Mary Celeste

This article is about the ship. For the album, see Mary Celeste (album).

An 1861 painting of Mary Celeste as Amazon, by an unknown artist
History
United Kingdom
Name	Amazon
Port of registry	Parrsboro, Nova Scotia
Builder	Joshua Dewis, Spencer's Island Nova Scotia
Launched	May 1861
Fate	Ran aground Glace Bay, Nova Scotia 1867, salvaged and sold to American owners
History
United States
Name	Amazon (1868) Mary Celeste (1869–85)
Port of registry	Principally New York or Boston
Builder	Rebuilt 1872, New York (yard not named)
Fate	Intentionally wrecked off Haiti, 1885.
General characteristics
Tonnage	198.42 gross tons as built 1861 282.28 gross tons after rebuild 1872
Length	99.3 ft (30.3 m) as built, 103 ft (31 m) after rebuild
Beam	22.5 ft (6.9 m) as built, 25.7 after rebuild
Depth	11.7 ft (3.6 m) as built, 16.2 ft (4.9 m) after rebuild
Decks	1, as built, 2 after rebuild
Sail plan	Brigantine

The Mary Celeste was an American merchant brigantine that was discovered on December 4, 1872, off the Azores Islands, sailing with no one on board and with her lifeboat missing. When found by the Canadian brigantine Dei Gratia, Mary Celeste was in a disheveled but seaworthy condition, under partial sail; the last log entry was ten days earlier. She had left New York for Genoa a month previously, and was well provisioned. Her cargo of denatured alcohol was apparently undisturbed, as were the captain's and crew's personal belongings. None of those who had been on board were seen or heard from again.

Mary Celeste was launched under British registration as Amazon, in 1861. She transferred to American ownership and registration in 1868, when she acquired her new name, and thereafter sailed uneventfully until her 1872 voyage. At the salvage hearings in Gibraltar following her recovery, the court's officers entertained theories of foul play, including mutiny by Mary Celeste's crew, piracy by the Dei Gratia crew or others, and conspiracy to carry out insurance or salvage fraud. No evidence was found to support these theories, but unresolved suspicions led to a relatively low salvage award.

The inconclusive nature of the hearings helped to foster decades of speculation as to the nature of the mystery, with no general consensus, and the story has repeatedly been complicated by false detail and fictionalization. Hypotheses that have been advanced include, besides human perfidy, the effects of alcohol fumes from the cargo, submarine earthquakes (seaquakes), waterspouts, attacks by giant squid, and paranormal intervention.

After the Gibraltar hearings, Mary Celeste continued in service under new owners. In 1885, her captain deliberately wrecked her off the coast of Haiti, as part of an attempted insurance fraud. The story of her 1872 abandonment has been dramatized and fictionalized many times, in novels, plays and films, and the name of the ship has become synonymous with unexplained desertion.

Early history

Amazon

Spencer's Island, photographed in 2011

The keel of the future Mary Celeste was laid in late 1860 at the shipyard of Joshua Dewis in the village of Spencer's Island, on the shores of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. The ship was constructed of locally felled timber, with two masts, and was rigged as a brigantine; she was carvel-built, with the hull planking flush rather than overlapping. She was launched on May 18, 1861, given the name Amazon, and registered at Parrsboro, the nearest port of registration, on June 10, 1861. Her documents indicated that she was 99.3 feet (30.3 m) in length, 25.5 feet (7.8 m) broad, with a depth of 11.7 feet (3.6 m), and with a gross tonnage of 198.42. She was originally owned by a local consortium of nine people, headed by Dewis; among the partners was Robert McLellan, the ship's first captain.

For her maiden voyage in June 1861, Amazon sailed to Five Islands, to take on a cargo of timber for passage across the Atlantic to London. After supervising the ship's loading, Captain McLellan fell ill; his condition worsened, and Amazon returned to Spencer's Island where McLellan died on June 19. John Nutting Parker took over as captain, and resumed McLellan's voyage. In the course of this journey, Amazon encountered further misadventures: she collided with fishing equipment in the narrows off Eastport, Maine, and after leaving London, she ran into and sank a brig in the English Channel.

