SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: The Mystery of the Mary Celeste

When the Mary Celeste was discovered floating and abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean one day in 1872, the legend of the ghost ship was born. Why did the Mary Celeste’s crew disappear? Was it pirates? Mutiny? UFOs? Well, probably not that last one.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Chuck here, introing episode 5 of the Stuff
You Should Know Gets Weird playlist. This is weird stuff, everyone,
and this is an episode on the Mary Celeste, because
that was definitely pretty weird. It's definitely a mystery, and
I believe the title is, in full, The Mystery of
the Mary Celeste.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Enjoy it right now.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland, the triumvirate, the hat trick,
the trio, the triage.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Trifecta.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
In French. There you go. Is that Latin?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
I don't know. I just know it as a gambling term.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Well, whatever it is, it's stuff you should know.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Hey, Happy New Year.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Happy New Year to you too, buddy. Happy New Year, Jerry.
Cheap mouth Happy New Year. Thank you, Jerry.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
So, in real time, this is our first recording of 2018.
I know this always feels a little bit weird when
we say things like Happy New Year in, what, February?

Speaker 3 (01:16):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Late January?

Speaker 3 (01:17):
No, it's like next week. Oh. We ate up the kitty.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Did we get that slim?

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
During our long break, which was wonderful.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah, it was so nice, Chuck. I actually, get this, relaxed.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I don't buy it.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
I did. I unwound. My cortisol levels decreased, although the
spare tire didn't actually go down with it. It was
replaced by frosting.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
My webcam begs to differ because I was peeking in
on you the whole time.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Well, okay, I did a lot of work, but I
did relax in between.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
I saw you pacing.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Wondering what to do with myself.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Clipping orchids, clipping orchids.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Man, my orchids are doing so well right now. It's
super cold out, of course, right? But I've got to
keep them outside because they have a bit of an
ant infestation. Haven't figured out how to do anything about
that one yet. But I built like a little impromptu
cold frame around them. And I have a mini crock
pot warming water inside the cold frame. So to the orchids,

(02:23):
they're in Ecuador right now during the rainy season.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
It's like downsizing. Have you seen that yet? No.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, that means nothing to you then.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
No, it doesn't. I have no idea what you're talking about.
You have to tell me now. What is it?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, it's that new movie. The new Alexander Payne movie
with Matt Damon.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Does it have to do with orchids?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
No.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Crockpots?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
It has to do with shrinking people down and living
in miniature.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Oh, that sounds kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
So there'd be like a miniature crockpot. That's what got
me on that tangent.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Did you ever see that documentary? I'm sorry, everybody who
wants to stay on track, but just one more thing.
Did you ever see that documentary, Chuck, about the woman
who created miniature crime scenes for police to study and
learn from? No. You should check it out. It was
this lady who did exactly what I just said, and

(03:14):
they made a documentary about her and how much these
things have actually helped teach techniques and how radical a
change it was and presumption of guilt and that kind
of thing.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
You know how much I love miniature things, though.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Well, you would love this. I'm surprised you haven't seen
it then.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
No, because what was, I think it was in Chicago,
the museum in Chicago and the downstairs, I want to
say basement, but whatever the lowest floor is. They have
the works of the woman who created all the miniature
house interiors. And it's just like I could have spent
all day in there.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, I'll bet. It's amazing. I know. There is something
about things that are really small. Things that are really
small and things that were once above ground that are
now underwater.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Have you ever get the little tiny Tabasco bottle?

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
I just want to hug it.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
It's about as prized a Tabasco bottle as you can get.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Man, I love small stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah. Oh, I know what you're getting next Christmas.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Something tiny.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah, well, some tiny Tabascos.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
I'm going to be like, hug these.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Give me a small anything.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Okay. Good to know. Good to know. All right. So
let's talk. Let's wrap. All right. You know I love
me a mystery, Chuck. I think you do too.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah. This is a good one. The old ghost ship.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah. When you cross mystery with history, it just blows up.
The spot. The whole spot blows up. And that's what
this one is. Like, I remember learning about the Mary
Celeste back when I was a young tyke. Probably filmed that, like,
time life unexplained phenomena series oh yeah i'm pretty sure
that's where those time life books yeah they were great

(04:58):
they were just chock full of just outright lies and
and mistaken facts and things like that but they were
perfect for like a little 10 year old imagination you.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Know you were tiny what do you mean you were
tiny 10 year old your imagination was big though.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
I i I wasn't tiny at 10. I was really
starting to work on some chubs by then.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Oh, yeah. See, I'm going in reverse order. I was
a skinny 10-year-old.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Oh, yeah. I was never a skinny kid.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Well, anyway. Just imagine little kind of chubby 10-year-old Josh
sitting there reading a Time Life book, learning about the
Mary Celeste, this, like you said, ghost ship, and just
my hair standing up on end going, this is what
a great universe to live in.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, where there can be ghost ships.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, and we'll get to, at the end, we will
reveal the big, well, no one knows for sure what happened.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
No.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
We'll get to what the best guess is at the
very end. Or should we just say that right now?

Speaker 3 (06:02):
No, no.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
That'd be weird.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
I think, no, I think that, I subscribe to the
best guess, as we'll see.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
All right, so way back machine time, right? But this
is our seafaring version.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Well, no, we're going to old New York. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
So we don't need to get wet yet?

Speaker 3 (06:20):
No, not yet. We're Daniel Day-Lewis Reign Supreme.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Have you seen that yet? Oh, no, you're talking about
Gangs of New York.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Gangs of New York.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
I thought you were talking about the new one, Phantom Thread.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Where do you hear about these movies?

Speaker 2 (06:33):
That's my job, dude.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Oh, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
I don't think that movie's even out yet, actually. At
least not in Atlanta. We're like a second-tier city.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, that's true, but I suspect not for long, because
I think Atlanta's actually surpassed L.A. now as far as
film production goes. Ooh. Have you heard that?

Speaker 2 (06:56):
I could certainly believe it. Yeah. So does that mean
we're second tier and L.A. 's third tier?

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Maybe so. All right. 2.5.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
All right, so are you talking early November 1872?

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Yes, November 4th, to be exact, a Monday.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Are you talking about the Astor House in New York City,
New York?

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, man. And this is at a time where, like,
have you ever read Devil in the White City?

