Ghost Ship: The Octavius

Abandoned places have always held an eerie fascination for those of us left behind. This could be a house or even a whole town that has been left to the elements, slowly succumbing back to nature with a few creepy reminders of its past life remaining for those curious enough to go looking. Then there’s the other type of abandonment, the feeling that you’ve walked into a place and just missed someone; everything is still in its place but there’s no-one to be found. What would make this creepier still is if the abandoned place you found was a fully-stocked ship, sailing in the middle of the ocean with not a soul on board.

Welcome, everybody to the mysterious case of the ghost ship, the Mary Celeste.

The Mystery

On December 4th, 1872, the brigantine Dei Gratia, under the command of Captain David Morehouse, was on its way across the Atlantic when it spotted another ship coming towards them. Nothing weird about that but this ship was sailing oddly and seemed out of control. The Dei Gratia tried signaling the ship but got nothing back, confirming Morehouse’s suspicions that something was wrong.

As they got nearer, it was clear that no-one was on deck so sailors Oliver Deveau and John Wright rowed out to check what was going on. Luckily for them, they didn’t find dead or dying crew littered about the deck with a wild-eyed psychopath lying in wait for them behind a pile of ropes. Using the 19th century maritime equivalent of “Helloooo?

Anybody at hoooome?” which I estimate to be: “Ahoooooy? Be there anybody aboooooard?”

they found…nobody. There was some damage to the sails and rigging and some loose ropes flapping about but the ship was seaworthy with no obvious signs of an attack. Months worth of food and water was still stowed neatly on board.

All the barrels of cargo were still in the hold. But the 10 person crew? Not a trace.

The ship they had boarded was the Mary Celeste, another brigantine which had left New York in November that year under Captain Benjamin Briggs. Deveau and Wright found a ship’s log but there were no clues as to what might have happened. The last entry was dated November 25th, a full 9 days earlier.

The only things that did appear to be missing from the ship, apart from the people of course, were some navigational equipment, official paperwork and the Mary Celeste’s small lifeboat. So where was everybody? Why was the ship abandoned in the middle of the sea when it didn’t seem that there was anything wrong with it?

Morehouse and his crew weren’t the only ones scratching their heads. Nearly 150 years later, we’re still not sure what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste. There are theories, of course, ranging from the possible to the bizarre but could it also be that the ship was just unlucky from the start?

The History

Let’s go back in time to 1861, 11 years before the empty ship was discovered. A newly-constructed brigantine almost 100 feet long (30m) was registered in Parsboro, Nova Scotia as a British ship under the name “Amazon”. In case you’ve been wondering what a brigantine is this whole time, it’s a two-masted ship with different types of rigging on the fore and aft although to be honest, the term is not concrete and I got a bit lost in weeds with all the gaff-rigging and square masts going on so just look up a picture if you care that much. Just imagine a big ol’ sailing ship with lots of sails and that will do.

As well as being an internet search headache in the future, Amazon did not have an auspicious start in life. Her first captain was Robert McLellan who was also a part owner of the boat along with 8 other people. In June 1861, on Amazon’s maiden voyage where she was supposed to be transporting timber across the Atlantic, Captain McLellan became ill.

He got progressively worse so the ship turned around and they sailed back to Spencer’s Island, Nova Scotia. After a mere 9 days as captain, McLellan was dead and Amazon’s legacy was on its way. A new captain took over to sail the wood to London.

His name was John Nutting Parker but it feels like his middle name should be in quotation marks as a nickname or something because a pair of safe hands he was not. Amazon hit fishing equipment or a fishing boat almost immediately after they’d set out again and had to be brought back for repairs. After they’d finally made it to London and unloaded, Parker seems to have taken his eye off the ball again because Amazon hit a smaller ship in the English Channel, causing the other ship to sink.

Parker was thankfully replaced by Captain William Thompson in 1863 but his bad luck wasn’t over as he appears to have drowned in 1868, making him the second captain of the ship to die prematurely.