Parker remained in command for two years, during which Amazon worked mainly in the West Indies trade. She crossed the Atlantic to France in November 1861, and in Marseille was the subject of a painting, possibly by Honoré de Pellegrin, a well-known maritime artist of the Marseilles School. Parker left the ship in 1863, and William Thompson assumed the captaincy, remaining in command until 1867. Amazon's mate recalled that during these years, "we went to the West Indies, England and the Mediterranean—what we call the foreign trade. Not a thing unusual happened". In October 1867, at Cape Breton Island, Amazon was driven ashore in a storm, and was so badly damaged that her owners abandoned her as a wreck. On October 15, she was acquired as a derelict by Alexander McBean, of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia.

New owners, new name

Within a month, McBean sold the wreck to a local businessman, who in November 1868, sold it to Richard W. Haines, an American mariner from New York. Haines paid US$1,750 for the wreck, and then spent $8,825 repairing the ship. He made himself her captain, and in December 1868 he registered her with the Collector of Customs in New York as an American vessel, under a new name, Mary Celeste.

In October 1869, the ship was seized by Haines's creditors, and sold to a New York consortium headed by James H. Winchester. During the next three years, the composition of the consortium changed several times, although Winchester retained at least a half-share throughout. There is no record of Mary Celeste's trading activities during this period. Early in 1872, the ship underwent a major refit, costing $10,000, which enlarged her considerably. Her length was increased to 103 feet (31 m), her breadth to 25.7 feet (7.8 m) and her depth to 16.2 feet (4.9 m). Among the structural changes, a second deck was added; an inspector's report refers to extensions to the poop, new transoms and the replacement of many timbers. The work increased the ship's tonnage to 282.28. On October 29, 1872, the consortium comprised Winchester, with six-twelfths; two minor investors with one-twelfth apiece, and the ship's new captain, Benjamin Spooner Briggs, with the remaining four-twelfths.

Captain Briggs and crew

Benjamin Briggs was born in Wareham, Massachusetts on April 24, 1835, one of five sons of a sea captain, Nathan Briggs. All but one of the sons went to sea, two becoming captains in their turn. Benjamin was an observant Christian who read the Bible regularly and would often testify at prayer gatherings. By 1862, the year in which he married his cousin Sarah Elizabeth Cobb, he was in command of the schooner Forest King, on which he and Sarah enjoyed a Mediterranean honeymoon. Two children were born: a son, Arthur, in September 1865, and a daughter, Sophia Matilda, in October 1870.

By the time of Sophia's birth, Briggs had achieved a high standing within his profession. Not long afterwards, he decided to retire from the sea and go into business with his brother Oliver, also a sea captain who had grown tired of the wandering life. They did not proceed with this project, but instead each invested his savings in a share of a ship: Oliver in the Julia A. Hallock, and Benjamin in the Mary Celeste. In October 1872 Benjamin took command of Mary Celeste for what would be her first voyage after her extensive New York refit, to Genoa in Italy. He arranged for his wife and infant daughter to accompany him, while his son, who was of school age, was left at home with his grandmother.

Briggs chose the crew for this voyage with care. The first mate, Albert G. Richardson, was married to a niece of Winchester, and had sailed under Briggs before. The second mate, Andrew Gilling, aged about 25, was Danish in origin although born in New York. The steward, the newly married Edward William Head, was signed on with a personal recommendation from Winchester. The four general seaman were all Germans from the Frisian Islands: the brothers Volkert and Boz Lorenzen, Arian Martens and Gottlieb Goodschaad. A later testimonial would describe them as "peaceable and first-class sailors". In a letter to his mother shortly before the voyage, Briggs declared himself eminently satisfied with ship and crew. Sarah Briggs informed her mother that the crew appeared to be quietly capable, "if they continue as they have begun".

Abandoned

New York

A painting of New York harbor in the 19th century

On October 20, 1872, Briggs arrived at Pier 50 on the East River, New York City, to supervise the loading of the ship's cargo for Genoa—1,701 barrels of poisonous denatured alcohol. A week later, Briggs was joined by his wife and baby daughter. On Sunday, November 3, Briggs wrote to his mother, telling her that he intended to leave on Tuesday, adding that "Our vessel is in beautiful trim and I hope we shall have a fine passage".

