June 24, 2013 • 23 mins
She's often referred to as a cursed ghost ship. The history of the Mary Celeste features one unfortunate incident after another. While this vessel is most famous for an incident involving a disappearing crew, there's much more to the life of this brig.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Wilson. And when I
was a kid, I had like a ceaseless fascination with
(00:22):
ghost ships and freaky maritime happening. Yeah. Uh, And what
we're gonna talk about today is one of those that
I remember always being kind of perplexed by as a
child because there was never a good explanation. That will
still perplex us a little bit as we go along,
but it's still a really interesting story. And beyond it's
one weird event, there were tons of other events associated
(00:45):
with this ship, which is the Mary Celeste, and she's
often referred to as a cursed ghost ship, and indeed
her history does feature one horrible incident after another. And
while she's most famous for a half of ning that
involves a completely disappearing crew, there's a lot more to
the life of this brig and there's a lot of
(01:06):
speculation has swirled around the ships throughout the years, and
a lot of like ghost stories and rumors about it,
and it's made it of his favorite of maritime history buffs.
So it all started in May of eighteen sixty one
at Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia. The shipyard there launched its
first vessel, the Amazon, and the Amazon's troubles began almost immediately.
(01:29):
On its first voyage, Captain Robert McClellan fell fatally ill
with pneumonia. On the second voyage, Captain John Nutting Parker
ran her into a fishing boat off the coast of Maine,
and the Amazon needed major repair, and while it was
in the shipyard for those repairs, the Amazon actually caught fire.
At one point. On its third voyage, there was another collision,
(01:50):
this time in the English Channel, and the other ship sank.
And after those first three rough ones, for about five years,
the Amazon traveled the British Aisles, the West Indies and
the Mediterranean, doing various cargo runs. In eighteen sixty seven,
she was grounded on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The
damage was so severe that the salvage ship was sold
(02:13):
as a wreck. In eighteen seventy two, the ship was
completely refitted and at this point the owners chose to
rechristen it as the Mary Celeste. Sadly, the name change
did not erase well, and some people will when they
talk about the curse, they'll blame the name change. But
it's like, no, no, it had problems before that. I
started way before. So later that year, on November seventh,
(02:35):
eighteen seventy two, the Mary Celeste, captain by Benjamin Briggs,
sent out from New York Harbor en route to Genoa, Italy,
with a cargo of alcohol. This was shipped by Messner,
Ackermann and Company, and Brakes was an accomplished captain. His
crew consisted of seven experienced sailors, which were a mix
of Americans and Germans, and his wife's Sarah and his
(02:57):
two year old daughter Sophia, were also on board. The
Briggs also had a son named Arthur, who was seven
at the time, but he actually remained behind in Massachusetts
so that he could attend school. On December five, eight
seventy two, the Day Gratia also called the Day Grazia
depending on who you're reading or who you're listening to. Yeah,
I've heard it pronounced both ways. I did a lot
(03:18):
of research try to get the pronunciation right, and it
splits about fifty so yes. It was a British brig
that had also set out from New York Harbor. The
day Gratia had left. About eight days after the Mary Celeste,
spotted a ship which appeared to be adrift four hundred
miles east of Santa Maria Island. Captain David Moorehouse said,
(03:38):
of course, to offer some aid to the vessel, and
was surprised to see that he was approaching the Mary Celeste.
A boarding party, which was led by first mate Oliver
de Vaux, found a number of odd things above aboard
the mary Celeste, first being that there was not a
soul on board. All ten people were completely gone, that
even though everyone was gone, the woman's belongings were intact
(04:01):
in their quarters, um their bunks were made, everything was tidy.
Some of the cabins were partially flooded, but it didn't
look like they had packed things up and left. Everything
was still there, and one of the ship's pumps had
been taken apart. And the sounding rod, which is normally
used to determine the depth of water that a boat
had taken on, was on deck, which suggests that the
(04:23):
Mary Celeste crew may have been checking incoming water frequently,
although it also could have been there as part of
the repairs being done to the pump. So normally, just
to explain what a sounding rod is, it's a long rod,
they would cover it with something like ash and dip
it into the pump and pull it up like you
would have dipstick in your oil in your car, and
see how high up the ash the water was, so
(04:44):
they could determine the depth of the water in the
whole of the boat. So, in addition to everyone's belongings
still being in their cabins, there was also a full
complement of rations on board, and Sarah Briggs had a
harmonium that had been put on the on the ship
up and if that's a small portable organ. It was
completely dry, and the ship's cargo, which was more than
(05:06):
seventeen hundred barrels of alcohol, was intact, although about three
hundred of those barrels had leaked. The sextant and the
navigational tables were gone, along with the ship's lifeboats, so
of everything else that was left in place, those were
really the only things that were gone. The captain's skylight
was open and there were also two open hatches on
(05:28):
the deck. There was between three and a half and
four ft of water in the ship's bottom. Maritime experts
say this would not have been a really concerning amount
of water. It wouldn't have caused the boat not to
be seaworthy anymore. But it was there, right, uh. And
November seventy two was the last century in the Captain's
(05:50):
log slate, which is the board in the captain's quarters
before he transferred it into the book log, and it
mentioned being in sight of the Azores, specificly in sight
of Santa Maria, and gave no indication of a problem.