Amazon seems to have behaved herself under Captain Thompson with nothing notable happening until October 1867 when she was caught in a storm by Cape Breton Island in Canada and driven ashore. The consortium that owned Amazon declared the ship a wreck as it was so badly damaged. As they had no intention of reclaiming it, a man called Alexander McBean claimed it under maritime derelict salvage laws which I think means that as the original owners left it abandoned there, he could claim ownership without having to pay anything.

These maritime laws are not like the laws of the land, though, so I wouldn’t go messing with anything unless you know what you’re doing. McBean sold it on pretty quickly as wrecked ships aren’t that useful or valuable if you’re not going to do anything with them. Amazon was then sold on again in 1868 to an American called Richard W.

Haines. After shelling out nearly 9000 19th century dollars which equates to over 174,000 in today dollars to restore her, Haines registered his new toy as an American vessel. The bad luck continued, however.

In 1869, Haines’s bad credit caught up with him and the ship was seized and sold on to another consortium of American men. After disappearing from the records for a time, the ship popped up again in 1872 where it underwent a major overhaul to enlarge it and upgrades including a new deck were added. Why am I talking so much about this ship, you may ask.

Well, despite the renovations it was still the same old wilful Amazon only when bad-credit Haines had registered it as an American ship in 1868, he also changed its name to the Mary Celeste.

Now with a new name, new owners and a new captain, the Mary Celeste was ready to take to the waters once again.

The Mary Celeste

Now that we’re all caught up on the history of the ghost ship, let’s get back into the story of the mystery voyage. The new captain of the Mary Celeste was a man called Benjamin Spooner Briggs. He was an experienced sea captain and for the Mary Celeste’s first outing following all the upgrades, he was going to sail to Genoa, Italy with a large cargo of denatured alcohol.

Briggs came from a solid sailing background with most of his immediate family also working in the maritime sector. As is usually the case with, spoiler alert, tragic stories, Briggs had intended to give up his seafaring ways and open up a shop with his brother as they both had an increasing number of small children to support. They decided against this in the end, though, and both ended up buying shares in ships instead, making Briggs a part owner of the Mary Celeste.

For his first voyage as Captain, Briggs was accompanied by his wife, Sarah, and their two year old daughter Sophia. They also had a 7 year old son, Arthur, but luckily for him they didn’t want to take him out of school so he stayed in the States with his grandparents. His existence also plays a role in debunking some of the more scurrilous theories that come up later on in the story.

During the refit, the main cabin had been modified to accommodate his wife and daughter so it seems that the voyage was supposed to be a nice family trip while also carrying some cargo to Italy. Briggs wrote to his mother before they departed with some updates about 2 year old Sophia, a few instructions for her if she needed money and he also wrote: “We finished loading last night and shall leave on Tuesday morning if we don’t get off tomorrow night, the Lord willing. Our vessel is in beautiful trim and I hope we shal have a fine passage but I have never been in her before and cant say how she’ll sail.”

We know that Briggs had many years of sailing experience so presumably he wasn’t particularly worried about the technical aspects of their trip. Briggs chose a small crew and mentioned his regret that they hadn’t also brought his son Arthur along after all: “We seem to have a very good mate and steward and I hope I shall have a pleasant voyage. We both have missed Arthur and I believe we should have sent for him if I could of thought of a good place to stow him away.

Sophia calls for him occasionally and wants to see him in the Album which by the way is a favorite book of hers.” As well as wanting him to remain in school, it appears that there just wasn’t a convenient place for Arthur to stay on board the ship. When the Mary Celeste set off for Genoa, there were 10 people on board: Captain Briggs, his wife Sarah, daughter Sophia, first mate Albert Richardson, second mate Andrew Gilling, steward Edward Head, or “Ed Head” as I like to call him, and four German crewmates - Gottlieb Goodschaad or Goudschaal, Arian Martens and brothers Volker Lorenzen and Boz or Boy Lorenzen.

After waiting for bad weather to clear, the Mary Celeste left New York on November 7th 1872 and nobody saw the crew ever again.

