The Maritime Mystery Of The Mary Celeste

this week on buzzfeed unsolved we look into a maritime disappearance so mysterious that it's unclear if a crime even occurred at all the abandoned mary celeste that sounds thrilling and potentially simultaneously very boring well it's more so that uh there's a spooky ship i do like that i'm listening a bunch of spooky things happened on it okay and it could be very scientific explanations and then there could be other explanations [Music] all right well let's get into whatever happened to the mary celeste on may 18 1861 the merchant vessel the amazon was launched from spencer's island in present-day nova scotia the ship was about 100 feet long over 25 feet wide and made from spruce pine birch and beach woods good wood good wood right a great medley of woods yeah you want a nice uh you want a varietal spread of wood when you're making a vessel a panoply of wood of a varietal vessel [Laughter] after difficulties launching the ship during which some reports claimed the boat refused to budge from its perch the amazon's maiden voyage was an inauspicious one in what might be seen as an omen for the ship's future the captain caught pneumonia from which he would die think of how exciting it would be to be a captain of a boat oh not as exciting to get pneumonia and die but like you know but here's my captain vibe and then i want to i want to hear yours but here's what i'm going to do i'm going to walk out my captain's quarters i walk sort of to the ledge of the the uh promenade or whatever it is there yeah yeah and i look beautiful i look stunning okay and glimmering yeah and i i sort of i have one hand behind my back we're going to sidebar on that later but another one up here sort yeah like this and i just go and then one of the boys on the poop deck looks up at me and goes captain and i just go that away lads oh i thought you were just gonna point at him to not talk to you like if i went captain and you just went walk the plank if i was the captain i'd say hey everyone check out my new boat i'm gonna sail it for years and years to come and then i'd die of pneumonia [Laughter] over the next few years the ship was damaged on several occasions eventually in 1867 running aground in cow bay cape breton island this time the ship was so banged up that its investors couldn't afford to have it repaired or even transported off the rocks a man named alexander mcbean mcbean solid name yeah i love it it really rolls off the tongue what can i do for you mr mcbean the male's outside you can do that too a man named alexander mcbean managed to pull the wreckage from the rocks and re-float her ownership of the amazon then passed to one john howard beatty who sold the badly damaged boat to american richard w haynes haynes replaced the keel and the entire bottom of the boat added new spars rigging and sails and renamed the boat the mary celeste which was then seized by his creditors as haines was unable to pay his loans mcbean flipping a ship mcbean and sounds like didn't make any mc profit i just don't know why anyone would be in the market for a old boat well it's 1861 what else are you gonna do get a new one eventually the ship was sold to a new york shipping company and put under the captainship of benjamin spooner briggs a man whose life as a boat captain seemed predetermined by that name a schooner for spooner that's good i don't think the techno all the boat heads and the comments are gonna be like that is not a schooner that's i mean look give him a break it was a good joke huh yeah give me a break it was a good joke let me have some boat jokes guys yeah what is a schooner anyway i don't know what would you rename your boat by the way champion just champion what would i rename mine uh uh what if i called it the the sea skimmer and i'd stand on the deck proud like this you just crashed directly into a cliffside ah yes let's skim that scene the skimmer and champion we could be out there uh i don't know how captains communicate with each other we can have one of those little those little things spy glass a spy glass and i'd look at you from my deck and look at me from yours and then we'd both crash into a cliffside oh bergara oh look at that it's shiny boy like you could just keep her out today yeah hey wait that looks closer an experienced captain with a reputation for being responsible respectable and deeply religious briggs had been a full-time sailor for over 18 years as he prepared for his first journey at the helm of the mary celeste he wrote quote our vessel is in beautiful trim and i hope we shall have a fine passage but i have never been in her before and can't say how she'll sail we seem to have a very good mate and steward and i hope i shall have a pleasant voyage end quote it's creepy yeah it's uh people always using the feminine pronouns for boats i've never been in her also he's really waxing poetic for just something i'm assuming this is something he wrote in a journal who writes like that in a journal right this is a journal i don't i'm not confirming that but i'm pretty sure it is the things i write in my journal are like shorthand it's not like i'm always like hate tuna sandwich today sucks today good that's like mine i'm not like today i set voyage for ralph's and looked out for some chorizo and when i got it boy was it a pleasant smell