Mary Celeste (, often erroneously referred to as Marie Celeste,) was a Canadian-built, American-registered, merchant brigantine that was discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores on December 4, 1872.
The Canadian brigantine found her in a dishevelled but seaworthy condition under partial sail and with her lifeboat missing. The last entry in her log was dated 10 days earlier. She had left New York City for Genoa on November 7 and was still amply provisioned when found. Her cargo of alcohol was intact, and the captain's and crew's personal belongings were undisturbed. None of those who had been on board were ever seen or heard from again.
Mary Celeste was built in Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia, and launched under British registration as Amazon in 1861. She was transferred to American ownership and registration in 1868, when she acquired her new name. Thereafter, she sailed uneventfully until her 1872 voyage. At the salvage hearings in Gibraltar following her recovery, the court's officers considered various possibilities of foul play, including mutiny by Mary Celestes crew, piracy by the Dei Gratia crew or others, and conspiracy to carry out insurance or salvage fraud. No convincing evidence supported these theories, but unresolved suspicions led to a relatively low salvage award.
The inconclusive nature of the hearings fostered continued speculation as to what had happened to the ship's occupants, and the story has repeatedly been complicated by false detail and fantasy. Hypotheses that have been advanced include the effects on the crew of alcohol fumes rising from the cargo, submarine earthquakes, waterspouts, attack by a giant squid, and paranormal intervention.
After the Gibraltar hearings, Mary Celeste continued in service under new owners. In 1885, her captain deliberately wrecked her off the coast of Haiti as part of an attempted insurance fraud. The story of her 1872 abandonment has been recounted and dramatized many times in documentaries, novels, plays, and films, and the name of the ship has become a byword for unexplained desertion. In 1884, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", a short story based on the mystery. The story's popularity led to the "Marie Celeste" spelling becoming more common than the original in everyday use.
Early history
thumb|left|Spencer's Island, photographed in 2011
The keel of the future Mary Celeste was laid in late 1860 at the shipyard of Joshua Dewis in the village of Spencer's Island, on the shores of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. The ship was constructed of locally felled timber, with two masts, and was rigged as a brigantine; she was carvel-built, the hull planking flush rather than overlapping. She was launched on May 18, 1861, given the name Amazon, and registered at nearby Parrsboro on June 10, 1861. Her registration documents described her as in length, broad, in depth, and of 198.42 gross tonnage. She was owned by a local consortium of nine people, headed by Dewis; among the co-owners was Robert McLellan, the ship's first captain.
For her maiden voyage in June 1861, Amazon sailed to Five Islands, Nova Scotia, to take on a cargo of timber for passage across the Atlantic to London.
In October 1869, the ship was seized by Haines' creditors and sold to a New York consortium headed by James H. Winchester. During the next three years, the composition of this consortium changed several times, although Winchester retained at least a half-share throughout. No record of Mary Celestes trading activities during this period have been found. Among the structural changes, a second deck was added; an inspector's report refers to extensions to the poop deck, new transoms, and the replacement of many timbers.
Captain Briggs and crew
Benjamin Briggs was born in Wareham, Massachusetts, on April 24, 1835, one of five sons of sea captain Nathan Briggs. All but one of the sons went to sea, two becoming captains. Benjamin was an observant Christian who read the Bible regularly and often bore witness to his faith at prayer meetings. In 1862, he married his cousin Sarah Elizabeth Cobb, and enjoyed a Mediterranean honeymoon on board his schooner Forest King. Two children were born: Arthur in September 1865 and Sophia Matilda in October 1870.
By the time of Sophia's birth, Briggs had achieved a high standing within his profession. He considered retiring from the sea to go into business with his seafaring brother Oliver, who had also grown tired of the wandering life. They did not proceed with this project, but each invested his savings in a share of a ship: Oliver invested in Julia A. Hallock and Benjamin in Mary Celeste. while his school-aged son was left at home in the care of his grandmother.
Briggs chose the crew for this voyage with care. First mate Albert G. Richardson was married to a niece of Winchester's and had sailed under Briggs before. Second mate Andrew Gilling, aged about 25, was born in New York, and was of Danish extraction. The steward, newly married Edward William Head, was signed on with a personal recommendation from Winchester. The four general seamen were Germans from the Frisian Islands (brothers Volkert and Boz Lorenzen), Arian Martens, and Gottlieb Goudschaal. A later testimonial described them as "peaceable and first-class sailors." In a letter to his mother shortly before the voyage, Briggs declared himself eminently satisfied with ship and crew.
Abandonment
New York
thumb|upright=1.2|A painting by [[George McCord of New York Harbor in the 19th century]]
On October 20, 1872, Briggs arrived at Pier 50 on the East River in New York City to supervise the loading of the ship's cargo of 1,701 barrels of alcohol; his wife and infant daughter joined him a week later.
On the morning of Tuesday, November 5, Mary Celeste left Pier 50 with Briggs, his wife and daughter, and seven crew members, and moved into New York Harbor. The weather was uncertain, and Briggs decided to wait for better conditions. He anchored the ship just off Staten Island, where Sarah used the delay to send a final letter to her mother-in-law. "Tell Arthur," she wrote, "I make great dependence on the letters I shall get from him, and will try to remember anything that happens on the voyage which he would be pleased to hear." The weather eased two days later, and Mary Celeste left the harbor and entered the Atlantic. Captain David Morehouse and first mate Oliver Deveau were Nova Scotians, both highly experienced and respected seamen. Captains Briggs and Morehouse shared common interests, and some writers think they likely knew each other, if only casually. Dei Gratia departed for Gibraltar on November 15, following the same general route eight days after Mary Celeste. Captain Morehouse came on deck, and the helmsman reported a vessel heading unsteadily towards Dei Gratia at a distance around . The ship's erratic movements and the odd set of her sails led Morehouse to suspect something was wrong. As the vessel drew close, he could see nobody on deck and received no reply to his signals, so he sent Deveau and second mate John Wright in a ship's boat to investigate. The pair established that this was the Mary Celeste by the name on her stern; they then climbed aboard and found the ship deserted. The sails were partly set and in poor condition, some missing altogether, and much of the rigging was damaged, with ropes hanging loosely over the sides. The main hatch cover was secure, but the fore and lazarette hatches were open, their covers beside them on the deck. The ship's single lifeboat was a small yawl that had apparently been stowed across the main hatch, but it was missing, while the binnacle housing the ship's compass had shifted from its place and its glass cover was broken. About of water were in the hold, a significant but not alarming amount for a ship of this size. A makeshift sounding rod (a device for measuring the amount of water in the hold) was found abandoned on the deck.
