The Mary Celeste

by Stan Mason

  “Like hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of other people, I became intrigued by the mystery. I had known of it from childhood. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous, but fictional solution, reprinted in a collection of his sea stories, set me thinking. Countless magazine and newspaper articles, each repeating or improving upon each other failed to satisfy me. From these multitudinous sources I present ‘The True Story of the Mary Celeste’,’ untold’, I claim, in the sense that the true facts and the story of the evolution of the legend have never before been collected and told completely in one book intended for popular reading. Two previous authors only have attempted to do so. Mr. J.G. Lockhart, famous for his investigation of sea mysteries, wrote up the story in 1927, but his book ‘A Great Sea Mystery’ is very short and it has been rendered obsolete by Mr. Charles Edey Fay’s ‘The Mary Celeste: The Odyssey of an Abandoned Ship’, whose detailed account was published in the United States only in a limited edition in 1942. Mr. Fay, who drew on the files of the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company of New York (which insured the ship and her freight) and on data collected privately in the United States, printed all the known facts, but he only briefly records the growth and evolution of the great myth, which is perhaps the most interesting part of the story and he does not set out to examine in detail the many ‘survivor stories’ which have appeared from time to time.”

  Mr. Furneaux attacked the subject like a master himself proving to be an excellent researcher and fact-finder. But the final result is an entirely educational work which fails to provide any solution to the mystery.....not even an opinion on the matter. Nevertheless, the facts are true and well-matched, with the work of Mr. Fay acting as the guiding hand.

  The Sun newspaper ran a three-day series on the ‘Mary Celeste Mystery’ in September 1972. This was based on a book written by Macdonald Hastings who reiterated the main facts. Hastings earned his reputation as a biographer, the last editor of Strand Magazine, and as a writer and commentator of many BBC television documentaries. His book contained most of the true facts, including some of the myths. Unfortunately, it was laced with excerpts from Conan Doyle’s work and that of others, rewritten in a different style, and resembling a theatrical play in some chapters. Mr. Hastings’ effort verges on a triangle between the real story, his own conversion in play form, and a tongue-in-cheek attitude to certain matters in the case. For example, of Solly Flood, he declared:

  “I believe that the Queen’s Advocate, who from all the evidence looks like a silly old busybody could have discovered, if he had the wit, so much more.”

  A pretty scathing criticism of the man even if many people, after reading a transcript of the evidence, agree with him. Of the Mary Celeste he suggested:

  “Maybe she enjoyed being a puzzling bitch when they brought her into Gibraltar with none of her company left to tell the tale.”

  With such reflections, no one could accuse Hastings of not being imaginative. Of the book and the story he stated:

  “So much hearsay has stuck, it is important to emphasise that there is not much more than a word or two of truth in the chapter that follows.”

  His perceptiveness on other matters, however, were very acute. One of the many points he cleverly observed concerned Deveau’s problem of manning and sailing the Mary Celeste.

  “Deveau had made his judgement, after a mere half-an-hour aboard, that he could get Mary Celeste to port. He would have been less than human if, with only two hands, he was confident that he could pump out, and put her to rights. Anyhow, seamen are gregarious men. The thought of occupying the abandoned ship must, at the least, have been alarming. Only the salvage money which could come out of it, as the row-boat bucked and rolled on the Atlantic swell, can have driven him on. He trusted Captain Morehouse, with his skeleton crew, could shadow him Tough seaman though he was, he must have been frightened. If he wasn’t, he would have lacked the will to bring the Mary Celeste into harbour.”

  His aversion to Solly Flood ran right through to the end:

  “The mystery of the Mary Celeste, thanks largely to Solly Flood, remains.”

  What harsher criticism could one aim at the Queen’s Proctor? Additionally, he referred to the ‘octopus’ theory as follows:

  “In October, 1848, the Commander of HMS Daedalus, Captain McQuhae, reported to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that his crew had sighted a monster. It was an enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about four feet constantly above the surface of the sea, and as nearly as we could approximate there was at the very least, sixty feet of the animal. It passed rapidly but as close under our lee quarters that, had it been a man of my acquaintance, I should easily have recognised his features with the naked eye. The diameter of the serpent was about fifteen or sixteen inches behind the head, which was, without doubt, that of a snake and it was never, during the twenty minutes it continued in sight of our glasses, once below the surface. It had no fins, but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of seaweed, washed about its back. It was seen by the quartermaster, the boatswain’s mate, and the man at the wheel in addition to myself.”