So basically everything seemed really normal except for nobody was there.
Except for nobody was there. Pump was taken apart, and
(06:14):
and like they didn't take any food or anything with them.
That's where it gets really weird for me. Like, I
can understand that if you're abandoning ship, you would abandon
the ship, you would take the lifeboat, you would go away.
You might want to travel light, right, but you would
probably want to take at least some food with you
along with your navigational stuff to make sure you get lost.
(06:34):
So that's where that's very weird for me. Yeah, and
we'll talk about some theories on what happened going forward.
Then may or may not explain why they didn't bother
with that, right. We do know that November of that
year was pretty bad in terms of weather. A lot
of ships reported encountering really rough seas and bad weather.
There have also been a numerable other stories about what
(06:57):
Devot and his two shipmates found when they boarded the
Mary Celeste, but those have all been identified as legend,
and some of them are really cookie like stories of
half eaten meals and that there were cats curled up
asleep and very peaceful on the ship um a galley
stove that was still warm. One talks about like a
thing of burning oil sitting on the sewing machine, just perfectly,
like the people had just poofed and vanished away right
(07:19):
before they got there, like it just those have all
been dismissed as as legend and story and having nothing
to really do with the reality of what they found.
Those are embellishments. Yes, So Captain Moorehouse and his crew
decided to sail the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar rather than
just leave her floating adrift. Devout helmed the ship and
they landed in port at Gibraltar on December thirteenth, eighteen
(07:43):
seventy two. In a letter to his wife that he
wrote once they made port, Devot said, I would not
like to undertake it again. My men were all but
done out when I got in here, and I think
it will be a week before I can do anything.
For I never was so tired in my life. I
shall be where it well paid for. The Mary Celeste
belongs to New York and was loaded with alcohol bound
(08:04):
for Genoa, Italy, and her cargo was worth eighty thousand
dollars besides the ship. His figure on this seems way off.
The ship and the cargo combined had been injured for
forty six thou dollars. Yeah, and part of the reason
that he was so exhausted. He took two men with
him to um get the Mary Celeste on its way,
(08:26):
which is a very small crew for a ship of
that size, and that also reduced the crew of more
House that Morehouse had on his ship. So they were
both really like that would be exhausting for three people
and then a reduced crew on the other ship to
all get everything to Gibraltar. So that's part of why
they were so very exhausted. But the other thing that
happened was that the Queen's proctor into Gibraltar, who was
(08:48):
Frederick Sali Flood was really suspicious of the situation when
they landed Uh and the hearings that followed. More Houses
Salvage claim we're way more dramatic than a standard hearing
would have been. There were sixty six pages of testimony
recorded in the proceedings, and the proceedings went on for
about three months, which is a really long time. Blood
found it difficult to believe that such an accomplished mariner
(09:11):
like Briggs would abandon a sound ship, and it became
clear that he suspected that the day Gratia crew had
engaged in foul play to get the ship. A popular
part of the story at this point is a line
of questioning that happened during the hearings regarding a sword
that was believed to have had blood on it that
was found aboard the Mary Celeste. But Devout had stated
(09:31):
that he had seen the sword, but it was sheathed
and he thought it was just rusty. Like There were
a lot of like sort of faux evidences put forward
and then disproven, and this was one of them. While
no true evidence against Morehouse, Devot and company was ever produced,
and they were cleared of any charges. The final award
for salvage in the case was seriously low, about seventeen
(09:54):
hundred pounds, which is about eighty three hundred dollars US,
all because of the suspicion. Yea, so it had been
insured it, uh, you know, forty six thousand, and they
got a pretty paltry sum by comparison. But what really
happened to the Briggs family and crew we still do
not know. But there have been a variety of theories
(10:14):
through the years, some of which are very fun and
some of which are kind of scientifically really interesting. I
like the first one. It's kind of my favorite, even
though it's really goofy giant squid or octopus attack. Yeah,
it's not very plausible at all, especially given the general
good order of the ship, but you know, it was
a pretty popular theory in the early everybody loves a
(10:37):
good monster story. Another one was that it was an
insurance scam that involved both Captain Briggs and Captain Moorehouse
working in collusion. And this one got a little bit
of traction due to the fact that the two captains
had dined together, uh just before the Mary celest set out.
I think it was a couple of nights before, but
since Briggs never resurface to claim any such payment, and more,
(10:59):
House went through all of the right legal channels and
you know took this very paltry some it didn't. That
doesn't really play out long term. It doesn't make sense.
