Genesis of a Legend

After the initial excitement surrounding the discovery of the derelict, and the subsequent enquiry at the Supreme Court in Gibraltar, the public became tired of trying to find the true solution and allowed the matter rest. No doubt, if such an event had occurred in modern times, companies involved in marketing would have kept the myth alive producing computer games and a multitude of toys and products, as well as competitions offering grand prizes, for solving the mystery. In 1883, however, creative ability, mass production, as well as effective channels of advertising and distribution were distant dreams. There were so many other matters on which to dwell. After all, in the days when steamships were taking over from sail, the plight of a small cargo vessel carrying ten people was hardly significant. Indeed, there were a number of mysteries of the sea which had never been resolved.....much to the concern of some insurance companies.....and this one would certainly not be the last. In fact it was not an unknown feature for a ship to be found at sea having been abandoned by its crew. Such incidents were reported and recorded from time to time. For example, in 1888, the schooner William L. White, was abandoned off Delaware in a blizzard but it kept afloat for more than ten months and sailed five thousand miles. Another schooner, the Fannie E. Wolston, was abandoned in December 1891 but failed to sink until February 1894, during which time she had drifted halfway across the Atlantic and back again.....for thousands of miles.....finally sinking off the New Jersey coast only a few miles from the position where she had been abandoned. In 1914, the British barque, Dalgonar, drifted five thousand miles across the Pacific after her Master and three crew had lost their lives in a gale and the surviving crew had been taken off by a French vessel, the Loire. The Dalgonar’s ballast had shifted and she developed a heavy list, but she drifted westward for six months.....past Easter Island, Pitcairn and innumerable other islets.....until grounding on a coral reef in the Society Islands. This would have been another mystery had the surviving crew not managed to get safely home in the Loire.

But all these incidents happened after the Mary Celeste was found derelict. When the news was issued by the Press it stunned the world. Imagination ran rife and speculation took place everywhere on what might have happened, what did happen, and what was likely to have happened. There were the pessimists who claimed that the passengers and crew had jumped overboard to their deaths after a drunken orgy. If they believed that they knew nothing of the facts. The Briggs were God-fearing people who never drank alcohol.....although Captain Briggs did imbibe one alcoholic drink when he dined with Captain Morehouse in New York, the night before the Mary Celeste sailed. Nonetheless, no alcohol was allowed on board.....with the exception of the cargo, which happened to be crude alcohol and hardly palatable. Ultimately, it was extremely unlikely that a drunken orgy took place. In effect, the First-Mate was a trustworthy and experienced mariner so he was unlikely to become involved in such activities. The optimists naturally took an entirely different view. They believed that something happened on board, either relating to the fumes of the alcohol or because the ship started to take in water. As such, the Captain and crew took to the long-boat and headed for the nearest island in the Azores. In their opinion, they would eventually hear news that the Captain, his wife and daughter and the crew managed to land somewhere and had been rescued. Thereafter, information would be quickly communicated to New York explaining how they had taken to the boat in an emergency to land on some unknown shore waiting for another ship to take them back to civilisation. There were others who considered that the Mary Celeste was the subject of an insurance fraud which went badly wrong. Why else would a seaworthy ship be found derelict.....unless fraud was involved? Freelance reporters seeking an exclusive scoop visited the islands of the Azores and even made enquiries as far south as the Canary Islands, in case the Mary Celeste had been swept that far off course before being blown northwards by strong winds. The coasts of Portugal and Southern Spain were scanned.....but all to no avail. Clearly, there was no evidence that Captain Briggs or his family and crew had ever landed on foreign soil.

As time passed one would have expected interest in the incident to fade in the minds of the public and become another unsolved mystery of the sea. But it did not. In normal circumstances ships capsized and sank for one reason or another, usually in storms or against savage rocks. The Mary Celeste, however, remained afloat as a ‘ghost’ ship, and that was something altogether different. It was certainly too good a story to slip through the fingers of creative writers. In 1883, in Portsmouth, England, a young doctor was struggling to establish a practice but found himself in financial difficulties. He approached a company publishing magazines for boys and began to write stories for each issue. Within a few months he began to realise the potential of his artistic talent and decided to develop his theory of the mystery of the Mary Celeste in between surgery hours and visits to the sick. The attempt to solve this mystery was the start of a new career of mystery writing for the young doctor who, four years later, wrote ‘The Study in Scarlet’.....the first Sherlock Holmes story. The doctor, of course, was Arthur Conan Doyle.

