On 5th December 1872, a British ship called Dei Gratia spotted the Mary Celeste at full sail and adrift 400 miles east of the Azores.
The Mary Celeste, a 282-ton brigantine, had set sail a month earlier on 7th November 1872. The ship’s captain, Benjamin S. Briggs, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter set sail along with eight crew members.
The captain of the Dei Gratia, David Morehouse, was concerned as he knew the ship and its captain, so he changed course and launched a boarding party to check on the ship’s occupants.
The ship was intact, aside from a few feet of water in the hold and a missing lifeboat, but there was no sign of Briggs and his family or crew. There was still a six-month supply of food on board.
Because the ship was still intact, Morehouse ordered some of his crew to sail the Mary Celeste alongside the Dei Gratia to Gibraltar. He was hoping to collect a salvage payment from the ship’s insurers.
When they arrived in Gibraltar, the attorney general leading the salvage enquiry, Frederick Solly-Flood, suspected foul play. He believed that the Dei Gratia crew had stalked the Mary Celeste before boarding the ship and killing Briggs and his crew.
After three months, the court found no actual evidence of foul play but only gave the Dei Gratia crew a sixth of the $46,000 that the ship and cargo had been insured for, suggesting they weren’t convinced of their innocence.
That might have been the end of the story, if not for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1884, he published a fictional retelling of the story from a survivor’s point of view. The piece titled ‘J. Habakkuk Jephson’s Statement’ got people thinking about what really happened, and even led to Solly-Flood reviewing the case, but there were still no answers.
Theories:
Alcohol Explosion – This is one of the more likely theories in the years following the event. The Mary Celeste had been carrying 1,700 barrels of alcohol, nine of which were empty when it was found. The theory is that these barrels had leaked noxious fumes and either caused a small explosion or caused fear that there would be an explosion. This led to everyone temporarily abandoning ship into the lifeboat to sail behind the Mary Celeste. The rope attaching the boat to the ship came untied and left them stuck in the middle of the ocean.
A Bad Pump – One of the two pumps on the ship was found disassembled, possibly having become clogged with coal and sawdust from previous cargo, leading to water leaking into the hull. It would have been hard for Briggs to determine just how much seawater had leaked in, but from the accounts of the Dei Gratia crew, it was several feet deep. With only one working pump, it is possible Briggs felt the ship wouldn’t stay afloat for long, so abandoned ship and tried to reach nearby. However, researchers found that the Mary Celeste was 120 miles west of where Briggs had thought he was according to log book entries, possibly due to a faulty chronometer. This means they may have gotten lost at sea because they were actually further away than Briggs thought.
There are, of course, the more unconventional theories, from stories of a giant sea monster to alien abductions. With so much time passed and no way of getting any concrete evidence as to what happened, the mystery of the Mary Celeste looks likely to stay a mystery.
Sources:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/abandoned-ship-the-mary-celeste-174488104/
https://www.history.com/news/what-happened-to-the-mary-celeste
https://yesterday.uktv.co.uk/blogs/article/5-theories-what-happened-mary-celeste/
https://museumhack.com/mary-celeste/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/mary-celeste
https://explorersweb.com/2021/10/19/exploration-mysteries-the-mary-celeste/
