The British brig Dei Gratia was about 400 miles east of the Azores on December 5, 1872, when crew members spotted a ship adrift in the choppy seas. Capt. David Morehouse was taken aback to discover that the unguided vessel was the Mary Celeste, which had left New York City eight days before him and should have already arrived in Genoa, Italy. He changed course to offer help.
Morehouse sent a boarding party to the ship. Belowdecks, the ship's charts had been tossed about, and the crewmen's belongings were still in their quarters. The ship's only lifeboat was missing, and one of its two pumps had been disassembled. Three and a half feet of water was sloshing in the ship's bottom, though the cargo of 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol was largely intact. There was a six-month supply of food and water—but not a soul to consume it.
Thus was born one of the most durable mysteries in nautical history: What happened to the ten people who had sailed aboard the Mary Celeste? Through the decades, a lack of hard facts has only spurred speculation as to what might have taken place. Theories have ranged from mutiny to pirates to sea monsters to killer waterspouts. Arthur Conan Doyle's 1884 short story based on the case posited a capture by a vengeful ex-slave, a 1935 movie featured Bela Lugosi as a homicidal sailor. Now, a new investigation, drawing on modern maritime technology and newly discovered documents, has pieced together the most likely scenario.
"I love the idea of mysteries, but you should always revisit these things using knowledge that has since come to light," says Anne MacGregor, the documentarian who launched the investigation and wrote, directed and produced The True Story of the 'Mary Celeste,' partly with funding from Smithsonian Networks.
The ship began its fateful voyage on November 7, 1872, sailing with seven crewmen and Capt. Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife, Sarah, and the couple's 2-year-old daughter, Sophia. The 282-ton brigantine battled heavy weather for two weeks to reach the Azores, where the ship log's last entry was recorded at 5 a.m. on November 25.
After spotting the Mary Celeste ten days later, the Dei Gratia crewmen sailed the ship some 800 miles to Gibraltar, where a British vice admiralty court convened a salvage hearing, which was usually limited to determining whether the salvagers—in this case, the Dei Gratia crewmen—were entitled to payment from the ship's insurers. But the attorney general in charge of the inquiry, Frederick Solly-Flood, suspected mischief and investigated accordingly. After more than three months, the court found no evidence of foul play. Eventually, the salvagers received a payment, but only one-sixth of the $46,000 for which the ship and its cargo had been insured, suggesting that the authorities were not entirely convinced of the Dei Gratia crew's innocence.
The story of the Mary Celeste might have drifted into history if Conan Doyle hadn't published "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" in 1884; his sensationalistic account, printed in Cornhill Magazine, set off waves of theorizing about the ship's fate. Even Attorney General Solly-Flood revisited the case, writing summaries of his interviews and notes. But the mystery remained unsolved. MacGregor picked up the trail in 2002. "There's so much nonsense written about this legend," she said. "I felt compelled to find the truth."
MacGregor's four previous investigative documentaries, including The Hindenburg Disaster: Probable Cause (2001), applied modern forensic techniques to historical questions. "There are obvious limitations for historic cases," she says. "But using the latest technology, you can come to a different conclusion."
For her Mary Celeste film, MacGregor began by asking what didn't happen. Speculation concerning sea monsters was easy to dismiss. The ship's condition—intact and with full cargo—seemed to rule out pirates. One theory bandied about in the 19th century held that crew members drank the alcohol onboard and mutinied; after interviewing crewmen's descendants, MacGregor deemed that scenario unlikely. Another theory assumed that alcohol vapors expanded in the Azores heat and blew off the main hatch, prompting those aboard to fear an imminent explosion. But MacGregor notes that the boarding party found the main hatch secured and did not report smelling any fumes. True, she says, nine of the 1,701 barrels in the hold were empty, but the empty nine had been recorded as being made of red oak, not white oak like the others. Red oak is known to be a more porous wood and therefore more likely to leak.
As for that homicidal sailor played by Lugosi in The Mystery of the Mary Celeste, he may have been drawn from two German crewmen, brothers Volkert and Boye Lorenzen, who fell under suspicion because none of their personal possessions were found on the abandoned ship. But a Lorenzen descendant told MacGregor that the pair had lost their gear in a shipwreck earlier in 1872. "They had no motive," MacGregor says.
After ruling out what didn't happen, MacGregor confronted the question of what might have.
Abandoning a ship in the open sea is the last thing a captain would order and a sailor would do. But is that what Captain Briggs ordered? If so, why?

Attorney general Frederick Sollyflood erred in his verdict.He found out that DeiGratias crew was not culpable in anyway towards the disaster that happened onboard MaryCeleste,yet he approved stipends for them,such action at that period of time could have sent wrong signals to other salvagers to be,innocent lifes could have been lost because of such decisions.It means back then that Captains who are not in good terms with another will definitely refused to render help and the spirit of crewmanship is destroyed.If modern forensic investigation proved them innocent which i believe they are,then the full wcrth of the monetary value should be paid to their legacies.
Posted by BRUNO OSUCHUKWU on November 19,2007 | 02:05AM
I wish to add my name to the list . The full value should be paid to the crews legacies.
Posted by Paul M McCluskey on November 19,2007 | 01:02PM
A few years ago I read a rather persuasive online article arguing that the Mary Celeste encountered a large wave generated by an earthquake (not uncommon in the vicinity of the Azores); it caused some of the damage that was later observed on the ship, and would likely have sent the panicked crew into the lifeboats. The author said that he'd attempted to research earthquakes in the area, but couldn't find any British record of them. A pity that none of the British investigators went out and ASKED the nearest people whether anything unusual had happened on Nov. 25; the Portuguese of the Azores were plenty familiar with the seas and the seismology. (My grandfather actually lived on Santa Maria, a few miles away from the Mary Celeste's position, but as he was only 1.5 years old in Nov. 1872 he couldn't have told them much.)
Posted by Paula Lozar on November 27,2007 | 01:57PM
I do not have cable or satellite tv... is there anyway to see this movie? Will it be made available on DVD?
Posted by Andrea on December 10,2007 | 02:22PM
Charles Fay certainly asked the Portuguese authorities about the weather and the possibility of earthquakes; The answer he received in 1940 was: "No record of any earthquake is kept in the registers, neither in the local newspapers which we have searched." Jim Watt www.maryceleste.net
Posted by Jim Watt on January 18,2008 | 10:52AM
There's more than a few errors perpetuated in the article about Mary Celeste, the major being that the photo shown is definitely NOT Mary Celeste. I could digress but feel it more positive to add that my research has established the fact that 13 other sailing ships were abandoned in those waters at that time in what was called in ship's logs a "perfect hurricane". Many lives were lost. Furthermore there was a major meteor storm on that date. These facts were never introduced at the Gibraltar hearings and alone could have dispelled any mysteries to come. The reason for abandonment, known to me, is scientific, not imaginative.
Posted by roger campbell on February 1,2008 | 10:17AM
I Think It Was A Fume Theory x!
Posted by Teagan on March 6,2008 | 09:22AM
The brothers,Volkert and Boy Lorenzen,who were part of the ship's crew, were more than likely from the Isle of Fohr in the North Fresian islands off the coast of Denmark and Germany where these names are very common. They were part of many generations of able-bodied seamen from that tiny island. My ancestry is riddled with these names and combinations of these names- Lorenz Boysen, Boy Volkerts, Volkert Lorenzen, etc.
Posted by Nancy Hunt on March 24,2008 | 10:22PM