They found the ship's daily log in the mate's cabin, and its final entry was dated at 8 am on November 25, nine days earlier. It recorded Mary Celestes position then as off Santa Maria Island in the Azores, nearly from the point where Dei Gratia encountered her.
Briggs' cousin Oliver Cobb suggested that the transfer of personnel to the yawl may have been intended as a temporary safety measure in the wake of anticipated danger. He speculated from Deveau's report on the state of the rigging and ropes that the ship's main halyard may have been used to attach the yawl to the ship, enabling the company to return to Mary Celeste when the danger had passed. However, Mary Celeste would have sailed away empty if the line had parted, leaving the yawl adrift with its occupants. Begg notes that attaching the yawl to a vessel that the crew thought was about to explode or sink would be illogical. Macdonald Hastings argues that Briggs was an experienced captain who would not have led a panicked abandonment, writing: "If Mary Celeste had blown her timbers, she would still have been a better bet for survival than the ship's boat." According to Hastings, if Briggs had relied on the ship's boat for survival rather than on Mary Celeste, he would have "behaved like a fool; worse, a frightened one."
Arthur N. Putman, a New York insurance appraiser, explored the wreck underwater in 1910 and confirmed that only a single lifeboat was missing from the vessel. He discovered that the boat's rope was cut, not untied, which indicated to him that the abandonment of Mary Celeste was performed quickly, the crew, in his opinion, having been terrified by a series of small explosions, as indicated in the entries In the ship's log.
Deveau returned to report his findings to Morehouse, who decided to bring the derelict into Gibraltar away. Under maritime law, a salvor could expect a substantial share of the combined value of rescued vessel and cargo, the exact award depending on the degree of danger inherent in the salvaging. Morehouse divided Dei Gratias crew of eight between the two vessels, sending Deveau and two experienced seamen to Mary Celeste, while four others and he remained on Dei Gratia. The weather was relatively calm for most of the way to Gibraltar, but each ship was seriously undermanned and progress was slow. Dei Gratia reached Gibraltar on December 12; Mary Celeste had encountered fog and arrived on the following morning. She was immediately impounded by the vice admiralty court to prepare for salvage hearings. Deveau wrote to his wife that the ordeal of bringing the ship in was such that "I can hardly tell what I am made of, but I do not care so long as I got in safe. I shall be well paid for the Mary Celeste."
Gibraltar salvage hearings
thumb|left|upright=1.4|Gibraltar in the 19th century
The salvage court hearings began in Gibraltar on December 17, 1872, under Sir James Cochrane, the chief justice of Gibraltar. The hearing was conducted by Frederick Solly-Flood, Attorney General of Gibraltar, who was also Advocate-General and Proctor for the Queen in Her Office of Admiralty. Flood was described by a historian of the Mary Celeste affair as a man "whose arrogance and pomposity were inversely proportional to his IQ", and as "... the sort of man who, once he had made up his mind about something, couldn't be shifted". The testimonies of Deveau and Wright convinced Flood unalterably that a crime had been committed, a belief picked up by the New York Shipping and Commercial List on December 21: "The inference is that there has been foul play somewhere, and that alcohol is at the bottom of it."
On December 23, Flood ordered an examination of Mary Celeste, which was carried out by John Austin, Surveyor of Shipping, with the assistance of a diver, Ricardo Portunato. Austin noted cuts on each side of the bow, caused, he thought, by a sharp instrument, and found possible traces of blood on the captain's sword. His report emphasized that the ship did not appear to have been struck by heavy weather, citing a vial of sewing machine oil found upright in its place. Austin did not acknowledge that the vial might have been replaced since the abandonment, nor did the court raise this point. Portunato's report on the hull concluded that the ship had not been involved in a collision or run aground.
A further inspection by a group of Royal Naval captains endorsed Austin's opinion that the cuts on the bow had been caused deliberately. They also discovered stains on one of the ship's rails that might have been blood, together with a deep mark possibly caused by an axe. These findings strengthened Flood's suspicions that human wrongdoing rather than natural disaster lay behind the mystery. Flood thought that Morehouse and his men were hiding something, specifically that Mary Celeste had been abandoned in a more easterly location, and that the log had been doctored. He could not accept that Mary Celeste could have traveled so far while uncrewed.
James Winchester arrived in Gibraltar on January 15, to enquire when Mary Celeste might be released to deliver her cargo. Flood demanded a surety of $15,000, money Winchester did not have. Winchester became aware that Flood thought Winchester might have deliberately engaged a crew that would kill Briggs and his officers as part of some conspiracy. On January 29, during a series of sharp exchanges with Flood, Winchester testified to Briggs' high character, and insisted that Briggs would not have abandoned the ship except in extremity. Flood's theories of mutiny and murder received significant setbacks when scientific analysis of the stains found on the sword and elsewhere on the ship showed that they were not blood.