On December 5, 1872, a British-American ship called “the Mary Celeste” was adrift in the Atlantic. It was found to be seaworthy and with its cargo fully intact, except for a lifeboat, which it appeared had been boarded in an orderly fashion. But why? We may never know because no one on board was ever heard from again.
In November 7, 1872, the Mary Celeste, a 282-ton brigantine set sail from New York bound for Genoa, Italy with Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs and seven crew members, including Briggs’ wife and their 2-year-old daughter, Sophia. On December 5, 1872 at about 400 miles east of the Azores Islands, the lookout of the British merchant brigantine Dei Gratia spotted a ship adrift in the choppy seas about 6 miles distant heading unsteadily towards Dei Gratia. Captain David Morehouse was alerted due to the ship’s erratic movements. The main sail was furled and the one on the topmast ripped by the wind. The ship was in the throes of the wind and tended to broach. The sighting, as marked by the first mate was at 38° 20′ north 17° 15′ west, approximately 600 miles from the Portuguese coast.
Morehouse recognized the ship as the Mary Celeste, and was captained by his good friend Benjamin Spooner Briggs, which had left New York City eight days before him and should have already arrived in Genoa, Italy. As Mary Celeste drew near, Morehouse could see nobody was at the deck of the adrift ship and received no reply. So he launched a lifeboat and entrusted his first mate, Oliver Deveau, and second mate John Wright to investigate, and if needed, to help the sailors. Boarding the ship was not easy for the rowboat as the adrift Mary Celeste was being dragged by the wind around.
When the crew of the Dei Gratia finally boarded the Mary Celeste, they were surprised to find that the ship was deserted. The condition of the ship in which the men from Dei Gratia found the brigantine added to the mystery. The sails were partly set and in a poor condition, some missing altogether. Much of the rigging was damaged, with ropes hanging loosely over the sides and a broken railing on one side of the ship. The main hatch cover was secure, but the fore and lazarette hatches were open, their covers beside them on the deck. The ship’s single lifeboat was a small yawl that had apparently been stowed across the main hatch, but it was missing, while the binnacle housing the ship’s compass had shifted from its place and its glass cover was broken. A makeshift sounding rod (a device for measuring the amount of water in the hold) was found abandoned on the deck.
Below decks, the ship’s charts had been tossed about presumably by the waves, but the crewmen’s belongings were still in their quarters. The hold was sloshing about three and a half feet of water since the pumps have not been activated. The cargo of 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol was largely intact. Supplies on board were ample enough for six months, and luxurious – including a sewing machine and an upright piano.
They found the ship’s daily log in the mate’s cabin, and its final entry was dated at 8 a.m. on November 25, nine days earlier. It recorded Mary Celeste’s position then as 37°1’N 25°1’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 that had entered through doorways and skylights, but were otherwise in reasonable order. He found personal items scattered about Briggs’ cabin, including a sheathed sword under the bed, but most of the ship’s papers were missing along with the captain’s navigational instruments. 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.
At the salvage hearings in Gibraltar following her recovery, the court’s officers considered various possibilities 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 convincing evidence supported these theories, but unresolved suspicions led to a relatively low salvage award.
The story of her 1872 abandonment has been recounted and dramatized many times in documentaries, novels, plays, and films, and the name of the ship has become a byword for unexplained desertion. In 1884, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement”, a short story based on the mystery, but spelled the vessel’s name as Marie Celeste. The story’s popularity led to the spelling becoming more common than the original in everyday use.
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. One theory proposed pump congestion and instrument malfunction. The Mary Celeste had been used for transporting coal, which is known for its dust, before it was loaded with alcohol. The pump was found disassembled on deck, so the crew may have been attempting to repair it. The hull was packed full, and the captain would have no way of judging how much water had been taken on while navigating rough seas. The filmmakers postulated that the chronometer was faulty, meaning that Briggs could have ordered abandonment thinking that they were close to Santa Maria, when they were 120 miles (190 km) farther west.
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. Postage stamps commemorating the incident have been issued by Gibraltar (twice) and by the Maldives (twice, once with the name of the ship misspelt as Marie Celeste).
Editor’s Notes:
I remember this story and the mystery about it has a likely explanation. There was a 1913 magazine article that was said to be a forged account of a man named Fosdyk who claimed to have been a stowaway on board the Mary Celeste, witnessed the entire crew fall overboard as they pressed against the rail to watch three of the men have a swimming race, then managed to be the only one not eaten by sharks and eventually washed ashore on Africa. But for a good mystery to remain a mystery, the stowaway account was dismissed and was treated as conjecture even though it was a most plausible explanation.