If you’ve ever been to the sea, you might
have noticed there’s an awful lot of it. Oceans cover more than seventy per cent of
the earth’s surface and impact your daily life in ways that probably never even occur
to you. They regulate the global climate and drive
weather systems, so no matter how far you live from the coast, oceans had some influence
on what you chose to wear today. Nice mankini, by the way. And look around you - no, not literally, keep
watching me - your life as you know it would be quite different without marine transport. About ninety per cent of the stuff that’s
traded around the world is carried by ships, which includes everything from food to clothes
to furniture and cars, even the fuel in those cars and the smelly things you hang from the
rearview mirror. If it weren’t for sea travel, you probably
wouldn’t have the device you’re watching this video on right now. You probably wouldn’t even be alive, since
oceans are widely regarded as the birthplace of life itself. So, yeah, they’re a pretty big deal. You would think we’d know more about something
so important to us, but it seems we’re still mostly clueless about the sea. More than eighty percent of the world’s
ocean depths are still unexplored. Like oysters, they remain a big, wet, salty
mystery. But the riddles don’t just lie beneath the
waves. For as long as humans have been sailing the
high seas, they’ve been collecting tales about strange phenomena like mermaids, sirens,
sea monsters, magical realms, and haunted ships. Of course, most of these stories come from
sex-starved men full of gonorrhoea and rum, so they should probably be taken with a pinch
of sea salt. There is one genuine mystery, though, that
remains unsolved almost 150 years after it was discovered: the bizarre account of the
ghost ship, Mary Celeste. It was the fourth of December 1872. In the preceding months, Mount Vesuvius had
erupted in Italy, the first-ever FA Cup Final had been held in England, and some guy had
patented dried milk. A week, later a meteorite would strike the
earth near a small town called Banbury. But none of this mattered to Captain David
Morehouse, commander of the Canadian ship Dei Gratia, as he stared through his telescope
at a vessel on the horizon drifting aimlessly in the north-Atlantic Ocean. Morehouse knew the boat. It was the Mary Celeste, a cargo ship that
had left New York eight days before him, loaded with about 1,700 barrels of denatured alcohol. Denatured alcohol isn’t like rum. It has an alcohol content between 70 and 99
per cent and is used as a solvent, cleaning agent, disinfectant, and fuel. Drinking it will make you blind or dead. Okay, maybe it is a bit like rum. By that stage in her career, the Mary Celeste
had already accumulated a fair bit of bad fortune. Originally registered under the name ‘the
Amazon’, her maiden voyage in 1861 from Nova Scotia to London was delayed when, just
before her departure, the captain fell ill and died. Then, with a new captain, the Amazon sailed
across the Atlantic but collided with fishing equipment off the coast of Eastport, Maine,
before running into and sinking another ship in the English Channel. A few uneventful years passed until October
1867 when the Amazon ran ashore during a storm, being so badly damaged that her owners abandoned
her as a wreck. The derelict boat was eventually bought and
sold a number of times before it was restored and renamed the Mary Celeste. When Captain Morehouse found the ship floating
in the open sea there’s a good chance he knew nothing of her chequered past, but if
he had, it’s safe to say alarm bells would have been rigging as he inspected the ship
more closely, noticing she was moving erratically and that her sails looked odd. He also knew the Mary Celeste should have
already arrived in Genoa, Italy, so, realising something wasn’t right, the captain changed
course to investigate. When members of the Dei Gratia crew boarded
the Mary Celeste they found her deserted, but with no indications of where everyone
had gone or, more importantly, why. There were no signs of fire, violence or a
struggle. The sails were in bad shape, some missing
altogether, and the rigging - that’s what landlubbers like us call the system of ropes
which hold a sailing ship’s masts in place - was damaged and hanging out of place. The main hatch, which is the big hole in the
middle of the deck where you load and unload cargo, still had its cover on, but the covers
of the hatches at the front and back of the boat - fore and aft in sailing terms - were
off and lying beside the hatches on the deck. The cargo of industrial alcohol was untouched,
which ruled out pirates or blind alcoholics as an obvious cause. About three and a half feet of water sloshed
around the cargo hold, which was a significant amount but not alarming. Someone had disassembled one of the two pumps,
but the vessel was still perfectly seaworthy. The only thing of importance missing was the
lifeboat. Well, that and all the people, obviously. The crew’s belongings were still in their
quarters, and there was enough food and water on board to last another six months. Most of the ship's papers were missing along
with the captain's navigational instruments, and in the mate's cabin was the ship’s logbook
with its final entry dated at 8 a.m. on November 25, ten days earlier. The final logbook entry placed the Mary Celeste
within sight of Santa Maria Island in the Azores, a group of nine small volcanic islands
in the middle of nautical nowhere. By the time Morehouse and his crew discovered
her, she had drifted almost 750 kilometres to the east. Ten people were missing from the Mary Celeste,
including Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife, Sarah, the couple's 2-year-old daughter,
