This will be a detailed look at the case of the famous derelict ghost ship, Mary Celeste. Like so many mysteries that become world popular, the legend takes over and the truth is sacrificed. The incident is recounted, sometimes embroidered, but the actual event is seldom analyzed.
The ship was partly owned by the master, Benjamin Spooner Briggs, and it was his cousin Oliver Cobb who truly first ventured to try and use the clues aboard the ship to come to a rational explanation. But there was one drawback in Cobb’s explanation: he was selective in what he would admit were genuine clues and, unfortunately, accepted the contradictory account of the only ones who knew what the ship looked like when boarded. These were the crew of the British brig Dei Gratia, who boarded the vessel and 3 of which sailed her to Gibraltar. Their main object was prize money. Although Cobb admitted that their accounts suggest “window dressing” because of the insurance money, he didn’t realize that the window of their dressing would have been the actual condition of the ship.
In the rehash of the legend of the Mary Celeste, writers either condemn the officials at Gibraltar or ignore their reports. Cobb based his very rational theory for a logical abandonment of the ship on evidence that merely never was. There was no evidence of fire aboard, and the peak halyard had never been spliced and the sounding rod was most likely not lying by the pump as if the ship had been sounded from some danger of sinking.
THE SEA GHOST: the mystery of the Mary Celeste
When Thomas Vecchio, the Marshal of the Court, “arrested” the ship on its arrival so that it could be inspected for salvage purposes, he was surprised to be handed the personal effects of the missing crew from the captain of the Dei Gratia. For some reason David Morehouse, the Dei Gratia’s captain, had the missing crew’s sea chests transshipped over to his vessel and they sailed to Gibraltar with these aboard.
The testimony of the crew during the Vice Admiralty Court Proceedings proved contradictory, but it was consistent in one area: the obvious desire to minimize the event. The crew of the Dei Gratia thus raised the suspicious eyebrows of officials at Gibraltar. Despite some internet claims, the Vice Admiralty Court judge, James Cochrane, actually censured them twice for their conduct.
The officials at Gibraltar have been written up as corrupt or scheming, especially Frederick Solly Flood. However, this is grossly inaccurate. Flood was overbearing, and often a flood himself. He wasn’t the greatest theorist, but he and Cochrane had a very unusual bit of evidence to ponder over: how did the Mary Celeste, with her sails set on the wrong tack, maintain her course for 9 days and even sail across the southeasterly current and end up north of her last logged position? Flood’s theory perhaps wasn’t the best. He thought that the crew mutinied and sailed the vessel on toward Portugal and then the mutinous crew turned the vessel around and let it sail back east. But he pondered over what is the fulcrum of Gibraltar’s reason for suspicion.
The Mary Celeste sailed into sea mysteries after that and accounts of it became a formula rehash. Amidst the hype of bizarre stories in popular journals from a myriad of cranks claiming to be survivors, Cobb’s theory was a breath of fresh air. But in truth there was no evidence for any fire on board at all. Nor was there evidence that the crew tied a line to the vessel in order to remain at a safe distance. Mate Oliver Deveau, the first of the Dei Gratia’s men aboard, had his own theory. Because of the sounding rod lying conveniently by an opened pump, he believed the crew misread a sounding in the bilge and thought the vessel was quickly sinking. Deveau’s theory was that the men quickly abandoned ship. Nobody attaches a line to a vessel they think is going to sink like a deadweight. Obviously, he never saw a line leading over the vessel, as Cobb’s theory required.
There are, in fact, more explanations of the mystery than there are investigations into the case. High Seas Drifter will be the first to actually compare testimony and read through the contradictory claims. Although a couple of author’s have truly written outstanding works, such as Charles Edey Fay and George S. Bryan, their works were marred by being only compilations of facts rather than analysis of the evidence. Harold Wilkins wrote a controversial article and then short book proposing that the crew of the Dei Gratia contrived to murder and pirate the Mary Celeste. Although the other author’s thought this interesting, Fay was right to point out that Wilkins was wrong on several points.
The truth lies in between. And it is to this point that High Seas Drifter leads the reader at last.