  Captain McQuhae’s dispatch agreed very largely with reliable reports from numerous seamen which had been accumulating ever since the eighteenth century. At different times, more than thirty warships had reported huge massive creatures of extraordinary appearance. Whether a serpent of this nature was around the Azores at the time of the Mary Celeste no one can say. However, it is surprising that so few writers failed to enlarge on such history, for there were written accounts of a monster going back many years. Perhaps the authors were too timid in case their reputations became badly damaged if they set out their theories on a premise of that kind.

  Although the written word is popular with the public, and is likely to continue to be so, the advance of modern science has led many people to focus much more on the media which includes radio and television. There were a few programmes on radio in the 1940s and 1950s in which the true mystery of the Mary Celeste was broadcast to the public, especially where Commander Campbell was concerned. These efforts were brief and did little to enhance the story, except to allow listeners to form their own opinions of the mystery. On the twenty-seventh of June, 1960, a short story called ‘A Bit of a Mystery’ by Norman Hall was read on ‘Monday Night at Home’ by Valentine Dyall.....an actor with a very deep haunting voice.....on the Home Service. A year later, on the first of June, a programme entitled ‘Court of Mystery: the Case of the Mary Celeste’ written by C. Churchill and J. Wiles, was presented on BBC television. Five years later, on the ninth of March, 1966, on BBC1, the mystery was shown on ‘Jackanory’, told by Bob Robert, and on the twelfth of December in the same year, it was shown on ‘Blue Peter’.

  A further five years passed before Radio 4 produced ‘Sea Mysteries No. 1: The Mary Celeste’ written by Vincent Brome, on the twenty-sixth of January, 1971. In May, the following year, in a ‘Schools’ programme entitled ‘Springboard’, another version was written by Alan C. Jenkins. Macdonald Hastings, whose book was completed on time for the centenary of the incident involving the derelict, was interviewed in ‘Today’ on Radio 4 on the eighth of September, 1972. Another interview took place with the same author five days later on ‘Late Night Extra’, on Radio 1 and 2. Mr. Hastings returned to Radio 4 the next day in yet a further programme called ‘P.M.’ and encouraged the producer sufficiently to allow him one final effort on Radio 4, on the fifth of December, 1972, when he examined the facts and the fiction, offering a possible solution of the story. This occurred one day after Frank Bough interviewed him on ‘Nationwide’, the BBC1 television programme.

  The Sun newspaper attempted to attract attention to the mystery with its own challenge in 1972, running an advertisement which said: ‘Your theory could win £25’. It followed by printing:

  “In this fascinating series you can read some of the incredible theories about the fate of the Mary Cel
este. On Saturday, the Sun will give you a chance to put forward your own theory. The most Ingenious explanation will win £25.”

  Sadly, the readers of that newspaper failed to rise to the occasion. The response was moderate and very uninspiring.

  In November, 1975, the Reader’s Digest mentioned the Mary Celeste in connection with a geographical zone now popularly known as The Bermuda Triangle - a disaster area for ships and aeroplanes whose disappearance cannot be explained by natural causes. Under the title ‘Vanishing Voyagers - Fact and Fiction’, James Stewart-Gordon commented:

  “Journalists, authors, television producers and psychics have noted the disappearance of many another ship and plane in the south-western quadrant of the North Atlantic. The Mary Celeste was discovered rocking gently on a calm, misty morning in 1872 near the Azores (to whose boundaries the influence of the Triangle is presumed by some to reach). Exactly seventy-four years later, the schooner City Belle was found south of the Bahamas deserted by her crew. That mystery has never been explained either. The largest ship lost in this area was USS Cyclops, a 19,000-ton Navy collier bound from Rio de Janeiro to Norfolk, Virginia, with a cargo of manganese ore. She disappeared in March, 1918, with a 293-man crew and an ever-silent ship’s radio. Equally puzzling, the cabin cruiser Witchcraft, which set out from Miami on the night of the twenty-second of December, 1967, disappeared after contacting the Miami Coastguard and complaining of damaged propeller.”