in my kitchen that day i beamed with pride as it hit my stomach uh no no need beer drink emotion on november 7 1872 loaded with 1700 barrels of industrial alcohol meant for routine delivery the mary celeste left new york city bound for genoa italy on board was briggs his wife sarah their two-year-old daughter sophia and a crew of seven in the early afternoon on december 4th a british merchant vessel the degratia spotted the mary celeste about 400 miles east of the azores an archipelago in the mid-atlantic off the coast of portugal when the mary celeste didn't respond to attempts to signal it three members of the de grantia were sent to board her dumb as hell to take your family on a boat if you're an 18-year veteran of the sea you would think like it's just another day at the office for you it'll be like you visiting paw no at whatever pa did for for shane midday i feel like if i'm married to a man who's been at sea for 18 years oh therein lies the riddle though because he's actually married to the sea enough of the sea are you going on that boat hell no i here's the thing if i see a boat that's not responding to signals obviously you do have to send some people over yeah but my thought and because i'm a paranoid guy is that this ship is uh playing possum and they're waiting for people to try over and when they come over then they're gonna take me hostage and then use that to get my bow pirates that's what i'm thinking or it's a zoo boat and the monkeys got out or it's a zoo boat and the monkeys got out i'd be taking out my spot glass looking at that boat and saying that boat's [ __ ] the three men found the ship totally abandoned there was no trace of struggle and the little damage the vessel showed was not severe enough to make a veteran crew of sailors abandoned ship the ship's cargo was basically intact with only nine of the barrels of alcohol found empty and there was still a six-month supply of food and water on board the ship's one lifeboat was missing along with its chronometer sextant navigation book and register no sign of the lifeboat or anyone on board was ever found the ship's last log recorded at 8 am on monday november 25th 10 days before she was discovered by the degratia said they were about six miles off of santa maria the southernmost island of the azores as records were generally logged on an hourly basis it's presumed whatever happened to the mary celeste and its crew happened shortly thereafter what did the the most wreath the log was just like what did it say i'm assuming nothing of note it didn't say like audi 5000 no it didn't say that it didn't say like yo it was blows looks like they were all decided to be audi 5000. with no clear explanation for what caused the crew to abandon the mary celeste the degratia brought the ship to gibraltar about 800 miles east of where it was found a judge conducted a salvage hearing and despite the disappearance on her seemingly doomed record the boat was sold to new owners who was buying the ship after people just disappeared from oh it's the same reason why dodo birds out there are buying haunted houses cheap yes does this house this property this boat have a record for disaster and death sure but who could pass up a sale here's the thing i even i i let me state for the record i don't believe in ghosts okay i also don't want to buy a house that people have been murdered yet why not because it's a [ __ ] bummer that being said it's time to dive into theories surrounding what happened to her disappeared passengers our first theory is pirates it's generally believed that captain briggs abandoned the ship purposefully though why is still unclear briggs was not only the captain but also an investor in the boat since the boat was not discovered to have any catastrophic damage pirates forcing everyone off the ship might make sense indeed when the de gracia showed up to gibraltar with the mary celeste some suspected the crew of the de gracia itself of foul play since finding an abandoned fine-conditioned ship with a full undisturbed cargo was so rare there were theories that the gratia crew could have pirated the ship and slaughtered everyone on board after three months of investigation however the court found no evidence that this was what happened despite the ruling the company that insured the ship paid the crew of the de gracia only one-sixth of the policy amount suggesting the insurers were not convinced of an absence of foul play yeah like how thorough could they be back then honestly they're probably like you promise yeah we didn't do anything all right well we're going to pay you money then but not the full thing that'd be crazy if you were like let's kill these people take their ship get paid money for it and then for hundreds of years people are like what happened i know when it was just simple as like nice ship i like it it's mine now there's another theory that pirates could have come from inside the ship it's been posited that the crew could have consumed too much of the alcohol they were transporting and become mutinous two crew members in particular german brothers volkert and boy lorenzen were seen as suspicious as unlike those aboard none of their belongings were discovered on the ship later testimony however would reveal that was because their belongings had actually been lost in a prior shipwreck