While the Mary Celeste was making final preparations, another brigantine was also waiting to set sail to Genoa. This was the Dei Gratia, meaning “By the Grace of God” under the command of Captain David Morehouse. It has not been definitively proven that Morehouse and Briggs were friends or had met for dinner the night before the Mary Celeste departed but they would have been aware of each other and were probably acquaintances at the very least.

The Dei Gratia set off 8 days after the Mary Celeste on a parallel but more northern route, heading for Gibraltar on the way to Genoa. On December 4th, 1872 land time, which was December 5th in “sea time”, which I had no idea was a thing but apparently the sea is living in the future, the Dei Gratia spotted the Mary Celeste behaving oddly. This was between the Azores and Gibraltar and there was no way the Dei Gratia should have caught up with a ship which had left over a week before it.

Wanting to find out what was going on, the sailors from the Dei Gratia went on board. Let’s talk about what the Mary Celeste looked like when it was boarded. You may have heard tell of hot meals on the table, a fire still alight in the galley and the ship being in dry and pristine condition.

We’ll talk more about this type of thing later but in actual fact, this was not the case.

The scene to the crew of the Dei Gratia looked like this: the ship was in a bedraggled but seaworthy condition. There were ropes hanging loose and some sails were damaged. The main hatch to the cargo hold was secured and no barrels were missing, although 9 barrels of the 1701 were later found to be empty.

A disassembled pump was found on the deck, one of two that the Mary Celeste had. There was over 3 feet (1 metre) of water in the ship’s hull. The small lifeboat was not there.

The only things that were obviously missing were a chronometer and sextant which were essential tools for navigation and timekeeping, the ship’s register and…the entire crew. The daily log was still there which put the most recent position of the Mary Celeste as near Santa Maria Island in the Azores. This entry was dated November 25th which was 9 days earlier.

When the Dei Gratia found it, the Mary Celeste was around 400 nautical miles (740 km) away from where the last entry said it was.

With nothing to be done, Morehouse decided to sail the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar and claim it as salvage for which he could expect to get quite a chunk of change under maritime law. I have no idea how this works, maritime law is totally nuts. If you recovered, say, an abandoned truck filled with stuff and notified authorities or drove it to the police station yourself, surely the original owners would be located and the goods returned to them?

You may or may not receive a reward at their discretion. If you sold all the goods yourself, it would be a crime. I guess things are different out there in the world of the sea.

Anyway, Morehouse sailed into Gibraltar on the 12th of December 1872 on the Dei Gratia with four of his crew. On the 13th of December, the Mary Celeste finally arrived, having been crewed by the remaining 3 of Morehouse’s men. However, instead of a hero’s welcome, he found himself on the wrong end of a criminal investigation and under suspicion of insurance fraud at best and murder at the worst.

It wasn’t until February 25th 1873 that the Mary Celeste was released by the court and eventually made it to Genoa to deliver those damn barrels in March of 1873. So, thoughts? Let’s get into it.

Theories

Insurance Fraud

As we’re here, let’s start with the Dei Gratia, Captain Morehouse and the possible case of abandonment for insurance fraud. There are two strands to this theory. The first is that Morehouse and Briggs were in it together with Briggs purposefully stranding the Mary Celeste for Morehouse to find.

Once the booty had been collected, the two would split the proceeds. Now, if this were the case, either it went horribly awry or Briggs and his whole crew secretly landed somewhere and spent the rest of their lives under assumed identities as they were never seen or heard from again. Why Briggs would be involved in this scam is difficult to believe as he was by all accounts an upstanding figure of good character.

The addition of his family to the crew also makes it unlikely that he was planning anything nefarious as he would be putting them at risk. He’d left his older son in America which again is not something you’d do if you were planning to start a new life somewhere else, I mean unless the kid was really, really annoying or something.

The other strand to the insurance theory is that the Dei Gratia found the Mary Celeste in some difficulty, boarded her, murdered the entire crew and sailed the ship back to claim a reward. Unlikely though this may seem, it was the theory that the Attorney General of Gibraltar, one Mr. Frederick Solly Flood, was working under when the salvage hearing came up for the Mary Celeste.