On Tuesday morning, November 5, Mary Celeste left Pier 50 and moved into New York Harbor. The weather was uncertain, and Briggs decided to wait for better conditions. He anchored the ship just off Staten Island, where Sarah used the delay to send a final letter to her mother-in-law, in which she wrote: "Tell Arthur I make great dependence on the letters I shall get from him, and will try to remember anything that happens on the voyage which he would be pleased to hear". On November 7, when the weather eased, Mary Celeste left the harbor and went out into the Atlantic.

While Mary Celeste prepared to sail, another brigantine, the Canadian Dei Gratia, lay in nearby Hoboken, New Jersey, awaiting a cargo of petroleum destined for Gibraltar. Her captain, David Morehouse, and his first mate Oliver Deveau, were Nova Scotians, both highly experienced and respected seamen. As captains with common interests, it is likely that Morehouse and Briggs knew each other, if only casually. Some accounts assert that they were close friends who, on the evening before Mary Celeste's departure, dined together, but the evidence for this is limited to a recollection by Morehouse's widow, 50 years after the event. Dei Gratia departed for Gibraltar on November 15, eight days after Mary Celeste, following the same general route.

Derelict

Discovery Position, 4th Dec

Last Log Position, 25th Nov

New York

Genoa

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Location map

At about 1 pm on Wednesday, December 4, 1872 land time (Thursday December 5 sea time), Dei Gratia had reached a position of 38°20'N, 17°15'W, midway between the Azores and the coast of Portugal. As Captain Morehouse came on deck, the helmsman reported a vessel about 6 miles (9.7 km) distant, heading unsteadily towards Dei Gratia. The ship's erratic movements, and the odd set of her sails, led Morehouse to suspect something was wrong. As the vessels drew close, he could see no one on deck, and receiving no reply to his signals, sent Deveau and second mate John Wright to investigate. Having established from the name on her stern that she was the Mary Celeste out of New York, the pair climbed aboard, where they found the ship deserted. The sails, partly set, were in a poor condition, some missing altogether, and much of the rigging was damaged, with ropes hanging loosely over the sides. The main hatch cover was secure, but the fore and lazaret hatches were open, their covers beside them on the deck. The ship's single lifeboat, which had apparently been stowed across the main hatch, was missing, while the binnacle housing the ship's compass had shifted from its place, its glass cover broken. There was about 3.5 feet (1.1 m) of water in the hold, a significant but not alarming amount for a ship this size. A makeshift sounding rod (a device for measuring the amount of water in the hold) was found abandoned on the deck.

The last entry on the ship's daily log, found in the mate's cabin, was dated at 8:00 am on 25 November, nine days earlier. It recorded Mary Celeste's position then as 37°01'N, 25°01'W, off Santa Maria Island in the Azores—nearly 400 nautical miles (740 km) from the point where Dei Gratia encountered her. Deveau saw that the cabin interiors were wet and untidy from water which had entered through doorways and skylights, but were otherwise in reasonable order. In Briggs's cabin, Deveau found personal items scattered about, including a sheathed sword under the bed, but most of the ship's papers, together with the captain's navigational instruments, were missing. Galley equipment was neatly stowed away; there was no food prepared or under preparation, but there were ample provisions in the stores. There were no obvious signs of fire or violence; the evidence indicated an orderly departure from the ship, by means of the missing lifeboat.

Deveau reported these findings to Morehouse, who agreed to bring the derelict into Gibraltar, 600 nautical miles (1,100 km) away. Under maritime law, a salvor could expect a substantial share of the combined value of vessel and cargo, depending on the degree of danger inherent in the salvaging. Dei Gratia's complement of eight was divided between the two vessels; Deveau and two experienced seamen were assigned to Mary Celeste, leaving Morehouse and four others with Dei Gratia. The weather was relatively calm for most of the way to Gibraltar, but with each ship seriously undermanned, progress was slow. Dei Gratia reached Gibraltar on 12 December 1872, and Mary Celeste, which had encountered fog, arrived on the following morning. She was immediately impounded by the vice admiralty court, preparatory to salvage hearings. Deveau wrote to his wife that the ordeal of bringing the ship in was such that "I can hardly tell what I am made of, but I do not care so long as I got in safe. I shall be well paid for the Mary Celeste".

