The Enduring Mystery of the Mary Celeste

 

The Mary Celeste (Inset: The captain's wife and daughter)

Finding abandoned ships floating on the high seas are not uncommon occurrences. As an example, the MV Alta, a 2,400 ton vessel, was found floating near the Irish coast in the beginning of this year. It had had broken down near Bermuda and while the crew had been rescued, the ship had been drifting for nearly seventeen months, skirting Africa, the Americas and Europe. The details after that remain murky: the owners might have abandoned it in international waters; it might have been hijacked, and finally, left to drift.

One such abandonment, captured the imagination of the world, and the subsequent varied explanations became a sort of cottage industry. The fate of the Mary Celeste, built in Nova Scotia under British registration and sold to American interests in 1868, remains a mystery to this day.

In December of 1872, off the coast of the Azores, the Mary Celeste was discovered floating alone, in a disheveled but seaworthy condition, by the Dei Gratia, a Canadian merchant vessel. The ship’s ample supplies, its cargo and all the crew’s belongings remained on board. Only the lifeboat, a small yawl, was missing. The ships’ log revealed nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed that the ship had been abandoned in a hurry, yet no reason for its abandonment could be discovered and the ship’s crew could never be found.

The Dei Gratia

The story might have ended there, except for two things. One was the personal tragedy of the Captain, Benjamin Briggs, who arranged to have his wife and baby daughter on board. He left his son, who was seven at the time, with his mother. The death of the mother, the daughter and the orphaning of the son aroused public sympathy.

The second reason was due to a fictionalized report written by a twenty-five year old ship’s surgeon named Arthur Conan Doyle. While he had no connection to the Mary Celeste, the creator of Sherlock Holmes wrote the report in the first person, claiming the disaster to be the result of a white-race hating fanatic named Jephson, who commandeers the ship to Africa.

While thoroughly un-factual, the story caused a sensation when published in the Cornhill Magazine. Immediately, other publications came out with even more fantastic accounts. Other “survivors” told their tales (despite the fact that no survivors were ever located,) each more lurid that the rest.

The accounts included thievery, murder, madness, treasures of gold and silver, giant squid and even “mystical experiences” that somehow tied the ship’s abandonment to the lost continent of Atlantis. The more bizarre the story, the more it was lapped up. In the 1930’s two well-received radio plays aired, movies were filmed in 1935 and in 1938, and a play performed in 1949. In 2007, the Smithsonian Chanel aired a documentary on the subject.

In the end, the Mary Celeste, could not outrun her bad luck. Despite being made again sea-worthy, she sat in a dock unused, having gained a reputation for bad luck. After a change in ownership, she sailed again, resulting in heavy losses. Her owners, in desperation, ran her aground on a reef near Haiti, hoping to collect insurance. Their plot was discovered, resulting in the suicide of one of the owners, madness of another and the impoverishment, death and disgrace of the third, three months after the trial.

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)