He got it into his head that the crew of the Dei Gratia broke into the alcoholic cargo the Mary Celeste was carrying, got homicidally drunk and proceeded to off the 10 crew members.There was absolutely zero evidence for this and even in the 19th century people were capable of seeing whether a huge fight had taken place on a wooden boat or not. One of the sailors who had initially boarded the Mary Celeste had reported seeing a sword which was immediately seized upon as a murder weapon. It was quickly found out, however, that the sword was not covered in damning blood as per Solly Flood’s assertions but rather was rusty.

Cuts and other damage to the boat could also have been caused by bad weather or possibly the original crew. Solly Flood’s idea that the Dei Gratia’s sailors were drunk on the alcohol in the hold was also majorly flawed as this alcohol was not yummy casks of rum or wine. I have seen various descriptions of the alcohol the Mary Celeste was carrying as “denatured”, “industrial” and “American”, whatever that means.

Nonetheless, this was not drinking alcohol. If the sailors had broken into the barrels and tried some, one mouthful would have been more than enough. It was probably toxic and it’s not likely that more than one person would be able to drink enough of it to then also be able to go on a murderous drunken rampage.

They’d probably be sick, go blind or die themselves. So, sorry, Solly Flood but your theory is utter rubbish. Poor old Captain Morehouse stayed in Gibraltar throughout this damaging investigation and was finally awarded his salvage settlement in April, some 4 months after he’d arrived.

The settlement you can receive can vary depending on how hazardous it was to retrieve the goods and whatever else the unpredictable maritime law deems relevant. Morehouse’s crew had sailed the Mary Celeste back with only 3 sailors, meaning it was a hard journey for both them and the Dei Gratia who also went down to 5 men. There was also bad weather meaning that Morehouse was hoping for quite a lot of money.

The value of the alcohol was about $35,000 at the time, or around 3 quarters of a million dollars in today’s money and the whole kit and caboodle was insured for over a million of today’s bucks, adjusted for inflation. Ultimately, after all his literal trials and tribulations, Morehouse received 1700 British pounds. At a rough conversion, this would equal between $150,000 to $200,000 today which seems ok to me but this would be split 8 ways between his crew and was only about a fifth of the worth of the salvage.

Morehouse would rightly have been expecting two to three times that amount. Given that possible substantial reward amount, might he have actually been tempted to murder the crew after all? Doubtful.

Also, the Mary Celeste had over a week’s head start on the Dei Gratia so if it had continued to be fully crewed, the two would never have been anywhere near each other. It seems that the murder for insurance theory can safely be put to rest.

The Paranormal

Come on, let’s get a little wacky. The eeriness of a fully-stocked abandoned ship has, of course, given rise to many weird and wonderful theories. Maybe the crew was zapped up by aliens, eaten by the kraken or fell into the Bermuda Triangle, never to be heard from again.

I think we can safely discount the kraken or sea monster theory as there would have been some signs of damage from said monster as it tried to grab up all the humans from the ship unless it was very, very dainty. And why would you abandon a large ship with lots of useful hidey holes in favour of a tiny, exposed lifeboat? Did they fall into the Bermuda Triangle?

No. The Bermuda Triangle is called the Bermuda Triangle because it’s near Bermuda. The Mary Celeste set sail from New York which is many hundreds of miles to the north.

I guess we can never totally rule out alien abduction but as the Mary Celeste’s lifeboat and ship’s documents were also missing, it seems a tad more likely that the crew left of their own volition. Or did they?

Pirates

If it wasn’t a sea monster or the crew of the Dei Gratia attacking the Mary Celeste, what about a scurvy crew of pirates? Not to pass judgement on the alcohol consumption of a band of salty sea dogs but maybe their tolerance was higher so they could handle a bit more of the industrial strength paint stripper in the hold? While pirates may seem a slightly possible theory for the deserted ship, the fact that nothing of value was taken puts the kibosh on it.