His theory of the mystery of the Mary Celeste included an indelicate reconstruction, with only threadbare evidence of the true facts of the case as they were reported eleven years earlier. The editor of the Cornhill Magazine was enthused by the idea and encouraged him to write his story. In January, 1884, it was published anonymously as “J. Habbakuk Jephson’s Statement”. If it had not been for this story, the tale of the Mary Celeste may have receded into the dark corners of history never to be recalled again after, say, thirty years had passed. However, not only was it resurrected, fuelled by false information and a plethora of rumour, but the ramifications spread wider and wider through authorities, one at least taking a view that some, if not all, of the details presented were actual fact. As such, enquiries were started in Europe and America solely on the basis of this story.

Conan Doyle tried to provide reason to the mystery by introducing the fact that five passengers had been taken on board, one of whom, remarkably was the only survivor of the voyage. Jephson, ostensibly, was the lone survivor and had related details of himself and of the ship to the author. But there were a number of strange discrepancies, sufficient to allow those people acquainted with the real facts, or astute enough to realise that Conan Doyle had introduced fiction deliberately, to know that he had used the Mary Celeste merely to expound his own ideas of mystery and imagination. For example, he mentioned that reports had been published by the Gibraltar Gazette.....which did not exist; that the boats were intact and slung upon their davits.....there was only one boat and that had been smashed in the cargo accident at New York Harbour. Worst of all, a mis-spelling of the name of the vessel as the ‘Marie’ Celeste which, although wrong, was still used almost one hundred years later by British libraries in their indexing system.

Of the five passengers aboard, one of them was Dr. J. Habbakuk Jephson.....the well-known Brooklyn specialist on consumption.....so the story unravels. He was apparently a distinguished advocate for the Abolition of Slavery who had exercised a strong influence on public opinion in America and felt it his duty to society to tell all he knew about the ill-fated voyage. Dr. Jephson relates that he had tried to explain the events on board the Mary Celeste over the first few years but without success, as both officials and relatives refused to acknowledge his story as being true. He admitted finally that pressure by his son to let the matter sink into oblivion forced him to allow reticence to gain the upper hand, and the matter was dropped. Without any doubt, it was a well-written yarn but the story was total fiction. Yet there was an element of truth on the point relating to the carriage of a passenger, although this was lost in the myriad of matters surrounding the characters and the plot. According to Dr. Jephson, a half-caste from New Orleans, Septimus Goring, murdered the Captain and crew of the ship, disposed of them over the side into the ocean, replacing them with two other passengers named Harton and Hyson, and a Captain Tibbs. The latter, however, suddenly went mad and committed suicide while Goring took charge of the ship’s navigational instruments to head the vessel to the west coast of Africa. It is his intention, he declared, to found a black empire, and he cast the Doctor adrift in a boat to leave him to his own devices. Fortunately, Jephson was in possession of a black stone, shaped like a human ear, an object of veneration by negroes, which protected him at all times. He was sighted five days later and saved by a steamer bound for Liverpool.....but no one would believe his story. The author finalised as follows:

“From the day on which I found myself once more in the bosom of my family, I have said little of what I have undergone. The subject is still an intensely painful one to me, and the little which I have dropped has been discredited. I now put the facts before the public as they occurred, careless how far they may be believed, and simply writing them down because my lung is growing weaker, and I feel the responsibility of holding my peace longer. I make no vague statement. Turn to your map of Africa. There above Cape Blanc where the land trends away north and south from the westernmost point of the continent, there it is that Septimus Goring still reigns over his dark subjects, unless retribution has overtaken him; and there, where the long green ridges run swiftly in to roar and hiss upon the hot yellow sand, it is there that Harton (a passenger) lies with Hyson (the Mate) and the other poor fellows who were done to death in the Mary Celeste.”

The story sparked off a series of communications after its publication in the Cornhill magazine, especially by those officials involved with the case from the outset. Frederick Solly Flood, the Queen’s Proctor in Her Office of Admiralty, and Attorney-General of Gibraltar, who appeared for the Crown, was extremely excited by the story. Over ten years earlier he was utterly convinced that some kind of criminal offence had been perpetrated for the purpose of obtaining insurance or salvage fraudulently. Regardless of his efforts to prove that such a crime had been committed, however, he was unable to establish a case of any kind and bore down heavily, in the end, on the those who salvaged her, which served to gain them a pittance for their part in finding the abandoned vessel and bringing her safely into Gibraltar with its full cargo. Mr. Flood deliberately led himself to believe that Conan Doyle’s story was factual and that Dr. Jephson had been an eye-witness. He expressed himself to the American Consul Sprague, stating that he was corresponding with officials in Germany in the belief that survivors of the Mary Celeste were hiding in that country. He knew that three of the crew were German and that they lived in or near the Parish of Utersum auf Fohr, but letters written from the Chief of the Parish indicated that matters were to the contrary.....although it did not mean that any were not in Germany. It merely indicated they had not returned home.

