Epilogue

In the final analysis, there are two schools of thought on the subject of the Mary Celeste. One refers to the ethical concepts relating to a tragedy; the other relates to poetic licence based on true fact. It could be suggested that authors had the right to handle the mystery laissez-faire which, after all, produced creative work. On the other hand, the Mary Celeste was a real-life unsolved mystery.....an incident painful to the living relatives of the missing people. On this account many authors denied them any sympathy whatsoever solely for personal gain. They wrote stories and submitted theories with distorted facts, having never bothered to research the incident, and often added their own innovations. It caused confusion to such an extent that careless errors became standard belief. Most significant of these is reflected in the fact that the name of the vessel for one hundred years was indexed in libraries as the ‘Marie’ Celeste. Some part of the blame must be apportioned to sensationalists, novelists, and newspaper reporters willing to clutch at straws, elevating even the greatest hoaxers to the realms of logic and reality. Many shabby tales should have been relegated to the far end of a down-town bar and left to fade into the oblivion they deserved. What were the errors which crept into the mystery on such a gradual basis over the last one hundred and twenty-five years? Some of the major items are set out below.

When sighted, the Marie Celeste was under full sail, a long stern chase was necessary by the Dei Gratia to catch up with her. A German tramp steamer was crossing her bows, and the sea was calm. When she was boarded there was not a soul on board, yet a half-eaten breakfast stood on the cabin table, three cups of tea were still warm to the touch, a bottle of cough mixture open on the table, a phial of oil and a thimble standing by a sewing machine in which a child’s garment was in the act of being repaired. The Captain’s watch hung from a bracket still ticking, the stove in the galley was warm, the galley fire was burning brightly, a cat was peacefully asleep on a locker. The sailors’ pipes were half-smoked, their washing hanging out to dry, a bloodstained axe was evident, a cutlass lay on the deck, the ship’s boats stood intact on their davits, and there was no sign of damage or violence. There was the implication that the crew were a gang of cut-throats who came from all over the globe, thirteen to thirty in number, drunken, dissolute and murderous. Captain Briggs was a homicidal maniac, or a criminal or a bully. He murdered his wife and child. Similar aspersions were cast on the Captain and crew of the Dei Gratia, while the size and type of both ships have been variously mis-stated. The reason why the Captain should change character within a few weeks of leaving New York has never been established, neither has his involvement in any nefarious arrangement ever been explained satisfactorily.....not that one existed. The Captain had a stable personality. He was religious, owned a home in New England, had a ship to command, a wife and two children, an unblemished reputation, and a one-third share in his vessel. But most of all he was an experienced sailor. Why should he do something entirely out of character.....why should he risk everything in some wild crazy conspiracy? It was more than unlikely he would behave in such a manner. Unfortunately, it was Mr. Solly Flood, the Queen’s Proctor, who spread more doubt than existed! He smelled evil doings on the high seas. Mutiny and foul murder.....conspiracy. He did not believe that ships could be found strangely abandoned with their valuable cargoes intact. Nor did he believe that derelict ships could sail themselves for ten days and seven hundred miles across the wintry Atlantic without a human hand on the wheel.

As the Mary Celeste lay under close arrest at Gibraltar, Mr. Flood boarded her with four British naval captains and a Colonel of the Royal Engineers. There were no signs of the Mary Celeste having met damaging stormy weather. Triumphantly, he found a phial of sewing-machine oil on a narrow shelf in the Captain’s cabin. If the ship had encountered a storm, he said, why hadn’t the phial fallen over? He also found the old sword under the bed in the Captain’s cabin. He declared:

“Undoubtedly bloodstained and cleaned with lemon to disguise the fact.”

He marshalled his accusing evidence and found a scar in the wood on the ship’s starboard topgallant. He affirmed:

“Undoubtedly made by an axe!”

Of the marks on the decks washed by the sea, he said:

“Undoubtedly blood.”

And down in the hold he made the biggest discovery of all. Nine of the 1,700 barrels of crude alcohol were dry, and another one had been broached. Mutiny! The naval captains with him aboard the ship believed this was the explanation of anything which destroyed good order in a ship. Given half the chance, seamen would drink anything.....and no Captain would desert his command except under duress. The American Consul in Gibraltar, and an American naval captain who examined the Mary Celeste, dismissed with contempt the British theory that there had been mischief aboard. But that did little to alter the convictions of the Queen’s Proctor.

