By: Pop
[2003-10-16]
What Really Happened to the Mary Celeste
about damn time, too
The following little-known article was printed in the June, 1973 issue of Yankee magazine. It pretty well puts the whole Mary Celeste mystery to rest:
MORE (AND MAYBE ALL) ABOUT THE MARY CELESTE
My mother's people have always been interested in the story of the
Mary Celeste (a version of which you published in the December, 1972
Yankee). One of them seems to have purchased the boat after "salvage" and run it for quite a few years. The enclosed clipping taken from the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1926 may interest you, as it would seem that the mystery, far from being hatched by a waterspout, was only a case of marine highjacking!
Among the many queer things that have happened at sea there has been none queerer, perhaps, than the celebrated case of the brig Marie Celeste. A hundred attempts have been made to solve this mystery of the deep. Now fifty years and more after the queer happening aboard the ship, we find the truth by her cook, now seventy-seven years old, and published in "Chamber's Journal."
On Dec. 7, 1872 the Dei Gratia, an English ship on her way from N.Y. to Genoa, by way of Queenstown, sighted a brig under full sail off the coast of Spain. This brig returned no answer to signals and the captain of the Dei Gratia sent a boat to investigate. The silent ship was the Marie Celeste.
The captain of the Dei Gratia promptly put a crew aboard, took the brig to Gibraltar and claimed salvage for bringing in a derelict. He reported that there was not a man aboard; that there was no sign of trouble of any kind, that her boats were untouched: that there were five seamen's chests full of clothes in the forecastle, and that a meal was laid in the cabin. The galley stove was warm, though the fire had been raked out, and her cat was calmly asleep on a locker. There was no corpse aboard, no sign of any disturbance, no bloodstain. What had happened? All sorts of crimes, from barratry to piracy, were suggested in an effort to explain, but none of them, from the most sanguinary to the most fantastic, were sufficient to account for the bewilderment of the case. How did the crew abandon the Marie Celeste?
Since all their own boats were in their places, they must have been taken off by some other boat, but no shipmaster would have taken them off and left a perfectly sound craft as salvage for some one else. Besides why abandon a sound craft?
The truth is somewhat disappointing, for the Marie Celeste was not abandoned at all. The captain of the Dei Gratia chose to describe her thus because, for salvage purposes, she was much more valuable without a crew. When she was found she had on board four men, of whom the cook was one. She had sailed from New York with a scratch crew, nine only, three of them lent her in N.Y. by the very Dei Gratia which later "rescued" her. It seems that the captain's wife was musical and that she insisted on shipping her piano. The mate lashed the instrument fore and aft, but one day when the Marie Celeste heeled over suddenly the piano broke loose and crushed the captain's wife, who was playing it. The captain buried her at sea, hurled the piano overboard, then lost his senses and jumped overboard himself. The mate had a quarrel with one of the men who accused him of helping in the captain's untimely end, and in the drunken scuffle which followed that man was drowned too. Finally the Marie Celeste made the port of Santa Marta where the mate, the boatswain and one of the remaining crew deserted, leaving the ship to continue on her way with the cook and the three men who had been lent from the Dei Gratia. The three knew that their old ship would soon be due at Gibraltar and decided to wait around on the chances of meeting with her.
So runs the tale of John Pemberton, the erstwhile cook, and there is none to dispute the truth of his story. But he damaged a noted mystery by telling it.
M. E. Felt, Wading River, N.Y.
I like sea stories! Evidently, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement," by Conan Doyle under a pseudonym covered some of this mystery. The ship had 1,700 barrels of liquor, so that might have been the motive for a hijacking gone awry.
the liquor the motive for hijacking the boat?
sure if you accept the premise that they hijacked it for the liquor, the presence of the liquor goes some way to explaining the mystery. (analogy = those cuts you get on your arms and legs when you've had a big night on the piss whose provenance you never really work out).
But i find it hard to accept your original premise (i.e. the motive for hijacking was liquor), for who can drink that much liquor? I know sailors are kind of dumb but no one is that dumb. Also, they would have realised that liquor is no fun without girls, and restrained themselves. (please no smart-arse comments re: the supposed 'tendencies' of sailors, this is a serious disputation)
The far more interesting question is: what kind of liqour was it?Rum?
