Mary Celeste

An 1861 painting of the Amazon (later renamed Mary Celeste) by an unknown artist (perhaps Honoré Pellegrin)

File:MaryCeleste 1873February26.gif

American report of the Mary Celeste

The Mary Celeste (sometimes incorrectly spelled Marie Celeste) was a brigantine discovered in the Atlantic Ocean unmanned and under sail heading towards the Strait of Gibraltar in 1872. The fate of the crew is the subject of much speculation; theories range from alcoholic fumes to underwater earthquakes, along with a large number of fictional accounts. The Mary Celeste is often described as the archetypal ghost ship.

Origins

The Mary Celeste was a 103-foot (31 m), 282-ton brigantine. She was built in 1861 as the Amazon at Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia, Canada and was the first large vessel built in this community.

The ship was thought by some to have had bad luck due to numerous misadventures. Her first captain died at the very beginning of her maiden voyage and she also collided with another vessel in the English Channel. However, after this rough beginning, the brigantine had several profitable and uneventful years under her Nova Scotian owners until she was driven ashore in a storm in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia in 1867. She was salvaged and subsequently sold to American owners who made substantial changes and renamed her Mary Celeste in 1869.

Fateful voyage

An engraving of the Mary Celeste as she was found abandoned.

On November 5, 1872, under the command of Captain Benjamin Briggs, the ship picked up a cargo of commercial alcohol shipped by Meissner Ackermann & Co. and set sail from Staten Island, New York to Genoa, Italy. In addition to the captain and a crew of seven, she carried two passengers, the captain's wife, Sarah E. Briggs (maiden name Cobb), and their two-year-old daughter, Sophia Matilda, making 10 people in total.

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.

According to the account given by the crew of the Dei Gratia, the ship was observed for two hours, under full sail and heading toward the Strait of Gibraltar. They 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 found the ship in generally good condition, though he reported that "the whole ship was a thoroughly wet mess". There was only one operational pump, with a lot of water between decks and three and a half feet (1.1 m) of water in the hold. The forehatch and the lazarette were both open, the clock was not functioning and the compass was destroyed. The sextant and marine chronometer were missing, and the only lifeboat appeared to have been intentionally launched rather than torn away, suggesting the ship had been deliberately abandoned. Popular stories of untouched breakfasts with cups of tea on the cabin table, washing hung out to dry, a cat found asleep on top of the gallery locker and a bowl of a half-eaten apple pie are wholly without substance.

The cargo of 1,701 barrels of alcohol was intact, although when it was eventually unloaded in Genoa, nine barrels were found to be 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 (160 km) west of the Portuguese islands of the Azores. The last entry on the ship's slate showed her as having reached the island of Santa Maria in the Azores on November 25.

Crewmen from the Dei Gratia sailed the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar where, during a hearing, the judge praised them for their courage and skill. However, admiralty court officer Frederick Solly Flood turned the hearings from a simple salvage claim into a de facto 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 suspected, but unproved, wrongdoing. Captain Morehouse was awarded one fifth of the ship and cargo.

None of the Mary Celeste's crew or passengers were found, and it is unlikely that the events leading to their disappearance will ever be known with certainty.

Later history and wreck

The recovered ship was used for 12 years by a variety of owners.

During January 1885, she was loaded with an over-insured cargo of scrap, including boots and cat food, by her last captain who attempted to sink her to claim insurance money. The plan did not work as the ship refused to sink after having been run up on the Rochelois Reef in Haiti and an insurance investigation revealed the fraud.

On August 9, 2001, an expedition headed by author Clive Cussler (representing the National Underwater and Marine Agency) and Canadian film producer John Davis announced that they had found the remains of the brigantine off the Isle de Gonave in Haiti. Archaeologist James P. Delgado identified the wreck as Mary Celeste based on a survey of the large bay and by analyzing vessel fastenings, ballast, timber, and evidence of the fire that burned the stranded hulk. This evidence matched the wreck with historical accounts of Mary Celeste. Other researchers have, however, disputed this claim. Scott St George of the Geological Survey of Canada and the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona analyzed samples from wood fragments recovered from the site in an effort to reconstruct sufficient tree ring data for dating. Based on this, St. George felt that the wood was cut from trees still living at least a decade after the ship sank.

Speculation and theories

Many theories have been proposed to explain the mystery:

• The first theory proposed during the admiralty court proceedings, was that the Mary Celeste was the victim of an act of piracy and the crew was murdered.