Consul Sprague took a more conservative view of the story. He felt it was his duty to send a copy to the State Department in Washington, prefaced by remarks suggesting it appeared replete with romance of a very unlikely or exaggerated nature. In a rider to his report, he suggested that the American authorities might consider tracing the author. He eventually received a reply that the State Department did not deem it essential to propose any particular enquiries into the antecedents of the writer of the article in question. In their opinion, the mystery had not been explained satisfactorily and the file would remain closed until further evidence was submitted.

At that particular moment, the Mary Celeste was still carrying cargoes across the Western world, which must have had some effect on the subconscious thoughts of its crew, but her life was coming swiftly to a close. Within a year, she lay in ruins off Rochelle’s Reef in Haiti, deliberately wrecked. The Captain was arraigned for barratry, her hold was full of junk for which an insurance company was supposed to pay a princely sum, and the timbers were left to rot or be taken by the tide. She was soon forgotten again as the legend faded but her memory was brought back to life again in 1890 when a collection of sea stories written by Conan Doyle were published in a book entitled “The Captain of the Polestar”. It would appear that the ghost of the Mary Celeste was never to be allowed to rest in peace!

The difference between fact and fiction is often very narrow so that fortune favours the writer with a wide imagination because readers may believe all that is written to be true. On the other hand, it may be considered unfair to criticise writers too harshly on the matter of a strange sea mystery. However, in some cases, not only was logic cast to the wind by means of rumour but there has to be some foundation for allegations to be made that the truth was totally distorted on a story supposed to contain the truth. Conan Doyle began a new era in printed speculation when he accepted thirty pounds for his “anonymous” story about Dr. J. Habbakuk Jephson. There is no doubt whatsoever that he used the framework of the story of the Mary Celeste, albeit solely as a fictional base. Nonetheless, the fact that he endeavoured to record his own solution ot the mystery has to be considered a false premise. His bold or foolhardy approach to a tragedy in which ten people lost their lives, much to the bereavement of their living relatives, encouraged other people to come forward with their view, and other writers to create new work on the subject. Fortunately, the numbers were relatively few, although numerous barrack-room lawyers and new-found mystery solvers held the attention of eager listeners in many local taverns in both America and Britain.

When news arrived that the Mary Celeste had been wrecked off the coast of Haiti and her master was arraigned for barratry, it was clear to many that she had been a ship with an evil spell cast on her from inception to death. Imaginations worked at feverish speed.....half the facts unknown or forgotten..... and most of the story became built around a fantasy which people preferred to believe. Many of the misbegotten stories, designed to entertain a captive audience rather than present the truth in useful discussion, fell on amused ears. The general public listened to what it wanted to hear and became bored if the orated yarn was stale. It was then that distortions were necessarily introduced into the tale to keep it alive. Narrators and commentators attempting to stimulate further interest began to break new ground, whereby details and events hitherto omitted began to creep into dialogue and print. None of these new facts contained any truth at all but few people were sufficiently informed or interested to mount any kind of a serious challenge. Unfortunately, each writer who tried to earn money in this way failed to realise that the introduction of new facts acted as an additional weight on the story. It could only overload it to its disadvantage, in the same way as ice sometimes builds up on the wings of a very high-flying aircraft.

The exaggerations led to further theories and rekindled old flames. Although the record was never expunged by an accepted solution, the lapses of time between each resurrection grew, as a developing world occupied itself with other matters of importance or interest. However, the distortions still continued, albeit slower than in the past, which included a variety of minor matters adding incentive.....yet they were all figments of the imagination and far from the truth. For example, it was suggested by one writer that a half-eaten breakfast remained on the cabin table, with cups of tea still warm as though the crew had been spirited away seconds or minutes before she was discovered. A cat was supposedly sleeping peacefully on a locker. The galley fire burned brightly as though recently stoked and was filled with fuel. A chicken was boiling in a pot, and the boats creaked as they swung in their davits. In those terms, the story was weird and contained a ghostly setting for the story-teller who often relished in the words: “.......and there wasn’t a soul aboard nor anyone to be seen!” But none of it was true!

