This is not a happy video.
It does not have a happy ending.
It is a ghost story.
But not your typical ghost story that ends with the hero saving the day and overcoming
evil.
No, this is the story of a ship called Mary Celeste and it is a tragedy.
The Mary Celeste was a wooden ship whose crew was lost and never found.
A ship that sailed by itself towards the coast of Europe.
The voyage you are about to embark on is full of mystery, betrayal, and lost spirits.
Be careful as you watch this video, and maybe for this one you should keep the lights on.
The Mary Celeste did not start out with the name that would go down in history.
Instead, the ship was built in 1861 in Nova Scotia, Canada and was named the Amazon.
There are numerous ghost stories to come out of the depths of the Amazon region of South
America, but we will leave those for another time.
Instead let’s focus on the ship that would become the Mary Celeste and discuss if the
ship itself was cursed from the moment it was created.
The Mary Celeste was a brigantine, a two-masted wooden sailing ship.
From the beginning it seemed that the ship was doomed.
During its maiden voyage the Captain of the ship began coughing, had shortness of breath,
and a fever.
The crew tried to hide their anxiousness, but every time the captain would yell orders
he would go into a coughing fit.
Rumors started among the crew that when he pulled his handkerchief away from his mouth
it would be covered in bloody mucus.
As the Amazon continued to sail along its planned route the captain died of pneumonia.
Perhaps his spirit was incorporated into the wood of the ship.
Then in 1867 another mishap happened to the brigantine.
The Amazon ran aground in Cow Bay off the coast of Nova Scotia.
The hull of the ship was cracked and splintered and the Amazon was brought into the shipyard
for repairs.
Not too long after this first accident the ship collided with another vessel in the English
Channel chalking up another catastrophe for the books.
The current owners were fed up with the cursed ship and sold it to an American named Richard
W. Haines.
It was Haines who renamed the ship Mary Celeste.
He made several structural changes to ensure that the ship remained sea worthy.
It may have also been for peace of mind.
The tales of the ship’s mishaps was enough to put anyone at ill ease.
Due to the past tragedies, and perhaps the unsettling nature of the ship, Haines eventually
decided to sell the Mary Celeste.
It was finally bought by Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs, and it was under his command
that the crew of the cursed ship went missing without a trace.
On November 7, 1872 the Mary Celeste set sail from New York Harbor bound for Genoa, Italy.
The ship carried a crew of ten, including Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife,
their two year old daughter Sophia, and seven crewmen.
The ship was also loaded with seventeen hundred barrels of crude alcohol for transport to
Europe.
Once the ship departed from New York City, none of the crew would ever be heard from
again.
The Mery Celeste sailed across the open Atlantic.
According to all of the evidence and captains logs that were later recovered from the ship
nothing had gone wrong.
Yet, on December 4, 1872 the Mery Celeste was found floating off the coast of the Azores
Islands located approximately 930 miles (1,500 km) west of Portugal.
All ten members of the crew had disappeared.
The Mary Celeste was spotted by a British vessel called Dei Gratia and captained by
David Morehouse.
Accounts provided by Morehous claimed that the Mary Celeste seemed to be sailing aimlessly
and erratically through the ocean waters.
The Dei Gratia maneuvered close enough to the seemingly abandoned ship that Morehouse
and his men could board her.
The sound of creaking floorboards could be heard as the crew searched the ship, but other
than their footsteps and the occasional sea bird there was dead silence.
No other living souls were on board.
The accounts of the British sailors stated that the most unusual thing about the Mary
Celeste was not that the crew had all vanished, but it seemed that all of the cargo was intact
with nothing missing.
Also, navigational instruments were still operational on the ship.
The eyewitnesses stated that there were a few broken casks of alcohol, a single missing
lifeboat, and frayed rope trailing behind the ship.
Curiously, there was three and a half feet of water sloshing about in the bottom hold
of the ship.
This may have been due to a broken water pump.
There was no life aboard the Mary Celeste at the time the Dei Gratia crew spotted it.
Documents recovered from the ship provided evidence that the Mary Celeste had been drifting
on the ocean for eleven days without any crew to guide her.
