We Care!

“Nobody answered when they called out and
as the two men searched the ship, it became
evident that something peculiar had happened.”
When the sailors viewed the
captain's quarters, they could
see evidence that the captain,
whoever he was, had brought
his family with him. There
was a sewing machine and a
small keyboard instrument,
and a child's toys and clothes
scattered about.
A more disturbing discovery
came when Deveau and Wright
found the ship's logbook. The
last entry was on November 24
and on the log slate, the final
notation indicated that Mary
Celeste had passed within
sight of Santa Maria in the
Azores on November 25. The
notation read “At 8 Easter point
bore S.S.W 6 miles distant.”
If that was the last indication
of when the crew was aboard
and working, it meant that the
Mary Celeste had been adrift
in the Atlantic for 10 days, at
the mercy of the wind and the
waves. Most disturbing of all,
the sailors' rough weather gear
and pipes were still present,
but the ship's papers, sextant
and marine chronometer were
nowhere to be found.
When the three sailors
returned to Dei Gratia and
informed Captain Morehouse
of the name of the ship
and what they had found,
his heart must have sunk.
For not only did Captain
Morehouse know the Mary
Celeste, but her captain,
Benjamin Spooner Briggs, was
a friend. Morehouse knew
that if Briggs was not onboard,
then something must have
happened to force him to take
his family and his crew and
abandon his cargo and his
ship.
Since the obvious solution was
to take the abandoned ship
to the nearest port in hopes
of claiming salvage rights,
Morehouse ordered Deveau
and two other men to go back
and crew the Mary Celeste so
that both ships would sail the
600 miles to Gibraltar.
Both Dei Gratia, which was
built in a Bear River shipyard,
and Mary Celeste were
products of Nova Scotia's
golden age of sail, an era when
shipyards thrived in coastal
communities and when
hundreds, even thousands of
men made a living as sailors or
fishermen, or, if they preferred
to stay ashore, as skilled
labourers building the ships.
Mary Celeste was built in
1861 in a small shipyard
located in Spencer's Island,
in Cumberland County on
the Bay of Fundy. She was
originally named the Amazon
and her first voyage was to be
an Atlantic crossing, carrying
a cargo of lumber to England.
However, Amazon got off to a
bad start. Shortly after the ship
departed, the captain, Robert
McClellan, was suddenly
taken ill with pneumonia
and Amazon had to return to
Spencers Island. McClellan was
taken ashore and died within
a few days. The ship's owners
quickly found a new captain
and Amazon successfully
sailed to England. But shortly
after delivering the lumber,
Amazon collided with another
vessel in the strait of Dover.
Amazon required repairs for
the damage, but the other ship
sank. It was the start of a long
run of bad luck that would
include Amazon running
ashore on a rocky coast in
Cape Breton.
Over the next 10 years. Amazon
was sold and resold and at
some point around 1868, she
was renamed the Mary Celeste.
The next year, J. H. Winchester
and Co. Ship Owners bought
the Mary Celeste, which after
some years of hard use, had
been restored. In the fall of
1872, a German company
called Meissner, Ackerman
and Company had chartered
the ship to sail to Genoa, Italy
with a cargo of 1701 barrels of
denatured alcohol that would
be used to fortify wine.
The captain for the voyage was
to be Benjamin Spooner Briggs.
Captain Briggs came from well
known seafaring family and his
brother Oliver was also a sea
captain. At age 37, Benjamin
Briggs had already spent
many years at sea and had a
reputation as competent and
reliable mariner. Briggs and
his wife Sarah had a sevenyear-old
son named Arthur
and a two-year-old daughter
named Sophie. For the trip
to Genoa, Sarah and Sophie
accompanied Briggs while
Arthur remained at home in
Massachusetts with Captain
Briggs's mother.
On November 7, Mary Celeste
departed New York with a crew
of seven including first mate
Albert Richardson, second
mate Andrew Gilling, steward
and cook Edward Head, and
four seamen named Gottlieb
Goodschaad, Boz Lorenzen,
Volkert Lorenzen, and Arien
Martens. Other than the
notations found on the ship's
slate, there is no record of how
the ship and her occupants
fared during the voyage.
Dei Gratia arrived in Gibraltar
on December 11, followed by
the Mary Celeste on Friday,
December 13. The salvage
hearing began in the Vice
Admiralty Court on December
18, with Sir James Cochrane
as the presiding judge and
Frederick Solly Flood as the
Queen's Advocate and Proctor.
The hearing was to determine
what happened to the Mary
Celeste, and whether the Dei
Gratia's captain and crew
could claim the salvage award
as compensation for having
brought the ship safely into
port.
Unfortunately, Flood was
deeply suspicious of the crew
of Dei Gratia. He questioned
Deveau and the other sailors
closely, making it clear that
he did not believe that they
had found the Mary Celeste
empty and adrift. The line of
his questioning is recounted by
author Brian Hicks in his book
Ghost Ship: The Mysterious
True Story of the Mary
Celeste and her Missing Crew
(Ballantine Books, 2004).
Flood was convinced that
either the Mary Celeste's crew
had mutinied and killed Briggs
and his family, or the Dei
Gratia sailors had somehow
done away with everyone
onboard the Mary Celeste.
The salvage investigation
included a diver's investigation
of the hull, which was
unremarkable, but when a ship
surveyor found a sword with
what appeared to be reddish
stains in the captain's quarters,
Flood found more reason to
believe that the Mary Celeste
had been the scene of foul play.
Though later inspection proved
the stains were not blood, that
was of little consequence to
Flood. He would stubbornly
cling to his belief that the
Dei Gratia and her crew were
somehow complicit in the
disappearance of the Briggs
family and the sailors from the
Mary Celeste.