Perhaps the worst and most famous tragedy at sea was the Titanic, the unsinkable ship, but before the Titanic sank sending 1,500 people to their deaths, there was the Mary Celeste.

The Mary Celeste was captained by a man named Benjamin Briggs. He, his wife, and their 2-year-old daughter along with seven others had been aboard the boat for about a month in 1872, when the boat was found abandoned by a British ship called the Dei Gratia. The Dei Gratia had left harbour only eight days after the Mary Celeste, and thus the crew knew that the Mary Celeste should have already been safely in its harbour in Genoa Italy, where they were meant to be dropping off 1,700 barrels of alcohol.

Fearing the worst, the Dei Gratia sailed over to offer assistance, only to find the boat devoid of life. Upon further exploration, it was revealed that the belongings of the crew werw still aboard the boat, nine of the barrels of alcohol were empty, there were about 3 feet of water in the hull, one of the two pumps had been disassembled and a lifeboat was missing. The last log entry was entered on November 25th, and the Mary Celeste had been found 10 days later, on December 5th. This was more than enough time for the boat to have floated miles away from wherever the crew of the Mary Celeste had ended up, as proven by the captain’s log, which logged the last location of the boat as 500 miles away from where the Dei Gratia had found it.

The crew of the Dei Gratia split up into two groups and sailed both ships to land, aiming to get the insurance money for finding the ship. Foul play was suspected, and thus the crew of the Dei Gratia was investigated for several months afterward, but no evidence was found, and so they were paid ⅙ of the amount promised.

The crew was never found. The captain and his wife left behind a 7-year-old son, whom they had left at home so he could continue with his schooling uninterrupted. The case was then promptly abandoned, until 1884 when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series, released a short story called “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement”, which was a fictional first-person account of someone aboard the Mary Celeste. The story blamed an ex-slave seeking revenge. After the story was released, interest in the Mary Celeste picked up and the case was looked into again.

The man who had been in charge of the investigation, Attorney General Solly-Flood started publishing summaries and accounts of everything he had discovered in his appraisal of the case. The captain’s log book was lost in 1885, making Solly-Flood’s account of things one of the most reliable pieces of evidence to date.

The crew of the Mary Celeste was never found, however, although there are several different theories. The most outlandish theory is that of a sea monster, which ignoring the unlikelihood of such a thing, would not explain why the crew abandoned ship.

Another theory suggested pirates, but this theory is also unlikely. This was at the tail-end of the pirate era, and this combined with the fact that the ship was still in good shape and showed no signs of a struggle indicates that pirates were likely not the reason that the crew of the Mary Celeste fled.

One of the more popular theories is that alcohol vapors expanded in the heat and blew off the main hatch of the ship. The miniature explosion and the fumes of the alcohol may have led the crew to believe that an explosion was imminent, forcing the captain to order them to abandon ship. There’s a problem with this theory, however. The main hatch was still secured to the floor, and the Dei Gratia crew members did not report smelling fumes when they boarded the ship. The main reason this theory prevails is likely because of the fact that nine barrels of alcohol were empty. However, the nine barrels in question were made of a different material than all the rest, red oak vs. white oak, and red oak is more likely to leak than white oak.

The theory that Doyle presented of a ex-slave or a vengeful crew member is believed to be based off of two German brothers who had been aboard the Mary Celeste, Volkert and Boye Lorenzon. People believe this of them because of the fact that none of their belongings had been aboard the Mary Celeste when it was found. When looking at it in a vacuum, this does look suspicious, but after a bit of digging, a Lorenzon descendant claimed that the brothers had been in a shipwreck prior to the Mary Celeste, and thus had no belongings to speak of. There was also no motive for the men to kill the crew or do anything to sabotage the trip.

With all these theories suggested but never fully proven or disproven, its hard to say why an experienced and respectable captain would order his crew and family to abandon ship. Perhaps the most complete and credible explanation was presented by a documentarian employed by the Smithsonian, named Anne MacGregor.

MacGregor investigated to see if the ship had truly been where the log claimed it was–near Santa Maria–or if it hadn’t truly travelled the 400-500 miles to get to Azore by itself in 10 days. She came to the conclusion that it was possible for the ship to have floated so far away from the destination in the logs, meaning that the information was likely correct. Using the recorded documents on where the ship was on certain days via the Solly-Flood accounts, and comparing those positions to the sea data of that time period, MacGregor claims that the ship was about 120 miles off where Captain Briggs believed it be, meaning that he should have sighted land three days earlier than he did. MacGregor believes this was due to a faulty chronometer, which is a device used at sea that is meant to be accurate enough to be able to base longitude based on the time and fixed locations.

This alone may not have been alarming enough to abandon ship, but the night before the last log entry, the ship had experienced bad weather. MacGregor believes that this may have contributed. She claims that the storm caused the water to fill the hull, and due to the load of coal that the Mary Celeste had carried before shipping the alcohol, the pump may have been clogged up–which would explain why it was disassembled–and disallowed the captain to tell exactly how much water was in the ship, with too many barrels to accurately eye the amount.

This all made the captain abandon ship, according to MacGregor. It’s important to remember, that this is all speculation, and it’s hard to believe that an experienced captain would leave for a long journey with his family without checking on his gear before starting the trip. So what really happened on the Mary Celeste? We’ll probably never know for certain.

More Information
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/abandoned-ship-the-mary-celeste-174488104/
https://www.history.com/news/what-happened-to-the-mary-celeste
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mary-Celeste