Sophia, and seven crewmen. None of them was ever seen or heard from again. Briggs was a part-owner of the boat and an
extremely experienced skipper. He handpicked his crew, and they were all
regarded as first-class sailors. Overall, a crack team and not the type to
abandon ship without a serious reason. So, what was that reason? Why and how did ten people disappear from
the Mary Celeste without a trace? These questions would soon fill newspapers
and books across the globe, but first, they appeared in the law courts of Gibraltar. After finding the Mary Celeste, Captain Morehouse
decided to sail her to Gibraltar, about 1,100 kilometres away, so he could claim salvage. The law of salvage is an ancient part of international
maritime law that says anyone who helps rescue or recover a ship or cargo is owed a reward
proportional to its value by the ship’s owners. In this case, Morehouse and the crew of the
Dei Gratia had rescued the Mary Celeste and sailed her back to safety at their own risk. When the ship arrived in Gibraltar, she was
confiscated by the authorities until the salvage hearings could be resolved in court. As part of those court proceedings, it was
suggested the disappearances of Captain Briggs, his family and his crew, were down to foul
play. Marks were found on the bow of the ship that
some claimed were made by an axe. There were also dark stains found both on
the boat and on the captain’s sword that might have been blood. The attorney general in Gibraltar believed
the crew got drunk one night on the alcohol in the ship’s hold - even though it was
undrinkable - and slaughtered Captain Briggs and his family in a drunken frenzy before
escaping in the lifeboat. Just a regular Friday night, then. But, soon the results of scientific tests
proved nothing dodgy had happened aboard the Mary Celeste and, after three months, the
authorities released the ship from custody. Captain Morehouse and his crew received less
than 8,000 dollars for their salvage efforts, which was well below the expected payment
given the value of the ship and cargo. Unfortunately for Morehouse, the court case
had generated rumours he and his men had killed the occupants of the Mary Celeste so they
could claim the ship for salvage. That accusation wasn’t ever proved but the
doubt never quite faded, and by awarding such a small salvage settlement, it seemed the
court remained suspicious. Other theories of foul play have Briggs and
Morehouse as friends, conspiring to claim the insurance money for the ship and staging
a disappearance. Another (admittedly somewhat ridiculous) view
was that Captain Briggs, who was a devout Christian, had lost his mind in a religious
frenzy and murdered everyone on board before killing himself. Just a regular Sunday, then. In the decades that followed, the story of
the Mary Celeste was retold and exaggerated many times over. In 1883, The Los Angeles Times published a
false narrative in which the ship was found in perfect condition and fully rigged, the
cooking fire was burning in the galley stove, dinner was on the table, barely cold, and
the logbook was updated to the hour before the ship was found. The next year, Arthur Conan Doyle, the man
who would later become the author of Sherlock Holmes, wrote a short story based on the Mary
Celeste. It was a fictional piece but, as with the
LA Times story, much of it became accepted as fact. These kinds of fabrications have made it even
harder to come up with plausible explanations for what happened aboard Captain Briggs’
ship, but a few proposals have gained popularity over the years. Let’s get the first and most obvious one
out of the way: Briggs, his family and his crew were whisked away by aliens. Since aliens are apparently responsible for
building the pyramids, making crop circles, assassinating JFK, and impregnating my neighbour
Janet, I suppose we should at least consider the possibility they swooped down on a random
ship in the middle of the sea and kidnapped all those on board. Because aliens obviously have nothing better
to do with their time. Another guess is that the Mary Celeste was
hit by a water spout, the oceanic equivalent of a tornado, which would explain all the
water in the ship’s hold. A water spout would also have caused the atmospheric
temperature to drop, which could have driven water from the bilges, the bottom part of
the ship where all the gunk collects, up into the pumps. This might have convinced the crew the vessel
had taken on more water than she had, and was therefore in danger of sinking. Under those circumstances, Briggs might have
chosen to abandon ship while he was in sight of land. Building on the theme of natural disasters,
other commentators have theorised that an earthquake on the seabed - imaginatively known
as a seaquake - may have generated enough turbulence aboard the Mary Celeste to cause
the spillage of alcohol and the release of alcohol fumes. That would potentially explain the hatches,
which might have been opened in an attempt to air the cargo hold. It would also tie in with the nine empty barrels
that were found onboard. If there had been a build-up of fumes, Briggs
would have been concerned, and that concern might have been elevated by rumblings from
the cargo hold, the smell of fumes, perhaps even an explosion. In that case, Briggs and his crew might have
climbed into the lifeboat, attached it to the ship, and allowed themselves to float
behind at a distance. That seems like a reasonable enough response
to the situation, but one has to question the sense in tying yourself to something you
think might be about to explode, especially since a lifeboat in the open ocean is far
from a safe place to be. Next time you go swimming, throw a cork into
the pool and then do your best cannonball - that’ll give you some idea of what a small