• The crew of the Dei Gratia was suspected as culprits, who murdered those on board and then fabricated the story of the ghost ship with the aim of securing the salvage rights.

• Of the theories consistent with the account given by the crew of the Dei Gratia, the most plausible are based on the barrels of alcohol. Briggs had never hauled such a dangerous cargo before and did not trust it. Nine leaking barrels would have caused a buildup of vapor in the hold. Historian Conrad Byers believed that Captain Briggs ordered the hold to be opened, resulting in a violent rush of fumes and then steam. Believing the ship was about to explode, Briggs ordered everyone into the lifeboat, failing, in his haste, to properly secure it 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.
  First put forth by the ship's owner, James Winchester, this theory is perhaps the most widely accepted explanation for the disappearance. Even paranormally-inclined writers like Richard Winer and Colin Wilson consider this the most likely solution to the Celeste mystery. A refinement of this theory was proposed in 2005 by German historian Eigel Wiese. At his suggestion, scientists at University College London created a crude reconstruction of the ship's hold to test the theory of the alcohol vapor's ignition. 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. Ethanol burns at a relatively low temperature with a flash point of 13°C or 55.4°F. A minimal spark is needed, for example from two metal objects rubbing together. None of the paper cubes was damaged, nor even left with scorch marks. This theory may explain the remaining cargo being found intact and the fracture on the ship's rail, possibly by one of the hold doors. This burning in the hold would have been violent 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 ship is suggested to be evidence that the crew remained attached to the ship hoping that the emergency would pass. The ship was abandoned while 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. This is perhaps the simplest and most convincing explanation expounded in a recent investigation and television documentary that both featured and satisfied one of the decendents of the original Ship's Captain.

• During the admiralty court proceeding Solly Flood, proposed that the crew, after consuming the alcohol from the kegs that were recovered empty, murdered the Briggs' in a drunken mutiny. The mutinous crew are then presumed to escaped in the missing lifeboat. However, the captain was a believer in abstinence and unlikely to tolerate drinking on board, or a crew inclined to drink alcohol on board.

• Another theory has suggested there was a mutiny among the crew who murdered a tyrannical Briggs and his family, then escaped in the lifeboat. However, Briggs had no history to suggest he was the type of captain to provoke his crew to mutiny. First Mate Albert Richardson and the rest of the crew also had excellent reputations.

• An alternate scenario has the ship encountering 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 ship 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 among the crew during such an occasion would probably explain the scratched railing and the broken compass, as well as the missing lifeboat. A further theory offered by Captain David Williams is that a seaquake erupted below the ship and jarred open nine barrels of alcohol (~450 gallons), which leaked into the bilge. The earthquake also dislodged the flue for the hot stove on deck and caused embers from the fire to drift into the rigging. Smelling the alcohol in full view of the burning embers caused the crew to panic and abandon the ship. The ship sailed on without the crew. The crew then decided to try to catch the ship and sail off after her in the small sailing dingy, but they never caught up with the Mary Celeste and died at sea.

• Yet another theory claims that ergotamine from contaminated flour aboard the ship which could have led all its occupants to throw themselves overboard. However, the sailors from the Dei Gratia were not affected.

• Brian Hicks and Stanley Spicer in recent books revived the theory that Captain Briggs opened the hold to ventilate it while becalmed. The release of noxious alcoholic fumes from the hold might have panicked the captain and crew into abandoning ship for the yawl tied to the halyard by an inadequate rope. If this broke with a weather change and consequent wind, then it could easily have explained the sudden and mysterious exit from the ship. Hicks claims that the cargo was a different material, methanol, which is toxic. The records do not support this.

The story in popular culture

The Mary Celeste is notable in part for the amount of interest that it has generated as an icon for writers of fiction.

Conan Doyle

Main article: J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement

The fictional depiction by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is credited as creating the Mary Celeste myth. In 1884, Conan 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.

There is a possibility that Doyle made reference to the mystery in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories. In "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire" (in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes), Watson notes that Holmes's reference files mention one "Mathilda Briggs". Holmes explains that this name is the name of a ship involved in the case of "the Giant Rat of Sumatra", which the detective feels the world is not ready to know about. The name of Captain and Mrs. Briggs infant daughter was "Sophia Matilda Briggs". This can be a reference. However, in the 1889 poisoning trial of Florence Maybrick in Liverpool, England, one of the witnesses against her was also named "Mathilda Briggs". Conan Doyle, an avid student of crime, might have been refering to the latter, not the former.