  He went on to say there were others and many vanishing aircraft as well. But, in particular, he repeated the words of Captain Adrian Lonsdale, of the U.S. Coastguard, to sum up the situation most accurately:

  “Lloyd’s Register of Shipping records more than three hundred ships in a year totally lost throughout the world. Four or five of these are stricken so suddenly that they have no time to send out an SOS. If a ship is lost in a violent storm in what is known as the Triangle, to us it’s a disaster. To someone who doesn’t know the facts, it’s uncanny. I suppose anything you can’t understand yourself is bound to be supernatural.”

  From then onwards, silence reigned over the media. Once again the Mary Celeste slipped from the public gaze. Perhaps this time it would be forever, except in passing comment to a particular mystery of the sea which no one seemed able to resolve. Indeed, it was likely to fade in the effluxion of time and through frustration because no one could establish what really happened......no one, with hand on heart, could say they were able to solve the mystery.

  Captain and Crew

  Although doubt has been cast on the members comprising the crew, information on their identity and their integrity is identified below is a matter of record. The Articles of Agreement signed on the fourth of November, 1872, indicated that the full crew of the Mary Celeste was as follows:

  MASTER

  Benjamin Spooner Briggs.

  CREW:

  Albert G. Richardson, aged 28, born Maine.Wages $50 a month - First Mate.

  Andrew Gilling, aged 25, born New York. Wages $35 a month - Second Mate.

  Edward William Head, aged 23, born New York. Wages $40 a month - Cook and Steward.

  Volkert Lorenzen, aged 29, born Germany, Wages $30 a month.

  Bob Lorenzen, aged 25, born Germany. Wages $30 a month.

  Arian Martens, aged 35, born Germany. Wages $30 a month.

  Gottlieb Goodschall, aged 23, born Germany. Wages $30 a month.

  In addition, Mrs. Sarah Briggs and her two-year old daughter accompanied the Captain. As a matter of record, both Mates (Richardson and Gilling), the Cook/Steward, and the four seamen, drew a month’s wages in advance.

  Benjamin Spooner Briggs was born at Wareham, Massachusetts, on the twenty-fourth of April, 1835. He was the second of five sons born to Captain Nathan Briggs and his wife, Sophia Cobb, who was a minister’s daughter. All but one of the sons went to sea, and all four became master mariners at an early age. His father, although kind and affectionate to his family, was a strict disciplinarian aboard ship. He was pleased to allow his sons to serve on his ships but he adopted high standards of conduct regarded as paramount, necessarily to be employed by the Master. Firstly, his role as Captain always had to remain supreme. Secondly, from his point of view, personal relationships did not exist at all on board. Thirdly, he was determined to make certain that his sons did the regular work of sailors, including handling the wheel, standing watch, helping to reef and furl sails and, additionally, to elect to be the first aloft in an emergency. He also insisted that his sons, when sailing with him, should study regularly and recite passages on navigation, geography, history and literature. The backcloth against which the family grew up was quite clear. It was based on strict discipline and Christian doctrines.

  When he was four years old, Benjamin and his mother went to live with her father, the Reverend Oliver Cobb, while Captain Nathan Briggs was at sea. The duration of the visit lasted five whole years. The old sea-farer set up home on his return in 1844 for the family at Rose Cottage in Marion, Massachusetts. Discipline was still strictly maintained, with careful training in manners and deportment. His mother exerted a powerful influence over Benjamin and imbued him with the religious fervour which became so important to him. His association with his mother’s family was very close and he developed a great passion for his cousin, Sarah Elizabeth Cobb. On the ninth of September, 1862, Benjamin, at the age of twenty-seven, married Sarah who was aged twenty, at Marion, Massachusetts. The ceremony was performed by the bride’s father, the Reverend Leander Cobb, Pastor of the Congregational Church of Marion. The happy couple spent their honeymoon on a voyage to the Mediterranean and they made several other voyages together. Their son, Arthur, was born on the twentieth of September, 1865, and their daughter, Sophia Matilda, on the thirty-first of October, 1870.