Food and water was still stored aboard the ship.
It seemed as if nothing had been touched.
There were no clues left behind as to the fates of the ten people on board the Mery
Celeste when it had left New York.
The only remnants of the original crew were the spirits that may have been haunting the
ship.
If you believe in that kind of thing.
Some of the men from Dei Gratia remained on board the Mary Celeste and the two ships sailed
back to mainland Europe.
Once docked, Captain Morehouse contacted Frederick Solly-Flood, the attorney general in London.
Under maritime law a derelict ship must be examined before the salvagers can claim it
as their property.
This is to ensure no foul play was involved before or during the discovery of abandoned
ships.
Without an investigation by the authorities Morehouse and his men could not collect the
insurance money or do anything with the ship and cargo.
Frederick Solly-Flood launched an investigation into what had happened to the crew of the
Mary Celeste.
It took three months and a number of interviews before the attorney general concluded there
had been no foul play on the part of the Dei Gratia crew.
The salvagers received payment, but not the full worth, suggesting that the authorities
were not totally convinced that De Gratia’s crew were completely innocent.
Many theories have been suggested as to what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste.
There is no conclusive evidence to prove any one theory is correct.
So let’s go on a voyage on the ghost ship Mary Celeste.
Maybe we can uncover what happened on the day that ten souls were lost to the sea.
Imagine you have been hired as one of the seven deckhands for the Mary Celeste voyage.
Your mission is to bring seventeen hundred barrels of denatured alcohol from New York
to Italy.
You board the wooden brigantine from a dock that sways back and forth with the waves of
the incoming tide.
You ascend the gang plank and an uncomfortable feeling overcomes you as you step onto the
slightly damp wooden planks of the Mary Celeste.
You glance over your shoulder and wave to your family and friends who have gathered
to watch you depart on what should be a routine expedition.
Little do they know it will be the last time they ever see you.
The ship sets sail and your trek across the Atlantic Ocean is uneventful.
Then on November 25, 1872 approximately three weeks after leaving New York, tragedy strikes.
You spot land straight ahead, which the captain makes note of in his log.
But then a giant tentacle erupts out of the water, pulling the crew one by one into the
murky depths.
The screams of your crewmates fill the air until they are silenced by the frigid water.
You run for cover, but before you can get below deck a suction cup sticks to your back
and pulls you overboard.
You and the rest of the crew are lost to the depths of the ocean, as a sea monster consumes
you.
It leaves everything else on the ship untouched.
This seems unlikely, yet it is one of the theories of what happened to the Mary Celeste.
Let’s try another one.
November 25, 1872 you sight land just ahead of the ship.
But approaching swiftly is another ship.
You take out your spyglass and extend it.
You look through the eyepiece and much to your dismay the ship coming towards you is
flying the Jolly Roger flag.
A black flag with a white skull and crossbones smiles back at you.
“Pirates!” you yell.
But it is too late, their ship catches up to the Mary Celeste and they swing aboard.
The pirates capture or kill all the members of the crew.
They then steal a lifeboat and a water pump, but leave the rest of the cargo intact…
they are either not very good pirates or just picky about what they plunder.
So again this theory seems unlikely.
The story of the Mary Celeste was known far and wide in the eighteen hundreds.
Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyal tried to explain what happened to the ship's crew.
He wrote a short story entitled J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement.
In this fictional story the author of Sherlock Holmes attributes the disappearance of the
crew to the acts of a vengeful ex-slave.
The ex-slave snuck aboard the Mary Celeste and killed all the passengers throwing them
overboard.
Then he stole a lifeboat and rowed away into the sunset.
You would want revenge too if you were forced into slavery, so who could blame him?
This story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was purely fictional, but it led to more legends and
theories about what happened to the Mary Celeste’s crew.
Let’s focus on much more plausible theories.
It is the morning of November 25, 1872.
The sun rises over the horizon.
Someone yells, “Land Ho!”
The crew wakes up from their slumber.
But as they begin to rise and ascend the steps to the top deck the captain smells alcohol
fumes.