earlier that year kind of weird that i guess shipwrecks were just common you would think that's like a one and done situation where i'm think about how often car accidents happen true but i feel like a shipwreck is a little more absolute no i and yes these two could have been mutinous however i will say if they are pirates and the only thing missing from the entire ship was their belongings pretty historically bad pirates in terms of bootying things is that can you use that as a verb bootying stealing booty well you have i i did it i have a hard time imagining german pirates i don't know why i mean i'm gonna ask it and it's probably going to be a disaster but i now have to hear your impression of a german pirate hello our next theory is that everyone abandoned ship due to a panicked miscalculation by the captain follow me because this theory gets a bit into the seaweeds about boat maintenance one of the first things the crew of the de gracia did once on board the mary celeste was attempt to sound the pipes to help make sure the boat was still seaworthy this involves using a sounding rod to determine how much water had accumulated in the bilges something however was a miss with the mary celeste sounding rod the second mate of the degratia john wright explained quote there was no sounding rod but a piece of iron with a piece of line attached to it i found no proper sounding rod i was able to sound with the piece of iron and line attached to it it was found lying on the deck near the cabin end quote the fact that the sounding rod or at least its jerry-rigged replacement was not found in its proper place has led experts to theorize that the rod had been dropped shortly before abandoning ship when john wright sounded the abandoned mary celeste he discovered that the hold of the ship was filled with about three and a half feet of water there was also a considerable amount of water between the decks though this would have been a relatively large amount of water in proportion to the size of the boat it still would not indicate a level of leakage that should have caused a panic in an experienced crew additionally if the barometric pressure was low from a sudden weather change for instance in the presence of a water spout it could have affected the pumps and caused the sounding reading to seem like there was more water in the ship than there actually was thinking the ship was taking on too much water and sinking the captain may have thought he was airing on the side of caution when he evacuated his wife daughter and crew to the lifeboat all right well i admire your commitment to educating people about boats and sounding rods yeah boy oh boy people are gonna be educated in this episode it's gonna be thrilling right there but it is thrilling because it's logical and it's uh a good theory it feels so premature to be like well the ship is perfectly afloat my rod's telling me some stuff but we can't trust my rod yeah let's all abandon ship because then as you're moving away you still see the ship perfectly fine on the horizon everyone's probably like i think the ships why don't we go back to the ship ship's looking pretty damn good voice out there yeah the ship is looking like it's floating yeah pretty buoyant that ship but also if the idea that like oh he knows his ship is watertight therefore the presence of water that he found with his little rinky dink sounding rod would make him alarmed it wouldn't because he would realize oh the ship's watertight that water down there's probably just from the storm that we got the water just came through the deck yeah to assume that this theory is true is also assuming that this captain has no knowledge of the sea at all yeah and that is not true he is a seasoned seaman you just wanted to say semen didn't you say semen right now and don't smirk semen oh you did it okay don't smirk like that i don't like something like that our next theory is of course ac quake according to the u.s naval research laboratory the area around the azores is one of the most seismically active in the world there is evidence that an 8.5 magnitude seaquake occurred within a month after the mary celeste was found abandoned and it's possible a foreshock struck the boat and went unrecorded an earthquake at sea could have caused the ship to be severely shaken perhaps breaking open the nine barrels discovered empty filling the bilges with alcohol and fumes if there are ominous rumblings in the cargo that could signal an imminent gas explosion it could explain the hasty departure admittedly there are some problems with this theory the nine empty barrels did not necessarily indicate they had been broken instead those nine barrels had been made of red oak rather than white oak like the rest of the cargo and were more likely emptied by natural seepage if this was the case there would be no fumes or cause for an explosion additionally the rest of the ship was not found in a huge amount of disarray instead the majority of the personal belongings left behind seemed to be undisturbed and in place look we're angelino's here i'm a native angelino you're a transplant that's right even still we know our way around a quake we've danced before yeah and uh i'll tell you there would be some things out of place oh big time yeah and if you had barrels there's gonna be seepage uh seasoned siemens seen