They would have to be the world’s worst pirates to forget to take any booty with them after capturing an entire cargo ship. And again, no signs of a struggle, all cargo intact etc. etc.

Mutiny and / or Murder

The two German brothers, Volkert and Boz (or Boy) Lorenzen have come under suspicion over the years. When going through the stuff left on the Mary Celeste, it was noted that none of their belongings were there. Could they have killed everyone, thrown them overboard and escaped in the lifeboat?

The biggest question here would be “what the heck for?” All the crew were hand picked or personally recommended to Benjamin Briggs. If the Lorenzens did do a mass homicide, there was no evidence of a fight, they didn’t take anything of value and why would they do it in the middle of the ocean where they couldn’t be sure of making it back to land themselves?

It was stated by a relative of the Lorenzens that the reason their belongings were not on the ship was because they didn’t have any in the first place. Prior to landing the job on the Mary Celeste, the brothers had been on another boat which was wrecked and they had lost all their stuff. Presumably you don’t need to bring much to work on a newly fitted-out, fully stocked boat so that seems to close that loophole.

Other theories regarding mutiny have popped up but this seems kind of stupid as the voyage wasn’t very long, there was plenty of food and water, all of the crew were experienced and the only alcohol on board was a crapload of undrinkable stuff that was the whole point of the journey in the first place. So mutiny? Don’t think so.

This seems like a good point to add another string to the tangled web of the Mary Celeste story. If you’ve been thinking: “I always thought it was the “Marie Celeste” or “what about the hot meals on the table or the fire still burning?”, I’m afraid you’ve been diddled, so to speak, by future Sherlock Holmes dad and professional meddler, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. If not for him, the strange case of the Mary Celeste might not be the mystery it is today.

It is not the only ship that’s ever been found abandoned in the middle of the sea but one of the main reasons it’s at the top of the list is the influence of a short story over the official narrative. In 1884, a whole 12 years after the crew disappeared and basically a propos of nothing, an anonymous story was published in the Cornhill Magazine called “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement”.

I’m not sure how anyone could have believed it with a name like that but it was written in the first person, as though this terribly named J. Habakuk Jephson fellow was a survivor of the episode. In the story, the ship is called the Marie Celeste, which actually flows a lot better than “Mary Celeste”, and after the crew is murdered by a serial-killer with a hatred for white people, it’s left abandoned for none other than the correctly named Dei Gratia to find.

The name “Marie Celeste” seemed to stick in the popular consciousness better than “Mary Celeste”, as did some of the invented details of the almost pristine condition the Dei Gratia found it in. In their first hand accounts, the crew of the Dei Gratia who boarded the Mary Celeste said that lots of things were wet and disorganised as though people had just dropped what they were doing and vanished. The ship’s interior was definitely not 100% dry.

Conan Doyle’s story then goes off on a tangent about a magical stone from a stone idol but he’d done enough to muddy the historical waters that even to this day his made up events are still thought of as facts. As recently as 1992, the Maldives issued a stamp using the incorrect “Marie Celeste” name as part of its “Mysteries of the Universe” series.

Now we’ve got the less probable stuff out of the way, let’s move on to some more believable theories.

A Natural Disaster

While the term “sea quake” might seem to belong in the realm of the paranormal theories, it is actually a thing. It is, as you might expect, an earthquake but on the sea. Activity under the sea floor can cause huge waves and tsunamis and it seems that the region around the Azores has experienced many significant seismic events over the years.

Even a small sub-marine rumbling might be enough to jeopardise a ship or at least make you think it’s in danger of sinking, even if it turns out it isn’t. A random event like a waterspout a.k.a. sea tornado might also cause enough of a panic to force the crew into the smaller boat but due to their combined experience, you’d have thought they would ride out their chances a bit further before everyone abandoned ship all together. As proved by the Dei Gratia, the Mary Celeste was a bit battered but otherwise in good enough condition that three people could sail her to Gibraltar so you would think that Briggs and his crew wouldn’t have been so easily put off by a spot of bad weather.

