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) 

Flowers to Remember Christmas...by Sheila Claydon

The cover of the latest edition, published by Books We Love 

Click here for my BWL page

A second edition ebook published by another publisher no longer operating

The original cover when the book was one of 2 full length stories published together

In recent blogs I have written about how the covers of some of my books have changed over the years as new editions have been published. How, too, I have transitioned from using the pseudonym Anne Beverley to my own name of Sheila Claydon, and how this also affected the publication. (see above) 

Today I am blogging about the third of these vintage books, Bouquet of Thorns, and I have chosen this one  because of the flowers and because it is almost Christmas. My mother was a very talented florist and because florists are always very busy in the festive season, I sometimes got to help her in those long ago  Christmases. Although I was given the unskilled jobs such as sweeping floor and filling vases with water, occasionally far more exciting things happened, and these are the seasonal memories I cherish. 

I was born and raised in Southampton, England, which is a coastal city with a port used by liners from across the world.  Nowadays it is the busiest cruise terminal and the second largest container port in the UK. In those far distant days, however, when cruises were only for the very wealthy, people would spend days and weeks aboard ship travelling to places such as South Africa and America, instead of flying as most do today. And that was how, from quite a young age, I was able to accompany my mum when she went on board what were then some of the most modern liners in the world, to decorate the state rooms, the various lounge and dining areas, the ball rooms and other communal places, and deliver personal bouquets to individual cabins. Sometimes I even got to do the personal deliveries myself...not exactly knocking on the cabin door and handing over the flowers, but taking them to the correct deck and searching out the bedroom steward who would then take charge of them.

Walking up the gangway carrying a bouquet of flowers or a box of plants made me feel very important but even better was going down to the galley to see the chefs at work, and then being served a meal that was far more exotic than anything I got at home because it was in the days before we all began to adopt the dishes of other countries and cultures. I would often be given chocolate, cakes and fruit to take home too. I  tasted my first Hershey bar courtesy of a steward on an American liner, long before they were sold in the UK. Pineapple too, and mango. And many other things that are available most places now but which weren't then.

So Bouquet of Thorns not only reminds me of those far off Christmases, it also reminds me of my mum, and every word written about the flowers and the floral displays in the book comes from that. Helping her taught me a lot, and it's thanks to her that I know how to care for cut flowers, how to revitalise them when they start to droop, and how best to display them. I know the best way to pot up plants too, and care for those, and, like my mum, that has tipped over into loving and caring for garden plants as well. So although those visits to the vast and glossy liners in the port of Southampton are long past, I still remember how it felt to be accepted by the crew and, probably because I was young, given so many treats. To this day I still remember most of the things my mum taught me about flowers, the same as I remember the joy of those Christmases past.

If you like flowers too, then you can find a snippet from Bouquet of Thorns on my Website.

Happy Christmas and I hope you are able to make some happy memories that stay with you, even in these difficult times.

Light the Way

 Find my books here

At the end of this strange, dark year, I wish you light. 

I thank everyone who has gifted me with light in 2020…

To the nurse who took the time to tell me how reading my Mercies of the Fallen had eased her out of her work in the middle of a pandemic to enjoy a love story held together by the notes of its hero’s penny whistle…

To my family for sending images of dogs frolicking on the Oregon shore and a baby reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? in sun-kissed California. 

To my community, for flooding an ancestor's mailbox with cards to celebrate her 100th birthday, and for for lighting up our town square in defiance of death itself.

Light a candle. Be the light. We'll get through this, together.

Clearing Clutter

 

                                 Please click this link for author, book and purchase information

One of my projects for this winter of COVID-19 is to clear clutter from my house. I'm starting with boxes of writing stuff I've accumulated during the past 30 years. So far, I've filled several recycling bins with papers, although I'm still holding onto more than I should.  

Easy to dump are old query letters to publishers and their form rejection letters. I've never understood writers who talk of papering their den walls with rejection letters for inspiration. My instinct is to shove the depressing messages out of sight, although rejection has prompted me to write better, and still does. I am keeping the occasional rejections that complimented my writing and place them in a binder with other encouragements I received on my journey to publication.  

