The Mystery of the Mary Celeste Ghost Ship





In the year 1867, the vessel was salvaged to a New York-based marine corporation and consequently re-christened as Mary Celeste and was put under the skippering of Captain Benjamin Briggs. Along with Captain Briggs and his family – wife and daughter – the ship had a crew of eight people. Incidentally, Captain Briggs was also one of the four stakeholders who held the newly transferred joint-stock ownership of the Mary Celeste.


Mary Celeste Mystery

The mystery of Mary Celeste starts soon after the ship was tasked with the transportation of about 1,700 alcohol casks to the Italian province of Genoa in the year 1872. The vessel which departed as per her schedule on the seventh of November, 1872 did not reach the Genoese port at all but was found to be adrift in the Gibraltar strait by the vessel Dei Gratia, which had left the New York harbour exactly a week after the Mary Celeste’s departure.

The perplexing details were soon obvious. The shipmen and the captain were nowhere to be found while the only lifeboat equipped in the boat was missing. But even as these two things became clear, it was also found that the commodities aboard the vessel – the cargo and the personal belongings of the people – were completely untouched which negated the theory of pirates raiding the vessel almost immediately.

Reasons for Drifting

While speculations came forth about the tyranny of the captain towards his crew, the fact that Captain Briggs was an honourable man with a high-sense of duty and integrity towards his profession, soon overruled these speculations.

One theory that has gained a lot of credibility about the ghost ship is the one revolving around the alcohol casks and the captain’s decision to abandon the vessel before a fire could erupt. The fact that nine casks of alcohol were uncovered and a rope was dangling into the water added to the credibility of this supposition, though nothing concrete has still been established.

Other popular rumours and theories about the Mary Celeste mystery include mutiny, encountering flying saucers, accidental foraying into the Bermuda Triangle and also encountering harsh weather conditions. But since the vessel was found intact with no visible damages, all these theories just remain suppositions.

The marine world has seen more than its share of ghost ship anecdotes. While some are intimidating, some are genuinely confusing. The mystery of Mary Celeste unequivocally comes into the latter cadre and is a topic worth thinking aloud.

What really happened aboard the Mary Celeste? More than a century after her crew went missing, a scenario is emerging


The British brig Dei Gratia was about 400 miles east of the Azores on December 5, 1872, when crew members spotted a ship adrift in the choppy seas. Capt. David Morehouse was taken aback to discover that the unguided vessel was the Mary Celeste, which had left New York City eight days before him and should have already arrived in Genoa, Italy. He changed course to offer help.

Morehouse sent a boarding party to the ship. Belowdecks, the ship's charts had been tossed about, and the crewmen's belongings were still in their quarters. The ship's only lifeboat was missing, and one of its two pumps had been disassembled. Three and a half feet of water was sloshing in the ship's bottom, though the cargo of 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol was largely intact. There was a six-month supply of food and water—but not a soul to consume it.

Thus was born one of the most durable mysteries in nautical history: What happened to the ten people who had sailed aboard the Mary Celeste? Through the decades, a lack of hard facts has only spurred speculation as to what might have taken place. Theories have ranged from mutiny to pirates to sea monsters to killer waterspouts. Arthur Conan Doyle's 1884 short story based on the case posited a capture by a vengeful ex-slave, a 1935 movie featured Bela Lugosi as a homicidal sailor. Now, a new investigation, drawing on modern maritime technology and newly discovered documents, has pieced together the most likely scenario.

"I love the idea of mysteries, but you should always revisit these things using knowledge that has since come to light," says Anne MacGregor, the documentarian who launched the investigation and wrote, directed and produced The True Story of the 'Mary Celeste,' partly with funding from Smithsonian Networks.

The ship began its fateful voyage on November 7, 1872, sailing with seven crewmen and Capt. Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife, Sarah, and the couple's 2-year-old daughter, Sophia. The 282-ton brigantine battled heavy weather for two weeks to reach the Azores, where the ship log's last entry was recorded at 5 a.m. on November 25.

After spotting the Mary Celeste ten days later, the Dei Gratia crewmen sailed the ship some 800 miles to Gibraltar, where a British vice admiralty court convened a salvage hearing, which was usually limited to determining whether the salvagers—in this case, the Dei Gratia crewmen—were entitled to payment from the ship's insurers. But the attorney general in charge of the inquiry, Frederick Solly-Flood, suspected mischief and investigated accordingly. After more than three months, the court found no evidence of foul play. Eventually, the salvagers received a payment, but only one-sixth of the $46,000 for which the ship and its cargo had been insured, suggesting that the authorities were not entirely convinced of the Dei Gratia crew's innocence.

The story of the Mary Celeste might have drifted into history if Conan Doyle hadn't published "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" in 1884; his sensationalistic account, printed in Cornhill Magazine, set off waves of theorizing about the ship's fate. Even Attorney General Solly-Flood revisited the case, writing summaries of his interviews and notes. But the mystery remained unsolved. MacGregor picked up the trail in 2002. "There's so much nonsense written about this legend," she said. "I felt compelled to find the truth."

MacGregor's four previous investigative documentaries, including The Hindenburg Disaster: Probable Cause (2001), applied modern forensic techniques to historical questions. "There are obvious limitations for historic cases," she says. "But using the latest technology, you can come to a different conclusion."


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