The Mary Celeste

The facts rest on the Gibraltar testimony of Morehouse, Deveau and the Dei Gratia's seamen, the survey reports commissioned by Solly-Flood, the consular correspondence of Horatio Sprague, and the New York shipping and insurance records; Charles Edey Fay assembled them in 1942 and later writers have added little that is new⁠[1]⁠[2]. The Dei Gratia's log and Deveau's testimony fix the finding at 38°20′N 17°15′W in the early afternoon of 4 December (entered as 5 December by sea-day reckoning)⁠[1]. The Mary Celeste's own log ends on 24 November at 36°56′N 27°20′W, and the slate on which the watch chalked positions ends at 8 a.m. on 25 November with the eastern point of Santa Maria bearing six miles south-south-west⁠[1].

The condition of the ship is the evidence. Sails: the lower topsail, jib and fore-topmast staysail set, the foresail and upper fore-topsail blown away, others furled or loose⁠[4]. Water in the hold about 3½ feet; the pump dismantled; a sounding rod on deck⁠[2]. The galley stove shifted, utensils washed about, a foot or two of water in the galley, no meal prepared⁠[4]. The yawl gone, and the main hatch it had covered intact⁠[1]. The chronometer, sextant and navigation book taken; the ship's register and the captain's papers taken; the log and slate left⁠[2]. Deveau described an orderly departure, not a flight⁠[2].

The cargo arrived in Genoa with nine barrels empty of their 1,701, and the empty ones were red oak⁠[3]. The ship herself was examined by a surveyor and a diver at Gibraltar, who reported marks on the bow that Solly-Flood took for a deliberate cut and stains on a sword and on the deck that he took for blood; the sword stains proved not to be blood, and the marks were judged weathering⁠[2]. The court's award and Solly-Flood's correspondence show he never gave up his suspicion; the record shows he never found anything to support it⁠[2].

There was no search for the people. The Azores and the Portuguese and Spanish coasts were the only places a yawl could have reached, and no boat, body or wreckage was reported from them; Consul Sprague's letters to Washington in 1873 record enquiries and nothing found⁠[1]. The ship herself, sold on, traded for twelve more years, mostly at a loss, and on 3 January 1885 her last master, Gilman Parker, ran her onto the Rochelois reef in the Gulf of Gonâve, Haiti, and tried to claim on an inflated cargo; he was tried for conspiracy in Boston, the jury failed to agree, and he died within months⁠[2]. In 2001 an expedition led by Clive Cussler announced timbers from a wreck on the reef as hers; tree-ring dating by Scott St George of the Geological Survey of Canada showed the wood came from trees still growing in 1894, so the find was not the Mary Celeste⁠[2].

The modern "search" has been analytical. In 2007 the documentary maker Anne MacGregor, with the physical oceanographer Phil Richardson of Woods Hole, re-examined the record for a Smithsonian Channel film. Richardson used the ICOADS historical marine data to model the derelict's drift from the 25 November position to where the Dei Gratia found her and showed that a crewless ship could have made that passage in the ten days available; MacGregor, working from Solly-Flood's notes on the log, found that Briggs had altered course to pass north of Santa Maria the day before, and that a chronometer error could have placed the ship about 120 miles west of where he believed she was, so that land he expected to sight three days earlier never appeared⁠[3]. The pump, the coal dust from the previous cargo and the debris of the 1872 refit, she argued, would have fouled the pump and left Briggs unable to tell how much water the ship had taken⁠[3].

Abandonment under a mistaken belief that the ship was sinking or about to explode is the reading the evidence favours. Its elements: a ship that had laboured in heavy weather for two weeks, water in the hold that could not be measured because the pump was fouled, open hatches and perhaps the smell of alcohol from leaking red-oak barrels, a captain who thought land was six miles off, and a decision to take the boat with the instruments and papers, perhaps on a line astern, until the danger passed⁠[2]⁠[3]. The line parted or the boat was swamped; the ship sailed on. Its strengths are that it uses every physical fact Deveau recorded; its weakness is that it requires an experienced master to leave a sound ship, and that the alcohol-vapour element has no support in the testimony, since Deveau reported no fumes and the main hatch was secured⁠[3]. The variant that a waterspout struck the ship, driving water into the galley and hold and giving a false pump reading through pressure on the sounding well, explains the galley's state and the binnacle but is a conjecture⁠[2].

Crime has been proposed in three forms. Mutiny by the crew, Solly-Flood's first theory, has no support: the four German seamen were of good character, nothing was taken, and the ship was not sailed anywhere⁠[2]. Collusion between Briggs and Morehouse to share a salvage award requires Briggs to have abandoned his family's lives and his own reputation for a fifth share of £1,700, and the two captains' acquaintance is itself uncertain⁠[2]. Murder by the Dei Gratia's crew is Solly-Flood's second theory and the court's implicit suspicion; it founders on the lack of any trace, on the absence of motive beyond salvage, and on the salvors' willingness to sail the derelict into a British port and submit to its court⁠[2]. Pirates from the Rif coast, sea monsters, seaquakes and the Bermuda Triangle belong to the literature that followed Doyle, not to the record⁠[2].

Little can. The people are gone, the yawl is gone, and the ship was wrecked on a reef where her timbers have not been found⁠[2]. Two things would help. The first is a complete modern edition of the Gibraltar proceedings, the survey reports and Solly-Flood's notes, which exist in the Gibraltar archives and the British and American consular files but have been read in full by few since Fay⁠[1]. The second is the chronometer question: if the ship's chronometer error can be bounded from the earlier positions in the log, MacGregor's 120-mile displacement becomes a measurement rather than an argument⁠[3]. A record of a boat or wreckage reaching the Azores or Iberia in December 1872, in Portuguese archives, would close the account of the yawl; none has been found.