Alcohol Explosion

Remember that alcohol the Mary Celeste was carrying? Of course you do, how could you forget? Well, whether it was denatured, industrial or whatever, it was not for casually supping on.

Captain Briggs was a staunch non-drinker and was apparently quite anxious about his cargo as he didn’t know anything about alcohol at all. Now what about those empty barrels we mentioned earlier? Were they drained by the Lorenzen brothers, the crew of the Dei Gratia or pirates?

Were they decanted into other containers for some unknown reason? Were they perhaps knocked over on rough seas or during the previously mentioned sea quake? There were 1701 barrels in the hold. 1692 of them were made of white oak.

The remaining 9, which were also the empty ones, were made of red oak. Red oak is more porous than white oak which meant that the liquid contents were far more likely to leak out over time. This fact leads on to one of the possible reasons why the crew of the Mary Celeste might have thought it prudent to abandon ship, if only temporarily.

The fumes from industrial strength alcohol would be pretty strong and if you’re a God-fearing alcohol abstainer with your young child on board, you might think it would be a good idea to hop into the lifeboat for a while to let things air out. That doesn’t seem too unlikely on paper but it doesn’t really explain the apparent rush to leave the ship as it would be pretty clear where the smell was coming from and what it was. So let’s add some more pressing events to the mix.

What if there was an explosion? That would certainly make you shift faster. If some of the barrels exploded below deck due to the alcohol vapors heating up, that would be an immediate trigger to drop what you’re doing, grab the barest of essentials and head for the lifeboat.

What happened then is just even more speculation but maybe the seas were rough or the tethering rope wasn’t tethered enough but once out in the life boat, the crew never made it back to the ship and instead just floated out to an eventual watery grave. But what? An explosion?

Wouldn’t that have left more obvious evidence behind? Well, yes, after any sort of explosion you might expect to see scorch marks, holes, things blown apart and there wasn’t any of this on the Mary Celeste. The hatch to the cargo was still closed and all the barrels were in one piece.

The boarding party of the Dei Gratia didn’t mention smelling any fumes although the ship had been adrift for over a week by this point so it probably had more than enough time to air out. It is possible, however, to have an explosion that leaves no obvious traces behind. In 2006, a chemist from University College London demonstrated that an explosion could occur but if a wave of cooler air followed it, no soot or charring would be left behind.

For some, this is the answer to why the ship was abandoned so abruptly. There was more than enough leakage from the red oak barrels to be ignited by a freak spark from the galley fire, perhaps, or maybe there was one poor idiot who dumped out his pipe into the wrong hatch. The only things holding this theory back are the fact that the main hatch was still fastened and not blown off its hinges and that the conditions necessary for this type of non-evidential explosion are rare.

Still, even the possibility that the ship might be about to blow up would be enough to get most people jumping into that life boat.

Captain’s Mistake

According to Anne MacGregor, a documentary maker who made “The True Story of the Mary Celeste” with the Smithsonian Network (currently 6.5 on ImDb if you’re interested), this is the mother of all theories. It all started with a dodgy chronometer and just devolved from there. Using the location of the drifting Mary Celeste and backtracking its journey with the last recorded position in the running log, MacGregor found that it was possible for the ship to have been where Briggs said they were just before abandoning it.

It then sailed on by itself for 400 odd nautical miles until the Dei Gratia found it. However, further information from the log, which was lost a few years after the Mary Celeste was recovered, was copied down by Frederick Solly Flood, the zealous Attorney General of Gibraltar with an axe to grind against poor old Captain Morehouse. Assuming he copied down the last few entries correctly, MacGregor and oceanographer Phil Richardson looked at historical weather and ocean current data and worked out that Briggs and the Mary Celeste were actually off course by over 100 miles.

A bad storm was noted in the log the day before the last entry and if they had been on track, they should have already reached Santa Maria three days previously. More pieces of the puzzle started coming together: the disassembled pump found on the deck could have been clogged up with coal dust from the Mary Celeste’s previous voyage and debris from the refit. Following the storm, the bottom of the ship would have filled up with water.