I'm also throwing out critiques of chapters from novels that I subsequently revised and published, since there's no point in rereading the comments now. In the pre-digital days of writing classes, we had to print copies of our submissions for each of our classmates to scrawl comments on. That's a lot of paper for my recycling bin. Now and then a page of positive remarks by an instructor or writer-in-residence jumps out at me. I add these to my encouragement binder. It turns out this de-cluttering project is partly about jettisoning negative and irrelevant memories, while preserving ones that boost my spirit. 

Stuff I can't bring myself to toss out includes notes and newspaper clippings that might have value for future writing projects. I file these in boxes and folders with labels so I can find them easily when I want. If I ever move to a smaller place, I'll instantly get rid of most of this, including my folder for the mythology workshop I didn't understand at the time, and still find baffling from my perusal of the notes. For now, these folders and boxes don't take up much space on my shelf, where they'll stay until I'm ready to dive into them or downsize.   

 The best finds are bits of clutter that might have an immediate use. I created folders for my current novel-in-progress, my next three story ideas, editing, and book promotion and tuck relevant notes and clippings into the folders. For instance, my germ of an idea for my next mystery novel includes a ghost in ways I haven't figured out yet. This prompted me to hold onto a comment by a creative writing instructor about Shakespeare's Hamlet. 'The ghost is a catalyst, and is the ghost telling the truth?' When I sit down to write the novel, this question about Hamlet's ghost might or might not trigger thoughts about the ghost in my story. If it doesn't, I'll send the instructor's observation to the recycling bin or to another folder, where it might apply.  

Also useful in the near future is advice for presenting my work in public. I'm collecting my scattered notes and handouts on this topic into one labelled box, along with printouts of past readings I've done. One tidbit of advice that I've taken to heart is to not read from the book itself. A printout of the scene enables me to enlarge the font for easier reading, revise the scene for audience interest and engage better with listeners than I can with my nose in the book. The next time I'm called on to do a literary reading I'll leaf through the box for printouts of a scene that suits the occasion and refresh myself on the advice, all of it conveniently located in one place. 

Nowadays, advice for public presentation tends to focus on Zoom and similar platforms. A couple of months ago, I attended an excellent webinar on this subject and made handwritten notes. The 'Readings' box will be the logical place for the notes, if I can find them in my recent piles of writing clutter. 

 Happy Holidays, however you celebrate this year!   

Happy Holidays

See below to get this holiday story for free! 

Ah, December is here and even with all the craziness in the world, I hope you have the chance to enjoy the season. Several years ago, I wrote a “short-short story” about the season and thought I would share a few parts with you. I’m sure some of you can relate to what I have experienced over the years. 

DECORATING: We found the box of lights at the bottom of everything because we had moved last summer and when we got them out, they were all tangled up and half of them didn’t even work. After buying new lights and a new ladder because ours was run over by the moving truck, we strung the lights along the house, around the shrubs, in the trees and down the driveway. Only to realize we needed five extension cords just to reach the closest outlet. 

SHOPPING: I drove around for over fifteen minutes trying to find a parking place at the mall and when I finally spied one, a little red Beetle whipped into it before I could round the corner. After taking a whole day off to go Christmas shopping, things that were on the sale flyer weren’t in the store and what I had put on layaway three months ago was now on sale for half price. And I couldn’t find the right size or the right color or something that matched the rest of what I had bought and if I couldn’t buy five of the same thing then I might as well not buy any because everyone had to have one or there would be crying. 

COOKIE MAKING: It was time to bake and my daughter made the frosting and decided that army green was an appropriate Christmas color, so Santa, the reindeer and all the snowmen joined the service that year. I wanted to make trays for work and my husband’s office and for our friends so I had to bake for several days, hiding everything on the shelf in the office closet because no one ever goes in there. But they did. 

SNOW: All the family was here to celebrate and just in time because it started to snow and the roads were closed. The kids all wanted to go sledding and build snowmen. We finally got everyone bundled up in snowsuits and boots and mittens and caps and then the littlest one said he had to go potty and so we had to undo the caps and mittens and boots and snowsuits. Much later, the cold, red noses were wiped and the hands warmed and cocoa drank and cookies eaten. All the cousins played downstairs and nobody worried when they argued because all we had to say was, “If you’re not good, Santa won’t come and leave you any presents.” 