Abel Fosdyk papers

Main article: Abel Fosdyk papers

Fosdyk's story was published in Strand Magazine, a monthly publication of works of fiction. It does not match the known facts regarding the Mary Celeste.

Other fictional accounts

Howard Pease's 1934 Tod Moran mystery, The Ship Without a Crew, was inspired by the story of the Mary Celeste.

The story was fictionalized in a now rare 1935 British film called The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (also known as Phantom Ship), which starred Bela Lugosi.

In 1949, the comic book Adventures Into the Unknown!, No. 5, June-July, by Edvard Moritz, Charlie Sultan and various, published by B. & I. Publishing Co., Inc., featured a story based on the Mary Celeste entitled "The Ghostly Crew," currently available through the Wowio book service.

The December 27, 1955 broadcast of the radio program Suspense presented a fictionalized account of the disappearance where the crew disappeared leaving one man behind (a criminal played by John Dehner). In the epilogue, the host suggests the main character's story was discovered in a bottle washed ashore years later. They also suggest he may have hidden aboard after the ship was found by hanging off the ship by a rope tied to his belt and that the rope and belt (still attached) was later found but it had broken in the middle. Alternatively, the host puts forward a theory that the ship may have beached on a rare and very temporary island that forms from the outflows of an African river. These islands wash away as quickly as they surface.

The Goon Show aired an episode called "The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (Solved)" on November 16, 1954.

The 1956 book The Wreck of the Mary Deare, by Hammond Innes, drew inspiration from the Mary Celeste story.

Numerous episodes of the Star Trek series recycled the central Mary Celeste myth of an abandoned ship found with no crew aboard.

The Doctor Who serial The Chase (1965) suggested that the arrival of time-travelling Daleks caused the terrified crew of the ship to jump overboard.

In 1973, science-fiction author Philip José Farmer penned a novel, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, in which he has two of Jules Verne's most famous characters, Phileas Fogg and Captain Nemo, square off against one another in a scene on board the Mary Celeste.

The 1970s British sci-fi serial Sapphire & Steel suggested in Adventure 1 that, in unseen events set prior to the story, the inter-dimensional operatives were assigned to deal with a time break aboard the Mary Celeste (according to Sapphire, the trigger was an out-of-date ship's log—a nautical souvenir belonging to the Captain), which would have caused the end of time itself. Steel had been forced to send the original ship and crew out of time (and presumably to their deaths); although he left behind a replica of the ship, he unfortunately forgot to replicate the bodies.

The 1973 Thomas Pynchon novel Gravity's Rainbow briefly mentions the ship—though as the "Marie-Celeste"—comparing it to the tunnels of Mittelwerke: "Though found adrift and haunted, full of signs of recent human tenancy, this is not the legendary ship Marie-Celeste—it isn't bounded so neatly..."

Stephen King's story "The Langoliers", from Four Past Midnight, refers to the incident.

Al Stewart, in the song "Life in Dark Water" from the album Time Passages, refers to the vessel, perhaps to imply that another ship (a submarine) has been abandoned.

In Greg Bear's book Eon, published in 1985, there is a reference to the Mary Celeste. "The Stone", a mysterious and empty asteroid (possibly an object from another dimension), arrives in Earth's atmosphere, found to be empty yet references a once-advanced society. A character, Patricia Vasquez, comments that she "feels like she is on the Mary Celeste" when the first exploratory mission is undertaken.

In the 1990 horror-film remake of Night of the Living Dead, a plaque outside the front door of the farmhouse reads "M. Celeste". Director Tom Savini states on the DVD's commentary that this is a reference to the Mary Celeste. Further details include scenes of still-smoldering cigarettes in ashtrays and food still cooking on the stoves, but the residents are missing.

In the 1994 science-fiction novel The Woman Between the Worlds, by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, an Englishman in the year 1898 enters a portal connecting London to an alien world that exists in the same space as Earth but in another dimension. One of the human prisoners on this planet is a European sailor named Volkert; in real life, one crewman who vanished from the Mary Celeste on its final voyage was a Dutchman named Volkert Lorenzen.

An episode of the 1996 series The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest titled "In the Wake of the Mary Celeste" deals with the ship as well.

In the 1999, British movie Guest House Paradiso, starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, a couple come to stay at the hotel, but think for a few moments nobody is there after ringing the reception bell a few times. Richard (Mayall) and Edward (Edmondson), are watching them from the top of the nearby staircase and then eventually descend with Richard bellowing "Good morning!, good morning!, good morning!", before the wife of the couple claimed she thought the hotel for a minute was like the Marie Celeste, due to the lack of people on reception, with Richard then for about five minutes laughing hysterically, with some of the laugher near the end forced deliberately for comedy effect. After a while he writes it down, and then realises what the wife meant by saying, "Sort of implying the sort of hotel, nobody wants to stay".