Gibraltar salvage hearings

Gibraltar in the 19th century

The salvage court hearings began in Gibraltar on December 17, 1872, under Sir James Cochrane, the chief justice of Gibraltar. The hearing was conducted by Frederick Solly Flood, attorney-general of Gibraltar who was also Advocate-General and Proctor for the Queen in Her Office of Admiralty. Flood has been described by historians of the Mary Celeste affair as a man "whose arrogance and pomposity were inversely proportional to his IQ", and as "the sort of man who, once he had made up his mind about something, couldn't be shifted". The testimonies of Deveau and Wright convinced Flood unalterably that a crime had been committed, a belief picked up by the New York Shipping and Commercial List on December 21: "The inference is that there has been foul play somewhere, and that alcohol is at the bottom of it".

On December 23, Flood ordered an examination of Mary Celeste, which was carried out by John Austin, Surveyor of Shipping, with the assistance of a diver, Ricardo Portunato. Austin noted cuts on each side of the bow, caused, he thought, by a sharp instrument, and found possible traces of blood on the captain's sword. His report emphasized that the ship did not appear to have been struck by heavy weather, citing a phial of sewing machine oil found upright in its place; Austin did not acknowledge that the phial might have been replaced since the abandonment, nor did the court raise this point. Portunato's report on the hull concluded that the ship had not been involved in a collision or run aground. A further inspection by a group of Royal Naval captains endorsed Austin's opinion that the cuts on the bow had been caused deliberately. They also discovered stains on one of the ship's rails that might have been blood, together with a deep mark possibly caused by an axe. These findings strengthened Flood's suspicions that human wrongdoing rather than natural disaster lay behind the mystery. On January 22, 1873, he sent the reports to the Board of Trade in London, adding his own conclusion that the crew had got at the alcohol (he ignored its non-potability) and murdered the Briggs family and the ship's officers in a drunken frenzy. They had cut the bows to simulate a collision, then fled in the yawl to suffer an unknown fate. Flood thought that Morehouse and his men were hiding something, specifically that Mary Celeste had been abandoned in a more easterly location, and that the log had been doctored. He could not accept that Mary Celeste could have traveled so far while unmanned.

James Winchester arrived in Gibraltar on January 15, to inquire when Mary Celeste might be released to deliver its cargo. Flood demanded a surety of $15,000, money which Winchester did not have. He became aware of rumors that Flood thought he might have deliberately engaged a crew that would kill Briggs and his officers, as part of some conspiracy. On January 29, during a series of sharp exchanges with Flood, Winchester testified to Briggs's high character, and insisted that Briggs would not have abandoned the ship except in extremity. Thereafter, Flood's theories of mutiny and murder received two significant setbacks. First, scientific analysis of the stains found on the sword and elsewhere on the ship concluded that they were not blood. A second blow followed in a report commissioned by Howard Sprague, the American consul in Gibraltar, from Captain Shufeldt of the US Navy. In Shufeldt's view the marks on the bow were not man-made, but came from the natural actions of the sea on the ship's timbers.

With nothing concrete to support his own suspicions, Flood reluctantly released Mary Celeste from the court's jurisdiction on February 25. Two weeks later, with a locally raised crew headed by Captain George Blatchford from Massachusetts, she left Gibraltar for Genoa. The question of the salvage payment was decided on April 8, when Cochrane announced the award: £1,700, or about one-fifth of the total value of ship and cargo. This was far lower than the general expectation—one authority thought that the award should have been twice or even three times that amount, given the level of hazard in bringing the derelict into port. The investigative journalist Macdonald Hastings says that the judge "could scarcely have made a meaner judgement". Cochrane's final words were harshly critical of Morehouse for his decision, earlier in the hearing, to send Dei Gratia under Deveau to deliver its cargo of petroleum—although Morehouse had remained in Gibraltar at the disposal of the court. Cochrane's tone carried an implication of wrongdoing which, says Hicks, ensured that Morehouse and his crew "would be under suspicion in the court of public opinion forever".

