On the morning of December 1872, two officers came to the commandant of the port of Gibraltar - David Morehouse, captain of the ship Dei Grazia, and his assistant, Oliver Deveaux. Morehouse and Deveaux said that they found a drifting brigantine "Maria Celeste" in the Atlantic Ocean, on which there was not a single person - neither alive nor dead. The entire crew and passengers disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
First troubles
"Maria Celeste" was built in 1861 in Canada and was first named "Amazon".
The first flight on the Amazon ended in death and wreck. The team was to pick up the wood at Five Islands and deliver it to London. But immediately after loading, Captain Robert McLellan fell ill and died. The Amazon took the timber to London with a new captain, John Parker, and collided with fishing gear in Maine, after which she sank another ship in the English Channel.
In 1867, the Amazon was caught in a storm and was washed ashore on Cape Breton Island. The damage was so severe that the owners decided to sell the ship. Amazon changed owners frequently until it got to Richard Haynes.
Haynes bought it for $ 1,750, invested another $ 8,825 in repairs and gave the ship a new name - "Mary Celeste" ("Mary of Heaven"). But a year later he gave it up for debts, and the ship got to James Winchester through creditors. By 1872, another 10 thousand dollars had been invested in the brigantine, and she was ready to embark on a voyage that would forever write her name in history.
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And in response - silence
1701 barrels of alcohol were loaded onto the ship, and on November 5, "Maria Celeste" set off for Italy. On board were Captain Benjamin Briggs, a crew of seven and passengers - Briggs' wife and little daughter. Radio communication did not yet exist at that time, so, having set sail, "Maria Celeste" naturally lost all connection with the land. This was the last time anyone saw the Briggs and the crew.
Simultaneously with the "Maria Celesta", another ship sailed to Genoa - the brig "Dei Grazia", which was carrying oil products to Italy. On December 5, the helmsman reported to Captain David Morehouse that he saw a strange ship: it looks like it is not being operated by anyone, and the sails are a complete mess. The captain quickly recognized the Maria Celeste in the ship he met: Benjamin Briggs and David Morehouse were longtime friends - they studied together, received captain's patents together, and dined together before sailing to Genoa.
Dei Grazia started to give signals, but to no avail. There was no one on board the Maria Celeste. Then Captain Morehouse sent an assistant and two sailors to the ship to check what was going on. Having sailed to the brigantine in a boat, the captain's mate Oliver Deveaux began to shout - silence. Then he and the sailors climbed aboard along the hanging cables to look around.
An eerie silence reigned on the Mary Celeste. The steering wheel turned itself. It seemed that the ship was not damaged, but … everything was not as it should be. Someone removed the hatch covers, and removed the bow hatch doors from their hinges and threw them on the deck. A broken compass lay near the steering wheel. The navigation toolbox had been pushed out of place with a crowbar, and ax notches were visible on the starboard handrails. The windows of the aft superstructure with the captain's cabin were covered with tarps and planked. All navigational books, except the ship's log, were gone. The chronometer and sextant were also missing. One of the alcohol barrels was completely empty.
At the same time, the cabins were in complete order. The captain's family's money and valuables were all in place. On the table they found a slate board with the note: November 25th. The Maria Celeste was supposed to be six miles from the Azores and 500 miles from where she was found. Also, there were no lifeboats on the ship - one remained under repair at departure, and the other, apparently, was launched. But most importantly, Devo and the sailors never found a single person on the ship.
Gibraltar investigation
Deveaux returned to Captain Morehouse and reported the findings. The captain gave the order to patch up the ship and take it to Gibraltar: according to the law of the sea, he was entitled to a reward for saving the ship.
Following Dei Grazia and Maria Celesta, representatives of the British Admiralty Court arrived in Gibraltar to conduct an official investigation. For three months, "Mary Celeste" was carefully studied: they brought in military and civilian sailors, engineers, officials from the Admiralty, divers, lawyers and detectives of Scotland Yard.
The US government has asked residents of the East Coast and the Caribbean to help locate the passengers and the Maria Celeste crew.
A commission of inquiry has found many strange and inexplicable details. So, in the logbook there were no records of bad weather conditions or conflicts on board. Further - "Maria Celeste" was heading east, but upon meeting with "Dei Grazia" the ship went west. The location notes on the slate were not made by Captain Briggs or his assistant - the handwriting did not match. The sailors were Germans and did not know English, so either the captain's wife or the cook wrote on the board. The windows of the aft superstructure were covered with boards and tarpaulins, apparently to protect from water, but the skylights on the ceiling were deliberately open, and water got there. All documents disappeared from the ship, but not the ship's log, which Captain Briggs should have taken with him in the first place if the crew and passengers left the ship. The Admiralty Commission clung to different versions, but there were inconsistencies in all.
Sea curse?
At first they suspected the owner of "Mary Celeste" - James Winchester. He behaved strangely: he came from New York to Gibraltar, but did not look for Briggs, the captain's wife - his daughter - and granddaughter, but, on the contrary, asked the commission to close the investigation and return "Maria Celeste" and barrels of alcohol to him. Having dealt with the insurance company, he received a large compensation for the disrupted delivery - 12 thousand dollars. But Winchester was able to prove that he was not guilty. And the scam version did not explain what happened to the Briggs family and team.
In the 19th century, ships were often plundered by pirates. But barrels of alcohol, money and jewelry, food and personal belongings of the team - everything was in place. The commission also rejected the revolt version. It seemed believable at first because of the notches on the railings and the bloody blade from the captain's cabin. But it turned out that Briggs was collecting ancient weapons and was taking a rusted saber to Italy to be appreciated there. And if the captain and his family were killed by the sailors, then they would not have left money, jewelry and cargo. In addition, no one from the team was seen after the swim.
Finally, the crew and passengers could leave the Maria Celeste in a lifeboat. But there was not even a hint of weather problems or unrest on the ship in the logbook. The commission was also embarrassed by the fact that small objects - an oil can or threads - certainly would have fallen with any swing, but they lay neatly on the table. And the general condition of the ship indicated that it did not fall into a storm. The fugitives did not take food and water with them, the captain's family - jewelry and money, and the sailors even left smoking pipes. In addition, Captain Briggs was a seasoned sailor and would not have abandoned the Mary Celeste to board the small and precarious lifeboat.
The boat situation is also mysterious. When the Maria Celeste was found, the handrails and the starboard dinghy were removed, that is, someone either lowered the starboard dinghy or wanted everyone to think so. But the wind in the North Atlantic closer to December is such that the boat cannot be lowered from the starboard side - it will immediately crash against the side of the ship.
Three months later, the commission closed the case of "Maria Celeste" - until new facts emerged. The ship stayed near the dock for a year - everyone considered it dangerous - and in 1874 James Winchester sold it to a New York company. Five years later, another captain, Edgar Tuzill, fell ill and died on board the "Mary Celeste". The last captain of the Mary Celeste was Gilman Parker - he filled the ship with cheap cargo, insured it for $ 30,000 and sent it to the reefs. The crew escaped, but the Maria Celeste sank. When the scam was revealed, Parker confessed and refused compensation in order not to go to jail, and soon shot himself. He became the last captain whose death was associated with the ship.
The fragments of the "Mary Celeste" were never found.
Arseny BATUEV