The Mystery of the Mary Celeste
On December 4th, 1872 an empty ship was found floating around in fine condition 400 miles west of the Azores. It was found by the crew of the Dei Gratia, who quickly recognized it as the Mary Celeste.
The captain of the Dei Grata, David Morehouse, reports to be greatly surprised by this, since the two ships had departed from the same harbor with only a week interim, and he had therefore expected the Mary Celeste to have already reached her destination Genoa, Italy.
The Mary Celeste was found to be intact, seaworthy, and with plenty of food for the remaining of the planned trip, but with the lifeboat gone and the pumps dissabled.
So why would her crew leave her? And where were they now?
While the whole crew of the ship was missing, their belongings were still there, suggesting that the crew had to leave in an awful hurry.
More often than not, when a ship is found abanded it's been robbed by pirates, but the ship's cargo, which contained mostly industrial alcohol, was mostly intact, ruling that theory out.
Another theory at the time was that the crew had gotten drunk on the industrial alcohol on the ship, and then turned to mutiny, but this doesnt explain why there was no one left on the ship. I would think that if some of the crew decided to start a mutiny, there would be some evidence of that, like sign of struggles, and probably bloodstains. So personally, I dont really buy into this one.
According to sources from the time, the Mary Celeste’s Captain, Benjamin Spooner Briggs, was a seasoned and experienced captain, and thus unlikely to leave a fully seaworthy ship for no good reason, but maybe he was not completely without fault.
Recently documentarian Anne MacGregor and oceanographer Phil Richardson has succeeded in mapping the last ten days before it was found, using historical weather data. They know where the ship was found, and they know where Briggs wrote in the log that they were, the last time he wrote there. They point out that the ship had encountered some bad weather in the last days, and that Briggs had changed the course of the ship so as to head directly to the Azores. This might have seemed necessary at the time.
It’s also been pointed out by MacGregor that the Mary Celeste had carried vast amounts of coal on her previous journy and apparantly coal dust and debris does not go well with pumps. She suggests that this might be the reason the ships pumps were disabled when the ship was found.
Now imagine that you are in the middle of the ocean, and you have just survived a storm which might or might not have damages your ship and there is water coming in. The pumps doesnt work, so you have no way of getting rid of the water again, and because the ship is tightly packed with 1701 barrels of heavy industrial alcohol, you cannot asses the damage to the ship.
Wouldnt you like to leave while you still can? Here it might be worth mentioning, that aboard the ship Captain Briggs had his wife and two year old daughter.
Assuming that the crew left right after the last entry in the log on the 25th of November, they should have been able to reach Santa Maria since they were estimated to be only a few miles from her. Or at least some of them should.
So this theory explains why the crew would have left the ship, but not why they were never found.
Another very popular theory, both now and then, is that it was actually the crew of the Dei Gratia who overtook the Mary Celeste, murdered the whole crew and then took it to the ships insurance company for a “finders fee”.
This theory however does not take into account how the Dei Gratia caught up with the Mary Celeste, when they left the same harbor a week apart. This was investigates for almost three months but no evidence was found against the crews story that they found the ship abandoned.
What do you think happened to the Mary Celeste and her crew? Feel free to comment what you think, I will answer all coments and questions!
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/abandoned-ship-the-mary-celeste-174488104/
