boat is suggested to be evidence that the crew remained attached to the ship hoping that the emergency would pass. The ship was abandoned when under full sail and a storm was recorded shortly after. It is possible that the rope to the lifeboat parted because of the force from the ship under full sail. A small boat in a storm would not have fared as well as the Mary Celeste.
Some people theorize that the alcohol was to blame for the crew's disappearances, but for a different reason. Some believe that the crew of the Mary Celeste tried to break into the hold and tried to drink the mass quantities of alcohol and betrayed and murdered Captain Briggs in the process, and later stole a lifeboat. This theory, however, is highly improbable. The alcohol being hauled by the Mary Celeste was of an impure quality (which the crew would have known) and was not fit for human consumption.
Other theories have suggested there was a mutiny among the crew who murdered a tyrannical Briggs and his family then escaped in the lifeboat. However, Briggs, a New England Puritan, was known as a very religious, just and fair man. He was not the kind of Captain to provoke his crew to mutiny. First Mate, Albert Richardson had served for three years in the American Civil War before returning to sea, and the rest of the crew also had excellent reputations.
Another theory is that the ship encountered a
waterspout, a
tornado-like storm with a funnel cloud that occurs at sea. In such a case, it is suggested, the water surrounding the boat may, in being sucked upwards, have given the impression that the Mary Celeste was
sinking. It would explain why the Mary Celeste was soaking wet when discovered by the crew of the Dei Gratia, and a mass panic amongst the crew during such an occasion would probably explain the bloodstains, the scratched railing, and the broken compass found on the Mary Celeste, as well as the missing lifeboat. A further theory is that a
seaquake panicked the crew into abandoning ship. However, mariners generally agree that abandoning ship is an extreme measure.
Other, more outlandish speculation is common, with commentators positing the involvement of
UFOs or
paranormal activity (such as a connection with the
Bermuda Triangle), though the ship was far from the latter location.
The story in popular culture Derelict ships were not completely unknown (e.g. the
San Demetrio) but the sensationalisation by Solly Flood and then by
Arthur Conan Doyle created the Mary Celeste myth. In
1884 Doyle published a story entitled "
J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", part of the book
The Captain of the Polestar. Doyle's story drew very heavily on the original incident but included a considerable amount of
fiction and called the ship the Marie Céleste. Much of this story's fictional content, and the incorrect name, have come to dominate popular accounts of the incident, and were even published as fact by several newspapers. It was said that their tea was still warm and breakfast was cooking when the ship was discovered; these are fictional details from Doyle's story. In reality the last entry in the ship's log was eleven days before the discovery of the empty ship.
Read more about J. Habakuk Jepson's statement