Speaker 2 (07:19):
No, man, I still have not read that.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
You should read it. It's pretty good. But one of
the things that the book does is it reproduces menus
from these dinners that they had when they were planning
the expo. And these things were like they had chapters, basically.
They'd smoke cigarettes in the middle. There'd be a cigarette
round because you had to do something to keep all
of this food down and help the process of digestion.

(07:43):
It was crazy how much they would eat. So I
can imagine the food was pretty good at the Astor
House in 1872.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah, but everything back then was like crown roast and
rack of lamb.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
It was just like huge trays of beef.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Right, live pig that you beat to death at your
table and then start eating. They did it, believe me.
The Time Life books told me so.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
That's right. All right, so at this dinner table, we
have a few people. We have one, Captain David Morehouse,
and then his buddy. He was a ship's captain. His buddy,
another ship's captain, because, you know, they tend to hang
out with one another.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Captain Benjamin Spooner, Briggs. And they're sitting down with Briggs' wife, Sarah.
And I don't know, did Morehouse have his wife there,
or was he batching it?

Speaker 3 (08:32):
That's not the impression I have. I think that, uh,
Sarah was there because they were, she was shipping out
the next day too.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
I think he was batching it in other.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Words, but they were, they were good buddies, both captains,
both set to set sail, uh, out of New York
for the Mediterranean. And I guess they were just talking shop.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah. I mean, I think they both grew up in
Nova Scotia, so they may have known each other there. Uh,
a couple of salty old sea dogs, but good people from, from, uh,
From all accounts.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
And they, I mean, the fact that these guys were
having dinner in New York on November 4th, 1872, totally
unremarkable in most senses, right? Yeah. But a month later,
it would be incredibly ironic. Oh, yes. And tell them why.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Well, because Morehouse's ship, the, is it Degratia?

Speaker 3 (09:25):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Okay. We'll call it that. D-E-I-G-R-A-T-I-A. Degratia. was sailing along,
and we'll get to the specifics of how this happened
in a second, but they came upon his buddy's ship,
the Mary Celeste. And by all accounts, it was probably like, hey,
that's Briggs. We need to go over and check out

(09:47):
how Spoon's Briggs is doing. And they weren't doing well
because nobody aboard the ship was aboard the ship.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
No, I mean, just seeing the ship would have caught
him by surprise because his ship out a full week later,
bound for the same city, leaving from the same port,
so they should have never caught up to them. And
then the fact that, yeah, when they boarded it and
there was no one aboard, a mystery that endures to
this day was born that day.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
That is correct.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Right. So the Mary Celeste, this very famous ghost ship,
What a lot of people don't know, Chuck, is that
even before the Mary Celeste became this famous ghost ship,
it was already considered pretty unlucky, actually.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, so 1860 was when, not even named the Mary
Celeste yet, it was called the Amazon at the time,
was born in Nova Scotia. And I believe the very
first voyage, what you would call a maiden voyage, was
to haul some timber to London, across the Atlantic.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Yeah, that's what she was used for.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Pretty routine.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah. Didn't go very well.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
No, it didn't.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
No, her first captain was a guy named Robert McClellan.
And he apparently had had a cold. And when they
shipped out, he took such a turn for the worse
that they had to turn around and go back home.
And he died two days after they got back from pneumonia.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Can you imagine back in those days if you get
a cold, you're like, well, I've got about a 1
in 10 chance of dying. Right.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Maybe even worse than that, right?

Speaker 2 (11:17):
I know.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Yeah, but think about this. First of all, sailors are
a fairly superstitious bunch, right? So a maiden voyage, anything
that's hinky or weird or bad about a maiden voyage, automatically,
cursed ship. So the captain dying on a maiden voyage
that can't even be completed, that's a cursed ship right

(11:40):
out of the gate.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
I would say so.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
But this is also a business venture, so it's not
like the owners gave up on the thing. They said, well...
Just get in another captain, you superstitious dogs, and get
back out there. And that's what they did. Yes.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
And captain number two was John Nutting Parker.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Great name.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
It is a good name. And he also sailed to London.
And when they left, they actually encountered some trouble right
off the bat. They hit some fishing equipment off the
coast of Maine, pressed on, as you do, and did
reach London, dumped off their cargo, set sail for home.
And as they set sail for home, they actually sunk

(12:20):
another boat in the English Channel.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yes. Cursed ship, cursed ship.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah, and that other boat was probably like, picks a lot.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Right, exactly.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Amazon.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yeah. And the captain of the other ship even stubbed
his toe on the way down afterward. It was terrible.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Insult to injury. It was a bad scene.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
So, again, this is a business venture. The owner said, whatever.
It was somebody else's ship. Our ship's fine. We're going
to keep doing this London to... New York to London
timber route. They also did some West Indies trade for
a while, and everything was fairly normal for a while.
And then a freak storm caught this ship. And I'm

(13:00):
not a seafarer by any means whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, same here.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
So I don't know if this actually is an inordinate
amount of things to happen to one ship, but it
does seem like a lot in just less than a
decade for a single ship. Yeah. So the first captain dies.
Second captain sinks another ship. They run into some fishing tackle.
And then in October of 1867, she's run aground in

(13:25):
a storm and is so bad off that the owners say,
we're abandoning her.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, that must be pretty bad. So they literally left
the ship there to decompose, or I guess you would
call it rot if you're wooden.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Or I guess wood decomposes, right? Or is that just rot?

Speaker 3 (13:43):
I think rod is more slang.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Okay. It sounds grosser, too.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
Like cool.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Right. And at that point, the ship was bought by
a dude named Alexander McBean, also from Nova Scotia.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Also a great name.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
And then he, I mean, the ship is changing hands, basically.
He sold that shipwreck. And I guess that was just
a thing at the time. You would buy a shipwreck,
maybe sell it, then turn a quick profit. Probably not
a ton of money. But he sold that shipwreck to
a dude who then sold it to another dude named

(14:18):
Richard Haynes. So he paid about $ 1, 750 for it, which
is about $ 32, 000, according to our favorite inflation calculator, which is?