When it was found, the Mary Celeste had about 3 and a half feet or just over 1 metre of water in the hold. As proven by the fact it was still afloat, this wasn’t a dangerous amount of water to be carrying although it’s about the same height as an average 5 year old child which seems like quite a lot to me. The hundreds and hundreds of barrels made judging the amount of water difficult and with a pump out of action, there was no way to quickly get rid of it.

Having finally sighted land after being kind of lost for a couple of days in terrible weather, maybe being in fear of the boat imminently sinking or exploding, the crew took their chances in the lifeboat in a gamble that ultimately did not pay off. They either tried to row to land which was still many miles away or were accidentally cut adrift from the ship but either way, they were never seen again.

Aftermath

After finally delivering her blooming alcohol to Genoa, what happened to the Mary Celeste who had now had another captain die on her watch? After being passed around a bit and wreaking financial losses wherever she went, she sailed to St. Helena in 1879 because the current captain, Edgar Tuthill, was ill.

Guess what? He DIED. That brings her total serving captain deaths to 3 with 1 ex-captain who died prematurely shortly after sailing on her.

In 1885, her reign of terror finally came to an end when she was intentionally wrecked by Captain Gilman Parker on the Rochelois Bank coral reef off the island of Haiti. Ironically, this was for an insurance scam. She was packed full of worthless junk purported to be valuable items but still managed to get the last laugh by not actually sinking so the fraud was quickly revealed.

This intentional wrecking of a ship was a crime known as “barratry” and in the nineteenth century was actually punishable by death. Man, those laws of the sea are scary. Just remind me never to go on a boat again in case I accidentally commit a serious crime.

Captain Parker was let off the hook, however, as his judge thought death was a bit harsh and just made him pay back the people he had defrauded instead. The Mary Celeste still had a bit of appetite left, and just three months later, after having lost his reputation and all his money, Gilman Parker was dead, adding yet another captain to her tally. After hitting the reef, the Mary Celeste was damaged beyond repair and was left to rot where she lay, perhaps extending her bad vibes into the sea around Haiti…but probably not.

While it will never be 100% figured out, the most likely cause for the abandonment of the Mary Celeste was that Captain Briggs thought the crew was in imminent danger. The abandoned ship was not in dry and pristine condition when it was found, contrary to the beliefs popularised by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but it did seem to carry a weird streak of bad luck which has earned it a place in the canon of the mysterious and unknown.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the name of the ship that found the Mary Celeste?

The Dei Gratia, under the command of Captain David Morehouse, found the Mary Celeste.

What was the cargo of the Mary Celeste?

The Mary Celeste was carrying a large cargo of denatured alcohol.

Who was the captain of the Mary Celeste?

The captain of the Mary Celeste was Benjamin Spooner Briggs.

What was the original name of the Mary Celeste?

The original name of the Mary Celeste was the Amazon.

What was the condition of the Mary Celeste when it was found?

The Mary Celeste was in a bedraggled but seaworthy condition with some damage to the sails and rigging, loose ropes, and over 3 feet of water in the hull.

What was the theory proposed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle regarding the Mary Celeste?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story popularized the incorrect name ‘Marie Celeste’ and added fictional details, such as hot meals on the table and a fire still burning, which are not supported by the actual accounts of the Dei Gratia’s crew.

What was the theory involving alcohol explosion?

One theory suggests that an explosion of alcohol vapors from leaking barrels might have caused the crew to abandon the ship. The explosion could have been silent and left no traces, but this theory is speculative.

What was the theory involving a sea quake?

A sea quake or underwater seismic activity could have caused a panic, leading the crew to abandon the ship. However, the Mary Celeste was in good enough condition to be sailed to Gibraltar by a small crew.

What happened to the Mary Celeste after it was found?

After being involved in a salvage hearing and delivering its cargo to Genoa, the Mary Celeste was intentionally wrecked in 1885 for an insurance scam. It was left to rot on a coral reef off the island of Haiti.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Ghost Ship: The Octavius
• Hero image source by Gerd Eichmann / openverse, by.