Unsolved Mysteries of the Sea

by Lionel

  Time travel features in another theory. First-class, avant-garde physicists are still undecided about the true nature of time even in our highly technological twenty-first century. It may well be that time can slip, warp, bend, distort, and behave in other odd and unexpected ways. Because we human beings are vividly aware of time, it might, perhaps, be argued that metaphysical time, subjective time-consciousness, and intelligent self-awareness are all inextricably integrated. If some sort of weird time irregularity occurred in the vicinity of the Mary Celeste during that fateful November of 1872, it is feasible to conjecture that it would have affected her passengers and crew rather than the vessel herself. Were the Briggs family and their companions snatched away into another time, or even another probability track — one of the intriguing Worlds of If?

  Another whimsical theory even concerned mermaids. Going back to classical concepts of the irresistible songs of the malevolent Sirens luring mariners to their deaths, it was suggested that similar marine temptresses lured Briggs and the sailors overboard, while Sarah and Sophia — impervious to those gender-directed songs — were abandoned to their fate. Sarah, realizing that she could not hope to handle the brigantine alone, decided that she and her tiny daughter would have more chance in the yawl, which one strong woman could just about handle. Accordingly, she cut away the rails and committed herself and her precious child to the Atlantic. If slave traders found them in their tiny lifeboat, we are back to the scenario of a Barbary Coast bordello.

  Yet another theory — along the lines of the unpleasant thoughts that lurked in the suspicious mind of Freddy Flood — was that there had been some sort of intrigue and collusion between Briggs and Morehouse. According to this theory, Morehouse took the Mary Celeste personnel to a remote part of the Azores and left them there, then went on to collect the salvage money, which would be shared later among the conspirators. The insuperable objection to this hypothesis is that Briggs was a deeply moral, ethical, and sincerely religious man who could no more participate in a confidence trick than he could rob a blind beggar.

  Even his profound and sincere religion was turned against him in the next theory. His deeply held New England Puritanism was said to have been a form of dangerous religious mania, and, deciding that his crew were all sinners deserving death, he had seen himself as the divine instrument of slaughter and butchered them all. He had also slaughtered his wife and child in a sort of ritual sacrifice before throwing himself over the side. That strikes us as far less likely than even the Sirens theory!

  Turning from wild conjecture to common sense and rationality, what was the most likely explanation for this weird unsolved mystery of the sea? There were no signs of foul play. There were no signs of attack by pirates, slavers, or sea serpents. There was little or no chance that such good and honest men as Briggs and Morehouse were involved in a conspiracy to defraud the insurers. Time slips and aliens in UFOs are not totally impossible, but they don’t seem very probable. So what really happened to those eleven people?

  If we analyze the story a detail at a time, we realize several important things. Briggs was a competent and experienced captain, but he had not — according to such records as are available — carried a large cargo of industrial alcohol before. Those who had were not keen on it. The liquid was volatile, and the containers were not perfectly airtight and watertight. Mariners who had carried industrial alcohol reported that its fumes tended to escape and had on occasion blown hatch covers off.

  Briggs was not sailing as a solitary captain. Two of the people he loved best were on board with him, sharing any risks to which the Mary Celeste was exposed. In general, we tend to take greater risks on our own than when we are taking care of those we love. (Co-author Lionel, for example, hammers his big Harley Davidson far harder around tight bends on his own than when co-author Patricia is on the pillion!) Ben Briggs would have taken risks for himself that he would never have shared with Sarah and Sophia. On this voyage, he is being hyper-cautious.

  The alcohol in the hold emits dangerous vapours. A hatch cover blows. Briggs imagines (wrongly) that the whole lot is about to explode. He gives emergency orders to launch the yawl. Everyone abandons whatever he, or she, is doing and gets the tiny boat into the sea. It’s dangerously overcrowded and barely seaworthy, but as far as Briggs is concerned it offers a better survival chance than the risk of being blown to hell by exploding alcohol in the hold of the Mary Celeste. They secure the yawl to the stern of the empty ship with the longest line they’ve got: the peak halyard. All goes well for a while. The alcohol has not exploded. Briggs begins to wonder whether the dangerous vapours have blown clear. Is it safe to go back on board? Then a savage squall hits the ship. The Mary Celeste leaps forward as the wind takes her sails. The peak halyard snaps. They row the overloaded boat frantically in pursuit — but the pursuit is hopeless. The Mary Celeste pulls further and further ahead of them — and vanishes into the gloom. Just a few hours later the inevitable tragedy happens: the inadequate little yawl overturns and sinks. All eleven people are lost. Like El Cid, the empty Mary Celeste sails out of history and into legend.

  After the lengthy and totally unnecessary objections raised by the unpleasant Freddy Flood in Gibraltar, the Mary Celeste was sent back to James Winchester, and her new skipper, Captain George W. Blatchford, safely delivered her cargo to Genoa. Glad to be clear of the problem and half-believing that there really was a jinx on the Mary Celeste, Winchester sold her at a loss. Everything seemed to go downhill from there as far as the Mary Celeste was concerned. During the following thirteen years, she had seventeen different owners before she was bought in 1884 by a Boston consortium who paid very little for her.

  The new owners insured her cargo for a suspiciously high amount, claiming that it included bread, beef, ale, cutlery, and furniture. Near the coast of the notorious Voodoo Island of Haiti, her captain, Gilman C. Parker, ordered the helmsman to run her aground on a coral reef. This was a particularly stupid way to try to dispose of a ship with barratry in mind — jammed on a coral reef, the Mary Celeste was wide open to insurance inspectors, and, in the circumstances, they came with alacrity. The expensive cutlery turned out to be cheap dog collars; the beer bottles were full of water. Charges were brought against Parker and his mate — who both died rather conveniently before going to court. Was it natural causes, or was someone higher up in the murky organization afraid of what they might say to save their own skins? Several companies involved in that Haiti reef swindle went bankrupt. Another of the conspirators allegedly committed suicide — but like Parker and the mate, he might have received a little assistance from someone who preferred his silence to his evidence. Her tragic end so close to Voodoo Island provided plenty of material for those who believed in the jinx that had followed the Amazon/Mary Celeste from the day she was launched until her death on the reef.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Some Strange and Dangerous Denizens of the Deep

  Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) was a doctor, a poet, and a playwright. His famous work A History of Animated Nature contains some unforgettable words about the sea and its inhabitants:

  The ocean is a great receptacle of fishes. It has been thought, by some, that all fish are naturally of the salt element; and that they have mounted up into fresh water by some accidental migration. A few still swim up rivers to deposit their spawn; but of the great body of fishes, of which the size is enormous and the shoals are endless, those all keep to the sea, and would quickly expire in fresh water. In that extensive and undiscovered abode, millions reside, whose manners are a secret to us, and whose very form is unknown. The curiosity of mankind, indeed, has drawn some from their depths, and his wants many more: with the figure of these at least he is acquainted; but for their pursuits, migrations, societies, antipathies, pleasures, times of gestation, and manner of bringing forth, these are all hidden in the turbulent element that protects them …. Most fish offer us the same external form, sharp at either end and swelling in the middle, by which they are ena
bled to transverse the fluid which they inhabit with greater celerity and ease. That peculiar shape, which nature has granted to most fishes, we endeavour to imitate in such vessels as are designed to sail with the greatest swiftness: however, the progress of a machine, moved forward in the water by human contrivance, is nothing to the rapidity of an animal destined by nature to reside there. Any of the large fish overtake a ship in full sail, with great ease, play around it without effort and outstrip it at pleasure.

  Goldsmith’s eighteenth-century representation of a codfish.

  The passing centuries have added vast stores of knowledge to the pioneering marine biology of Goldsmith’s eighteenth century, but his great statement “In that extensive and undiscovered abode, millions reside, whose manners are a secret to us, and whose very form is unknown” remains awesomely true. Many of the most impressive unsolved mysteries of the sea live in it. What Goldsmith said so profoundly about the sea and its many strange inhabitants in the eighteenth century is being reinforced and expanded by outstanding Canadian marine biologists and other leading Canadian ocean scientists in our twenty-first century.

  Professor Paul Hebert, for example, who holds the Chair in Molecular Biodiversity in the Department of Zoology in the highly prestigious Guelph University in Ontario, has done brilliant work on DNA bar-coding. Professor Ransom Myers, who holds the Killam Chair in Ocean Studies at the celebrated and influential University of Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia, works with Dr. Boris Worm of the German Institute of Marine Science. They have issued a very significant and serious warning concerning the loss of huge numbers of large marine life forms.

  Chimera monstrosa.

  There are still many species waiting to be found and classified by scientists and researchers. An example is the weird-looking Chimera monstrosa, which has been described in some colourful eyewitness accounts as a cross between a shark and a unicorn. It is an odd-looking bottom-feeder, hauled up occasionally from great depths by fishermen working off the French coast. How many uncles, aunts, and cousins has the Chimera monstrosa got down there with him?

  Almost as strange in appearance, but relatively better known, is the edible and nutritious doree, also called dory, John Dory, and St. Peter’s fish. Its pigments are olive and yellow, with glimpses of blue, silver, and gold. According to legend, the large dark spots on each side are where the saint took hold of it: the coin found in its mouth (hence the gold and silver markings) paid the temple tax collector (Matthew 17: 27).

  Doree, or dory, St. Peter’s fish (Zeus faber).

  The sea wasp, also called the box jellyfish, is known scientifically as Chironex fleckeri Southcott. With a mass of two or three kilograms, it’s one of the sea’s deadliest toxic stingers, with a big, translucent, bellshaped body that can reach sizes of up to half a metre across. Sixteen tentacles, which can each be four metres long, trail out behind this bucket-shaped body. Each tentacle carries millions of capsules filled with venomous toxin that the sea wasp discharges enthusiastically into anything that makes contact with it. In humans, the sea wasp’s poison causes agonizing pain, restricts breathing, hinders the circulation, and induces a fatal heart attack. The toxin also damages the skin badly, causing marks that look like the wheals left by a whip. Victims can survive, however, if an antidote to the toxin is administered very soon after the attack.

  Portuguese man-of-war.

  The Portuguese man-of-war is more widely distributed than the sea wasp, which is mainly a problem in Australian waters, and — although unpleasant — the man-of-war is considerably less dangerous than the sea wasp. They have been found in Hawaii, Japan, the Mediterranean, and even in the Canadian Bay of Fundy. The Portuguese man-of-war is not a single marine entity but a complete colony of polyps attached to a blue float, which gives the man-of-war its nickname, bluebottle. This inflated blue bladder rises well above the water and acts as a sail when the colonial polyps travel. The polyps are equipped with tentacles armed with stinging cells called nematocysts. The poison from these cells causes respiratory problems and weakness of the muscles. It can easily knock out small fish. The sting causes sharp pain to human victims, but is not normally lethal.

  The blue-ringed octopus — small but deadly — is one of the nastiest marine creatures around. Two varieties of them are found in Australian waters: Hapalochlaena lunulata is slightly larger than Hapalochlaena maculosa. Both of them lurk in tidal pools, as well as in the sea itself. Although they barely reach twenty centimetres from tentacle tip to tentacle tip, weight for weight they are about as dangerous an opponent as the unwary bather can have the misfortune to encounter. When frightened, disturbed, or taken up out of the water, the blue-ringed octopus shows the brilliant blue rings from which it gets its name. It can deliver its potent venom either through biting, like a poisonous snake does, or by squirting it at its victim. The main result is respiratory failure and malfunction of the nervous system. There is numbness, blurred vision, loss of tactile sensation, difficulty in speaking and swallowing, paralysis, and nausea. Unless given immediate medical help, the victim can die of lack of oxygen or heart failure — or a sinister combination of the two.

