Mary Celeste

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A painting of the Amazon (later renamed Mary Celeste) by an unknown artist. Year unknown.
A painting of the Amazon (later renamed Mary Celeste) by an unknown artist. Year unknown.

The Mary Celeste was an abandoned ghost ship found off the coast of Portugal in 1872. The final fate of the Mary Celeste is open to speculation; theories range from alcoholic fumes to the strange case described in the Abel Fosdyk papers. The case of the Mary Celeste is often described as the archetypical example of a ghost ship.

Contents

[edit] The ship and her desertion

The Mary Celeste was a 103-foot (31 metres), 282-ton brigantine. She was built as the Amazon in Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia, in 1861, the first large vessel built in this Nova Scotian community. Her first captain died at the very beginning of her maiden voyage. The ship seemingly had bad luck and, due to numerous misadventures, had changed hands several times. She was driven ashore in a storm in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia in early 1869, and subsequently sold to American owners who changed her name to 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 and set sail from Staten Island, New York to 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.

The cargo of 1701 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).

[edit] 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. One popular rumor that has been spread through Europe is that the alcohol had released some type of gas and someone had dropped a match down into the hold. This then caused something called a "smoke-out". The alcohol did not explode. In fact, the smoke-out caused the two doors leading down to the keep to be blown into the air and the occupants of the ship would have seen a tongue of flame shooting out from the two areas. When this idea was put into experiment form, they used paper walls and no destruction occurred. So the occupants would then believe that they were sitting on a time bomb ready to go off at a moment's notice. They then promptly left the ship with the lifeboat and drowned during a storm. 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.

[edit] 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 Byers 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. 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 found intact and the fracture on the ship's 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.

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, had no history to suggest he was the type 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 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.

Brian Hicks and Stanley Spicer in recent books revived the entirely plausible theory that Captain Briggs opened the hold to ventilate during a becalmed stretch at sea. 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 it could easily have explained the sudden and mysterious exit from the ship with numerous hatches, portholes and windows left open.

[edit] Abel Fosdyk papers

See the main article at Abel Fosdyk papers.

[edit] The story in popular culture

Derelict ships were very common in the 19th century and not completely unknown in the 20th century (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.

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.

The December 27, 1955 broadcast of the radio program Suspense presented a fictionalized account of the disappearance where the crew abandoned ship when they became beached on a rare temporary sand bar from the outflows of an African river.

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 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 and Steel suggested that Steel had been forced to send the original ship and crew out of time (and presumably to their deaths), because an accident, caused by the crew, would have caused the end of time. He left behind a replica of the ship, but forgot to replicate the bodies.

Stephen King's story The Langoliers, from Four Past Midnight, references the Mary Celeste incident.

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

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.

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

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 Only Am Escaped to Tell Thee a seaman escapes from the accursed ship Flying Dutchman only to be rescued by the Mary Celeste.

[edit] Timeline

  • 1861 Amazon built
  • 1869 Amazon renamed Mary Celeste
  • 1872 Sets sail from New York City to Genoa, Italy on November 7th
  • 1872 Last entry in captain's logbook dated November 24th.
  • 1872 Last entry on ship's slate dated November 25th.
  • 1872 Ship found abandoned on December 4th
  • 1885 Ship wrecked on reef captained by Parker on January 3rd
  • 2001 Remains of wreck rediscovered in Haiti

[edit] Ship's manifest

The crew and passengers are listed in the ships log as:

[edit] Crew

Name Status Nationality Age
Benj. S. Briggs Captain American 37
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 Dutch 35
Boy Lorenson Seaman German 23
Gottlieb Gondeschall Seaman German 23

[edit] Passengers

Name Status Age
Sarah Elizabeth Briggs Captain's Wife 30
Sophia Matilda Briggs Daughter 2

Captain Benjamin Briggs

First mate Albert Richardson

Sarah Briggs

Sophia Briggs

[edit] See also

[edit] References

    • New York Times; February 26, 1873; pg. 2; "A Brig's Officers Believed to Have Been Murdered at Sea."
    • Boston Post, February 24, 1873. "It is now believed that the fine brig Mary Celeste, of about 236 tons, commanded by Capt. Benjamin Briggs, of Marion, Mass., was seized by pirates in the latter part of November, and that, after murdering the Captain, his wife..."

    [edit] External links

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