There must be a leak in the containers.
Your captain immediately calls for the crew to abandon ship.
The alcohol fumes can be deadly in the closed off hull of the ship if inhaled and they are
highly volatile.
The last thing you want is the whole Mary Celeste going up in an explosion of splintered
wood and flames while you and your crewmates are still on board.
Everyone piles into one of the lifeboats and descend into the choppy ocean water.
You tie a rope to the Mary Celeste to make sure that your lifeboat doesn’t drift to
far from the ship.
The thought is that after the ship airs out you and the crew can reboard.
But due to bad weather, or the poor integrity of the rope, it snaps.
Your lifeboat begins to drift out into the middle of the Atlantic never to be seen again.
Or perhaps, the weeks go by slowly.
Since you’ve left New York all you’ve seen is open ocean and the same nine faces
on the ship.
You are going stir crazy, and you’re not the only one.
The other crew members are starting to become restless as well.
You eye the casks of denatured alcohol.
Sure it’s not made for drinking and it could cause you to go blind, but to get away from
the boredom and monotony it is worth the risk.
You and your crewmates drink some of the alcohol.
Things are starting to seem better.
You think, hey, I could run this ship just as good as the captain.
You discuss this with the other men and the decision is made.
It is time to mutiny.
You take control of the Mary Celeste.
You are the captain now.
But you aren't quite as prepared as you thought.
You know very little about navigation and how to captain a ship.
The crew starts to become unsettled.
Just when things seemed to be at their worst you spot land.
You order the crew into a lifeboat so you can row to the island.
You launch, but never make it to shore.
Your crew and captives are lost to the currents and never heard from again.
Perhaps the theory that has the most evidence is the one proposed by Anne MacGregor, the
investigator that created the Smithosinian documentary “The True Story of the Mary
Celeste.”
MacGregor and her research team provided evidence that the crew to the Mary Celeste most likely
were lost due to a miscalculation in navigation.
Using ship logs and computer modeling of currents during the time of the Mary Celeste, they
reconstructed the voyage.
It would seem that the ship was one hundred and twenty miles off course when the ship
was abandoned.
This panic could have led to mistakes.
Mistakes that cost the crew their lives.
It was claimed that a series of problems all occurred at once on the Mary Celeste.
One of the water pumps stopped working and needed to be dismantled and repaired.
The ship was also not in the location that it was supposed to be, which meant the maps
and charts mislead the decisions of the captain.
Bad weather then might have caused the ship to take on water, and without proper pumps
Captain Briggs could have ordered the crew to abandon ship, afraid that the Mary Celeste
was doomed to sink.
The lifeboat and crew was then lost to the ocean forever.
The story of the Mary Celeste did not end with the loss of her crew and the discovery
of the ghost ship.
After the Mary Celeste was brought back to England and its contents were deemed the property
of the salvagers, the ship was sold to a new owner.
The ghost ship sailed under different captains for twelve years before it was deliberately
run aground by Captain G.C. Parker in 1885.
He steered the ship straight into a reef near Haiti, as a plot to defraud the insurance
company and collect the insurance money.
Perhaps there is more to the story.
Perhaps Captain Parker was haunted by the spirits of the lost crew and he knew the ship
needed to be destroyed, so that it didn’t haunt anyone else.
Perhaps not.
All evidence points to insurance fraud, but that’s the funny thing about ghost ships,
they are not always what they seem.
The Mary Celeste was damaged beyond repair, but did not sink.
Instead it was left on the Haitian reef to deteriorate from the sands of time.
The ghosts of past crews may have been watching from her deck as the ocean that claimed them
eventually claimed the ship that cost them their lives.
Whether the ten souls who vanished from the Mary Celeste in 1872 were lost to a sea monster,
pirates, mutiny, or miscalculations, the facts remain, when it was discovered floating in
open water it was a ghost ship.
What do you think actually happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste?
Let us know in the comments!
And if you are ready for another eerie unexplained tale from the crypt of The Infographics Show
click on this video here.
Or if you want to watch something a little less scary click on the video next to it.
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See you next time!