What of the many theories put forward as solutions to the mystery? Tales of explosion were rife, ostensibly proved by the fact that the fore-hatch had turned over. Gases escaping from the alcohol had ignited and the crew, fearing for their lives, had taken to the long-boat. Another theory intimated that the vessel was taking water in the hold which made such a noise during a storm that the Captain and crew abandoned her and perished at sea. Someone else believed that the Captain went mad, killed his wife and his child and the crew and, on returning to his senses, threw himself overboard with remorse at his actions. Others decided that the Captain and his crew became so drunk they fought and destroyed each other. Each theory had a semblance of truth to those unaware of the facts. They provided the thinkers.....the day-dreamers.....with their own views of what might have happened. But there was no evidence to support any of these ideas. The true facts were that there was no sign of an explosion on board; no signs of any fire was evident; the water in the hold was not disproportionately high; Captain Briggs was a stable man..... a family man of good temperament.....he was not a likely candidate for insanity, temporary or otherwise; liquor was not allowed on board because the Captain was religious and a teetoller; and there were no bodies to be seen after any fight to the death, which destroys that theory entirely.

The mystery was bolstered by wider ramifications whereby it was suggested that the Captain and his crew had deserted the ship when they realised that a gigantic ice-berg was bearing down on them. This was extremely unlikely as the position of the Mary Celeste was far to the south of the limits of arctic ice, even during the Spring melting period. There was mention of the possibility that the cook had poisoned everyone on board and, having disposed of all the bodies, slipped while attending the rigging and fell overboard. Whether the originator of this story intended to mean that the cook killed the crew deliberately or whether he was so bad at the practice of culinary art is by no means certain. However, it needs to be pointed out that some cooks on board smaller vessels in those days were a greater hazard to seamen than any other maritime dangers. Next came the pirate theory to account for the disappearance of the crew. The most plausible solution suggested that the Mary Celeste was raided by Riff or Barbary pirates who captured the Captain and his crew and sold them as slaves in a North African slave market. To examine the validity of this theory, history shows that the American navy, although in its infancy, pursued a policy of wiping out piracy on the high seas, and their tactics included destroying the ports at which pirates were known to have established themselves. Consequently, between 1801 and 1813, American ships bombarded and rased the ports of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. In addition, they sought international co-operation from European countries to make safe the high seas and not only did a joint British and Dutch expedition destroy Algiers in 1815, but they wiped out the Algerian and Salle corsairs which had preyed upon shipping for centuries. One widely-held theory which resurfaced regularly concerned the disappearance of the crew and the abandonment of the vessel during violent storms. There were very severe gales at sea recorded in the winter of 1872 and 1873 which led to many wrecks and casualties. Even the city of London in England was struck on the eighth of December, 1872, by what was described as the most severe gale for centuries. Whether there is any credence to the supposition can only be left to the imagination of the reader. Suffice it to say, it was not uncommon to lose sailors during a severe storm at sea, but how can one account for the Captain, the crew and the passengers to be lost in this manner.....including a two year old child who would have been kept safe and warm downstairs? Another factor which laid the groundwork for rumour was the display of meteors in November, 1872. The earth is recorded to have been swept by the disjecta membra of Biela’s lost comet. However, neither storms nor lost comets, or any other phenomena, were entered in the logs of either the Mary Celeste or the Dei Gratia. Perhaps the most amusing version concerns the alleged sudden appearance of a giant octopus or squid which sucked each member off the ship for its evening meal; or the appearance of a space-ship to carry off the crew to some distant planet for examination. If the last theory is accepted, they were absorbed into an alien society and, it would appear, that the visitors from the alien planet which invaded earthly skies during much of the twentieth century, as recorded in the annals of any history of Unidentified Flying Objects, refused to bring them back. There were other matters.....some backed by oral evidence.....to cast new light on the subject. These are set out in chronological order below. In advance of that, however, it is impossible to ignore the complete conviction of the Queen’s Proctor, Frederick Solly Flood, who never doubted at any time that a conspiracy existed between the Captains of the two vessels involved. His motto, when in doubt, was to revert to basics and, although both Captains were characters of paramount integrity, Mr. Flood failed to move his gaze from their direction. Had be progressed down to crew level he might have been able to see the wood for the trees, as is shown later .

After the story in the Cornhill Magazine in 1884, and the demise of the vessel in 1885, a reporter employed by the New York World decided to write an article through the eyes of a Captain Coffin. His version did little to satisfy the doubt which existed in many minds but the article acted as a catalyst for future writers who wished to develop other theories. Captain Coffin declared that the long-boat of the Mary Celeste was missing and that the fore-hatch was found lying bottom-up on the deck. He suggested this might have occurred through an explosion, endorsing the views of Captain Winchester, the owner of the vessel, concerning the combustibility of gases released by alcohol in an enclosed space. In Captain Coffin’s opinion, the derelict had continued on the same course for ten days without drifting. His imagination then took its own direction which offered other writers the fruit from which to feed. After that submission, the New York World let the matter drop until February, 1913, when they published Captain Winchester’s theory.....after his death.

