This is the one where a laden two-masted ship turns up floating intact with belongings of captain, wife, and crew left aboard and everybody missing: cargo of alcohol, 9 barrels drained (red oak barrels drained; white oak held intact) and one of two bilge pumps disassembled on deck. Ship had been newly refitted to carry more cargo,given 5 feet more height, loaded to gills with barrels. Cargo intact and stable, hatch covers intact, ship seaworthy.
The finders were accused of piracy and acquitted and given partial salvage rights.
The crew were hire-ons, but average. Two were brothers.
Ship’s boat was missing. Captain, wife, crew, all missing. So was wife’s treasured photo album. Little else.
An island 2 hours’ sailing onward gave an indication of safety they might have wanted to reach.
They never got there.
My question is—if they were so spooked the ship was going to sink, that they would commit themselves to a small boat—they’re going to lose the ship, right? So why not stay ON the ship, which was not riding low, and steer for the island? How bad could it be to rig everybody with flotation, steer deliberately for the shallows on an inflowing tide, and wreck the ship. It had everything they would have needed for survival. Would the crash have been that violent, granted it would be a serious bump, that they couldn’t then head for shore and hope the ship would continue to supply them?
Course that makes perfect sense, but requires others being smart too. Maybe the crew killed owner and wife and scampered off to another boat — but if piracy was the plan why leave almost all the cargo? Any new theories from the show? Well, there’s the Doctor Who theory of alien nastiness scooping them all up 🙂
There was an accusation against captain and crew of the ship that claimed the Mary Celeste as salvage on the high seas—the one that found her drifting. But they were acquitted. There was no sign of violence aboard, and nothing taken. Personal possessions left. As I recall there was evidence of a recent meal.
That, and the dismantled pump, one of two.
There was a suggestion that the crew might have feared explosion of the alcohol—but it wouldn’t explode: alcohol will take fire, but not blow when loaded in wooden barrels. There was suggestion that recent carpentry and a prior load of dusty coal might have loaded the bilges with muck and slowed pumping…but surely the first thing the captain would have done had he thought they were taking on water and not pumping enough was to check the freeboard, the depth they were riding; and there was no indication it was sinking. One could add up the leaking alcohol and wonder if it might have compromised the pump gaskets… but there was no word of that, either. There was no report of uncommon weather. And the infamous ‘rogue wave’ wasn’t the case, since the ship had no damage, and as I recall, had her lower courses of sail spread.
Everything points to a panic evacuation—except one thing: if they looked to go back to the ship, experienced sailors surely wouldn’t have canvas spread; —one of the classic ways to kill yourself in a lake, let alone the ocean is everybody leaving the sailboat while the sail is up and taking the wind. That’s just so classic as to be dim-witted. And if they looked to go back, it’s curious that of all things that went into the boat—the wife took her photo album, which is what someone does who fears they’re not coming back. If I feared explosion, I might order the boat out, but stay tied on, and everybody just sit out there while a couple of crew continue to manage the helm and monitor the situation.
And if they were victims of piracy—it’s odd the wife would take her photo album with her while being set adrift or thrown overboard. Or that nothing of value would have been taken from the ship—well, unless you count the whole ship itself; but scum and villainy rarely refrain so immaculately from private pillage.
Just a lot of real interesting what-happeneds.
Doesn’t that assume that everyone was thinking rationally? I mean, there are more kinds of irrational thought than violent doings.
Red wine versus white wine barrels, one set drained, the other full? Why that? Did they use the alcohol for some purpose? (Besides drinking it.)
Did that have something to do with the one bilge pump being dismantled?
If the barrels did leak, then would there, over hours, be fumes belowdecks, aside from the non-alcohol components in the wine? If so, maybe they got “drunk” or “high” from the alcohol fumes, slowly enough not to realized they weren’t thinking straight? — Only drinking shouldn’t cause some totally odd behavior from the entire ship’s company. Some of them should’ve been accustomed to some level of drinking. However, inhaling alcohol fumes, I don’t know, that might be another thing altogether.
“Hey, let’s all go for a refreshing swim in the sea!” Doesn’t seem like an explanation, much. Unless there’s a sudden bout of foul weather, some of them should’ve made it back on board, someone should be manning the ship, etc.
Crazy cult activity? From the whole ship’s company? It seems unlikely. “Hey, you lot may be eager for the hereafter, but that’s not what I signed on for! The heck with this, I wanna live!”
The wife’s photo album taken does sound like a sudden, “We’re not coming back, we don’t have time for everything, I’m taking our photos!” Does lend itself to “We’re leaving, not coming back.”
