Neither Living nor Dead: True Hypotheses about How Mary Celeste Became a Ghost Ship

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

World history knows many cases of mysterious disappearances of people for which no explanation has been found. But, perhaps, the first place among these mysteries is occupied by the history of the ship "Maria Celeste", more precisely, of its crew and passengers. These ten people disappeared without a trace from the sailing ship in 1872, and what happened to them is still unknown. All sorts of attempts to solve this riddle turned out to be unsuccessful: none of the versions of what happened could explain all the oddities that the researchers faced.

The ship is intact, there are no people

Abandoned by people, "Mary Celeste" was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean on December 4, 1872. The sailors of another ship, called Dei Grazia, saw this sailboat drifting on the waves without any control - it was constantly tossed from side to side. Captain of Dei Grazia, David Reed Morehouse, gave the command to get close to the strangely behaving ship and soon, seeing its name, became especially worried. He was personally acquainted with the captain of the "Mary Celeste" Benjamin Spooner Briggs and knew that his wife Sarah Elizabeth Cobb Briggs and two-year-old daughter Sophia Matilda went on this voyage with him.

When the sailors from the "Dei Grazia" boarded the "Maria Celeste", it turned out that there was not a single living soul there. The deck, the cabins, the hold - everything was empty and there was almost no mess, only a broken compass lay on the floor in the wheelhouse, and children's toys were scattered in the cabin of Sarah Elizabeth and her daughter. In the galley, on the stove, was freshly baked, still fresh and soft bread, in the cabin of the captain's wife, a sewing machine with unfinished sewing was found, and the last entry in the logbook, made the day before the ship was found abandoned, read: “On Maria Celeste everything is fine".

The hold of the sailboat was partially filled with water - it rose by about a meter due to the fact that all the hatches were open there - but the cargo, barrels with ethyl alcohol, was safe and sound. The crew members' pipes were found in the cockpit - none of the smokers, wherever they fled from the ship, took them with them. And in the same way, the captain's wife left a jewelry box in her cabin. But all the documents, except for the logbook, as well as the lifeboat disappeared somewhere.

It seemed that all the people on board suddenly abandoned their affairs and in great haste got into the boat, after which they sailed away on it in an unknown direction.

The ship was left in complete calm

The "Maria Celeste" was brought to Gibraltar by the navigator and several sailors of the "Dei Grazia". In the port, the abandoned ship was carefully examined by investigators, but they could not find any clues indicating the reason for the flight of the crew and the captain's wife with the child. They drew attention to the fact that after the disappearance of people, "Maria Celeste" did not fall into either a storm or even a slight roll. Otherwise, in the cabins and other rooms there would have been much more things that had fallen to the floor - otherwise, except for scattered toys and a broken compass, everything was in place. Including an open oiler with machine oil, designed to lubricate the sewing machine and standing next to it - it should have toppled over at the slightest jolt.

The fact that during the voyage of this ship there were no storms on its way was also confirmed by meteorologists. So the version that people during a strong storm decided that the sailboat was sinking and sailed away in the boat, the investigators had to immediately discard. But what then made them leave the ship? Only they themselves could answer this question, but there was no way to ask them what happened. The boat of "Mary Celeste" was never found, neither with people, nor empty …

From pirates and aliens to an insurance scam

Among the hypotheses explaining this mystery were an attack on a sailboat by a giant squid or octopus, which dragged people into the depths of the ocean, and a fight with pirates, and the madness of one of the crew members, who killed and threw everyone else overboard, after which he drowned. myself. In the twentieth century, these versions were supplemented by several fantastic ones, such as the abduction of the crew and passengers by aliens or creatures from a parallel world that "infiltrated" into our reality in the area of the notorious Bermuda Triangle. But all these assumptions were shattered about the absence of any traces of the struggle on the "Mary Celeste".

Theories were also put forward about the fraud of the captains of the "Maria Celeste" and "Dei Grazia", who agreed in advance to stage the discovery of the abandoned ship in order to get insurance later. This scenario looks quite reliable, but still raises doubts. If all the people who sailed on the "Maria Celeste" survived and hid on the "Dei Grazia", and then began a new life under false names, then did not one of them tell about it and did not catch the eye of someone from their acquaintances?

Is the alcohol "to blame"?

The most plausible version at the moment is considered to be expressed by one of the relatives of the wife of the captain "Mary Celeste" by the name of Cobb. He suggested that the alcohol vapor in the hold of the sailboat heated up and began to explode, which caused all the hatches to fly out. The captain, frightened by a stronger explosion, ordered everyone to get into the boat and sail to a safe distance from the ship. He expected to wait for the alcohol vapors to escape through the hatches and return, but the tackle with which the boat was tied to the ship broke off. The wind carried the sailboat further, and the heavily laden boat remained in place. Most likely, later, she was turned over by a storm that happened after the "Mary Celeste" was discovered.

But it is now impossible to prove that everything was exactly like that, and not in some other way …

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