Proposed solutions

Foul play

Although the evidence in Gibraltar failed to support Flood's scenario—the murder of Briggs and his officers, either by a drunken crew or perhaps the crew of Dei Gratia—the suspicion of foul play lingered. Insurance fraud on the part of Winchester was briefly suspected, on the grounds of newspaper reports that Mary Celeste had been heavily over-insured. Winchester was able to refute these allegations, and no inquiry was instituted by the insurance companies who held the policies. In 1931 an article in the Quarterly Review suggested that Morehouse could have lain in wait for Mary Celeste, then lured Briggs and his crew aboard Dei Gratia and killed them there. Paul Begg, in his account of the mystery, comments that this theory ignores undisputed facts: Dei Gratia left New York eight days after Mary Celeste, was a slower ship, and would not have caught Mary Celeste before the latter reached Gibraltar. Another theory posits that Briggs and Morehouse were conspirators, involved in a scheme to share the salvage proceedings. The unsubstantiated friendship between the two captains has been cited by commentators as making such a conspiracy plausible. Hicks comments that "if Morehouse and Briggs had been planning such a scam, they would not have devised such an attention-drawing mystery", and also asks why, if Briggs was intending to disappear permanently, he left his son Arthur behind.

Other theories of foul play have suggested an attack by Riffian pirates, who were active off the coast of Morocco in the 1870s. Charles Edey Fay, in his 1942 account, observes that pirates would have looted the ship, yet the personal possessions of captain and crew, some of significant value, were left undisturbed. In 1925 the historian John Gilbert Lockhart surmised that Briggs, in a fit of a religious mania, had slaughtered all on board and then killed himself. In a later edition of his book Lockhart, who had by then spoken to Briggs's descendants, apologized and withdrew this theory.

Natural phenomena

A waterspout, photographed off Florida (1969). A waterspout strike offers a possible solution to the Mary Celeste mystery.

To Begg, the real mystery is not whether, but why Briggs and the crew abandoned an apparently sound and seaworthy ship, with ample provisions. Commentators agree that, to precipitate such a course of action, some extraordinary and alarming circumstance must have arisen. In his evidence, Deveau ventured an explanation, based on the sounding rod found on the derelict's deck. He suggested that Briggs abandoned ship after a sounding which, due to a malfunction of the pumps, had given a false impression that the vessel was taking on water rapidly. A severe waterspout strike could explain the water in Mary Celeste's cabins, and the ragged state of her rigging and sails. Furthermore, the low barometric pressure generated by the spout could have driven water from the bilges up into the pumps, leading the crew to assume the ship had taken on more water than she had, and was in danger of sinking.

Later commentators have suggested other events as the root cause, including a displaced iceberg, fear of running aground while becalmed, and a "seaquake". Hydrographical evidence suggests it is improbable that an iceberg could drift so far south, and it would almost certainly have been spotted earlier by other ships. Begg considers the theory that Mary Celeste, becalmed, began drifting towards the Dollabarat reef off Santa Maria Island. Fearing she would run aground, Briggs launched the yawl in the hopes of reaching land. The wind then picked up and blew Mary Celeste away from the reef, but in the rising seas the yawl was swamped, and sank. The weakness of this theory is that if the ship had been becalmed, all sails would have been set to catch any available breeze, yet the ship was found with many of its sails furled.

The possibility of fumes emanating from the ship's volatile cargo, leading to an explosion or fears of an explosion, is one of the more durable theories for the abandonment. One suggestion is that an earthquake on the sea bed—a seaquake—caused sufficient turbulence on the surface to damage parts of the cargo, thus releasing noxious fumes. The displaced hatches might indicate an inspection, or part of an attempted airing. Subsequently, fears of an imminent explosion could have led Briggs to order the abandonment. Seaquakes apart, the New York World of January 24, 1886 drew attention to a case where a vessel carrying alcohol had exploded. The same journal's issue of February 9, 1913, blamed loss of alcohol through several porous barrels in Mary Celeste's cargo for creating gases that may have caused or threatened an explosion in the hold. Oliver Cobb was a strong proponent of this theory as providing a sufficiently alarming scenario—rumblings from the hold, the smell of escaping fumes and possibly an actual explosion—for Briggs to have ordered the evacuation of the ship. Lack of damage from an explosion weakens the case, but in 2006 an experiment was carried out for Channel Five television by Andrea Sella of University College, London. He built a model of the hold, with paper cartons representing the barrels. Using butane gas he created an explosion, which caused a considerable blast and ball of flame, but contrary to expectation no fire damage within the replica hold. "What we created was a pressure-wave type of explosion. There was a spectacular wave of flame but, behind it, was relatively cool air. No soot was left behind and there was no burning or scorching".