And another fun one except really not fun pirate attack
so maybe probably not. There wasn't really any evidence that
there had been a scuffle or any kind of battle,
(11:21):
and all that alcohol in the hull was still there,
so one would think that if a pirate ship had
attacked number one, there would have been signs of struggle,
and the number two they might have helped themselves to
the spoils of what was in the hall, yeah, and
other things aboard the ship. Uh. The second or the
second one, This next thing has kind of a two
pronged theory. Some people think it was just a flat
(11:44):
out mutiny that some of the crew members had decided
that they were gonna just take over the ship. Uh.
And then there's also another one that's mutiny due to drunkenness.
That they think maybe some crew members got into all
of that alcohol and uh, you know, got a lot
kukie and killed Briggs in like a fever dream kind
(12:04):
of situation. Um again, then where they those Those people
were never found either. And speaking of cookie, there's the
idea that maybe everyone had lost their minds from either
eating muldi rye bread or breathing all the alcohol fumes. Again,
with the fumes, there's a vapor escaped theory, and it's
possible that the alcoholic cargo was venting vapor and that
(12:27):
the crew and passengers had taken to the lifeboat which
they had kept tethered to the ship to wait for
it to finish venting, and then the boat had been
swept away or the line had snapped for some reason.
And this has become a fairly popular theory, I think,
partially because it supports it's supported by some of the
questions you asked earlier, like why would there no provisions taken?
(12:47):
Why if they just thought they were going to sit
in the lifeboat for a little while while these fumes
vented out, it would make sense that they wouldn't take
all their stuff, But then why would they need this
extant in the maps that was exactly going to be
My question was, well, that that makes sense in one way,
but still does not make sense another way. Another theory
poor judgment. It's possible that Captain Briggs might have believed
(13:09):
the ship was sinking. This makes sense given that the
sextant and the navigational charts were missing along with the lifeboat,
and that the sounding ride was on the deck, But
the water in the ship when it was found didn't
really seem to indicate a real sinking emergency, and two
thousand seven, documentarian and McGregor started an investigation into the matter.
(13:30):
She found that the previous cargo of the Mary Celeste
had been coal and a refitting had been done on
the ship. The coal, dust and debris from the construction
could have damaged the ship's pumps, making it hard for
Briggs to gauge just how much water was actually in
the fully packed hull. The cargo would have made visual
estimation hard to do as well, so McGregor theorizes that
(13:52):
there was doubt about whether the hull was flooded. And
it's possible that Briggs ordered an evacuation when the vessel
was inside of land on November twenty five, So that
also is kind of supported by your no provisions thing,
like they just thought they were going to make the
quick jaunt to Santa Maria safety well, and it would
probably be a good idea to have your navigational stuff
(14:13):
with you just in case you have to of course,
so that's also another popular one. Uh And another theory
is that there was an explosion from the leaking industrial alcohol.
And I know this sounds crazy because all reports say
everything seemed very tidy and in order and untouched when
the boarding party from more Houses ship went aboard. But
there have been those that noted that the volatile nature
(14:35):
of alcohol could have caused an explosion, but because those
ship's contents were discovered more or less undisturbed, that theory
has never really run true for most people. But in
two thousand and six, a chemist at the University College
of London, Dr Andrea Cela, he actually built a replica
of the hold of the Mary Celeste, and he simulated
(14:56):
an explosion of leaking alcohol and fumes using utane gas
and actually paper cubes, and when the gas was lit
it caused a huge blast, but the paper cubes were
actually left undamaged in his model, uh, in like a
pressure wave explosion. And so his theory is that a
similar explosion aboard the Mary Celeste, which could have been
(15:18):
caused by like barrel friction of two barrels rubbing together,
or even a crewman's pipe being nearby. Two fumes could
have easily blown the hatches open, uh and made those
on board believe that another explosion was imminent. And so
they just jumped in the boat without grabbing anything because
they thought there was not enough time. So those are
many of the theories going about, though again none of
(15:40):
those have ever been proven. We haven't found any additional evidence.
I saw one in passing and I didn't get to
read a lot about it. That about a seaquake also happening.
I mean, they're just everybody has a theory, uh so,
and it's fun to postulate what sorts of things might
cause uh perfectly sound ship to be abandoned. Well, and
(16:02):
in a completely unsurprising development, the Mary Celeste was considered
to be hext after that, and for twelve years it
passed from owner to owner and was always hard to
crewe because everybody was really suspicious about it. And an
American company eventually purchased the vessel in four with the
intent to sail her from Boston to Haiti, but she
(16:22):
never made it to her destination of porta Prince. By
this point the ship had been sitting unmanned and uncared
for for quite some time. It was in pretty rough condition.
She was carrying an assortment of items in her last cargo,
including casts of ale, butter boots, hardware, and other random sundry's.
The whole lot was insured for twenty five thousand dollars,
(16:43):
and some accounts lest the insurance amount is thirty thousand dollars.
