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Over the years many ships have met watery graves and unknown destinies upon the mysterious and alien ocean, but the riddle of the Mary Celeste tugs at the imagination in a way that no other tale of the sea ever has. This is perhaps due to the eerie circumstances surrounding her discovery.
On December the fourth, 1872 the hardy brigantine was found floating unmanned some five hundred miles east of the Azores. The fate of her passengers which included Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife, Sarah, their two year old daughter, Sophia and their seven man crew has been a source of speculation for more than a century.
The Mary Celeste was originally launched in 1861 under English registry and named The Amazon. To many observers of the day, the ship seemed jinxed by a series of mishaps. The first skipper died within forty-eight hours after the ship was registered. The hull was severely injured on her maiden voyage and on subsequent voyages she endured both serious fire and collision. She changed hands several times, becoming American in 1869 and christened The Mary Celeste by her owners which included Captain Briggs himself.
The Mary Celeste had traveled more than two thousand miles when Briggs took over the helm and he was an experienced mariner from a sea-faring family. The two-masted sailing ship presented no challenge to his abilities and confidence. He was not familiar with, however, the volatile nature of the cargo of more than one thousand seven hundred kegs of crude alcohol that was bound for Genoa, Italy when the ship departed from New York’s East River on November 5, 1872. It is perhaps this single fact that ultimately cost the lives of ten people.
On the night before departure, Briggs and his wife, Sarah dined with Captain David Morehouse, an old comrade who himself was bound for Gibraltor within a few day on board another brigantine, the DeGratia, with a cargo of petroleum.The stunning coincidence of Morehouse finding the Mary Celeste adrift in the middle of the ocean with no one on board some two weeks later placed him at the center of an ugly three week inquiry where he was accused of piracy and multiple murder. But there were no bodies and no proof that any foul play had befallen the doomed passengers, despite sixty-six pages of testimony and the frenzied efforts of Gibraltor’s Attorney General, Solly Flood to convict and hang David Morehouse. A careful inspection of The Mary Celeste revealed working sails, a working pump and cargo that was secure, although one keg of alcohol had been opened. Morehouse was released and granted a salvage reward for hauling the ship into port, but it was barely one tenth the value of the Celeste and the cargo she was carrying.
But what really happened on board? Why did an experienced sailor like Briggs panic and abandon ship? Theories abound and range from sudden bad weather to a fraudulent arrangement between Briggs and Morehouse that went sour and culminated in murder. No one will ever really know the truth, but one thing is certain: the abandonment of The Mary Celeste was swift and in haste. The last entry in her log on November the twenty-fourth placed her about one hundred and ten miles due west of Santa Maria Island in the Azores, some three hundred and seventy miles west of where she was found. Since many captains did not make log entries every day, that date may not necessarily be the day she was abandoned.
When Morehouse’s men boarded the deck of the phantom vessel, they found themselves wrapped in an eerie silence broken only by the soft moaning of the wood. Descending into the hold and calling Brigg’s name over and over, they were confronted with the suspended reality of lives interrupted. One of the items found was an unfinished letter written by the first-mate to his wife who, in a bizarre coincidence on the night of November the twenty-fifth, had a nightmare that her husband had been murdered at sea. On an unmade bed lay the clear imprint of a child’s body, a half-eaten breakfast sat on a nearby table, and an unspilled bottle of cough medicine was standing on a narrow shelf with a cork and spoon lying along side. In the forecastle, a strong box, some women’s jewelry and all the oil-skins belonging to the crew were left behind.A missing life boat was clearly the means of evacuation.
To a seaman like Briggs, bad weather would not have merited such a haphazard departure. Also, even though abandonment was swift, it was not without guidance as the sextant as well as other navigation books and ship’s papers were also missing and probably taken along. The most likely scenario suggests that the crew of the Mary Celeste evacuated at a moment’s notice and then, for some reason, couldn’t return.
Perhaps the answer lies in the nature of the cargo carried by The Mary Celeste. One of the kegs of raw alcohol had been opened and something might have caused it to make a rumbling sound which is a sign of eminent explosion. Briggs was not acquainted with the chemical reaction of industrial alcohol and it is possible that such a noise might have caused him to believe that his family and crew were in significant danger. Everything left behind strongly suggests that they planned to return to the ship. What stopped them? It is possible that they lost contact with the Celeste due to some unexpected vagary of the open sea. November was always a bad month for sailing, noted for heavy rains and gales. Such turbulence could have caused a giant tidal wave or a sudden squall that could tear a life-boat in two within a heart-beat.
No bodies were ever found and no answers can ever claim complete truth or certainty as to what happened on board the ill-fated brigantine. The Celeste herself eventually met a fiery end. Still, the mystery of her doomed passengers endures through the great dark veil of time, eternal and constant as the sea itself.
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