In the August of 1877, Longman’s Magazine ventured a story written by a novelist by the name of Clark Russell, who introduced the hitherto undisclosed, and untrue, facts about the uneaten meal and the galley fire. His story, entitled “The Mystery of the Ocean Star” was clearly based on the Mary Celeste incident although the author tried to disguise the vessel and the events in many unsubtle ways. In his story, a steamship with the name “Guide” painted on its bows proceeded through dense fog in mid-Atlantic and managed to avoid collision with a barque called Ocean Star, whose sails were in disarray. The Mate of the steamer boarded the other vessel and noticed that the ship’s boat was missing, the galley fire had been recently tended and was burning brightly, and that a chicken was boiling in a saucepan on the stove. He searched the ship but could not locate anyone and, on examining the log, he discovered that the last entry was written ten days earlier. Yet there was evidence of the presence of someone on board. The Guide put aboard a minimum crew to claim salvage monies and on the following day they came across the missing crew who were rowing aimlessly across the wide ocean. These men cleared up the mystery quite simply by explaining that a series of mishaps had occurred on the Ocean Star. They alleged that the Captain was found dead in bed one morning. Then the First Mate died suddenly of fever. Thirdly, there were incidents on board in which two seamen lost their lives. Fourthly, the rudder jammed and the Second Mate fell overboard as he examined the problem. Lastly, the crew went to his rescue and lowered the boat, leaving one man aboard but, as they searched for the Second Mate, the wind freshened and the ship moved swiftly away in the fog, lost to those in the small boat. As to the fate of the sole surviving sailor on board the Ocean Star, his efforts to attract the attention of the crew of the Guide were so vigorous that he tripped, fell overboard, and was drowned minutes before the rescuers arrived. When challenged on the story.....on the grounds that it represented his solution to the mystery surrounding the fate of the crew of the Mary Celeste.....Clark Russell denied the allegation. He purported that all those mishaps occurred in one voyage of a ship which sailed from Hull to Rio in 1877. But other people knew better! The story appeared again in 1888 when it was reprinted in a collection of the author’s maritime sketches. The impact at that time, however, was negligible. It took second place to Conan Doyle’s effort which was reprinted as ‘The Captain of the Polestar’ in 1890. A brief account of the last voyage of the Mary Celeste was published in McClure’s Magazine in November, 1894, written by a Mr. Robert Barr, but many facts were well wide of the mark, including the statement that she was bound for Europe with a cargo of clocks. The source of this information is not disclosed and merely proved to show that baseless facts were being introduced by careless writers who were prepared to capitalise on the mystery without any intention of conducting basic research before putting pen to paper.

***

The mystery then faded away for a further eight years until a reporter working for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle found himself short of topical news. He decided to search for relatives of the crew of the Mary Celeste and eventually found a willing subject in Mrs. Fanny Richardson, the widow of the missing First Mate. Setting up a meeting on the ninth of March, 1902, almost thirty years after the event, he eagerly wrote notes on her views. In her opinion, Albert Richardson was a qualified Captain without the command of a vessel, although he had been offered this position on a barque which was being fitted out. Until the vessel was seaworthy, he decided to act as First Mate on the Mary Celeste. She corroborated the fact that Captain Briggs had taken his wife and daughter on the voyage, as well as Richardson and William Head. However, her husband had complained that although the Captain and his chief men were Americans, the rest of the crew were Portuguese, Italians and Turks. The reporter of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle waxed lyrically on such information commenting they were said to have been “as bad a looking lot as ever swabbed a deck!” In her own words, Mrs. Richardson stated:

“I always believed and always will believe that my husband, Captain Briggs, Mrs. Briggs, her baby and the cook were murdered by the crew. My husband had a presentiment of evil before he sailed and he appeared to me in a dream on the night of the twenty-fourth of November, 1872, the date on which I believe the catastrophe occurred. My brother-in-law (CAPTAIN LYMAN RICHARDSON) on the other hand, thought that those on board the Mary Celeste had been done away with by the crew of the Dei Gratia, and I can tell you now that he sailed the seas for several years in an assumed character for the purpose of ascertaining if there was anything in his theory.”

Other information released by her proved to be fresh evidence which had not been mentioned earlier. Somehow she knew that the cradle on the forward-hatch, intended to carry an additional boat, had been smashed during the loading of the cargo.....a matter which had not been divulged earlier. She claimed that Albert Richardson had told her that Captain Briggs had experienced difficulties not only in arranging for the cradle to be repaired but also in obtaining a new long-boat. As such, it was decided to repair the damage during the voyage and to purchase a new long-boat in Genoa. Of all the effects left on the derelict vessel no item was more indicative of a third party than the ship’s slate. Scratched upon it were the words: “Fanny, my dear wife, Frances NR” which appeared to be the opening words of a letter by the Mate to his wife, abandoned as a result of urgent duty, uncollected thoughts, or for some reason which will for ever remain unknown. Mrs. Richardson dismissed many of the sophisticated suggestions on the disappearance of the crew, firmly believing that the foreign crew broke open a barrel of alcohol (ONE BARREL HAD BEEN SMASHED IN THE HOLD), drank the contents, and took to the boats when they sobered up, realising they would be hanged from a gibbet if they were caught. She ridiculed the idea that they had landed on an island in the Azores and hid there for the rest of their lives. The newspaper reported the dialogue of the Mate’s widow as it was told to them. “The solution to this mystery,” it stated, “will probably never be learned until the sea gives up its dead.” It would appear there would be a very long wait!

In March, 1904, the Yale Alumni Weekly commented on the salvage award. However, the public were to greet the next theory with great surprise. In September, 1904 in Chambers Journal, a British author by the name of J.L. Hornibrook wrote “The Case of the Marie Celeste: An Ocean Mystery”, explaining how the incident occurred through the appearance of a huge octopus. It is difficult to understand the audacity of an author to give himself enough licence to promote ideas of such a wide nature coupled with an established incident. His imaginative powers connected with the name of the Mary Celeste was reprehensible. Worse still, having written such fiction, it might have been possible to forgive the author for presenting such a monstrous story but, alas, he completely abandoned the idea thirty years later in favour of a new and more fashionable theory. His original story needs to be examined if only to indicate the inaccuracies he allowed to creep into the tale.

“On a certain morning, back in the sixties (should be seventies), the Spanish authorities near the Straits of Gibraltar noticed a vessel in the office which speedily attracted special attention (it was the Dei Gratia not the Spanish authorities which found the Mary Celeste). She was a brig, with all sails set, and at first sight appeared to be heading direct for the Straits, as though to enter the Mediterranean. A few minutes scrutiny, however, revealed the fact that there was something wrong on board - something strange and inexplicable. A boat was quickly manned and put off to the vessel, for it was seen by this time that she was not under control. As the men drew near they hailed her more than once, but no answer came back to them from the brig. They now perceived that the wheel was deserted; nor was a single soul observable on deck. The brig was absolutely devoid of life. The entire crew from Captain to cabin-boy had disappeared - vanished! (NO CABIN BOY WAS ENLISTED). A minute examination of the vessel revealed a truly extraordinary and astounding state of affairs. There was not a single boat missing (UNTRUE: THE SHIP SAILED WITH ONE BOAT MISSING) They were all in their proper places, slung on the davits and stowed on deck in the usual manner (WRONG). Further than that, not a rope or stay, not a sail or spar, was injured. Everything, from truck to keep, was as sound as the day the vessel had sailed (TWO SAILS HAD BEEN BLOWN AWAY). More astonishing still, the Captain’s watch was ticking on a nail above his berth, and on the cabin table was found the remains of a half-consumed dinner, apparently as fresh as when it came from the cook’s galley (UNTRUE). The same thing was noticeable in the mens’ quarters and looked as though the entire crew had been interrupted or startled in the midst of their meal. And that was all. The brig was navigated into Gibraltar, and there the American Consul came on board for, as was seen by the name of her port on the stern, she hailed from Boston (COMPLETELY UNTRUE). He, in turn, proceeded to make a minute and searching inspection overhauling the vessel from stem to stern, and noting every detail. (UNTRUE). Let us now turn to the commencement of this remarkable voyage, which ended in such a mysterious and unaccountable manner. The Marie Celeste (SHOULD BE MARY CELESTE) set sail from Boston (it was New York) under the most favourable auspices (UNTRUE) and certainly there was nothing either in her complement or otherwise to warrant the assumption that the voyage would result in tragedy of any kind. She was an ordinary trading brig, bound for the Mediterranean ports with a general cargo of merchandise (ALCOHOL ONLY). Her crew consisted of seventeen hands (ONLY SEVEN) composed chiefly of Americans, Danes and Norwegians (NO NORWEGIANS). In addition, there was the Captain, his wife, and their little daughter - twenty souls all told. (THERE WERE ONLY TEN). Of the various theories advanced in explanation of this singular ocean mystery, many may be dismissed as wholly untenable. Piracy may be put on one side, for piracy was unknown in the Atlantic in the sixties (SEVENTIES) as it is at the present day. Besides, if pirates had boarded the vessel and murdered the crew, they must have left traces of their deadly work; not to mention the fact that they would scarcely have taken their departure without looting from stem to stern. It is equally impossible to suppose that the crew deserted the brig in a sudden panic, caused by the fear of her sinking, for not a single boat was missing (UNTRUE). Nor was their disappearance due to a storm which swept every soul overboard. Storms leave abundant traces of havoc among sails and rigging. The idea that every human-being on board suddenly went mad and voluntarily cast themselves into the sea is altogether too far-fetched. It has been suggested, on the other hand, that one of the crew may have been attacked by homicidal mania, and murdered by his fellows. But if so, where were the bodies? Even supposing that he had succeeded in his desperate attempt one against seventeen (WRONG) - threw the bodies overboard, and finally plunged into the sea himself, traces of the tragedy would have been noticeable everywhere. One truly startling and surprising theory would seem to cover the entire facts. There is a man stationed at the wheel. He is alone on deck, all the others having gone below to their mid-day meal. Suddenly, a huge octopus rises from the deep, and rearing one of its terrible arms aloft encircles the helmsman. His yells bring every soul on board rushing on deck. One by one they are caught by the waving, wriggling arms and swept overboard. Then, freighted with its living load, the monster slowly sinks into the deep again, leaving no traces of its attacks. It may be pointed out, in support of this theory, that the mark of a slash on the bulwark of the vessel would look as if some member of the crew had seized an axe and attempted to chop off one of the threatening arms. If, however, the theory is not accepted, it must be left to the reader’s imagination to furnish a better one.”

The first reasonable non-fictional account to follow the story of the Mary Celeste through to its final resting place in Haiti was introduced by Allan Kelly, a reporter for the New York Evening Post in its edition on the fifteenth of October, 1904. The Saturday Supplement published “The Strange Case of the Mary Celeste - A Mystery of the Deep which has never been solved”. To heighten the interest of its readers, the sub-heading ran as follows:

“An American Ship Found Abandoned on the high seas under full sail - various theories as to why she was deserted - nothing ever learned as to the fate of her Captain and crew. Subsequent career of the vessel.”

Reporter Kelly’s approach was very honest indeed and he used logic to dismiss the fantasies and inaccuracies presented by fellow writers. He could not accept the theory that Captain Briggs would be either stupid or heartless enough to take his wife and young daughter aboard the vessel had he any intention of committing a criminal offence. However, Kelly dwelt on these matters in depth although he could see no reason why the Captain would deliberately lose the ship, or scuttle her, or claim insurance for the loss. Having said that, he could contribute only by reinforcing the idea that the menace of impending disaster caused the Captain and his crew to take to the long-boat in which they perished. Why he should play so heavily on the possibility of Captain Briggs’ possible attempt to wreck or lose the ship is not known.....especially as it was ultimately dismissed later on in the article. Clearly, there was insufficient evidence of any kind which caused Kelly to pad out the story. Nonetheless, his reasons could not have been marked more noticeably by the argument that Captain Briggs would hardly buy a share in a vessel and wreck her on the first voyage. That fact alone would be incomprehensible. But the account was useful, for many of the myths which had attached themselves to the history of the derelict were dispelled. These included the half-consumed meal, the warm tea, the galley fire which had been stoked, the missing boats, and the ticking watch which supposedly had hung in the Captain’s cabin. In Kelly’s opinion, the crew were quite decent Germans and the chances that a mutiny had occurred was highly improbable. Whatever the shortcomings of the reporter in his summary and conclusions, at least he saw the story to the bitter end, attempting to interest his readers with a factual, historical account.

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At the end of 1904, it was the turn of the Liverpool Echo to enter into a new sensational and exclusive story. To give that newspaper some credit, it had not been reticent in reporting facts on this sea mystery earlier, but now that it entered the spotlight again it intended to make an impact. An article was printed concerning a young apprentice who served on the barque “Ardorinha” which had been bound from Swansea in South Wales to Chile. The apprentice, by the name of R.E. Greenhough, stated that he was sent with a boat’s crew to collect sand from the tiny islands of St. Paul’s Rocks. As they searched the island, they discovered a skeleton behind a rock with a bottle resting beside it. Inside the bottle, a piece of soiled and fading paper bore the following message which had been translated from German:

“I am dying. My ship struck these rocks at dawn three days ago. She sank immediately. Only I of all her crew reached the shore alive. There is no water; I am dying of thirst. It has been a voyage of disaster..... killed in the engine room. Three deaths in two days. Then came the poison on the seventh day out. Chronometer had run down. In my agony I forgot to wind. Only one on ship. It was the final catastrophe. Ship helpless. Too weak to get steam on boilers. And so for three days we lay. Knew we must ask assistance to take us to Gibraltar for crew. That was ruin. Ship not insured. If English found cargo it was prison and confiscation. Managed to get steam to give steerage way. I headed for Lisbon. Early morning sighted small brig becalmed. Mate said ‘Take her crew’. It was the Devil’s voice. Went aboard. Captain asked why we came. His wife and child were with him. It was hard. It would have been easy without the woman. But the Mate got behind the Captain, he and two others, and threw him. His wife fainted. Then we pointed pistols. Crew went into boat quietly. One man shot. He fell into the sea.....We left no one on board. The brig was called the Marie Celeste. Would to God I had never seen her. Then the child would be yet alive. I cannot forget the child.”

A number of discrepancies may be noted in this story, not least why the crew of the Ardorinha stopped for sand at that misbegotten place, and why sand was needed anyway. Secondly, the dying sailor mis-spelt the name of the Mary Celeste - a change unknown until Conan Doyle’s story eleven years after the derelict ship was found. The account was regarded as a melodramatic effort to provide a solution to the mystery but it failed in its attempt to stimulate public interest which relegated the matter to the lower depths of speculation. It was not surprising then that Mr. Greenhough earned little merit or money with his revelation, even with the headline: ‘Skeleton’s Tale in a Bottle.’

McClure’s Magazine entered the lists once again in May, 1905, with an article entitled: ‘The Terror of the Sea’. The theme of the text was designed to investigate the menace of wrecks and abandoned vessels to other maritime craft and, naturally, reference was made to the Mary Celeste. The author, P.T. McGrath, had contributed articles of interest to other magazines and he was well-known for his venturesome approach to mysteries. No doubt he held his reader’s attention firmly and the titles of earlier works would allow one to come to this conclusion. What person with any imagination at all in 1905 could resist ‘The Peril of the Iceberg’, or ‘The Ocean Graveyard’? Consequently, ‘The Terror of the Sea’ was undeniably a worthy capture for the American magazine. Sadly, however, Mr. McGrath’s knowledge of the facts appeared to have slipped away and his talents fell into the realm of fiction rather than fact. The name of the ship was incorrectly spelt in his story; supposedly it left New York in 1887 - fifteen years after the mystery occurred and two years after the vessel was destroyed; and there were thirteen people on board, when there were truly only ten. He went on to say that she was sighted by a British barque some days out at sea, and the boats were in their davits - but the latter item was totally incorrect. The author placed emphasis on the United States Government which supposedly spared no effort to solve the mystery, although one must suspect that while every sympathy was given to the Captain, the crew, and their families, there was little for any individual, organisation or government to do to provide the real answer to the affair. Four months later, another American publication, Munsey’s Magazine, produced a story entitled ‘Mysteries of the Sea’, by John R. Spears. It was very short but at least it stated the main facts correctly. This effort was of little consequence, however, as the writer failed to present a solution of any kind.

In relation to the newspaper industry and its involvement with the mystery, perhaps it is possible to move back to Wednesday the eighteenth of December, 1872. Five days after the arrival of the Mary Celeste in Gibraltar, the Court was assembled to hear the salvage claim by the crew of the Dei Gratia. The Gibraltar Chronicle was the journal to benefit mostly, not least through the extra financial benefits occurred from additional sales of the newspaper. The advantage for the Chronicle was considerable: it could report daily on details of the salvage claim being held in Gibraltar on an incident which was now one of international importance. The reports were conducted regularly, presenting the truth to the public so that the mystery surrounding the Mary Celeste was never allowed by them to fall into disrepute. From the background to the legend of the derelict vessel lies the rumour that the Gibraltar Chronicle received a letter in 1909 from a Ramon Alvarado of Columbus, Ohio, who claimed he held the key of the mystery in a cipher message. Further rumour indicates that he forwarded the document, which contained various squiggles and marks, to the Chronicle suggesting that if the cipher was successfully decoded it would reveal everything. One must suppose that the main American Press had already ignored Mr. Alvarado’s claim, therefore it is not surprising that the editor of the Gibraltar Chronicle dismissed the matter likewise. Whether this rumour had any credence is of little consequence. What is important is that it served to show that some people who, for reasons of their own, still dwelt on the mystery and that they were willing to submit their own ideas to the Press and other journals, regardless that their feeble attempts were likely to be rejected.