But none of the other sounds like piracy, when all the loot’s left and the barrels were drained, not taken.
Not reaching a nearby island could be bad luck, bad seamanship, or some other ship. Or whatever else might be on the ocean or in it.
But why abandon things you could take with you?
Then again, assuming another ship is after piracy but not other behavior, might be a false assumption. Rescue? Trick them into something, then do something else? Some planned but not rational trap by another ship? — But no evidence of struggle or violence. And again, no later coming back to take the ship and its cargo. Really odd, if they were to be trapped by some other ship. But again, that assumes any other ship had rational motives for something. (Assuming there was another ship at all.)
Very strange.
I believe it was distilled wood alcohol, methanol–the fuel of racecars.
I think I saw this program a while back, and it really sounds like they got in the lifeboat. But why? And what happened to them after they abandoned ship? There’s a saying among blue-water sailors “Step up into the life boat”; in other words don’t leave the boat unless it’s sinking under you. During the Fastnet race in 1979 a hurricane force storm hit the fleet, and most of the people who drowned abandoned boats that were later found still afloat.
I saw a show on that myself once. I thought they had a good hypothesis in the documentary I saw. Methanol leaked into the hold, for fear of an explosion they retreated to the boat tied to the painter. The only open question was what snapped the painter.
Well, and all getting into the boat and leaving no one to steer…with canvas still spread. That’s as scary as potential explosion.
BCS, the 9 barrels of alcohol that leaked were not wine: they were alcohol contained in red oak; the more numerous barrels that did not leak were made of white oak. Some sort of reaction of the wood with the contents, perhaps.
But what they did is just strange.
No, ask a wine maker about the porosity of even American oak vs French oak vs Hungarian oak, and which (s)he chooses to use. (American oak barrels tend to leak more. Things one learns when he joins a winemakers club. 😉 )
The most plausible explanation I’ve come across, and one which feels to me like it’s true, is this:
The ship was carrying a cargo of 1700 barrels of alcohol. Not drinkable wine or spirits, but highly concentrated alcohol. The weather was stormy on the voyage and the hatches to the cargo hold likely remained closed as they crossed the Atlantic. Off the Azores, there was finally a calm period, the day was hot, and the cargo hatches were opened.
In the hold, nine barrels of alcohol had leaked in the stormy weather. There was liquid alcohol washing around the deck, and the enclosed hold was filled with intense alcohol fumes – which quickly spread throughout the ship.
Alcohol fumes can do more than get you dangerously, or fatally, drunk very quickly. They can also very easily ignite. The flash point is low and even a warm stove will ignite concentrated fumes. Whether it would cause an explosion or not, a flash fire aboard a wooden ship with a cargo of 1700 barrels of alcohol would mean an instant inferno.
The crew was well aware of the danger. It was too dangerous to stay aboard the ship. They immediately launched the lifeboat and everyone piled into it, grabbing one or two of the most necessary items, like the chronometer and sextant, in case the ship was destroyed. The lifeboat was tied to the ship with a heavy rope. The main halyard, a rope which would have been quickly accessible and wouldn’t have affected the immediate sailing of the ship, was later found with one end strongly tied to the ship and the other broken and hanging over the side.
They were intending to wait a few hours until the fumes had dispersed and it was safe to return to the ship. But sudden storms can blow up very quickly in that area, and according to Servico Metrologico in the Azores there were gale force winds and torrential rain that day.
The lifeboat was presumably swamped, or else the rope broke and they were separated from the ship, and sank later.
This explanation was first proposed by Charles Edey Fay in 1942 in a limited edition book, which was republished in 1988. It’s a simple, sensible explanation, which accounts for all the facts.
CJ, I posted a comment here, but I think it may have been caught in a spam filter.
Wood alcohol. Yikes. Then they’d have risk from the fumes, flammability, maybe the alcohol reacting with something else down there (equipment, other materials) and doing damage — and if the wood alcohol fumes got out into the rest of the belowdecks, it could have caused real problems with their thinking. Most likely, confusion, nausea, an awareness something wasn’t right…good thing for people to be awake and get out abovedecks to clear their heads and ventilate below. Fumes would tend to affect some in ways different than others, so you’d have a range of very off behavior, even for the ones most able to keep clear thinking.
What occurs to me is, all you need, all one needs, rather, is one or two very persuasive, charismatic leader-types, one guy (or girl) with a gun, some one (or few) with some screwball superstitious thing that the rest either go along with or can’t dissuade the group from.. panic, the unthinking crowd behavior that can happen…. Or, ugh, someone gone so mentally ill (sociopathic?) or vengeful or jealous, greedy, love life proglems, whatever it might be….