Speaker 3 (14:30):
West Egg.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
That's correct. It's just got a good name.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Plus it's easy to use, and it's been around forever.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah. I mean, I think it goes up to 2016 now,
which is pretty good.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
That's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
They're always just like a year behind, which I can respect.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
That's fine. They need the data.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
So Haynes went through bankruptcy, and that boat was seized.
And then that was sold to a group led by
a man named James Winchester.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
And Haynes had fixed it up a little bit, but
Winchester really put a lot of money into it, lengthened
it to over 100 feet, added a deck. Basically, the
show would have been called Flip This Brigantine.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
We're starring Vanilla Ice. You like that one, huh?

Speaker 2 (15:17):
I've seen that show. Have you seen it?

Speaker 3 (15:20):
For like five minutes. I'll tell you this. This proves
that I relaxed this vacation.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
You ready?

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah. I got hooked on an Animal Planet show called
Insane Pools. Have you heard of it?

Speaker 2 (15:34):
I do watch one of those pool shows, but I
don't think it's that one. It's another one.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
I was like, I have to go to bed now
or else I'm going to be up till like 5 a.m.
watching this marathon about a pool renovation show that has
nothing to do with animals.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
It was bizarre how it just got its hooks in me.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, that happens from time to time with me too.
And you know what scares me about those pools though
is most of them are just amazing and you have
like grottos and waterfalls and all that cool stuff. But
some people opt for those death tubes where you can like,
swim through a thing to another thing.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Oh, I haven't seen one with that yet.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, they're like, hey, we want to be able to
swim through a tube to another part of the pool
and potentially, you know, get stuck and die. That's how
I see it.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
That would be really awful.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
I don't think that ever happens, though.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
They need to just leave a stick of butter at
the mouth of that thing so you can grease yourself
up real good as you're going through. You know? Your
pool would just have a sheen of butter floating in it.
At the top, it kind of rots in the sunlight.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
I worked at a pool like that once.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
That's grody.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
It was not butter, but there was a sheen. I
don't know what it was.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
I'm sure it was sunblock.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
It has to be. What else is it going to be?

Speaker 2 (16:50):
I don't know. Body funk?

Speaker 3 (16:52):
It could be. There's probably a little body funk fixed
in there.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
But does that cause a rainbow sheen?

Speaker 3 (16:58):
Oh, a rainbow sheen? No. I don't know what that was.
There should not be a rainbow sheen on your pool.
Unless you had, like, pool like swimmers covered in gasoline
going into your pool that would explain it.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Well that might have been it okay uh all right
so winchester and by the way winchester is just the
major investor uh there was a very notable other investor
and what was his name.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
Oh oh oh you're asking me yeah it's been a
couple weeks hasn't it sorry about that.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
You were just staring up in the space that was
weird his.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
His name was benjamin spooner briggs.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Right who you will notice is the dude from dinner Yes.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
So he's not only the captain of the Mary Celeste,
he was a two-fifth stake investor in it. And what's
notable is that at the time he invested in the
Mary Celeste, he and his brother were actually considering getting
out of the sailing game and buying a hardware store

(17:56):
together in New Bedford, Mass. And instead, Briggs said, no,
you know what? This is too good of a deal.
This is a great ship. I'm going to pour my
savings into a two-fifth stake, and not only that, I'll
be the captain of it. And not only that, for
its maiden voyage, I'm going to bring my wife and
daughter along with me.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, it's one of those sliding doors things, like should
have gone into hardware.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yeah, rather than sailing into history.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
So, by the way, that is when the ship was
officially renamed the Mary Celeste from the Amazon, is when
it was re-registered, I guess. I looked it up. I
was kind of curious because there is a Marie Celeste,
which is a fairly famous Civil Wars ship. I was
just curious where the name came from, and nobody really knows.

(18:46):
But they said there is a theory that it was
an error by the painter because it's an English and
a French name, and it's just a weird mix-up to
not have been Marie and be Marie Celeste. So they
think it might have been either the Mary Sellers or
another Marie Celeste. So either way. Who knows?

Speaker 3 (19:04):
Well, even today, though, still there's some confusion. If you
Google Mary Celeste, Google says, do you mean Marie Celeste?
And I say, no, Google, I mean Mary Celeste.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
It says, do you mean Vanilla Ice?

Speaker 3 (19:16):
Right. Vanilla Ice flipped his pool.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
So Briggs, like you said, brought along his wife, who
was at dinner, and then their two-year-old daughter, Sophia Matilda.
They left little Arthur behind because he was seven. And
he was in school, and they said, we don't want
to take little Arthur out of school. No.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
He was already pretty dim-witted, so.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Oh, was he?

Speaker 3 (19:40):
No, I don't know. Okay. But they didn't want to
interrupt his schooling, so they said, Arthur, you stay here
with some relatives. And they took Sophia Matilda. with them.
And this was a huge decision. I don't know if
this is unusual or not, but whatever. Briggs said, I'm
bringing my wife and daughter with me on this ship

(20:01):
on the maiden voyage.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
And everyone went, oh, brother. I know.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
They're like, oh, good, good. This will be fun. We'll
not only have to work really hard for weeks at sea,
we'll also have to entertain your two-year-old whenever she wants
our attention. Right.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
And we can't curse.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Right. Exactly. So that decision, though, probably had some effects
on the voyage overall. It definitely had an effect on
who Briggs chose for the crew.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
He, you know, he had his wife, his daughter. He
was known as a Christian, an upstanding person. Apparently didn't
drink much, if at all. He was known as fair, just, level-headed,
and just an overall honorable person. Not just at sea,
but in life, you know, as well, back on land.
So he was pretty well regarded. I'm assuming his wife

(20:52):
was equally well regarded. And he, because his family was
on the boat with him, he went to some... trouble
to make sure that the seven crew members that he
picked were of upright character themselves, that there weren't any
shade balls because you don't want any shady sailors out
in the middle of the Atlantic ocean with your wife

(21:13):
and child. No, you don't want that. So that is
to say that the crew of the Mary Celeste on
her maiden voyage with Benjamin Briggs, his wife and daughter
were all pretty, pretty top-notch dudes by all accounts.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, for sure. So, um, They set sail. What they
were carrying was about 1,700, actually 1,701 to be exact,
barrels of what's called denatured alcohol. This is not rum.
This is not something you're going to drink. It is undrinkable.
It is like fuel, basically, industrial fuel. And they finally

(21:49):
set sail on November 7, 1872, bound for Italy, bound
for Genoa. And I think we should probably take a
break right here.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
All right. We'll be right back about The.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Haunted Ghost Ship.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
All right, Chuck.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
We're out at sea.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Okay, so there was an investigation, as you can imagine.
We'll talk about that more later. But this investigation determined
that probably, although they definitely ran into some storms and
heavy weather here or there, but most of the voyage
of the Mary Celeste was fairly unremarkable overall, right?