The song "Sinking", from the 2000 Alabama 3 album La Peste, is about a ship that is stranded at sea after its captain dies of a drug overdose. In the song, the captain's dying words are: "Beware, don't stare at the Mary Celeste, this quest of ours is cursed."

The title of Nurse With Wound's 2003 album Salt Marie Celeste is a reference to Mary Celeste.

In Roger Zelazny's short story "And I Alone Am Escaped to Tell Thee", a seaman escapes from the accursed Flying Dutchman, only to be rescued by the Mary Celeste.

Dean Koontz wrote a novel, Phantoms, that explains mass disappearances like the Mary Celeste. In the book, the "Ancient Enemy" is blamed. It lives at the bottom of the ocean and feeds mostly on aquatic life, but every once in a while, it surfaces and consumes large quantities of animals, including the crews of ships.

In Babylon 5, a transport ship named the Marie Celeste can be heard mentioned in background public announcements. Specifically, it is the ship that transports Thomas (aka Jinxo) off the station in the episode "Grail".

The Mary Celeste features in Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales by Hideyuki Kikuchi. D escapes from a dimensional prison, causing a tear in the time-space continuum. This causes many disappearances across history before it seals itself, the crew of the Mary Celeste being among them.

In the 2001 SciFi-channel movie Lost Voyage, Judd Nelson briefly recounts the tale of the Mary Celeste.

The 2002 movie Ghost Ship makes a lengthy and mostly inaccurate reference to the ship.

In Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga, an alien spaceship which crash landed on the planet Far Away is named the Mary Celeste.

In an episode of the TV series Space:1999, "Guardian of Piri", first broadcast in 1975, astronaut Alan Carter boards an abandoned Eagle spacecraft adrift in space and describes her as the Mary Celeste.

Timeline

• 1861 – Amazon built in Nova Scotia, Canada
• 1867 – Driven ashore in a storm in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia
• 1869 – Salvaged, repaired, and sold to an American owner. Renamed Mary Celeste
• 1872 – Set sail from New York City to Genoa, Italy on November 7
• 1872 – Last entry in captain's logbook dated November 24
• 1872 – Last entry on ship's slate dated November 25
• 1872 – Ship found abandoned on December 4
• 1885 – Ship wrecked on reef captained by Parker on January 3
• 2001 – Remains of wreck re-discovered off coast of Haiti (disputed)

Ship's manifest

The crew and passengers are listed in the ship's log as:

Crew

Name	Status	Nationality	Age
Benjamin S. Briggs	Captain	American	38
Albert C. Richardson	Mate	American	28
Andrew Gilling	2nd Mate	Danish	25
Edward W. Head	Steward & Cook	American	23
Volkert Lorenson	Seaman	German	29
Arian Martens	Seaman	German	35
Boy Lorenson	Seaman	German	23
Gottlieb Gondeschall	Seaman	German	23

Passengers

Name	Status	Age
Sarah Elizabeth Briggs	Captain's wife	30
Sophia Matilda Briggs	Captain's daughter	2

• 
  Captain Benjamin Briggs
• 
  First mate Albert Richardson
• 
  Sarah Briggs
• 
  Sophia Briggs

Further reading

• The Saga of the Mary Celeste: Ill-Fated Mystery Ship, Stanley T. Spicer - ISBN 088999546X
• The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved, Lawrence David Kusche - ISBN 0-87975-971-2
• Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and her Missing Crew, Brian Hicks - ISBN 0-345-46391-9
• The "Mary Celeste", John Maxwell - ISBN 87-15-01118-6

External links

• The Mary Celeste Pictures and Video
• http://www.deafwhale.com/maryceleste/ (home page of the Seaquake Theory)
• http://www.maryceleste.net
• http://www.occultopedia.com/m/mary_celeste.htm
• Project Gutenberg – The Captain of the Polestar by Arthur Conan Doyle
• BBC News story about the discovery of the wreck
• NUMA site with photos and video of the wreck
• J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement by Arthur Conan Doyle Learn about Conan Doyle's short story based on the Mary Celeste.
• straightdope on the Mary Celeste'
• Film "The Phantom Ship" (1936) on the Internet Archive
• The True Story of the Mary Celeste, Smithsonian Networks