It was listed as "raw alcohol" so it was probably corn liquor. Conan Doyle's explanation, which has been urged to be dismissed, details a diversion of the ship solely for the purpose of a secret passage of a mysterious person.
Did someone do research to find out about the liquor? Where was this mentioned?
I won't travel on a sailing vessel any more. No sir.
actually i have heard that they were carrying only pure raw ethyl alcohol, which i would think is not particularly drinkable. it is, however, highly flammable, and i have heard that as an explanation of the abandonment of the entire ship by its crew and captain, who may have been apprehensive about carrying 1700 gallons of explosion juice.
why he would have agreed to take such a cargo if he was afraid of it burning or blowing him up at sea, though, is beyond me.
Gentlemen I believe our combined wits have solved this mystery.
There was a passing electical storm, or some "St Elmo's Fire" which made the captain nervous about the flammable/explosive substances the crew was sitting on. As a precautionary measure he abandoned the ship, meaning to return after the storm had died down.
But wait, no lifeboats were taken were they...
must have been aliens
i once attended a science program, where while steralizing a glass probe, a guy set a petri dish full of ethyl alchohol on fire. the professor supervising us tried to put it out by smothering it, but only suceeded in splashing burning alcohol all over the room. the only injuries were to the dish, but it was still exeedingly cool.
Sometimes when I camp out overnight, I take along a jug of Old Forester. While sitting around the fire, you can spit a mouthful of whisky into the fire, it makes a nice flash.
"Master and Commander" with Russell Crowe as "Lucky" Jack Aubrey looks like a well-done swashbuckler coming out in November. I dunno if I can wait 'til next month to get my swash buckled.
does your jug have a cork? if not, then it ain't no jug (unless it has no top at all and you're lugging around a porcelain beaker)
Yep, a cork.
that Russell Crowe plays lots of real people? Oh wait, the gladiator wasn't a real person. But he talked to a lot of real people. And the Insider was a real person. That's at least two and a half real people. Am I missing any? Cause I want to find a trend here...
Jack Aubrey isn't real neither. Didja ever notice how Russell Crowe plays lots of not-real people who interact with real people?
THE RUSSEL CROWE SHOW: MAKING MOVIES MAKIN SONGS AN FIGHTIN ROUND THE WORLD
Do any of you care about the facts? Yes, there were boats missing. That, and much of what is written in this "account" doesn't jive with historical evidence. Check out any of a number of credible research sources.
"Facts, schmacts, you can prove anything that's even remotely true with facts." -Homer Simpson
These people are not generally noted for their strict adherence to reality, so to be appalled is probably a bit excessive. To be apalled, however, is just illiterate.
The ship is still pretty much intact on the bottom of the ocean, and is within fairly easy diving distance. It is the most intact wooden shipwreck (in the ocean, not on land) that has ever been found, still sitting completely upright in the water. I've seen pictures of it, and it's really, really spooky how everything looks like it did in 1872. *sigh* Just thought I'd add something different to the thread.
There was a 2 year old daughter of the Captain and his wife. What happened to her?
Check out this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste
In any case, what you just said seems completely unreliable. The alcohol they carried was not drinkable, the captain was by all accounts not such a man, and it's pretty hard for a piano to crush to death a person who was playing it. If it were strapped somewhere above and fell, I would believe that, but as mentioned she was playing it.
Im sorry, but all of what you say is kind of stupid.
There were MANY accounts of different ships, like this, going missing temporarily, and then resurfacing (as it would seem) with nothing missing except the crew.
As far as I know, this was just like those ships. One of many to still have its cargo intact. If so, there goes the "lets steal the liquor" idea. There was no account of anything that indicated a battle, or death, so there goes any "pirate" pr "piano dropping" concepts.
The one thing you have to realise, is the crew went poof. The crew. People. All of the.
This leads to 3 conclusions.
1. The 2 life boats found with a captain and american flag in one, and 5 crew members in the other WERE actually from this ship, and thus were killed offship by pirates, or by someone who may have had mental disorders onboard and never metnioned it, and got cabin fever.
2. The almighty Cthuhlu rose up from the depths and ate them.
3. This is the result of what happens when a normal ship actually collides with a ghost ship like the Flying Dutchman or Jian Seng.