So as captain and owner Gilman C. Parker approached the
reef of Rochelois near Haiti, he actually commanded that the
ship be running around on the reef, and then he
ordered that the masts be cut away a he and
his crew abandoned the ship in what was an insurance
(17:04):
fraud scam. Unfortunately for Parker, the ship didn't sink as
he intended. An insurance inspectors were able to board the vessel,
and they saw that, in fact, no cargo aboard was
nearly so valuable as he had claimed. There have been
reports that the casks of ale were actually just water,
that there were like inexpensive dog callers and boxes that
were marked silverware like it was just a huge fraud.
(17:26):
Uh And while Parker managed to get out of his
charges of conspiracy and barratry thanks to a hung jury.
He actually died not long after the incident, and the
other men involved similarly went bankrupt, died, etcetera, which many
people believe feeds the curse theory, and the Mary Celeste
was left on the reef to rots Yeah something what happened, Well,
(17:50):
there was an interesting thing that happened in eight three,
which is that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story
called j Habakuk Jeffson's Statement, which was a fictional lies
version of the disappearance of the Briggs Party, and he
renamed the ship the Marie Celeste instead of Mary Celeste
in the story, and it published in Cornhill Magazine in
(18:10):
three As I said, but many readers didn't realize it
was fiction, and it really caused a lot of like
hubbub uh and even Frederick sali Flood, the person who
had been so suspicious that foul play had happened in
the disappearance, got really riled up about it, and he
thought that the story would damage England's relations with foreign countries,
and he protested it as being you know, hogwash that
(18:32):
he didn't realize it was supposed to be fiction. He
thought someone was claiming this was the true story. In
August two thousand one, author Clive Custler and John Davis,
president of Ikanova Productions of Canada, which is the group
behind the Sea Hunters TV series, worked with James Delgado,
director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. They announced they had
(18:53):
located the wreckage of the Mary Celeste off the coast
of Haiti. Analysis of the shipwreck showed it to be
of the appropriate dimensions in construction to match the Mary Celeste,
and wood samples taken from the wreckage would put its
construction in northern New England or Canada's maritime provinces. So
the Mary Celeste, as you recall, was built in Nova Scotia.
So yeah, and she sits there still because she's covered
(19:15):
with reef growth. That actually makes it kind of happy. Yeah,
there's a whole other fascinating thing about this sort of
cultural island that's been built up around there that farms
conch and or conk, depending on how you pronounce it's
it's kind of fascinating in and of itself. But that's
almost like a whole other thing. Uh, And so we
(19:38):
We will never know for sure unless new evidence magically
surfaces what happened to Briggs in his company. But we
do know where the Mary Celeste ended up, and that's
covered in coral sitting off the coast of Haiti. It
is kind of neat just to know it's out there.
I love a good shipwreck story. The shipwreck is done
on purpose, yes, which I was telling Tracy before we
(20:00):
started recording. There's part of me that's like, I know
he was an insurance Uh, he was committing insurance fraud.
But that might have been the best idea ever for
this boat. Was just I think it just ram it
into a reef and let it go, because clearly it
just had one horrible story after another connected to it. Yeah,
even as a really skeptical person, when I hear a
(20:20):
story of the thing where bad things keep happening over
and over and over, I kind of like stopped touching
that thing. Leave that alone, don't mess with that anymore. Yeah. Yeah,
So that is the story of the Mary Celeste. There's uh,
you know, there are people that just study this and
have loads of you know, evidence regarding ships, logs and
(20:41):
things that happened along the way, And I mean, it
could go over days and days. It's so fascinating, and
like I said, we didn't love a good shipwreck story.
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on Pinterest. If you want to research a little bit
more sort of about what we talked about today, you
can go to our website and type in the words
Mary Celeste in the search bar and you'll actually get
an article called how the Bermuda Triangle works. The Mary
Celeste was not in the Bermuda Triangle, but it is
often referenced as being one of the Bermuda Triangle mysteries.
(22:47):
People just like to lump all the mysteries into it, uh.
And that's mentioned in that article how it's often included,
but it really isn't a valid inclusion. So if you
would like to learn about the Mary Celeste, the Bermuda Triangle,
or almost anything else your mind can call, sure, you
should come to our website to do that. And that
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(23:08):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Wilson. And when I
was a kid, I had like a ceaseless fascination with
(00:22):
ghost ships and freaky maritime happening. Yeah. Uh, And what
we're gonna talk about today is one of those that
I remember always being kind of perplexed by as a
child because there was never a good explanation. That will
still perplex us a little bit as we go along,
but it's still a really interesting story. And beyond it's
one weird event, there were tons of other events associated
(00:45):
with this ship, which is the Mary Celeste, and she's
often referred to as a cursed ghost ship, and indeed
her history does feature one horrible incident after another. And
while she's most famous for a half of ning that
involves a completely disappearing crew, there's a lot more to
the life of this brig and there's a lot of
(01:06):
speculation has swirled around the ships throughout the years, and
a lot of like ghost stories and rumors about it,
and it's made it of his favorite of maritime history buffs.