For three months the wrangling went on. All parties were sure that survivors of the Mary Celeste would turn up, or that another ship would report news of them. But, as time passed, Mr. Solly Flood looked for a darker explanation. Soon he was in pursuit of what he considered to be ‘a Yankee conspiracy to collect the salvage money.’ The plot would be revealed when someone from the Mary Celeste was found. But this never happened. On the tenth of March, 1873, after eighty-seven days of acrimonious argument where the Judge and the Queen’s Proctor chased down numerous blind alleys, the Court of Inquiry came to an end. The Mary Celeste was released. The Court reluctantly awarded £1,700 salvage money to the Master and crew of the Dei Gratia. It was a miserable sum, less than a fifth of the total value of the brig and her cargo, when they had expected at least one-third.

One key to the solution of the mystery could be found with regard to a decision made by Captain Morehouse at Gibraltar. He was no fool. From the attitude of Deveau on the Dei Gratia after sighting the Mary Celeste he knew that his First Mate was implicated in some kind of fraud. He was not party to it, nor did he know the devious plan, but Deveau was clearly up to something. Ultimately, the Captain practically refused to give proper answers to the Court and despatched Deveau off on the Dei Gratia at the earliest possible moment. Why should he entrust the ship and its cargo to sail from Gibraltar under the command of his First Mate? No Master would allow that to happen! The owners of the vessel and the owners of the cargo would quickly show their feelings towards that decision as soon as they found out. Yet that is exactly what the experience Captain did.....and one must demand to know the reason why he did it. In the evidence he gave, Deveau stated he had only been to Gibraltar once before, yet Captain Morehouse told him to take his ship and deliver the cargo from that port. It didn’t make sense.....or perhaps it did. It indicated that Captain Morehouse was desperate to get rid of Deveau from Gibraltar. After all, they could all hang if someone broke down and told the truth......a truth of which the Captain was not truly aware! He didn’t want to hang for someone else’s conspiracy! Deveau, in later evidence, declared that the Captain had stayed in Gibraltar to receive the salvage money. What a load of nonsense! Why should the Captain wait around for that and risk someone else taking his ship and a valuable cargo.....especially a man who had only been the First Mate on the Dei Gratia or any other vessel! The award had not yet been made when the First Mate sailed. The salvage money would have been still there when the Captain returned.

In due course, the Dei Gratia sailed off with a disgruntled crew, still watched by the suspicious eyes of Mr. Solly Flood. Somewhere, sometime, the Queen’s Proctor was convinced, a person from the Mary Celeste would be found to tell the true tale. It never happened! Keating wrote in his book:

“The searchlights have been turned in the wrong direction, the busy rakes have never succeeded in clearing the rubbish. Bunglers and follow-our-leaders have made the affair of the Mary Celeste a greater mystery after fifty years and even the baffled Court found it so after fifty days.”

Dr. Cobb declared emphatically that:

“On board a whaler or maybe a trade amongst the islands of the Pacific, or it may be on a trans- Atlantic liner, a sailor in the forecastle or an officer on the bridge will light a pipe, and after blowing out two or three puffs of smoke will say: ‘Well, what do you suppose ever became of the crew of the Mary Celeste?’”

The question is now timeless. After more than a hundred and twenty five years some people might add that the problem has now become academic.....a feature in the annals of past history.....an unsolved mystery of the sea. One thing is certain, however, while man uses his imagination and seeks to resolve the mysteries of life, the ghost of the Mary Celeste will never be laid to rest. Perhaps it is most fitting to end with the words of Captain Adrian Lonsdale, of the U.S. Coastguard who said:

“If a ship is lost in a violent storm, to us it is a disaster. To someone who doesn’t know the facts it’s uncanny. I suppose anything you can’t understand yourself is bound to be supernatural.”

Indeed, while mystery and curiosity remain features which stimulate human thought, the memory of the Mary Celeste will live forever!

THE END