  The reputation of Captain Briggs as a ship’s Master was well established before he purchased a share in the Mary Celeste. He had previously commanded a schooner, ‘Forest King’, a barque listed as ‘Arthur’, and a brig named ‘Sea Foam’. He was not only well-known in Marion, Massachusetts, but also in Gibraltar which he visited often. His complexion was ruddy in appearance and he sported a beard. He was regarded as a typical sailing master of the old school, a strict disciplinarian, like his father, a teetotaller, and a man who made it a daily practice to read a chapter of the Bible. Consul Sprague, at Gibraltar, wrote to the U.S. Department of State in Washington on the twentieth of January, 1873, to suggest that Captain Briggs was well-known and bore the highest character for seamanship and correctness. On the third of April, 1873, he wrote to Mr. N.W. Bingham, the Treasury Department agent at Boston:

  “The missing Master, Briggs, I had known for many years and he always bore a good character as a Christian, and an intelligent and active shipmaster.”

  R. James C. Briggs, Benjamin’s brother, he expressed his sympathy, adding:

  “Your brother was well-known to me and therefore I was able to appreciate his merits.”

  To most people, Captain Briggs was a man who spoke in a quiet tone of voice with an inclination to reticence. Born of sturdy New England stock, and reared in an atmosphere of discipline and refinement, he could be stern when the occasion required it, and was not a man on whom one could impose upon or intimidate. He was an experienced Captain, familiar with the Bible, which he read regularly. On occasion he gave testimony at prayer meetings and joined a Masonic Lodge on one of his trips to Gibraltar.

  Sarah Briggs was described as a practical New England housewife and a good mother and wife. She attended church regularly, was fond of music, and often praised for the quality of her singing.....especially by her father. Most people would have considered her as rather plain-looking and extremely serious but she had many good qualities which ranged far and above her dull appearance. For example, most of her time involved rearing the children, educating Arthur in reading, writing and arithmetic, making clothes for her son and her
daughter, as well as for herself, on a sewing-machine, and playing the harmonium, or melodeon.

  Albert George Richardson, the First Mate, was the son of Theodore W. Richardson, of Stockton Springs, Maine, and in the crew list signed on the fourth of November, 1872. He entered his age as twenty-eight. He was five feet eight inches tall, had a light complexion and brown hair. He was well-connected with the firm of J.W. Winchester & Co., being the son of Captain Winchester’s wife’s niece. To all those people who knew him, he was an extremely likeable person, diligent in his tasks, and would make a fine Captain in due course. He had not been a merchant mariner for long, however, having served as a private in the Maine Coastguard in the Civil War between the States (1861-1865), receiving an honourable discharge at its termination. This period of service was sufficient ultimately for a pension to be provided for his widow. Captain Winchester regarded him very highly. Although Albert Richardson had been in his service for only two years, he had been accepted into the family and was greatly respected. The Captain expressed his views on this matter in an interview which was published by the New York Sunday World on the twenty-fourth of January, 1886, describing him as a man of excellent character. Apart from that, Richardson had impressed Captain Briggs during a previous voyage in which they sailed together to such an extent that the latter had no doubts as to the selection of a First Mate for the Mary Celeste. Indeed, there are witnesses, such as Dr. Cobb, the cousin of Captain Briggs, who overheard the Captain suggest to his wife that they were extremely fortunate in having Richardson to go with them as First Mate on the Mary Celeste. In effect, there can be little doubt of the integrity of Albert Richardson. Admired by all, a diligent husband and mariner, renowned for his character, he was a man respected in the family of the owners of the vessel. Having previously sailed with Captain Briggs, and personally selected by him, he was all one could expect in a First Mate. Some time after the Mary Celeste was discovered derelict, Captain Winchester and Joseph Noyes signed an affidavit jointly stating that: