On December 4, 1872, while crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe, a few days after leaving the port of New York, the crew of the gigantic ship ” De Gracia ” saw a sailing ship moving incorrectly on the horizon, one of her sails flapped in the wind.
The French magazine “Le Point” tells the story of this mysterious ship, which has become a mystery and the subject of several theories, none of which convincingly explains what happened.
Captain David Reed Moorhouse, master of the “Dee Gracia”, recognized the ship “Mary Celeste” , which had left the same port a week before him, led by his friend Benjamin Spooner Briggs, and said in astonishment: “I see no one at the helm” , and ordered to head towards it.
Three sailors from the “Die Gracia” went aboard and searched it from start to finish, finding no human presence, and noting that the sails were misaligned, the mainsail lines were cut, the rudder was turning in the void, and that no there were enough provisions for 6 months in the hold and with it plenty of drinking water, so nothing is missing on the ship except the crew.
So where did the crew go? There is no indication of this, according to the magazine, as the vessel was not in the process of sinking and the logbook in the captain’s cabin had recorded nothing.
With the deepening of the search it emerged that some navigation instruments were missing, in addition to the sea transport contract, the navigation book and a small boat, so the crew used it to escape? Why are they fleeing their ship while it is in perfect condition? Morehouse and the crew ask themselves this without finding an answer, before deciding to take the vessel to Gibraltar to claim their part as shipwreck diggers at sea.
Subsequent investigation revealed that this vessel was built in 1860 and began sailing under the name Amazon , and from the earliest days it appeared that she was “cursed” , as her first captain died immediately, as the magazine says , and her owners went bankrupt one after another, before moving from New York to Mary Celeste’s name in October 1872, under the command of a new captain and co-owner, Benjamin Spooner Briggs (age 37).
Mary Celeste departed November 5 for Genoa, Italy, carrying 1,701 barrels of non-drinkable denatured alcohol. The logbook reported no incidents during the first three weeks of her voyage, but what happened on November 26 until the sailors disappeared?
An earthquake, a giant octopus or a hallucinogenic mushroom?
Dozens of hypotheses have been advanced, each crazier than the last, one accusing the crew of being drunk, killing the captain and his family, and fleeing in a boat, but the alcohol is not drinkable, which disproves this hypothesis. . Is it that the captain of the Mary Celeste and the captain of the “Dee Gracia” agreed before leaving New York to undertake an operation and claim the reward due to anyone who finds a wreck at sea? So it’s possible that Briggs killed his crew before Morehouse picked it up, to take it to Gibraltar, but in this case Briggs would lose more than he would gain because he is co-owner.
The third theory holds that the captain and crew of the ” Di Gracia ” stormed the Mary Celeste and slaughtered the entire crew, while the fourth theory holds that a giant hungry octopus attacked the vessel and ate her crew , and a fifth theory predicts that the crew was abducted by a flying saucer, and a sixth imagines that the water or food is contaminated by a hallucinogenic mushroom that causes the crew to dive into the water, or that a hurricane has transported all those present according to a seventh theory, and other hypotheses.
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Eventually, rescuers from the Diego Gracia received one-sixth of the insured value of the vessel and its cargo, or $7,700 at the time (about $120,000 today), and the Mary Celeste was returned to Boston by her owners. But the bad luck didn’t end, as the father of one of the owners drowned while aboard the vessel, which changed hands 17 times over the next 13 years before the last owner jettisoned her into a reef near Haiti on 3 January 1885 .