Cobb believed that the transfer to the yawl may have been intended as temporary. He speculated from Deveau's report on the state of the rigging and the ropes that the ship's main halliard may have been used as a tow-line, attaching the yawl to the ship. Thus, when the danger had passed, the company could return on board. The theory supposes that the line parted, and Mary Celeste sailed away empty while the yawl foundered with its occupants. Begg observes some illogicality in attaching the yawl to a vessel that the crew thought was about to explode or sink. Hastings asks whether Briggs, an experienced captain, would have effected a panicky abandonment of the ship when, "if the Mary Celeste had blown her timbers, she would still have been a better bet for survival than the ship's boat". If this is what happened, Briggs "behaved like a fool; worse, a frightened one".

Myths and false histories

The young Arthur Conan Doyle, whose 1884 short story did much to disseminate Mary Celeste myths

In the decades that followed, fact and fiction became intertwined. As early as June 1883, the Los Angeles Times retold the Mary Celeste story with invented detail: "Every sail was set, the tiller was lashed fast, not a rope was out of place ... The fire was burning in the galley. The dinner was standing untasted and scarcely cold ... the log [was] written up to the hour of her discovery". Twenty years later, in the November 1906 Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, Mary Celeste was recorded as drifting off the Cape Verde Islands, some 1,400 nautical miles (2,600 km) south of the actual location. Among many inaccuracies, the first mate was "a man named Briggs", and there were live chickens on board.

The most influential retelling, which according to many commentators ensured that the Mary Celeste affair would never be forgotten, was a story in the January 1884 issue of the Cornhill Magazine. This was an early work of Arthur Conan Doyle, then a 25-year-old ship's surgeon. Doyle's story, entitled "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", did not adhere to the facts; he renamed the ship "Marie Celeste", the captain's name was "J.W. Tibbs", the fatal voyage took place in 1873 and was from Boston to Lisbon. The vessel carried passengers, among them the eponymous Jephson. In the story, another passenger, a fanatic named Septimus Goring with a hatred of the white race, has suborned members of the crew to murder Tibbs and take the vessel to the shores of Western Africa. Here, the rest of the ship's company is killed, save for Jephson who is spared because he possesses a magical charm that is venerated by Goring and his accomplices. Doyle had not expected his story to be taken seriously, but Sprague, still serving as the US consul in Gibraltar, was sufficiently intrigued to inquire if any part of the story might be true.

In 1913, The Strand Magazine provided another alleged survivor's account, from one "Abel Fosdyk", supposedly Mary Celeste's steward. In this version all on board (except Fosdyk) were drowned or eaten by sharks, when a temporary platform, on which they had crowded to watch a swimming contest, collapsed into the sea. Unlike Doyle's story, this was proposed by the magazine as a serious solution to the enigma, but it contained many simple errors: "Griggs" for Briggs, "Boyce" for Morehouse, Briggs's daughter as a seven-year-old child rather than a two-year-old, a crew of 13 and an ignorance of nautical language. Many more people were convinced by a plausible literary hoax of the 1920s, perpetrated by an Irish writer, Laurence J. Keating. Again presented as a survivor's story—one "John Pemberton"—this told a complex tale of murder, madness and collusion with the Dei Gratia. It included basic errors such as using Doyle's name "Marie Celeste", and misnaming key personnel. Nevertheless, the story was so convincingly told that the New York Herald Tribune of July 26, 1926 thought its truth beyond dispute. Hastings describes Keating's hoax as "an impudent trick, by a man not without imaginative ability".

In 1924 the Daily Express published a story from a retired naval war hero, Captain R. Lucy whose informant, allegedly, was Mary Celeste's former bosun—no such person is recorded in the registered crew list. In this tale, Briggs and his crew are cast in the role of predators; they sight a derelict steamer, which they board and find deserted, with £3,500-worth of gold and silver in its safe. They decide to split the money, abandon Mary Celeste, and seek new lives in Spain, which they reach by using the steamer's lifeboats. Hastings finds it astonishing that such an unlikely story was, for a time, widely believed; readers, he says "were fooled by the magic of print".

Chambers's Journal of September 17, 1904 suggests that the entire complement of Mary Celeste was plucked off one by one by a giant octopus or squid. According to the Natural History Museum, giant squid, or Architeuthis dux, can reach 49 feet (15 m) in length; they have been known to attack ships. Begg remarks that while such a creature could conceivably have picked off a crew member, it could hardly have taken the yawl and the captain's navigation instruments. Other explanations have suggested paranormal intervention; an undated edition of the British Journal of Astrology describes the Mary Celeste story as "a mystical experience, connecting it by processes of reasoning beyond the power of ordinary human understanding, with the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, the lost continent of Atlantis, and the British Israel Movement". The Bermuda Triangle has been invoked, even though Mary Celeste was abandoned in a completely different part of the Atlantic. Similar fantasies have considered theories of abduction by aliens in flying saucers.

Later career and final voyage

Mary Celeste left Genoa on June 26, 1873, and finally arrived in New York on September 19. The Gibraltar hearings, with newspaper stories of bloodshed and murder, had made her an unpopular ship; Hastings records that she "rotted on wharves where nobody wanted her". In February 1874 the consortium sold the ship, at a considerable loss, to a partnership of New York businessmen.

Gonâve Island, in the Gulf of Gonâve, Haiti. The Rochelois Bank is faintly discernible in the southerly channel between the island and the mainland.

Under this new ownership Mary Celeste sailed mainly in the West Indian and Indian Ocean routes, regularly losing money. Details of her movements occasionally appeared in the shipping news; in February 1879 she was reported at the island of St. Helena, where she had called to seek medical assistance for her captain, Edgar Tuthill, who had fallen ill. Tuthill died on the island, encouraging the idea that the ship was cursed—he was her third captain to die prematurely. In February 1880 the owners sold the Mary Celeste to a partnership of Bostonians headed by Wesley Gove. A new captain, Thomas L. Fleming, remained in the post until August 1884, when he was replaced by Gilman C. Parker. During these years the ship's port of registration changed several times, before reverting to Boston. There are no details of the ship's commercial activities during this period, although Brian Hicks, in his study of the affair, asserts that Gove tried hard to make a success of her.

In November 1884, Parker conspired with a group of Boston shippers, who filled Mary Celeste with a largely worthless cargo, misrepresented on the ship's manifest as valuable goods and insured for $30,000. On December 16, Parker set out for Port-au-Prince, the capital and chief port of Haiti. On January 3, 1885, Mary Celeste approached the port via the channel between Gonâve Island and the mainland, in which lay a large and well-charted coral reef, the Rochelois Bank. Parker deliberately ran the ship on to this reef, ripping out her bottom and wrecking her beyond repair. He and the crew then rowed themselves ashore, where Parker sold the salvageable cargo for $500 to the American consul, and instituted insurance claims for the alleged value.

When the consul discovered what he had bought was almost worthless, the insurance company began a thorough investigation, which soon revealed the truth of the over-insured cargo. In July 1885 Parker and the shippers were tried in Boston for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. Parker was additionally charged with "wilfully cast[ing] away the ship", a crime known as barratry and at the time carrying the death penalty. The conspiracy case was heard first, but on August 15 the jury announced that they could not agree on a verdict. Some jurors were unwilling to risk prejudicing Parker's forthcoming capital trial by finding him guilty on the conspiracy charge. Rather than ordering an expensive retrial, the judge negotiated an arrangement whereby the defendants withdrew their insurance claims and repaid all they had received. The barratry charge against Parker were deferred, and he was allowed to go free. Nevertheless, his professional reputation was ruined, and he died in poverty three months later. One of his co-defendants went mad, and another committed suicide. Begg observes that "if the court of man could not punish these men ... the curse that had devilled the ship since her first skipper Robert McLellan had died on her maiden voyage could reach beyond the vessel's watery grave and exact its own terrible retribution."

In August 2001 an expedition headed by the marine archaeologist Clive Cussler announced that they had found the remains of a ship embedded in the Rochelois reef. Only a few pieces of timber and some metal artifacts could be salvaged, the remainder of the wreckage lost within the coral. Initial tests on the wood indicated that it was the type extensively used in New York shipyards at the time of Mary Celeste's 1872 refit, and it seemed the remains of the Mary Celeste had been found. However, dendrochronological tests carried out by Scott St George of the Geological Survey of Canada showed that the wood came from trees, most probably from the U.S. state of Georgia, that would still have been growing in 1894, about ten years after the ship's demise.

Legacy and commemorations

There has never been a clear consensus on any one scenario. It is a mystery that has tormented countless people, including the families of the lost sailors and hundreds of others who have tried in vain to solve the riddle. The Ghost Ship may be the best example of the old proverb that the sea never gives up its secrets.

Brian Hicks: Ghost Ship (2004)

Mary Celeste was not the first reported case of a ship being found strangely deserted on the high seas. Rupert Gould, a naval officer and investigator of maritime mysteries, lists several such occurrences between 1840 and 1855. Whatever the truth of these stories, it is the Mary Celeste that is remembered; the ship's name, or Doyle's version of it, has become fixed in people's minds as synonymous with inexplicable desertion. In October 1955 the MV Joyita, a 70-ton motor vessel, disappeared in the South Pacific, while traveling between Samoa and Tokelau, with 25 people on board. The vessel was found a month later, deserted and drifting north of Vanua Levu, 600 miles (970 km) from its route. None of those aboard was seen again, and a commission of inquiry failed to establish an explanation. David Wright, the affair's principal historian has described the case as "a classic marine mystery of Mary Celeste proportions".

The Mary Celeste story inspired two well-received radio plays in the 1930s, by L. Du Garde Peach and Tim Healey respectively, and a stage version of Peach's play in 1949. Several novels have been published, generally offering natural rather than fantastic explanations. In 1935 the British film company Hammer Film Productions issued The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (retitled The Phantom Ship for American audiences), starring Bela Lugosi as a deranged sailor. It was not a commercial success, although Begg considers it "a period piece well worth watching". A 1938 short film entitled The Ship That Died presents dramatizations of a range of theories to explain the abandonment—mutiny, fear of explosion due to alcohol fumes, and the supernatural. In November 2007 the Smithsonian Channel screened a documentary, The True Story of the Mary Celeste, which investigated many aspects of the case without offering any definite solution.

At Spencer's Island, Mary Celeste and her lost crew are commemorated by a monument at the site of the brigantine's construction and by a memorial outdoor cinema built in the shape of the vessel's hull. The ship has featured on postage stamps issued by the Maldive Islands, and by Gibraltar.

Notes and references

Sources

• Begg, Paul (2007). Mary Celeste: The Greatest Mystery of the Sea. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4058-3621-0.
• Fanthorpe, Lionel; Fanthorpe, Patricia (1997). The World's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries. Toronto: Hounslow Press. ISBN 978-0-8888-2194-2.
• Fay, Charles Edey (1988). The Story of the Mary Celeste. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-4862-5730-3. Revised edition of book originally published by Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts in 1942.
• Fujiwara, Chris (1998). Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-0811-2.
• Gould, Rupert (1946). The Stargazer Talks. London: Geoffrey Bles. OCLC 4904905.
• Hastings, Macdonald (1972). Mary Celeste. London: Michael Joseph. ISBN 978-0-7181-1024-6.
• Hicks, Brian (2004). Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and her Missing Crew. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-3454-6665-5.
• Wright, David G (2002). Joyita: Solving the Mystery. Auckland: Auckland University Press. ISBN 978-1-86940-725-4.

External links

• NUMA site with photos and video of the wreck
• Film "The Phantom Ship" (1936) on the Internet Archive