CHRISTMAS EVE: The carolers are singing and we go out and join them before going to midnight service to hear the wonderful story about the birth of Christ. And when we come home, all the presents are wrapped and under the tree and the stockings are hung and the kids are too excited to go to sleep, but all we have to say is, “If you don’t go to sleep, Santa won’t come and leave you any presents.” Quiet descends and we sit and watch the lights wink on the tree and hope that on Christmas Day all the toys make noise and all the baby dolls bawl; that the bike and trike bells ring and the train whistle blows and the race cars speed around the track just like the instructions said they would. And on Christmas day when everything has been opened and played with and tried on, we sigh in relief that it all works and all fits and is in all the favorite colors. And now we only have three hundred sixty-four shopping days until we get to do it all over again. 

If you enjoy Christmas stories, Books We Love is giving away a free Christmas novel every week until December 25. One of my favorites, “Always Believe” is available FREE right now so visit their website at https://bookswelove.net and scroll down to the Christmas Gift to our Readers.

Another of my holiday stories, “If Wishes were Magic” is a contemporary romance about making wishes come true and is available in print or ebook format at Books We Love. 

Wishing you Happy Holidays,

Barb Baldwin 

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin 

https://bookswelove.net/baldwin-barbara/

New release "Mishandled Conviction" by J. S. Marlo

 

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

A few years ago, my friends and I were looking for a place to go on our girls’ night out when someone suggested an escape room.

None of us had ever attempted to escape a theme room in sixty minutes or less, and I don’t think any of us expected to succeed, but we figured we should give it a try. Well, fifty-nine minutes and three clues later, we solved the last puzzle and escaped. It was a blast.

At the time, I had just started writing "Misguided Honor", but it occurred to me that an escape room would make a great setting for my next time travel mystery.

Two years later, I'm pleased to present you my new release: 

"Mishandled Conviction"

 

While Violette remodels an escape room, the lines between illusion and reality blur. The escape room is based on the legend of a dead inmate who haunts a condemned penitentiary, but the fake prison cell she recreates transports her into the past.

As she relives the tumultuous events surrounding her life and the inmate’s death, Violette glimpses clues regarding the disappearance of her son-in-law and loss of her precious heirloom.

The past and the present collide, threatening the lives of Violette’s loved ones and unleashing conflicting emotions toward the men haunting her heart. Can she unravel the truth and save her family without losing her future?

 At 95,000 words, it's the longest story I've published so far and it's available in paperback and ebook. List of online retailers -> https://books2read.com/Mishandled-Conviction

It would make a great stocking stuffer for Christmas...just saying...

Here's an excerpt:

Something snapped behind her, jolting Violette. As she spun on her heel, the front door opened and her daughter barged in.

“Mom, where have you been?” Garbed in Elliot’s oversized t-shirt, Sophie kicked off her yellow flip-flops. One landed on the floor mat and the other under the bench on which they sat in the winter to put their boots on. “I was worried.”

Welcome to Worryland, sweetheart. Once you enter, you never leave. “I was—” Upon seeing Joe stepping in with only pajama pants on, the remaining words caught in Violette’s throat.

“Did something happen?” Bare chested, Joe looked more athletic and in better shape than most men half his age, including Elliot who patronized a gym three days a week. “You didn’t spend half the night in my escape room, did you?”

She heard him, but the question didn’t register until she tore her gaze away from his formidable physique. “No...not your escape room...not exactly...”

“Then where were you, Mom?” An arm draped around Violette’s shoulders, Sophie led her into the kitchen. “I tried calling you. When you didn’t answer, I knocked on Joe’s door. He was mounting a rescue when he saw your car pull into the driveway.”

“My phone was—” The meaning behind their nightclothes, and the realization that they had followed her inside, dawned on Violette. “You were on your way to rescue me? In pajamas?” That would have been a great idea—four hours ago. “I think I need a cup of coffee.”

“At this hour?” A frown etched on his forehead, Joe pulled up a chair for her. “You won’t be able to sleep a wink.”

Trust me, I won’t sleep whether I drink or not. “You’re right. After the eventful evening I just spent, I need something stronger. I’ll have a beer.”

Her daughter exchanged a dubious look with Joe, a look that her grandson might as well get used to early in life, but then Sophie gestured for Joe to sit at the table. “I’ll get Mom a beer. Would you like one too?”

“No thank you, Sneaky Pie.”

The nickname drew a smile on Violette’s face. On so many levels, Joe was the father that her daughter would have deserved but that Violette could never give her. “I suppose I owe you both the long version, don’t I?”