So it all started in May of eighteen sixty one
at Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia. The shipyard there launched its
first vessel, the Amazon, and the Amazon's troubles began almost immediately.
(01:29):
On its first voyage, Captain Robert McClellan fell fatally ill
with pneumonia. On the second voyage, Captain John Nutting Parker
ran her into a fishing boat off the coast of Maine,
and the Amazon needed major repair, and while it was
in the shipyard for those repairs, the Amazon actually caught fire.
At one point. On its third voyage, there was another collision,
(01:50):
this time in the English Channel, and the other ship sank.
And after those first three rough ones, for about five years,
the Amazon traveled the British Aisles, the West Indies and
the Mediterranean, doing various cargo runs. In eighteen sixty seven,
she was grounded on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The
damage was so severe that the salvage ship was sold
(02:13):
as a wreck. In eighteen seventy two, the ship was
completely refitted and at this point the owners chose to
rechristen it as the Mary Celeste. Sadly, the name change
did not erase well, and some people will when they
talk about the curse, they'll blame the name change. But
it's like, no, no, it had problems before that. I
started way before. So later that year, on November seventh,
(02:35):
eighteen seventy two, the Mary Celeste, captain by Benjamin Briggs,
sent out from New York Harbor en route to Genoa, Italy,
with a cargo of alcohol. This was shipped by Messner,
Ackermann and Company, and Brakes was an accomplished captain. His
crew consisted of seven experienced sailors, which were a mix
of Americans and Germans, and his wife's Sarah and his
(02:57):
two year old daughter Sophia, were also on board. The
Briggs also had a son named Arthur, who was seven
at the time, but he actually remained behind in Massachusetts
so that he could attend school. On December five, eight
seventy two, the Day Gratia also called the Day Grazia
depending on who you're reading or who you're listening to. Yeah,
I've heard it pronounced both ways. I did a lot
(03:18):
of research try to get the pronunciation right, and it
splits about fifty so yes. It was a British brig
that had also set out from New York Harbor. The
day Gratia had left. About eight days after the Mary Celeste,
spotted a ship which appeared to be adrift four hundred
miles east of Santa Maria Island. Captain David Moorehouse said,
(03:38):
of course, to offer some aid to the vessel, and
was surprised to see that he was approaching the Mary Celeste.
A boarding party, which was led by first mate Oliver
de Vaux, found a number of odd things above aboard
the mary Celeste, first being that there was not a
soul on board. All ten people were completely gone, that
even though everyone was gone, the woman's belongings were intact
(04:01):
in their quarters, um their bunks were made, everything was tidy.
Some of the cabins were partially flooded, but it didn't
look like they had packed things up and left. Everything
was still there, and one of the ship's pumps had
been taken apart. And the sounding rod, which is normally
used to determine the depth of water that a boat
had taken on, was on deck, which suggests that the
(04:23):
Mary Celeste crew may have been checking incoming water frequently,
although it also could have been there as part of
the repairs being done to the pump. So normally, just
to explain what a sounding rod is, it's a long rod,
they would cover it with something like ash and dip
it into the pump and pull it up like you
would have dipstick in your oil in your car, and
see how high up the ash the water was, so
(04:44):
they could determine the depth of the water in the
whole of the boat. So, in addition to everyone's belongings
still being in their cabins, there was also a full
complement of rations on board, and Sarah Briggs had a
harmonium that had been put on the on the ship
up and if that's a small portable organ. It was
completely dry, and the ship's cargo, which was more than
(05:06):
seventeen hundred barrels of alcohol, was intact, although about three
hundred of those barrels had leaked. The sextant and the
navigational tables were gone, along with the ship's lifeboats, so
of everything else that was left in place, those were
really the only things that were gone. The captain's skylight
was open and there were also two open hatches on
(05:28):
the deck. There was between three and a half and
four ft of water in the ship's bottom. Maritime experts
say this would not have been a really concerning amount
of water. It wouldn't have caused the boat not to
be seaworthy anymore. But it was there, right, uh. And
November seventy two was the last century in the Captain's
(05:50):
log slate, which is the board in the captain's quarters
before he transferred it into the book log, and it
mentioned being in sight of the Azores, specificly in sight
of Santa Maria, and gave no indication of a problem.
So basically everything seemed really normal except for nobody was there.
Except for nobody was there. Pump was taken apart, and
(06:14):
and like they didn't take any food or anything with them.
That's where it gets really weird for me. Like, I
can understand that if you're abandoning ship, you would abandon
the ship, you would take the lifeboat, you would go away.
You might want to travel light, right, but you would
probably want to take at least some food with you
along with your navigational stuff to make sure you get lost.
(06:34):
So that's where that's very weird for me. Yeah, and
we'll talk about some theories on what happened going forward.