  Just as deadly — but vastly bigger, and brutally powerful rather than toxic — is the awesome sea crocodile. Crocodylus porosus is particularly dangerous because, despite his simplistic appearance, he’s as cunning as the proverbial fox and has few — if any — natural enemies. If this abnormal and unexpected brainpower somehow makes him aware that human beings are dangerous to him because they can stab, harpoon, or shoot him, it may perhaps account for his tendency to attack people without provocation. A recent example (November 2003) of crocodile intelligence comes from Hong Kong, where crocodile expert John Lever of Queensland, Australia, finally admitted defeat after two weeks of hunting. He had laid special traps for the elusive crocodile terrorizing the area. At the time of writing, two Chinese experts, He Zhanzhao and Li Mingjian, have taken over the search. Before Lever came to help them, local Hong Kong conservationists, armed with tranquillizer guns, had also searched for the croc unsuccessfully; they’d even laid traps for it.

  Adult saltwater crocodile, nine metres long.

  Saltwater crocs can grow up to eight or nine metres long and live for more than one hundred years. They prowl the coastal areas, venturing into creeks, rivers, and lakes, lurking and lying in wait for the next victim to walk, wade, or swim past. They harbour in mangrove swamps, and their powerful jaws will take birds, fish, animals, and people indiscriminately. Crocodylus porosus is an omnivore and proud of it.

  He looks incapable of any sort of speed on land — but that’s dangerously deceptive. Over twenty- or thirty-metre sprints he’s as fast as a horse, and in addition to his powerful jaws and formidable teeth he has a flexible muscular tail that can bring most prey down with one deadly sideways blow.

  Crocodylus porosus has unpleasant dietary habits. Having despatched his victims, he likes to hide them in his underwater mangrove larder until they have rotted down nicely before eating them.

  The sea anemone looks beautiful and flower-like — but doesn’t behave that way! It’s very common in the tidal pools of Hawaii and extends out to deep offshore waters as well. Some anemones enjoy symbiotic relationships with crabs. The crab carries the anemone around on its back from one profitable feeding place to another, and the anemone reimburses its carrier by acting as a weapon if the crab is attacked. Some marine biologists report that the boxer crab, Lybia tesselata, holds the anemone in its claws on these occasions and seems to use it as a combination of sword and shield. The stinging cells in the anemone’s tentacles deter most predators. Majidae dochlea, commonly known as the spider crab, also carries anemones around, as does Dorippe facchino, the porter crab.

  This type of marine relationship is one of the many unsolved biological mysteries relating to numerous strange denizens of the deep. Symbiosis can be subdivided into mutualism, where both partners get something out of the relationship; commensalism, where one creature gets considerable
advantages from being on the team but the other doesn’t — although the non-benefiting partner is not harmed by the arrangement; and crude, undeniable parasitism, where the parasitic partner wins and the host loses. Some marine biologists also include the idea of mimicry as a form of symbiosis at a distance. The harlequin snake eel, for example, is about as innocuous a sea creature as you can hope to meet — but it mimics the powerfully venomous banded sea snake, Laticauda colubrine, in order to dissuade potential attackers.

  Many other mysterious examples of symbiosis abound in the sea and oceans. Astropyga radiate is an unpleasantly toxic sea urchin among whose spines its little goby partners lurk for protection. Other varieties of sea urchin are interesting rather than toxic.

  Sea urchin (Echinus radiate).

  Toxicity can help a species to survive, but rarely seems effective for the toxic individual when it’s essentially posthumous! The puffer fish is easy enough to catch, but is likely to take its revenge on the successful angler if he, or she, eats it. The flesh and organs of a puffer can be toxic enough to interfere with breathing, and, even at its least serious, induces very unpleasant sickness.

  The actual poison inside the puffer fish is tetrodotoxin, and Canadian scientists, working with colleagues in Britain and China, have isolated one of its ingredients, which may soon become the world’s most effective painkiller, thousands of times stronger than morphine. It will hopefully be able to ease the pain of terminally ill patients for whom even morphine is no longer effective.