Mary Celeste
UPDATED 24 JUL 2018
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| Credit: Jbarta, Mary Celeste as Amazon |
"Our vessel is in beautiful trim and I hope we shall have a fine passage."
Sailed From: New York Harbor
Purpose of Voyage: To deliver denatured alcohol
Voyage Plan: Sail from New York Harbor to Genoa, Italy
Captain: Benjamin Spooner Briggs
Crew: (SPELLINGS MAY VARY)
Albert G. Richardson, first mate
Andrew Gilling, second mate
Edward William Head, steward
Gottlieb Goodschaad, seaman
Boye Lorenzen, seaman
Volkert Lorenzen, seaman
Arian Martens, seaman
Briggs was the newly appointed captain of the Mary Celeste, and he was preparing to take her on her first journey since she was bought and extensively refurbished in New York. He would sail the Mary Celeste to Genoa, Italy where she would deliver 1,701 barrels of denatured alcohol (a solvent used to fuel camp stoves and alcohol burners).
Briggs' wife and daughter would accompany him on the voyage. He had a school-aged son as well, Arthur, but he stayed behind with his grandmother so he could attend school.
"Our vessel is in beautiful trim and I hope we shall have a fine passage," Briggs wrote to his mother on Sunday, November 3rd.
Two days later, Sarah sent a letter to her mother-in-law concerning her son, Arthur: "Tell Arthur I make great dependence on the letters I shall get from him, and will try to remember anything that happens on the voyage which he would be pleased to hear."
On November 7th, the Mary Celeste sailed from New York Harbor with 10 passengers, including Captain Benjamin Briggs, his family, and a crew of 7 experienced merchant sailors.
The events that followed are surrounded by mystery and intrigue.
On the morning of December 5th, Captain David Morehouse discovered a lone ship, lifelessly drifting through the North Atlantic, 400 miles east of the Azores.
The ship was the Mary Celeste. Briggs, his family, and his crew were nowhere to be found.
Morehouse ordered his men to board the ship, where he found her floors covered in 3½ ft of water. Other than that and a single disassembled pump (a tool for measuring the amount of water in the hold), there was little damage to the Mary Celeste. Most of her cargo, the 1,701 barrels of alcohol were undamaged, but 9 barrels were empty.
In addition, Morehouse discovered Briggs', log. The last entry was dated back three weeks, and Captain Briggs had not mentioned any problems with his ship.
Oddly, the crew seemed to have abandoned the Mary Celeste without reason, even leaving their belongings behind. Well, most of them. The possessions of two crewmen, German brothers Boye and Volkert Lorenzen, were no where to be found.
Still, most everything on the ship was untouched, except the ship's only lifeboat, which was gone.
Foul Play
Over the 150 years since this mystery began, there has been much speculation. Many were quick to suspect that Riffian pirates were at fault, but the massive quantity of food and alcohol left behind disproves that theory.A different theory involves the brothers Boye and Volkert Lorenzen. Remember them? They were the only two crewmen who did not leave any possessions behind, and this aroused suspicion. However, according to a descendant of the Lorenzen brothers, this was not suspicious at all. The men had lost their belongings earlier that year in shipwreck. To further disprove this theory, Briggs had personally handpicked the crew, and stated he was very satisfied with each one of them. His wife, Sarah, was pleased as well, calling the crew quietly capable "...if they continue as they have begun."
Safety Measures
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| Mary Celeste Engraving |
At this point, we've excluded quite a few possibilities of foul play. But what if it wasn't foul play at all? What if Briggs himself ordered his crew to abandon the Mary Celeste as a safety measure? What would prompt him to do so?
One popular belief, first offered by James Winchester, is that the alcohol became too hot in the Azores heat and blasted off the main hatch, creating the fear of an inevitable explosion. The nine empty barrels of alcohol seem to support this idea. These barrels, unlike the others, had been made of red oak, a porous material, and it is likely they leaked. This would have created alcohol vapor in the hold. The steel bands that held the barrels together rubbed against each other and created a spark which then turned into an explosion. Acting on fear, Briggs could have ordered his crew to abandon the Mary Celeste.
However, this theory falls apart when one considers that Morehouse's boarding party did not report smelling any alcohol vapor, did not see any burn marks, and found the main hatch perfectly in tact.
So what really could have caused Briggs and his crew to leave the ship?
This is perhaps the best-supported theory presented thus far, but the mystery continues.
The disassembled pipe is perhaps our best clue. The Mary Celeste had formerly been a merchant ship, mainly delivering coal. Coal dust or construction debris could have caused the pump's damage. With the pump broken, Briggs may not have known how much seawater was caught in the Mary Celeste's hold. If enough seawater got through, the ship would sink.
Not wanting to put his family in danger, he decided to seek haven and abandon the ship. More than likely, he was headed for Santa Maria Island.
But something went wrong.
Although the ship's log was lost around 1885, Solly-Flood--an attorney general who investigated Morehouse's claim of finding the Mary Celeste abandoned--had carefully inspected the captain's journal, and he made some notes of it himself.
Solly-Flood noticed that on the last five days recorded in the log, some unusual details had been recorded about the Mary Celeste's course. A day before the ship arrived at the Azores, Briggs unexpectedly changed course and sailed just north of Santa Maria Island.
So Briggs sailed right past safety. Why?
After looking at sea conditions data and ICOADS, modern researcher and documentarian Anne MacGregor proposed that Briggs was actually 120 miles west of where he thought he was. In other words, Briggs expected to reach Santa Maria three days before he actually would. A faulty chronometer is most likely to blame.
So Briggs sought haven, but became confused when Santa Maria Island did not appear when he thought it should. In an effort to find the island, he changed course and sailed just north of it.
Days passed and still no sight of land. It was the night of November 25th; the ocean was rough and the winds were dangerously high, nearing 25 knots.
By morning, Briggs was desperate. Unknowing when his ship would sink, and unwilling to risk waiting for another storm, the captain made the order to abandon ship.
Faulty Chronometer
Briggs was not the only one to experience trouble with a marine chronometer. In the early 1800's, a time when chronometers were commonly used for navigation at sea, faulty chronometers were not unheard of. The question as to why troubled many scientists and clock-makers of the time.George Fisher was the first to suggest possibility of a magnetic influence in 1820, fifty-two years before the Mary Celeste's final voyage. Fisher worked as an astronomer aboard the Royal Navy ships, Dorethea and Trent. During his time there, he observed that the rates of the instruments, which had been accurately set in London, increased while at sea, then slowed back to normal as they came to Spitzbergen.
John Franklin, who was the commander of Trent on the voyage to Spitzbergen, also noticed a discrepancy in the chronometer's timing.
"It may be worthy of remark, that the chronometers taken out by the Hon. Capt. Phipps showed too great westerly longitude, and consequently gained on those seas. The fact of so many chronometers altering their rates the same way is curious, but I am not aware that any cause can be assigned," he wrote.
If the theory of Briggs' faulty chronometer is correct, Phipps' experience is significantly similar. Both men's chronometers malfunctioned and leaned west, perhaps as result of magnetic interference. There is no question that magnetism affects the work of chronometers, but the correlation between magnetism and the chronometers' tendency to favor west is unique and must be further explored.
Then again, maybe strange magnetic forces are not to blame, and perhaps the westward tendencies of these chronometers are just mere coincidence.
It is very possible that the chronometer, being an early method of navigation, was simply unreliable, with or without the interference of magnetism.
I will continue to update this article as I find more information on this subject.
Note: Although the Mary Celeste did not sail through the Bermuda Triangle, and the crew disappeared in an entirely different part of the Atlantic, the ship is still often associated with the Bermuda Triangle. The Mary Celeste being a "ghost ship," I found this was the best category to put this article.
As this site expands, I may move this article to a more fitting place.
Begg, Paul. Mary Celeste: The Greatest Mystery of the Sea. Routledge, 2017.
Bhattacharya, Raj. “Mary Celeste - The Ghost Ship.” Top Bermuda Attractions & Things To Do, Aug. 2014, www.bermuda-attractions.com/bermuda2_000064.htm.
Blumberg, Jess. “Abandoned Ship: The Mary Celeste.” Smithsonianmag.com, Smithsonian Institution, Nov. 2007, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/abandoned-ship-the-mary-celeste-174488104/.
Brooks, Randall C. Magnetic Influence on Chronometers, 1798-1834: A Case Study. ResearchGate, 1987.
Buzzkill. “The Marie Celeste.” Professor Buzzkill - History's Myths Debunked, 1 Feb. 2017, professorbuzzkill.com/the-marie-celeste/.
Chapman, S., and T. Lewis. “The Effect of Magnetism on the Rates of Chronometers and Watches.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 72, no. 7, 1912, pp. 583–608., doi:10.1093/mnras/72.7.583.
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