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, they made it a long way.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
It wasn't. They did. It wasn't until the last five
days before they are suspected to have disappeared that the
Mary Celeste's voyage turned a little odd or became a
little unusual. Yeah. And they figured out that from looking
at the logbooks that within that last five days, Captain

(23:13):
Briggs decided that he really should have seen land by
by this time. And if you're a captain and you're
a chronometer, which is basically like from what I was
reading about this, it's like a portable time zone that
you can use for celestial navigation to basically tell exactly

(23:35):
where you are in the world. It's a very valuable
tool to have at sea, but if your chronometer is faulty,
you're not necessarily going to be where you think you are. Okay.
So based on his calculations with his chronometer, he thought
that they should have seen land, the Azores by then.

(23:56):
This island chain in the Atlantic kind of toward Portugal.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah, it's like just like dead west of southern Portugal.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah, I think the easternmost island of the Azores is
like 400 miles north. West of Portugal. Something like that.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Quite lovely, I imagine.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
I can imagine, too. But I think it's also basically
in the middle of nowhere. In the mid-Atlantic.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, it's one of those things where if you do
the Google map, you will see these tiny specks and
nothing but blue. Right. So you've got to start zooming
out to see where the heck you are.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Right. It's like the Hawaii of the Atlantic, I think. Okay.
So he thought that he should have seen the Azores
by then. And he hadn't. So I think he started
to get a little nervous because they changed course. They
went northward, which he suspected would have taken him toward
the Azores. And he may have been either looking to
kind of reorient himself or just looking for haven. Who knows?

(24:57):
But they know that they did change course and that
he wasn't where he was. He thought he was.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
Yeah, and I also get the idea, which will jibe
with one of the theories, is that he may have
been a little nervous having his two-year-old and his wife
aboard in general.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, it's not just his
safety now or even the safety of the crew. It's
his little kid and his wife's safety. Of course he's
going to be worried about that.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Exactly. Man, I can't imagine having a two-year-old on a ship.
What a nightmare.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
I know.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Good God.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
I know. Just go on a cruise. You can experience
it a million times over. Oy.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, because a modern-day cruise ship is the same as
a 19th century sailing vessel.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
It's not. You're right. There's nothing to do. No, that's true.
Although they did have a melodion, which I had to
look that up as well. It's like an accordion.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, I don't see why they even call it something different.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
Right, an accordion with keys.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
All right, so on... Oh, as opposed to what?

Speaker 3 (26:01):
The little buttons. Oh. Or maybe it's the accordion with
the buttons right on the keys. It's one of the two.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
You know what I'm talking about. It's like a weird
Al Yankovic type instrument.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Oh, well, we should get Aaron Cooper to write us
because he will surely do.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
And they, yes, I'm sure. So they would have had
that aboard, which would have been all the pleasure you
could imagine.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, like one wooden doll and a And an accordion
is really going to keep a two-year-old occupied.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
And a communal salt lick in the middle of the
above deck.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
All right. So the next morning they wake up and
the Mary Celeste actually sees land, which I can imagine
if you were a seaman out there in the 19th
century and you're a little worried, there is no more
welcome sight than seeing land. You know, after seeing nothing
but water for weeks and weeks. So they see land.

(26:58):
The logbook says they saw land. They're about six miles
from Santa Maria, which is the easternmost of the Azores.
And this was sort of the last stop before you
hit Portugal.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Right. I can imagine. He just was so relieved when
he saw this land.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
So the reason we know this is not because anybody
on the Mary Celeste told anybody, at least not verbally.
They found the logbook and the log slate, which is
kind of like you're just keeping track of stuff on
the slate before you actually transcribe it into the logbook.
And the log slate was where they noted that 8 a.m.
on November 25th, the Mary Celeste sighted land, and by

(27:41):
their calculations were six miles off of Santa Maria, right?

Speaker 2 (27:45):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
That was November 25th. Yes.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
I guess they just had a nice Thanksgiving?

Speaker 3 (27:53):
Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
With their salt lick? Yeah. Now, they had food, as
we will see. Yeah. So, remember the Drogatia?

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Drogatia.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Drogatia.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
I think that's it, that last one.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
So, the other ship that was being sailed by his buddy,
Captain Morehouse, remember? Seaman John Johnson of that ship said, hey, Cappy,
there's another ship out here. And it's about 400 miles
further east from where that log had placed that ship,
the Mary Celeste.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
Not only that, it was a good 10 or 11
days later.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Right. So this is all spelling trouble. There are only
three sails set. The rest of the sails had either
blown away, weren't raised. None of this bodes well. And
Captain Morehouse, I don't think he probably recognized from that
distance that it was the Mary Celeste yet. Right. But
he sent his first mate, Oliver DeVoe, and second mate,

(28:55):
John Wright, and another dude and said, get in that boat,
row over there, and see what the heck's going on.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
Right. So these guys, DeVoe and Wright, were the ones
who actually got on deck and investigated the Mary Celeste.
And I read this one article that I think just
put it so perfectly, like just ropes creaking, like a
door kind of banging open and closed in the wind.
And just utter silence as far as humans are concerned.

(29:23):
Nobody on board the ship would be so creepy. I
think that Oliver DeVoe and John Wright probably experienced one
of the creepiest experiences that any human ever has in
the history of people.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
So is it creepier? for Josh Clark, Seaman Josh, to
get upon the ship and find nobody aboard, but everything
seemingly okay, or to see dead bodies in each of
the bunks?

Speaker 3 (29:57):
It would be... Okay, so it depends on the position
of the dead bodies. Are they just kind of like
crumpled and tossed like they've been thrown down onto the
bed or something like that? Or are they like sitting
up at the dinner table or sitting up in bed?

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Or is it a Walt Disney ride?