Then may or may not explain why they didn't bother
with that, right. We do know that November of that
year was pretty bad in terms of weather. A lot
of ships reported encountering really rough seas and bad weather.
There have also been a numerable other stories about what
(06:57):
Devot and his two shipmates found when they boarded the
Mary Celeste, but those have all been identified as legend,
and some of them are really cookie like stories of
half eaten meals and that there were cats curled up
asleep and very peaceful on the ship um a galley
stove that was still warm. One talks about like a
thing of burning oil sitting on the sewing machine, just perfectly,
like the people had just poofed and vanished away right
(07:19):
before they got there, like it just those have all
been dismissed as as legend and story and having nothing
to really do with the reality of what they found.
Those are embellishments. Yes, So Captain Moorehouse and his crew
decided to sail the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar rather than
just leave her floating adrift. Devout helmed the ship and
they landed in port at Gibraltar on December thirteenth, eighteen
(07:43):
seventy two. In a letter to his wife that he
wrote once they made port, Devot said, I would not
like to undertake it again. My men were all but
done out when I got in here, and I think
it will be a week before I can do anything.
For I never was so tired in my life. I
shall be where it well paid for. The Mary Celeste
belongs to New York and was loaded with alcohol bound
(08:04):
for Genoa, Italy, and her cargo was worth eighty thousand
dollars besides the ship. His figure on this seems way off.
The ship and the cargo combined had been injured for
forty six thou dollars. Yeah, and part of the reason
that he was so exhausted. He took two men with
him to um get the Mary Celeste on its way,
(08:26):
which is a very small crew for a ship of
that size, and that also reduced the crew of more
House that Morehouse had on his ship. So they were
both really like that would be exhausting for three people
and then a reduced crew on the other ship to
all get everything to Gibraltar. So that's part of why
they were so very exhausted. But the other thing that
happened was that the Queen's proctor into Gibraltar, who was
(08:48):
Frederick Sali Flood was really suspicious of the situation when
they landed Uh and the hearings that followed. More Houses
Salvage claim we're way more dramatic than a standard hearing
would have been. There were sixty six pages of testimony
recorded in the proceedings, and the proceedings went on for
about three months, which is a really long time. Blood
found it difficult to believe that such an accomplished mariner
(09:11):
like Briggs would abandon a sound ship, and it became
clear that he suspected that the day Gratia crew had
engaged in foul play to get the ship. A popular
part of the story at this point is a line
of questioning that happened during the hearings regarding a sword
that was believed to have had blood on it that
was found aboard the Mary Celeste. But Devout had stated
(09:31):
that he had seen the sword, but it was sheathed
and he thought it was just rusty. Like There were
a lot of like sort of faux evidences put forward
and then disproven, and this was one of them. While
no true evidence against Morehouse, Devot and company was ever produced,
and they were cleared of any charges. The final award
for salvage in the case was seriously low, about seventeen
(09:54):
hundred pounds, which is about eighty three hundred dollars US,
all because of the suspicion. Yea, so it had been
insured it, uh, you know, forty six thousand, and they
got a pretty paltry sum by comparison. But what really
happened to the Briggs family and crew we still do
not know. But there have been a variety of theories
(10:14):
through the years, some of which are very fun and
some of which are kind of scientifically really interesting. I
like the first one. It's kind of my favorite, even
though it's really goofy giant squid or octopus attack. Yeah,
it's not very plausible at all, especially given the general
good order of the ship, but you know, it was
a pretty popular theory in the early everybody loves a
(10:37):
good monster story. Another one was that it was an
insurance scam that involved both Captain Briggs and Captain Moorehouse
working in collusion. And this one got a little bit
of traction due to the fact that the two captains
had dined together, uh just before the Mary celest set out.
I think it was a couple of nights before, but
since Briggs never resurface to claim any such payment, and more,
(10:59):
House went through all of the right legal channels and
you know took this very paltry some it didn't. That
doesn't really play out long term. It doesn't make sense.
And another fun one except really not fun pirate attack
so maybe probably not. There wasn't really any evidence that
there had been a scuffle or any kind of battle,
(11:21):
and all that alcohol in the hull was still there,
so one would think that if a pirate ship had
attacked number one, there would have been signs of struggle,
and the number two they might have helped themselves to
the spoils of what was in the hall, yeah, and
other things aboard the ship. Uh. The second or the
second one, This next thing has kind of a two
pronged theory. Some people think it was just a flat
(11:44):
out mutiny that some of the crew members had decided
that they were gonna just take over the ship. Uh.
And then there's also another one that's mutiny due to drunkenness.