Folly or nutty or substance-induced faulty behavior can still have what seem like rational components, which is what the bit about the photo album surely is.
And yet, whatever happens, there should be indications, clues left behind, of what went on.
It seems much more a human psychology problem than something with the weather, natural events, or (who knows?) something strange with sea life? (If it were sea life, though, there should be, I don’t know, skin or scales or other evidence left behind, damage to the ship, uh, human evidence left…yikes.) That last, only because the ocean is still a big place full of unknown creatures and weather and natural forces (waves, storms, etc.).
Did it even make sense to the people going through it? Was it some bizarre, senseless thing to them, too fast and strange to make sense of? Or did they make some partial sense of it? They must have, at some point, or that photo album would still be there along with the rest of the effects.
And so you can understand why they decided to get into the skiff at least for a while. The prospect of a methanol fire must have seemed very great.
But as to whether they all went, or they left one helmsman, well, imagine if they did leave the best sailor, which wasn’t the Captain, and a big wave separated the painter. Might he not have jumped overboard and tried to swim to the skiff to take command of getting it to safety?
The possibilities are too great to know.
The most plausible explanation I’ve come across for the Mary Celeste, and one which feels to me like it’s true, is this:
The ship was carrying a cargo of 1700 barrels of alcohol. Not drinkable wine or spirits, but highly concentrated alcohol. The weather was stormy on the voyage and the hatches to the cargo hold likely remained closed as they crossed the Atlantic. Off the Azores, there was finally a calm period, the day was hot, and the cargo hatches were opened.
In the hold, nine barrels of alcohol had leaked in the stormy weather. There was liquid alcohol washing around the deck, and the enclosed hold was filled with intense alcohol fumes – which quickly spread throughout the ship.
Alcohol fumes can do more than get you dangerously, or fatally, drunk very quickly. They can also very easily ignite. The flash point is low and even a warm stove will ignite concentrated fumes. Whether it would cause an explosion or not, a flash fire aboard a wooden ship with a cargo of 1700 barrels of alcohol would mean an instant inferno.
The crew was well aware of the danger. It was too dangerous to stay aboard the ship. They immediately launched the lifeboat and everyone piled into it, grabbing one or two of the most necessary items, like the chronometer and sextant, in case the ship was destroyed. The lifeboat was tied to the ship with a heavy rope. The main halyard, a rope which would have been quickly accessible and wouldn’t have affected the immediate sailing of the ship, was later found with one end strongly tied to the ship and the other broken and hanging over the side.
They were intending to wait a few hours until the fumes had dispersed and it was safe to return to the ship. But sudden storms can blow up very quickly in that area, and according to Servico Metrologico in the Azores there were gale force winds and torrential rain that day.
The lifeboat was presumably swamped, or else the rope broke and they were separated from the ship, and sank later.
This explanation was first proposed by Charles Edey Fay in 1942 in a limited edition book, which was republished in 1988. It’s a simple, sensible explanation, which accounts for all the facts.
That makes some sense, but they were crazy to have the ship completely vacated. Seems somebody should have stayed aboard to keep the ship headed right. If fumes were bad on the deck, any wind should have carried that away. Maybe they were too overcome to deal with the sails, and it was in a calm—ergo fumes building up…but getting into the boat and leaving nobody to steer could indeed have snapped the rope if the Mary Celeste began to move or to turn.
I once engaged about 15 girls and a couple of guys to pull a dead weight on skids (Egyptian history) —and we used a rope as thick as a woman’s wrist. They’d been running with it, horsing about. We got our sledge somewhat stuck, and I asked them to pull hard. They did, and instantly snapped that rope, which flared and unwound thick as a horse’s tail. We tied it back and we got it unstuck, but I had to tell them to pull easy. Ropes and cords subjected to a hard ‘pop’ can break.
If something the mass of the Mary Celeste got to towing a loaded boat through chop, I can see where they could have popped the rope, or just capsized and eventually sunk.
For a cynical theory, the Capt. of the MC sold the salvage rights to the Capt. of the following Dei Gratia, who did salvage it and got 1/6th the value (I presume divided among owner, Capt. and crew). The Capt. of the MC and family (with their family album and sextant and marine chronometer) and crew (only seven) sailed off into the sunset. The missing boat was a yawl, a much more seaworthy vessel than Capt. Bligh’s 23′ boat that sailed 3600+ nm. It wasn’t hard to vanish in 1872. But against this theory, the MC’s Capt’s son was left in the US. For it, of course, was the removal of the album, sextant and marine chronometer.