These are just one mans findings. They seem to be the most logical.
You are a grease stain.
The Lorentzens (not Lorensens) were German, not Dutch. A sword was found in Briggs's cabin. The Mary had only one boat which was missing. The two strips were cut out of the hull at the bow, not the deck.. There were red stains on the starboard rail and the captain's sword. The report on those stains was kept secret till 1887, why? Briggs was a Freemason and so was Horatio Sprague, the American Consul in Gibraltar. Sprague was also a friend of Captain Moorehouse of the Dei Gratia. It is highly likely that Sprague also was a friend of Frederick Sally Flood, Advocate and Proctor for the Queen in her Office of Admiralty. Was there something to hide about Briggs? Was there a conspiracy about the Mary Celeste?
Read my story, "What really happened on the Mary Celeste".
Sarah had it off with one of the crew. Briggs ran his sword through the man at the starboard rail. Richardson died of Malaria. The crew mutinied. Briggs, the second mate, the bodies of Richardson and the killed sailor and the child were set overboard on a raft, not a boat. The remaining crew of four kept Sarah on board.. Sarah escaped on a second raft which explains the forebrace trailing over the side. When discovered by the Dei Gratia the four escaped in the yawl, a small but fast sailing boat, undiscovered by the Dei Gratia.
In the story from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
1) The crew count from the ship's log was eight not nine.
2) The cook's name from the ship's log was Edward W Head not John Pemberton.
3) The story excludes the blood-stained sword and the blood stains on the railings (which led to accusations of misdoings of the crew of the Dei Gratia).
4) The daughter is un-accounted for in the story.
Your story, Arie,
1) The wet mess unaccounted for.
2) During two jours of observation, thew yawl was not discovered.
But combine the two:
1) Sarah had it off with the German seaman and the mate gave him the beat down.
2) As he ran away to the bow, the captain ran him through. He hides his sword under his bed. Richardson dies from an infected wound from his fist fight.
3) After pulling into port, the rest of the crew gets suspicious that the captain did not report the deaths in St. Mary (Santa Marta, whatever) and disembarks there but re-boards the vessel just before it pulls out and commits mutiny (thinking the Captain is primed for blackmail).
4) The captain tries to escape with the blackmail evidence, taking his daughter, the two bodies and the second mate with him. His wife was almost home free also but was nabbed at the last minute by the crew.
5) The wind picked up and Briggs could not get back to the Mary Celeste to save his wife and the crew did not try to help him, thinking his wife can also be blackmailed.
6) the wife later tosses her piano overboard to use it as a raft but it sinks like a rock as it is made from hardwood. She then finds something else to use as a raft and grabs the flag to use as a blanket to keep warm.
8) The three dutch crew members, originally from the Dei Gratia, along with the cook gets discovered by the Dei Gratia.
9) The seamen claim to Morehouse that Sarah was crushed by a piano and buried at sea with her piano by Briggs. They claim that the German seaman was killed by the mate who, Briggs let leave at Santa Marta with the second mate. They claimed that when they told the captain that they will tell the truth when they dock again, the captain abandoned ship with his daughter in the lifeboat.
10) Morehouse decides to protect his loaned seamen and, being friends with Briggs, also protects him.
10) Morehouse claims that the cook and the three seamen were his crew and that the Mary Celeste was found abandoned.
11) The cook who tells the story, John Pemberton, is the cook of the Dei Gratia who gets the story slightly confused when he claims to be the cook of the Mary Celeste to lend credence to his story.
Pirates probally invade the ship but were too stupid too take the goods ; )-
The cargo was raw alcohol. Non drinkable. If anything, they were smart not to take the goods.
All the foot lockers were still there.
They had already hit a safe harbor. They were out of the Danger Zone for trans-Atlantic pirates.
An abandoned ship not salvaged?
There is no evidence to support any of the claims made here. The entire article is conjecture, and should be presented as such, rather than the factual form in which it appears here. Officially, the fate of the ship's crew (the ship was in fact the 'Mary Celeste', not the 'Marie Celeste', which was a fictitious ship in a book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) is still is a mystery, because there was nobody aboard to recount what actually happened.