That they think maybe some crew members got into all
of that alcohol and uh, you know, got a lot
kukie and killed Briggs in like a fever dream kind
(12:04):
of situation. Um again, then where they those Those people
were never found either. And speaking of cookie, there's the
idea that maybe everyone had lost their minds from either
eating muldi rye bread or breathing all the alcohol fumes. Again,
with the fumes, there's a vapor escaped theory, and it's
possible that the alcoholic cargo was venting vapor and that
(12:27):
the crew and passengers had taken to the lifeboat which
they had kept tethered to the ship to wait for
it to finish venting, and then the boat had been
swept away or the line had snapped for some reason.
And this has become a fairly popular theory, I think,
partially because it supports it's supported by some of the
questions you asked earlier, like why would there no provisions taken?
(12:47):
Why if they just thought they were going to sit
in the lifeboat for a little while while these fumes
vented out, it would make sense that they wouldn't take
all their stuff, But then why would they need this
extant in the maps that was exactly going to be
My question was, well, that that makes sense in one way,
but still does not make sense another way. Another theory
poor judgment. It's possible that Captain Briggs might have believed
(13:09):
the ship was sinking. This makes sense given that the
sextant and the navigational charts were missing along with the lifeboat,
and that the sounding ride was on the deck, But
the water in the ship when it was found didn't
really seem to indicate a real sinking emergency, and two
thousand seven, documentarian and McGregor started an investigation into the matter.
(13:30):
She found that the previous cargo of the Mary Celeste
had been coal and a refitting had been done on
the ship. The coal, dust and debris from the construction
could have damaged the ship's pumps, making it hard for
Briggs to gauge just how much water was actually in
the fully packed hull. The cargo would have made visual
estimation hard to do as well, so McGregor theorizes that
(13:52):
there was doubt about whether the hull was flooded. And
it's possible that Briggs ordered an evacuation when the vessel
was inside of land on November twenty five, So that
also is kind of supported by your no provisions thing,
like they just thought they were going to make the
quick jaunt to Santa Maria safety well, and it would
probably be a good idea to have your navigational stuff
(14:13):
with you just in case you have to of course,
so that's also another popular one. Uh And another theory
is that there was an explosion from the leaking industrial alcohol.
And I know this sounds crazy because all reports say
everything seemed very tidy and in order and untouched when
the boarding party from more Houses ship went aboard. But
there have been those that noted that the volatile nature
(14:35):
of alcohol could have caused an explosion, but because those
ship's contents were discovered more or less undisturbed, that theory
has never really run true for most people. But in
two thousand and six, a chemist at the University College
of London, Dr Andrea Cela, he actually built a replica
of the hold of the Mary Celeste, and he simulated
(14:56):
an explosion of leaking alcohol and fumes using utane gas
and actually paper cubes, and when the gas was lit
it caused a huge blast, but the paper cubes were
actually left undamaged in his model, uh, in like a
pressure wave explosion. And so his theory is that a
similar explosion aboard the Mary Celeste, which could have been
(15:18):
caused by like barrel friction of two barrels rubbing together,
or even a crewman's pipe being nearby. Two fumes could
have easily blown the hatches open, uh and made those
on board believe that another explosion was imminent. And so
they just jumped in the boat without grabbing anything because
they thought there was not enough time. So those are
many of the theories going about, though again none of
(15:40):
those have ever been proven. We haven't found any additional evidence.
I saw one in passing and I didn't get to
read a lot about it. That about a seaquake also happening.
I mean, they're just everybody has a theory, uh so,
and it's fun to postulate what sorts of things might
cause uh perfectly sound ship to be abandoned. Well, and
(16:02):
in a completely unsurprising development, the Mary Celeste was considered
to be hext after that, and for twelve years it
passed from owner to owner and was always hard to
crewe because everybody was really suspicious about it. And an
American company eventually purchased the vessel in four with the
intent to sail her from Boston to Haiti, but she
(16:22):
never made it to her destination of porta Prince. By
this point the ship had been sitting unmanned and uncared
for for quite some time. It was in pretty rough condition.
She was carrying an assortment of items in her last cargo,
including casts of ale, butter boots, hardware, and other random sundry's.
The whole lot was insured for twenty five thousand dollars,
(16:43):
and some accounts lest the insurance amount is thirty thousand dollars.
So as captain and owner Gilman C. Parker approached the
reef of Rochelois near Haiti, he actually commanded that the
ship be running around on the reef, and then he
ordered that the masts be cut away a he and
his crew abandoned the ship in what was an insurance
(17:04):
fraud scam. Unfortunately for Parker, the ship didn't sink as
he intended. An insurance inspectors were able to board the vessel,
and they saw that, in fact, no cargo aboard was
nearly so valuable as he had claimed. There have been
reports that the casks of ale were actually just water,
that there were like inexpensive dog callers and boxes that
were marked silverware like it was just a huge fraud.
(17:26):
Uh And while Parker managed to get out of his
charges of conspiracy and barratry thanks to a hung jury.