some seepage you've done it you've done it are you happy with yourself i just want to say it is pretty fun to say but yeah but a quake at sea kind of hard to decipher that which you know with the waves and such yeah these waves seem a little more wavy yeah doesn't the water just sort of absorb that i would think so your water's not going you know i mean i i've never been in an earthquake on at sea but i have been in an earthquake in a tub oh what was that like the water was all shifting around and i was like whoa oh it was floating around there like paddington bear was rubber ducky there rubber ducky was not there oh it was a hot tub though it wasn't like a oh [ __ ] yeah that sounds dope it was crazy i'd be like yeah i was in there like oh better not spill my beer i don't want to spill my margarita you had to do i had to move it around like this to to regulate it was great uh anyways i don't know if i really buy this one either based on the the state of the ship yeah it sounds dumb this indeed does bring up the question then what happened to the crew our fourth and final theory is that the crew of the mary celeste was abducted by aliens or attacked by a giant sea monster perhaps an octopus with giant limbs wait are you actually gonna do this what are you doing i'm citing the theory the floor is yours oh that was the end of the theory but i mean like wouldn't it be crazy if they got abducted by aliens or like a sea monster like a big octopus took it like grab them off you know look i looked at a lot of boards and a lot of people think that since you crossed off all the logical boxes aliens is the only thing that makes sense they got in the lifeboat to try and paddle away but they just couldn't paddle fast enough you know yeah them getting in the lifeboat negates the aliens thing entirely does it yeah well then what happened to them monkey those damn sea monkeys maybe they had a monkey on board what if they got eaten by crabs that'd kick ass i mean not for them no yeah i mean imagine if the crabs ate them and then were just like just taking on the rolls like one crab is captain another crab is captain's wife a little baby crab jesus christ but then but they're surrounded by half-eaten bodies after the mary celeste's infamous disappearance john dewis the son of the man who built the ship said of his father's vessel quote this craft seemed possessed of the devil to begin with but where she got it i don't know end quote while we can be somewhat confident that the mary celeste was not possessed by satan what actually happened to the 10 passengers who set sail aboard her that november of 1872 remains unsolved ain't no devil ain't possessing a boat too hard too big you know you gotta possess every plank of wood you put a barrel on the boat what the devil's possessing that too yeah yeah yeah and what about all the successful things the boat did i'm sure there were plenty with the devils making spice runs you know what irks me about this one huh all of the the logical theories don't make sense and none of the supernatural ones even make sense so what the hell happened to these guys like yes it's a very funny theory deposit aliens but like you said a lifeboat doesn't make a lot of sense when it comes to an alien abduction nor does it make sense when you're battling like a sea monster of some sort which some people online have positive both of those of those theories yeah this is a weird one in that usually when we get to this point we're like here's my favorite i don't have a favorite here yeah it's freaky man i guess the pirates maybe yeah too but no signs like struggle no signs of a struggle and they didn't seem to take anything well there couldn't be any pirates back then that know like krav maga or something like that and they could like jason bourne these guys like with precision roll up a magazine or a spyglass rule it beat the [ __ ] out of a captain with his spyglass yeah you would think there'd be glass though you'd think there'd be glass anyways it just doesn't make a lot of sense either one they had a monkey on board or two uh the insurance thing where those guys maybe but then i don't know because then if if it was them trying to get the insurance money for the boat the rescuers why are you shoving them onto the lifeboat because then what if they make it unless you killed them all threw them in the ocean and then just detached the lifeboat to make it look like they were going yeah but then there would probably be well i mean no signs of a struggle what does that mean like it's a head scratcher ryan i don't get it it's gonna drive me nuts this one drives me nuts yeah [Music] you

Channel: BuzzFeed Unsolved Network

Views: 2,979,813

Rating: 4.9560714 out of 5

Keywords: BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed Unsolved, BuzzFeed Unsolved Network, Cold case, Creepy, Mini doc, Mystery, PL-Unsolved, PL-UnsolvedTrueCrime, PL-UnsolvedTrueCrime-S7, Ryan bergara, Shane madej, The Maritime Mystery of The Mary Celeste, Unsolved, bizarre, buzzfeed unsolved network, cold case, ghost ship, investigation, mary celeste, mystery, ryan and shane, theories, true crime, unexplained mysteries, unsolved, unsolved mysteries, unsolved mystery, unsolved network, unsolved true crime

Id: 6EPR4Ux-U6k

Length: 23min 37sec (1417 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020