Speaker 3 (30:15):
That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, or are they laying there with purple robes and Nikes,
Heaven's Gate style?

Speaker 3 (30:22):
Yeah, that would be something as well. So to me,
creepier is... I think no one there. I think it
would be more horrific to find the bodies, of course.
But creepier would be just finding a ghost ship. Okay.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
I agree, I think.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
Because there's the absence of something that's supposed to be there.
And that's, I think, what would make it so creepy.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Well, yeah. And I think the thing that really makes
it creepy, as we will see, is that it wasn't like, hey,
this ship has clearly been pirated.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
And there's blood on the walls and people have been killed.
There was just nobody there. No signs of distress. The sextant,
the chronometer. I know.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
It's tougher than you'd think to say.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
The chronometer. The nav book. They were gone, but that
log book was still there. So basically, like, there was food.
There was drinking water. Everyone's clothes were there. That little
girl's two– the salt lick was there. Her two toys
were there.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
Shoot, there was the impression– From her sleeping on the
bed in the captain's cabin?

Speaker 2 (31:25):
That's super creepy. It is.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Yeah. There were no signs of violence. There was no
signs of panic. No kind of disorder. I mean, some
things were out of order, but it was the kind
of stuff that you could chalk up to a ship
drifting at sea for a week or so.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
By itself.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Like a broken compass.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
Right. Broken compass. Like some of them, some of the
sails have been blown down onto the deck itself. There
was some water in there. Yeah. Right. And then one
of the things they found, which is a pretty big clue,
was improvised sounding rod, which is basically just a stick
with markings on it to show feet. Right.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
And they you would lower that into the hold and.
to see where the water mark hit. It's just to
figure out how deep water is in a hold. So
they clearly knew that there was water in the hold
because they built the sounding rod, and it had been
found on the deck by the two guys from the
Dei Gratia.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah, and it was only about three and a half
feet of water by all accounts, and that sounds like
a lot to a guy like me who's not an
experienced sailor. Sure. But apparently on a ship that size,
that's like no big whoop.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
One of the other things that ties in with the water, too,
is they had two pumps aboard. One of the pumps
was found disassembled. So there was basically like these guys
came onto the ship and there are all these weird
out-of-context things that were the result of decisions made by
people who were now vanished. And they had to try

(33:01):
to figure this out. But one of the first things
that came into their head, eventually, I think when they
went back to the Dei Gratia, and told Morehouse what
was going on, in pretty short order, somebody said, well,
we should probably take this ship to Gibraltar with us.
How about that? Because there's something called salvage rights, and

(33:22):
whether it was your friend who was missing or what
have you, you would have been pretty foolish to have
just continued on your way and left the Mary Celeste,
because what they found pretty quickly, and this adds to
the mystery itself as well, The Mary Celeste was totally saleable.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Well, yeah, and I don't even think we pointed out
that all the denatured alcohol that they were shipping was
there and intact. Like, it's not like they had been
axed into or, like, what would you pillage?

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Exploded.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Or exploded. It was all there. All the gear on
board was there. So there was a lot to salvage,
in other words. Because not only can you salvage the ship,
but the cargo. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:06):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
And what it would come out to, like between $ 45, 000
and $ 80, 000 in today dollars, is what he could have
potentially gotten for salvaging this thing.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Yeah, because at the time, the insurers owed a reward
to whoever salvaged a ship like this, and it could
run up to 100% of the value of the cargo
or the ship.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Mutual of Nova Scotia.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
It would pay good dollars.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Which, I mean, man, you want to see a board
stuffed with neckbeards? Yeah. Go to that bank.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Oh, that's good. All right. So they, like you said,
decided to do the smart thing and the right thing
because and it was his friend. Besides the fact that
I mean, anyone would have tried to salvage the ship,
but it was also his pal. So I think that
probably had a little to do with him saying or
maybe it was just all the money.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
No, I think it was both. I'm sure he was concerned.
I've read accounts that he was concerned by this.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
He said, aye, very concerned.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
The end.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
So they take this boat. They actually took, there was
three guys. One of them was Oliver DeVoe, who was
the first mate of the Dei Gratia. He was in
charge of sailing this.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, very important note.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
Yeah, he sailed with just two other guys. The Mary Celeste.
They pumped out the water from the hold. They fixed
the sails. And the night of the day that they
found it, they set sail for Gibraltar. And just three
dudes sailed this thing successfully 1,000 kilometers from where it

(35:43):
was found onto Gibraltar. Not bad. Where they took it
to the salvage court and said, pay up.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
That's right. And this is where things get a little
bit weird. Because... There was a man there, the Queen's
Proctor in Gibraltar, by the name of Frederick Solly Flood.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Man, that could not be more British.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
I know. And he basically said, hmm, this is, you
say there was nobody there at all. There's no explanation
for any of this. And you want the equivalent of
$ 2017 of $ 45, 000.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
To $ 80, 000?

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Thank you, West Egg.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
No, I think that was in their dollars. $ 1872.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
No, it says contemporary estimate. Doesn't that mean?

Speaker 3 (36:35):
No, contemporary at the time.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
I think that was an estimate in their dollars.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Is there such a thing as contemporary at the time?
Doesn't that always mean now?

Speaker 3 (36:46):
I don't know. I could have gotten it wrong. It's
entirely possible. All right.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
Well, it's 2018 and we're just figuring stuff out here, folks.
So give us a break.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
So it's in their dollars. So I'm almost positive.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Okay. Well, at any rate, he was– Sully Flood said,
this seems really hinky to me, guys. And DeVoe, you, sir,
since you boarded the thing first, you sailed it here.
You are the star witness in this case. He gave
his testimony. It was very clear. Nothing weird about it.
He was very honest because, by all accounts, he had

(37:24):
nothing to hide. But Solly Floods just was suspicious from
the beginning.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Yeah, so much so that during this investigation, and this
would be like going to probate court, and all of
a sudden the representative for the state accuses you of
murdering your grandma, who's the state you're in charge of
taking through probate. Yeah. And then suddenly there's this murder
investigation against you.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Without any evidence of anything.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
Right. Just based on the prosecutor's suspicions, right?