He actually died not long after the incident, and the
other men involved similarly went bankrupt, died, etcetera, which many
people believe feeds the curse theory, and the Mary Celeste
was left on the reef to rots Yeah something what happened, Well,
(17:50):
there was an interesting thing that happened in eight three,
which is that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story
called j Habakuk Jeffson's Statement, which was a fictional lies
version of the disappearance of the Briggs Party, and he
renamed the ship the Marie Celeste instead of Mary Celeste
in the story, and it published in Cornhill Magazine in
(18:10):
three As I said, but many readers didn't realize it
was fiction, and it really caused a lot of like
hubbub uh and even Frederick sali Flood, the person who
had been so suspicious that foul play had happened in
the disappearance, got really riled up about it, and he
thought that the story would damage England's relations with foreign countries,
and he protested it as being you know, hogwash that
(18:32):
he didn't realize it was supposed to be fiction. He
thought someone was claiming this was the true story. In
August two thousand one, author Clive Custler and John Davis,
president of Ikanova Productions of Canada, which is the group
behind the Sea Hunters TV series, worked with James Delgado,
director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. They announced they had
(18:53):
located the wreckage of the Mary Celeste off the coast
of Haiti. Analysis of the shipwreck showed it to be
of the appropriate dimensions in construction to match the Mary Celeste,
and wood samples taken from the wreckage would put its
construction in northern New England or Canada's maritime provinces. So
the Mary Celeste, as you recall, was built in Nova Scotia.
So yeah, and she sits there still because she's covered
(19:15):
with reef growth. That actually makes it kind of happy. Yeah,
there's a whole other fascinating thing about this sort of
cultural island that's been built up around there that farms
conch and or conk, depending on how you pronounce it's
it's kind of fascinating in and of itself. But that's
almost like a whole other thing. Uh, And so we
(19:38):
We will never know for sure unless new evidence magically
surfaces what happened to Briggs in his company. But we
do know where the Mary Celeste ended up, and that's
covered in coral sitting off the coast of Haiti. It
is kind of neat just to know it's out there.
I love a good shipwreck story. The shipwreck is done
on purpose, yes, which I was telling Tracy before we
(20:00):
started recording. There's part of me that's like, I know
he was an insurance Uh, he was committing insurance fraud.
But that might have been the best idea ever for
this boat. Was just I think it just ram it
into a reef and let it go, because clearly it
just had one horrible story after another connected to it. Yeah,
even as a really skeptical person, when I hear a
(20:20):
story of the thing where bad things keep happening over
and over and over, I kind of like stopped touching
that thing. Leave that alone, don't mess with that anymore. Yeah. Yeah,
So that is the story of the Mary Celeste. There's uh,
you know, there are people that just study this and
have loads of you know, evidence regarding ships, logs and
(20:41):
things that happened along the way, And I mean, it
could go over days and days. It's so fascinating, and
like I said, we didn't love a good shipwreck story.
Would you like to take a moment and listen to
a word from our sponsor? Do you also have listener mail?
I do? Uh. This was a only for true physical
piece of mail that came to us from our listener,
(21:03):
Carrie Uh. And she wrote his postcard and said, Dear
Tracy and Holly, I really enjoyed your recent podcast about
the Dowager Empress. Last year I taught in China, but
I just had to spend a few days in Beijing
before I returned home. I visited the sites, including the
Summer Palace. I enjoyed my first visit so much I
went back again in the same week. I've sent you
a souvenir for your enjoyment. She sent us a beautiful
(21:23):
map of the Summer Palace and grounds. It's really cool.
I gotta find a cool place in our offices where
I can put it up and enjoy it. Uh. These
maps are sold outside the gates that are almost necessary
for any visit. I got quote lost the first time.
It ended up walking all the way around the lake.
It's quite a hall. Uh, which is really cool. I
would want to do that walk. Yeah, let's go to
(21:45):
China do that? Say it's a work trip. No, come on,
I cannot approve that, but to an expense. Thank you. Uh.
If you would like to write us, and again, thank
you Carrie, because that map is seriously awesome. Is as
soon as so. I was the one that got that
envelope in particular day and I opened it and then
(22:05):
I took it directly to your this because I love it. Uh.
If you want to write to us, you can do
so at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can
also touch based with us on Twitter at miss in History,
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visit us on our tumbler, which is missed in History
dot tumbler dot com, and you can also find us
(22:26):
on Pinterest. If you want to research a little bit
more sort of about what we talked about today, you
can go to our website and type in the words
Mary Celeste in the search bar and you'll actually get
an article called how the Bermuda Triangle works. The Mary
Celeste was not in the Bermuda Triangle, but it is
often referenced as being one of the Bermuda Triangle mysteries.
(22:47):
People just like to lump all the mysteries into it, uh.
And that's mentioned in that article how it's often included,
but it really isn't a valid inclusion. So if you
would like to learn about the Mary Celeste, the Bermuda Triangle,
or almost anything else your mind can call, sure, you
should come to our website to do that. And that
site is how Stuff Works dot com for more on
(23:08):
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