Mary Celeste
Ship
found adrift on December 4, 1872
(some accounts say December 5), by the
Dei Gratia, a bark sailing from New York to Gibraltar, and considered by
many one of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries in the annals of
maritime history.
When it was found,
the Mary Celeste was sailing itself alone across the wide Atlantic. The
ship was in first-class condition. Hull, masts, and sails were all
sound. The cargo-barrels of alcohol were still lashed in place in the
hold. There was plenty of food and water. When he examined the ship's
log, the captain of the Dei Gratia found that the last entry was on
November 24. That would have been 10 days earlier, when the Mary Celeste
had been passing north of St. Mary's Island in the Azores — more than
400 miles west of where it was found. If
it had been abandoned soon after that entry, the ship must have drifted
unmanned and unsteered for a week and a half. Yet this could not have
been. The Mary Celeste was found with its sails set to catch the wind
coming over the starboard quarter: in other words, it was sailing on the
starboard tack. The Dei Gratia had been following a similar course just
behind. But throughout the 400 miles from the Azores, the Dei Gratia had
been obligated to sail on the port tack. It seems impossible that the
Mary Celeste could have reached the spot it did with its yards and sails
set to starboard. Someone must have been working the ship for at least
several days after the final log entry.
No one, from the 10
people that supposedly sailed aboard the Mary Celeste, including 7
crewmen and captain Benjamin Briggs' wife and daughter, was ever found.
The explanation that
seemed most reasonable at the time was the official one put out by the
British and American authorities. This suggested that the crew had got
at the alcohol, murdered the captain and his family, and then somehow
escaped to another vessel. But the story does not really stand up. There
were no visible signs of a struggle on board, and if the crew had
escaped, some of them would surely have turned up later.
The yawl boat — a
small four-oared boat carried over the main hatch — was missing,
suggesting that at least some of the missing people could have left the
Mary Celeste in it.
Dozens of theories
have been put forward since then, ranging from attacking monsters from
the deep and aliens kidnapping to nature's wrath, piracy and mutiny. But
no one has ever found any evidence or proof to confirm any of them. The
only other evidence to what really happened may be the so called Fosdyk
papers.
According to an
article written by a schoolmaster named Howard Linford and published in
1913 (41 years after the Mary Celeste was found) in the Strand
magazine of London, a well-educated and much-traveled employee of his
named Abel Fosdyk, had left some papers and notes after his death
explaining not only the fate of the crew but also the curious cut marks
that were found in the bows of the Mary Celeste.
Fosdyk claimed that he
had been a secret passenger on the ship's last voyage and the only
survivor of the tragedy that overtook it. Being a close friend of the
captain, Fosdyk convinced Briggs to give him secret passage because, for
some undisclosed reason, he had to leave America in a hurry. During the
voyage Briggs had the ship's carpenter build a special deck in the bow
for his small daughter. It was the supporting struts for this deck that
were slotted into the cuts in the bow planks.
One day, after a
lengthy argument with the mate about how well a man could swim with his
clothes on, Briggs leaped into the water and started swimming around the
ship, as to prove his point. Couple of men followed while the rest of
the crew watched from the deck. Suddenly, one of the sailors swimming
around the bow gave a yell of agony. Everyone, including the captain's
wife and child, crowded onto the newly built deck which promptly
collapsed under their combined weight. They all fell into the sea, where
all were devoured by the sharks that had attacked the first seaman.
Being the only
survivor of the shark attacks because of his luck of falling on top of
the shattered decking, Fosdyk clung to it as the Mary Celeste drifted
away. He floated for days until he was washed up half dead on the
northwest coast of Africa.
The Fosdyk papers
tell a neat tale. But they offer no solution to the mystery of how the
ship got to where it was found. And they are wrong on details that
should not have escaped an educated man. Fosdyk says the Mary Celeste
weighed 600 tons. In fact, the ship weighed a third of that. Fosdyk also
says that the crewmen were English, when, in fact, they were mostly
Dutch. And most of all, it seems highly improbable that anyone would go
swimming around a ship that, according to the Dei Gratia evidence, must
have been making several knots at the time. Bizarre as it is, no better
explanation than Fosdyk's has so far emerged. And after more than 120
years, it is unlikely to do so. The enigma of the ship that sailed
itself seems destined to puzzle us forever (Parts
of this text are excerpts from Reader's Digest's "Strange
Stories, Amazing Facts").
Related
books:
The
Mary Celeste.
The
Mary Celeste: An Unsolved Mystery from History.
The
Shadow of the Mary Celeste.
The
Story of the 'Mary Celeste'.
Further
info:
J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement.
Mary Celeste - Fact Not Fiction.
The
Mary Celeste.
The Mary
Celeste - A Great Mystery Solved.
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