The explanation I find most plausible is that of an overreaction by the crew due to the dangerous nature of the cargo (industrial alcohol.) Nine barrels were found to be empty when the ship was finally unloaded in Genoa. Methanol catches fire very easily, but burns at low temperature, leaving no scorch marks, and not therefore burning the rest of the cargo, or the ship itself - hence all being intact on discovery of the ship. However, having never carried such a cargo before it is unlikely that the captain would have been aware of this, and, especially with his wife and young daughter aboard, would have taken no chances on discovery of fire. The hypothesis runs that he ordered all aboard to take to the lifeboat, which was then attached to the ship by means of a stern line. The lifeboat appeared to have been deliberately launched rather than torn free, and a frayed line trailed the ship astern when it was discovered, so this is plausible. A storm was recorded around the time of the incident, and the ship was abandoned under full sail - the force of a ship under full sail in storm-force winds would have quite likely have been able to break the tow rope. What happened to those in the lifeboat then falls to two likely possibilities - either the boat was lost in storm (a small boat would have had difficulties riding out an Atlantic storm, unlike a bigger ship such as the Mary Celeste); or, worse, it drifted until lack of water, food, and over-exposure killed those aboard. Either way, there is little mystery involved.
I find this theory the most creditable one that I've heard, certainly more so than the one above, but it must be remembered that all such theories are just that; none are certain, and all are possible.
The disappearance is easy to figure out if all the blood stains and other stuff is ignored. My first appearance in this thread was totally for humor as you are right on one point; everything is conjecture.
Even the [i] St. Elmo's Fire [/i] theory which sounds plausible lacks the explanation for the sword, etc. If there must be conjecture --and apparently there must-- it has to be a unifying theory. Yes, it is possible for the blood/sword.etc. to have been independent of the abandonment but even then they must be explained.
Without such explanation, we are still left with a complete mystery and even with such explanation, the best we have is entertaining conjecture.
Dei Gratia came across the Mary Celeste on Dec 5th, for 2 hours watched and tried to hail the Mary Celeste with no reply. They boarded and found it had been abandoned. It was water logged but everything still intact (i.e. no reason to abandon ship). The chronometer and sexton were missing along with papers. The last log entry was on November 24 with no mention of anything wrong. There were hatches left open. Here's my theory:
With the fumes from the alcohol there was a slight "explosion", the gas from the alcohol burn at a low temp and therefore only a slight spark will cause explosion. Captain Briggs got scared and ordered everyone into a lifeboat, but he stayed attached to the ship in order to reboard if nothing else happened. But in the stormy seas the boat separated from the ship which expains the rope hanging over the side of the ship.
There have been tests carried out that prove that the explosion of the fumes would not have burnt anything but the fumes, a bit like lighting a fart I guess.
The story of the table being set and half eaten meals are untrue, and the stove was not warm.
I think this is the most likely explanation. And there was 1 Captain, 7 Crew, and the Captains Wife and Daughter on board, 10 in total.
Sophie,
You still have not accounted for the bloody sword found under the Captain's mattress and the blood found on the railing.
There was also the notches in the rail --which I personally find totally irrelevant in that a thousand plausible explanations for that exists, any of which can be used in a unifying theory. There was also the "carved out slices" on the hull.
I think that the St. Elmo's Fire/fumes igniting theory for the abandoning of the vessel is highly likely if we assume that the blood and the sword was planted after the vessel was salvaged (or rather, after the salvage claim was submitted).
Nevertheless, the abandonment cannot be plausibly explained without a plausible explanation for the sword/blood that figures into the entire saga from leaving the port of Santa Marta -Saint Mary, Santa Maria, whatever-- to being brought into port at Gibraltar.
One report says that the red stains on the sword was nothing more than rust. That still does not explain the red stains on the rail. The one thing is that the red stains on the rail was not in the original reports and may have been embellishments to the story by over enthusiastic reporters.
The most in-depth study of this I have found [ here http://www.deafwhale.com/maryceleste/ ] disregards the "blood stains" as embellishments. It also explains all the loose holes such as the slices in the hull and does all this with experimental support for the theories with historical references.
I would love to see the History Chanel/BBC documentary but who really cares? These posts are much more fun than the truth can possibly be. Let's have more conjecture!
was a 2 year old .