“We were worried, Mom.” From the fridge, Sophie fetched a beer from the six-pack that Elliot concealed behind the milk. “We’re just glad you’re safe, but an explanation would be nice, if you feel like sharing.”

Sharing her unbelievable ordeal sounded like a bad idea—an idea that might tempt them to send her to the loony bin—but to receive answers to her questions, she somehow needed to share her incredible tale. “I...I drove to the Ottawa Royal Penitentiary to visit Phantom’s cell.”

“You drove where?” Joe’s policeman mask fell right off his face and hit the table with a silent thump.

I stumbled onto an enchanted passageway that transported me from your mock courtyard to the real courtyard, slid into a coal room, broke all my nails. The grime of her escape was embedded into every pore of her skin, while the hopelessness of the prison cast a shadow on her soul. I searched Phantom’s cell, found a dog tag, walked up and down a deserted road hoping to get a signal on my phone only to realize that it had died since I’d left the prison. Then I felt giddy and scared when I spotted lights in the distance. I almost gave a heart attack to the poor truck driver when I waved at him from the ditch, but he was kind enough to give me a ride to your escape room. From there, I jumped in my car and drove home.

“I drove to the prison.” Mustering her best poker face, Violette held his darkening gaze. “How else would I get there?”

 

The holiday season is fast approaching. Don't forget to give the gift of reading.

 

Wrapped a book for each of your loved ones or get them a library membership.

 

Happy Reading & Stay Safe!

Many hugs!

JS

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

Erin's Children Now Available!

 

Click here for purchase links

Click here to visit Eileen O'Finlan's website

I am very excited to announce that my new novel, Erin's Children, the sequel to Kelegeen was released by BWL Publishing, Inc. on December 1, 2020! 

Erin's Children picks up three years after the end of Kelegeen. Meg has arrived in America, found employment as a domestic servant in Worcester, Massachusetts, regularly sends life-saving money back to her family in Ireland, and saved enough to buy passage for her sister, Kathleen.

Sounds like everything is going just fine, doesn't it? Not quite.

Meg and Rory married just before she sailed for America. They had planned to wed anyway and thought it safer for Meg to arrive in a strange country as a married woman. Wrong! It turns out that a domestic servant, the best job for a female Irish immigrant, must live in with the family she serves. There's no room for a husband and the children who will undoubtedly soon follow. 'No Irish Need Apply' signs among the help wanted ads abound making it difficult for Irish men to find work. When they do, it pays little forcing them and their families to live in squalid housing tenements, if they're lucky. Meeting the rent is hard enough, but they still have to eat.

Meg loves and misses Rory. She came to America with the plan that he would join her and they would make a life together. Used to a one-room, nearly bare cottage, and a diet almost soley made up of potatoes (before the blight left them with nothing), Meg shouldn't mind making the best of living in a tenement. That's what she believed upon her arrival.

But that was before she moved in with the Claproods in their Grecian style home in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Crown Hill. A beautiful house, a room to herself, three good meals a day, money enough to send home with extra to save and a little more to buy clothes as nice as those of her employers - it's all become the norm now. How can she give it up? But how can she give up Rory?

While Meg struggles with her internal conflict, her sister, Kathleen, faces the daily invective of the Pratts, particularly Mrs. Pratt and her eldest son, Lemuel. Mrs. Pratt is suspicious, bigoted, and impossible to please. Lemuel seems downright dangerous. The only bright spot is Clara Pratt, the sole daughter of the family. A bright, friendly, but lonely girl, she befriends Kathleen much to her mother's dismay. Eventually Clara is all that holds Kathleen to the Pratts until she is finally forced from the home. Where she goes from there is the start of an adventure she could never have imagined.

Surrounding everyone is the tumult caused by the fight over slavery, the rise of the nativist, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Know Nothing political party, and the ever-present specter of a looming civil war.

Meg, Kathleen, and the other Irish immigrants must navigate all these obstacles in a land very different from their own while trying to keep their personal lives together even as their new country seems about to be torn to pieces. They will need all of their resiliance, faith, and mutual support to make it.

To celebrate the release of Erin's Children, I invite you all to join me for my blog tour beginning today. Click here for a list of blog sites where Erin's Children will be featured over the next ten days with spotlights, interviews, reviews, and guest blog posts as well as a chance to win free copies of Erin's Children!