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Well, and that Granny disappeared without a trace.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
Well, oh yeah, that's a big one too. I forgot
that part.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
But, you know.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
So that's basically what happened to these guys. So they
were pretty surprised by this. And Solly Flood launched this investigation.
They inspected the Mary Celeste. They found Marks on the railing,
which Solly Flood was like, these are clearly hatchet marks.
There was discoloration on Captain Briggs' sword. This is clearly blood. Well,

(38:21):
it turned out that the hatchet marks, the axe marks,
were actually from the construction of the ship. That wasn't
axe marks, so no violence there. There wasn't blood on Briggs' sword.
It was just rust. But Solly Flood was so determined
to prosecute these guys that he suppressed the test results.

(38:42):
that showed that this was not blood on the sword,
that it was actually rust. He really wanted to get
these two.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Well, yeah, and here's the deal. I think things really
ramped up when, here's what happened. Before all of this, like,
deep investigation, remember, Morehouse still has his ship that was waylaid.
And so he says, hey, DeVoe, I got to stay
here for this thing to collect this dough. You just
go on to Genoa. You've already testified. And take our

(39:11):
cargo of petroleum because I got to get the stuff here.
I'm losing money. Right. And so he did so. And
so all of a sudden, Sully Flood was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
He was the number one witness. And you've just sent
this guy away. So now I'm super suspicious. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
But DeVoe came back. He's like, what? What's going on? on, everybody?

Speaker 2 (39:30):
What's the big deal? Here's some salami.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
So finally, Solly Flood just couldn't come up with any
evidence of foul play. But apparently did raise enough suspicion
that the probate judge said, you know what? We'll give
you guys a reward. but it's going to be like
a 10th of what you actually deserve.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
So they got a reward of 1700 pounds, um, which
was Jack, even in that day. Yeah. Um, and they, uh,
they were allowed to go on their way. The Mary
Celeste was finally released in February. This, this all began
in December. She was released in February to finally carry her, uh,

(40:13):
cargo of alcohol to Genoa, Genoa. And, um, That would
have been that. And what's weird is when you think
about this ghost ship, you just think like, well, obviously
they took her out of service or commission. You've got
to remember, this is a business venture. A ship in
those days, just like they are today, it's a business venture.

(40:34):
And business people are not exactly the sentimental types usually.
So once she got to Genoa, they got a new crew,
a new captain, and put her right back into service again.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
So, as you say, it just is back out there
on the market again, taking cargo around the world. And
it ran aground off a reef of Haiti in 1885.
And this was all– this is just kind of a
weird ending to this ship that was super unlucky or

(41:05):
maybe cursed. Who knows? Of course, that stuff isn't real.
But it ran aground in Haiti as part of this
insurance fraud scheme. So they cooked up this scheme. Who
was the, what was the guy's name? The captain?

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Captain Gilman Perkins.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
All right. So here's what he did. He basically, it's
like any insurance fraud you can imagine today. Like when
I was a kid, there was this, you know, I
didn't grow up in a big neighborhood. I grew up
on a street with like seven houses and it was
a dirt road until I was like 12. With the
murder house? No.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
Oh. Oh.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
What murder house?

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Was it a murder house or a haunted house? I
can't remember. There was one down the street from you
that you were scared to death of.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Oh, yeah. This was that. So that one was torn down,
but a big house was built in its place. But
the old barn from the murdery haunted house was still there.
And my brother and I used to go exploring, is
what we'll call it now. We basically busted into this barn,
and we're just checking things out one day. And then

(42:08):
about two weeks later, the thing burned down. And I
remember being a little kid in these insurance detectives. Is
that what they're called?

Speaker 3 (42:19):
They are now.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Insurance, whatever, investigators.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
Claims investigators?

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Yeah, they came by and questioned Scott and I. And
we're like, what was in that thing? Because this guy
is claiming like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of,
I can't remember what all he said was in there. And,
you know, we were little kids, so we just told
the truth. We're like, none of that stuff was in there.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
We stole that.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
It was a bunch of. Old file cabinets and just
a bunch of junk. It was just like a junk barn.
So I'm not even, I need to ask my mom.
I'm not sure whatever happened with that.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
That guy's probably still in jail because of eight-year-old Chuck. Good.
That's funny. He got some guy sent up the river.
The law prevailed.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
But that's basically what happened here is this guy purposely
wrecks the ship and says, man, there was a lot
of really valuable stuff on board. I was toting a
bunch of bass ale, like the real bass ale. That
we still enjoy today. Sure. And then what else was there?
It was a bunch of really expensive shoes.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
Cutlery.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah, a bunch of cutlery.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Fine fish, fine butter.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
And what was in there? A bunch of garbage.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
It was. So this guy purposely runs the ship aground.
It's insured by five different insurers for a total of $ 34, 000.
A lot of dough. In 1872 dollars. Contemporary dollars. And
they probably would have gotten away with this. But the captain,
Gilman Perkins, went ashore and sold salvage rights to this cargo,

(43:47):
this fine cargo that was supposedly on the ship, to
a local salvage person in Haiti. And had he not
conned the salvager, then they may, again, they may have
gotten away with this. But the salvager went aboard to
get this, to recover this cargo, this bass, this great butter,

(44:08):
great shoes, cutlery, all this stuff. And found, like you said,
just pure nastiness there.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
There was a bunch of junk ale. A lot of
the bottles weren't even filled. There were dog collars instead
of shoes.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
What else? The cutlery. No, no, the cutlery was dog collars.
These boots were old galoshes.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah, the women's fine shoes. Just classic scams. The butter
was rank slush, I think is what it was called.
So this con man or the salvager is like, I've
been conned and alerts the authorities who get on the
case and finally track it all the way back to Boston.
And Captain Perkins, the last captain of the Mary Celeste,
remember the first captain died. The third or fourth captain disappeared.

(44:52):
And the last captain of the ship is facing the
gallows for barratry, which is deliberate destroying of a ship.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
It's a great crime.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
Narrowly avoided being executed for it. I think the jury
came back seven to five and he got off, just
narrowly avoided being killed for it.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah. I don't know why he got off.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
The article I read by a guy named Paul Collins
supposed that the jury just couldn't bring themselves to kill
a person for an insurance fraud scheme. And that was it.
And actually, a couple of years after, they changed the
law So that barotry was no longer a capital offense.
But you could still get in big trouble for it,

(45:35):
but a jury would be more likely to convict if
it didn't mean your death, you know?

