We Care!

Finally, in March 1873 the
court granted Captain
Morehouse and crew a
salvage award of £1,700, or
approximately $8000. The
cargo had been insured for
$46,000, so the small size
of the prize suggested that
the court believed that Dei
Gratia was somehow to blame
for Mary Celeste's unhappy
fate. Her story might have
been forgotten but for an
anonymous story published in
the British magazine Cornhill
in January
1884. Titled
J. Habakuk
Jephson's
Statement,
the story was
purported to be
a true confession
of a man who
had sailed in a
ship named the
Marie Celeste.
To anyone who
knew of the Mary
Celeste, it was
evident that the
story was a heavily
fictionalized fictionalized version
of the incident in
1872. Many of the
details were wrong,
and there was a
complicated and lurid
plot involving murder,
suicide and voodoo
but the the story's author,
Arthur Conan Doyle, would
later become famous as the
creator of Sherlock Holmes.
The magazine story
reawakened the public interest
in the Mary Celeste, as the
hearing had never offered a
satisfactory explanation as
to what had happened to her
crew and passengers. One
suggestion was that the crew
had mutinied. But if that were
the case, why would they
abandon a ship carrying a
valuable cargo and six months'
worth of food and supplies?
Another theory was that the
Mary Celeste was overtaken by
pirates who killed the Briggs
family and the crew. But again,
pirates, who usually were
motivated by greed, would
have taken Mary Celeste into
port to sell the cargo for profit.
Another theory suggested
insurance fraud on the part of
the captain, but there was no
obvious reason why Captain
Briggs, whose reputation for
integrity had had been built during
nearly
20 years
at sea, would put his family family
and his sailors at risk in midocean
when he already had the
promise of compensation for
taking his cargo to Genoa.
The most likely solution is
that everyone onboard had
to abandon the Mary Celeste
unexpectedly, possibly
because of bad weather, or
from fear that they were in
imminent danger due to the
ship's cargo, or a combination
of the two. Alcohol was
regarded as a dangerous cargo
because of its flammability
and Captain Briggs, who had
never transported alcohol
before, may have erred on the
side of caution. When Mary
Celeste's was finally unloaded
in Genoa, nine of the 1701
barrels were empty, possibly
because their contents had
evaporated or spilled. If there
was a suspicion that alcohol
fumes were leaking through
the Mary Celeste, Captain
Briggs might well have ordered
everyone into a lifeboat as
an emergency
emergency
measure. Such a hasty
departure would explain
why the sailors had not take
their rough weather gear, if
they thought they might be
returning to the ship as soon as
the danger had passed.
It is also possible that Captain
Briggs, believing that his ship
was no longer fit to sail, took
the ship's papers and loaded
everyone into the lifeboat in
hopes that another passing
ship would rescue them.
Whatever the reason, the 10
people onboard the Mary
Celeste vanished. Whether they
drowned or died while adrift
in their lifeboat will never be
known.
As for the main characters
in the Mary Celeste drama,
both Captain Morehouse and
Oliver Deveau continued their
seagoing careers. Morehouse
eventually moved to the
United States and Deveau
remained at sea into his early
70s, finally dying in 1912. Upon
his death, an item in the Digby
Courier described him
as “an old time sailor, a
thorough officer and a
man man capable of sailing
a ship to any part of the
world.”
Despite Despite her notoriety,
Mary Celeste returned
to service at sea,
changing owners
several more times
as she transported
a variety of cargoes
to ports around the
world. In January
1885, Mary Celeste
was sailing into the
Gulf of Gonave in
Haiti, bound for
Port au Prince
when the ship
was wrecked on
a notorious reef
called Rochelais
Reef. In April of that
year, the ship's commander,
Captain Gilman Parker, was
among those indicted for
conspiracy, as an investigation
found that the cargo was a
load of junk and the ship was
deliberately wrecked so Parker
could collect the insurance.
After a trial, Captain Parker was
found guilty on one count of
fraud and was scheduled for
trial on more charges, which
were dropped following his
death a few months later.
The wreckage of the Mary
Celeste remained on Rochelais
Reef for some time, until
the battered hulk finally
disappeared under the water.
“Whatever the reason, the 10 people
onboard the Mary Celeste vanished.”