lifeboat might face in the open ocean. All it would have taken was for the tow line
to come loose or snap and the ship’s occupants would have been in serious trouble. Some experts suggest the Mary Celeste would
have been a safer bet than the lifeboat even if she had suffered an explosion and that
Briggs would have been a fool to abandon ship. But, the alcohol explosion view of events
had a lot of support at the time and gained some credibility from later reports of ship’s
whose cargo had exploded under similar conditions. It was also noted the nine empty barrels were
made of red oak, unlike the other barrels which were made of white oak. Red oak is more porous than white oak, and
it’s possible some of the alcohol may have seeped out the barrels, filling the cargo
hold with more toxic fumes than the last time you farted under the duvet. The main argument against the idea the Mary
Celeste’s crew were trying to escape an explosion was that no scorch marks or evidence
of an explosion were ever found. But in 2006, an experiment carried out by
Dr Andrea Sella of University College London showed that such an outcome was perfectly
possible. Sella built a replica of the Mary Celeste’s
hold with paper cubes to represent barrels and then used butane to generate the type
of explosion that would have happened had alcohol fumes in the hold ignited. The results showed a massive explosion with
no burning, no scorching, and no soot left behind. According to Sella, the trapped gas created
a pressure-wave type of explosion with a spectacular surge of flame followed by relatively cool
air. Such an eruption would have been enough to
blow open the hatches and have everyone fleeing the ship like, well, rats fleeing a sinking
ship. To many, an alcohol-fuelled explosion and
a desperate evacuation is the most logical and scientifically sound explanation of what
happened to those aboard the Mary Celeste. But forensic researcher, Anne McGregor, thinks
there’s more to the story. After cross-referencing notes from the salvage
trial with the ship’s log and oceanic data from the time, MacGregor concluded Briggs’
instruments were probably damaged because his measurements appeared to be wrong - he
was actually 120 nautical miles west of where he thought he was. It seems the ship had experienced lousy weather
the night before the final logbook recording, and with the pumps broken - perhaps due to
coal dust buildup from a previous cargo - the crew had no way to measure how much water
had been taken on in the rough seas. If Briggs suspected there was too much water
on board, he would have had a decision to make. If he pressed on, he knew they wouldn’t
see land for hundreds of miles, so if there was a possibility the ship was sinking, their
best chance would be to head for Santa Maria island - which by his faulty calculations
was nearby - while they still could. That might not have been the best decision,
but it wouldn’t have been crazy. One issue with many of these theories is that
Captain Briggs not only abandoned his ship, he also abandoned his log book. If he really did think the ship was slowly
sinking, he would still have had plenty of time to collect the log, or at least to scribble
a quick note as to his plans. Ships’ captains in the nineteenth century
were not in the business of forgetting to make crucial entries in their logbooks, no
matter the circumstances. Of course, we’ll never know for sure what
happened to those on board the Mary Celeste, but we do know the ship’s bad run continued
long after the mysterious disappearance of her crew. When the trial in Gibraltar was concluded
she sailed to Italy, as originally planned, to deliver her cargo, before heading to New
York. But by the time the Mary Celeste arrived in
the Big Apple, the rumours of bloodshed, murder, mutinee and inexplicable disappearances had
circulated throughout the shipping world and nobody wanted anything to do with her. Eventually the owners were forced to sell
her at a considerable loss. The new owners didn’t fare much better,
with the ship consistently losing money, and in 1879 she called in at St Helena bay to
seek medical help when the captain fell sick. He died on the island shortly after in a sequence
of events eerily similar to the way in which the ship’s first captain had died. All told, the Mary Celeste had seen three
captains die prematurely, fuelling speculations the ship was cursed. Six years later luck still hadn’t improved
and the desperate skipper, a Captain Parker, conspired with a group of shippers in a crooked
plot to finally make some cash on what had been a truly terrible investment. They filled the Mary Celeste with worthless
cargo, which they insured for 30,000 dollars - about 850,000 dollars in today’s money
- before deliberately running the vessel aground near Haiti, wrecking her forever. Investigations by the insurance company revealed
the attempted trickery, and Captain Parker and his accomplices were soon facing trial
in Boston for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. Parker was also charged with "wilfully casting
away a ship," a crime known as barratry that used to be punishable by death. Luckily for the captain he avoided the death
penalty and the jury was split on the crime of fraud, so Parker went free, but his reputation
was ruined and he died in poverty just three months later. One of his fellow defendants went mad and
another killed himself. Even under normal circumstances this would
be an almost unbelievable chain of events, but looking back it seems very little was
normal about the Mary Celeste, or those who came in contact with her. Perhaps it's for the best she now lies in
a permanent, watery grave at the bottom of the ocean. Thanks for watching.