Speaker 2 (45:38):
Right.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
So the Mary Celeste run aground on this reef met
its fate when, I guess, the government of Haiti paid
for it to be doused in kerosene instead of flame.
All right.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Well, let's take a break and we'll come back and
talk a little bit about how the legend of the
Mary Celeste lived on and then What may have actually
happened that fateful day in November?

Speaker 4 (46:03):

.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
All right, so the Mary Celeste, it wasn't some huge
sensational story of the time. Locally, it probably got a
little news, but it wasn't like, you know, it didn't
sweep the world. But there was a story written by
one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called J. Habakkuk Jepson's Statement.

(46:50):
In 1884.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
That's the worst made-up name I've ever heard.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
In Cornhill Magazine, also worst magazine name ever.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, but it was like a huge magazine at the time. Oh, yeah? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
I know it outsold Cornhole Magazine.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Right.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
So he writes a story, and what it is is
basically this sensationalistic fake account of the Mary Celeste, but
everyone takes it as real.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Yeah, and he renamed the ship the Marie Celeste. I
don't know if it was a mistake on his part
or whatever, but that also muddies the waters these days, too,
as far as Google searches go.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah, so everyone thought this thing was real. All these
basically presented a bunch of things as fact, made up
a bunch of stuff like the tea was still hot
and steaming when they climbed aboard, and the beds were
still warm, and it was... sailing perfectly and fully sailed

(47:49):
and breakfast was half eaten and like there's a cigar
still burning. None of this stuff was true. It was
all cooked up to make the myth just even creepier.
But a lot of people, even today, still think that
stuff is kind of true.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Did he make all that up or was it just
kind of added to later on?

Speaker 2 (48:08):
Well, I think, I don't know what exactly he made up,
but it basically over the years was Everyone just started
adding stuff like that. The lifeboat was still there. You know, right.
None of that stuff was true.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
Right. So all of those those facts are making scare quotes,
as you can see. They are they they they lend
credence to like really outrageous solutions to this mystery. Right.

Speaker 4 (48:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
There have been a lot. Well, some some aren't exactly
outrageous or preposterous. They're just the evidence doesn't support them.
Some are just totally outrageous.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Right.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
Yeah. So you can kind of divide them into different categories,
like the natural phenomenon. There could have been a sea quake,
which I guess happens, and that usually disturbs the sea
above when the seafloor has a massive earthquake. Water spouts,
rogue waves. Remember, we did a really good episode on

(49:02):
rogue waves.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
Remember that one? Giant squid, giant octopus, which fall under
the subcategory sea monster. That's the natural stuff.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
Sigma and the sea monster?

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
All right. Then there's piracy and murder. These just for
the time would make a little more sense. Like Conan
Doyle said that there was an ex-slave bent on revenge
who just wanted to kill white people. And that was

(49:37):
in his story. So that clearly ramped things up. There
was a movie in the 30s with Bela Lugosi that
he was one of the crew members was a murderous sailor.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
With a hook.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Oh, really?

Speaker 3 (49:49):
All right.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
Well, they always had hooks. Captain Briggs was overcome with
religious mania, killed everyone on board, including his family, then
killed himself. Then there was the mutiny theory that everyone
got into this alcohol that you couldn't even drink.

Speaker 3 (50:05):
No, you would die like almost immediately.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yeah, I guess just. got the drunken murderers, the drunken
murder rampage. You know what happens when you drink a little,
you just want to kill.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
Right. Exactly. Well, do you remember, um, I guess in
our prohibition episode, it was shown years on that the
U S government had poisoned the, the bootleg hooch supply
with denatured alcohol and people died and went blind from it.
This is this stuff. Yeah. That's what they put into
the supply.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Well, and then there's the, just the, kind of mundane
pirate piratry, like, hey, this was where there were North
African pirates. And that's probably what happened is they were
it was just a regular run of the mill pirate operation.

Speaker 3 (50:49):
Yeah. But whether it's like any kind of violence, like
a religious fervor or pirates or something like that, there
was not any sign of struggle. Remember, and the one
lifeboat was missing. So it would seem that if they
got off the ship, they probably got off willingly rather
than there having been some sort of violence.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah, and then also the two brothers, there were a
couple of brothers who were to the crew members, Volkert
and Boy Lorenzen, and they were suspects for a little
while because none of their personal possessions were found. Apparently
there was no motive whatsoever, and A descendant of them said,
you know, they had lost all their gear in a

(51:34):
previous shipwreck. So just none of that makes any sense.
They were good guys.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
Right. So probably was not murder, right? Probably not. Plus
also the idea that the crew had come across another ship,
pirated it, turned pirate all of a sudden, and were
led by Briggs. The idea that, and then just took
this other ship and set sail to start a new
life elsewhere. Yeah. It doesn't make much sense on its face,

(52:02):
but even if you dig down just one more degree
and remember that they left their son Arthur behind, who
became an orphan on the day that the Dei Gratia
found the Mary Celeste, it lends even less credence to that.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Unless they didn't like Arthur.

Speaker 3 (52:19):
Yeah, again, he was fairly dim-witted.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
They left him behind.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
Not a very likable kid. He had a real temper
for no good reason. Didn't like cake. Who doesn't like cake?
I know. So, the murder, piracy, or lastly, so remember
the Captain Morehouse. Yeah. Dined with Captain Briggs and his
wife the night before they headed out. Yeah. And then

(52:44):
Captain Morehouse was the one who found the ship and
claimed salvage rights to it. The idea that it was fraud,
maybe a fraudulent scheme cooked up, that one's really dismissed too. Again,
by the presence of Arthur. Right.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Arthur ruined everything.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
So, you can dismiss... Murder, piracy, or fraud, typically. Yes.
What about paranormal?

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Let's go ahead and dismiss that, too.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Because I don't think that the Bermuda Triangle ate them,
or that aliens... It's aliens, man. I don't think that happened.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Yeah, that's a big one.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
So let's just go ahead and not even talk about
that too much, because that's dumb.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
So that Frederick Solly Flood's obsession with this whole thing
at the time, contemporarily... um doc presented like the documented
evidence we have concerning the case so it's good that
he he did this that he was gripped by this
this paranoia the suspicion right yeah um because we do
know some facts about the thing we know that like

(53:45):
like we said the ship was found with just three
three sails up and the rest were either blown down
or unfurled the lifeboat was missing there was um a
rope dangling over the the side from the back of
the ship into the water Yeah. Nine of the 1701
casks were intact, but were actually empty. Yeah. And on

(54:07):
closer inspection, they were made of red oak, which is
more porous than white oak, which the other 1701 barrels
were made of and were intact and still full. So
we know these things about this ship that are actually correct.
And they've been put together to kind of create this

(54:28):
explanation that, again, isn't definitive, doesn't prove it once and
for all what happened. That'll never happen now, which I love.
But there's a pretty good explanation. I think that we
both kind of agree is the likeliest explanation.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
Yeah, so those casks that leaked but did not explode
or anything, there could have been a smell. There could
have been a sound. There could have been Just some
indication that maybe this ship is about to blow up
or we are in danger. They had taken on a
little water that might have played into it. But what

(55:04):
really everyone thinks played into it is, like we said
at the beginning, was that he had his wife and
toddler aboard. So he was taking no chances, which would
thoroughly explain why they got off of that boat really
quickly at the very first signs that something could be wrong.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
Right. So those nine red oak barrels that were empty
had 300 gallons of denatured, highly flammable alcohol in them.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, that would have smelled.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Yeah, it would have smelled. It could have created a
fireball explosion. It could have blown the hatches off. It
could have done a lot of things that would have
made a reasonable person, especially one that's also concerned for
the life of his wife and child, say, the likeliest
thing we should do here, the most reasonable thing we
should do here is get off of this ship. So

(55:53):
considering that there was this alcohol aboard, some of it
was missing, and that the lifeboat was gone, and that
the logbook showed that they were within sight of land
the last time they'd made any kind of entry, supports
the idea that they had all gotten into the lifeboat
willingly because probably that alcohol and then the water that

(56:19):
the ship had taken on.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Yeah, and apparently in 2006 there was a study at
University College of London where they tried to reproduce what
that explosion might have looked like and sounded like. And
they did it with butane. So I guess, is that
about the same thing?

Speaker 3 (56:36):
I don't know why they used butane instead of alcohol vapors.
I have no idea why, but they feel like it
was pretty definitive.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Yeah, and so basically it caused a big brilliant flame
and made a sound. But because it was this vapor,
there was no... It didn't burn everything up. It didn't
scorch anything. There was no soot. There was no evidence.
So if this would have happened on board, this guy's
got his wife and his toddler, that would have been
enough to create a panic. And that's where my money
is for sure.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
For sure. And plus also, I mean, the explosion of
the exploding alcohol theory had been around for a while,
but it had been dismissed because they were like, well,
it would have left some evidence. But this study showed that, no,
it could have actually blown up. scared the heck out
of these people and gotten them off this boat into
the lifeboat, which they would have had connected to this ship,

(57:26):
the Mary Celeste, by this 400 foot or 400 yards.
It was a very long rope, inch thick rope called
a halyard. And they had connected the lifeboat to it.
And what they supposed happened was that they kept a
few of the sails down. Some of them still furled.
to let the ship keep going but at a slow

(57:48):
pace because they were going to have to ride behind
it for an indefinite period of time. And the wind
caught it just right, sped the ship up, snapped the line,
and then within an hour, the lifeboat was adrift with
the Mary Celeste out of sight.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
So is the idea that they got in the boat
with the rope attached to just say, hey, let's get
away from it and see what happens here?

Speaker 3 (58:12):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
Okay, and then it just starts going, the rope is gone,
and then they're like, well, can't catch it now.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
Right, and they would have been left adrift at sea
to die, which is what everybody thinks happened.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
Yeah, and I guess at the time there would be,
unless it got really lucky or unlucky and the rowboat
eventually washed ashore somewhere, there would just be no trace, right?

Speaker 3 (58:40):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
They just were fish food.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
Yeah, I mean, if they're out in the Atlantic, especially
if they just... Six miles away from an island that's
in the middle of nowhere is pretty middle of nowhere.
So if you're in a small boat, it'd be very
easy to vanish without a trace forever.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Man, I bet that story is the sad one, is
what those final days were like.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
That kid, man.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Heartbreaking.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
So that's the story of the Mary Celeste.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Good job.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
Good job, you, Chuck.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
I feel like we kicked the rest off the sword
on this one.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
If you want to know more about the Mary Celeste,
there is plenty more to dig into. This is a
nice rabbit hole to jump down if you want to
do that kind of thing. Just go search Google. Say, no, Google,
I mean Mary Celeste. And start off. You'll have fun.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
And in the meantime, it's time for Listener Mail.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
I'm going to call this local listener. Hey, guys. My
name is Sally, and I am a sophomore at Emory University.
Started listening to Stuff You Should Know two years ago
when I was on a school exchange in Beijing. What
began as a fun way to bide time and bumper-to-bumper
traffic turned into a complete obsession. Your quick banter made
me feel at home on the other side of the world.

(59:58):
While you're engaging in well-developed topics, reignited my love of learning.
Since leaving Emory, I frequently imagine bumping into you guys
in Decatur and Atlanta and having the opportunity to chat
about your journey from college kids at UGA to potentially
the most interesting and vibrant guys I've heard. Wow. You're vibrant, buddy.

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
I'm fascinated by how you do what you do, and
there's nothing I would love more than to be a
fly on the wall of the show. From your creative
process to your tangential tidbits... Whatever topic you happen to
be covering, I am fully captivated by every facet. That's nice, huh?

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
I still have not declared a major. She wrote a
lot more really nice stuff, but I had to edit
it for content.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Or for time. I have still not declared a major,
and I'm still essentially a ball of frenetic energy. But
you guys have helped me because you helped me tap
into that frenetic energy and productively exercise my burning, insatiable
desire to learn, to think, to question, and to grow.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Now as a young adult and until the nurses need
to pinch my oxygen tank and physically made me stop.

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
Well done.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
A million thanks. That is Sally Jinx.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Thanks a lot, Sally. That's pretty great.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Very sweet. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
And good luck with the rest of your schooling. Agreed.
If you want to get in touch with us and
pay us some high compliments like Sally did, we're always
down with that. You can tweet to us at joshumclark
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(01:01:31):
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Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.