Mary Celeste (ship)

A detective's file is an example of a simile in the story The Mary Celeste. A simile serves to compare what or who is unlike one another through use of the words "as" or "like." Manhattan-born author Jane Yolen writes of her wannabe sleuth, a daughter who seeks to emulate her detective father, considering the collecting of paper trails and of physical evidence regarding the disappearance of the Mary Celeste 10 in November 1872 as like unto compiling a folder to be filed in a detective's cabinet of closed, ongoing and unsolved cases.

Nobody knows what happened to the crew of the ship Mary Celeste. The crew from Dei Gratia reported during admiralty court proceedings in Gibraltar regarding salvaging the half brig in question that the Mary Celeste 10 -- the captain with his daughter and wife as well as the cook/steward, the first mate, the second mate, and the four seamen -- were nowhere to be seen even though the cargo was intact and personal possessions were left behind. Possible explanations for the mysterious disappearance of everyone on board tend to center upon drowning accidentally in a lifeboat or deliberately by pirates.

Amazon is the original name of the ship Mary Celeste. Joshua Dewes, as shipbuilder and shipowner on Spencer's Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, launched the hermaphrodite brig in question under the name Amazon in May 1861. The second name succeeded the first with the ship's purchase by Richard W. Haines in November 1868.

That the half brig in question is the apparently unsolvable source of one of the world's greatest peacetime mysteries in maritime history is a reason why Mary Celeste is an interesting mystery. The rationale for abandoning the hermaphrodite brig, with cargo and possessions intact, offers no cooperation with any explanation for unmanned yawing between the Azores and Portugal in 1872. Explanations range from mutiny to piracy, seaquakes, volatility of the cargo of industrial alcohol or water spouts forcing the Mary Celeste 10 to abandon ship for a rickety lifeboat that owner James Winchester had promised to replace and supplement but did not do so and that surely must have sunk, without surface traces, far from help, land and notice.

Ten is the number of people who were on the abandoned, derelict, ghost, mystery ship Mary Celeste. Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs made his first and last voyage on the above-mentioned half brig with his two-year-old daughter Sophia and his wife Sarah. He was accompanied by three officers -- First mate Albert Richardson, second mate Andrew Gilling and cook and steward Edward William Head -- and four seamen -- Gottlieb Goodschaad, Boz and Volkert Lorenzen, and Arian Martens.

New York is the port from which the half brig Mary Celeste most famously sailed. The New York Times reported the vessels Mary Celeste, Osprey and Pedro as departing from New York on Tuesday, November 5, 1872. Stormy weather required a two-day stop-over off Staten Island, for a re-departure date of Thursday, November 7, 1872, for transatlantic and transmediterranean routes culminating in ultimate delivery of cargo in Genoa, Italy.

Yawing is a nautical term that means temporarily swerving off course.

No - the Mary Celeste was a 2-masted brigantine sailing vessel. It had no engines of any type or design.

Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs, as a member of North America's hard-working, honest, sea-based east coast sailing community families, was especially respectable regarding Mary Celeste. He was known for devotion to family and friends, fair treatment of crew and timely unloading of cargo. It would seem that Captain David Reed Morehouse of Dei Gratia enjoyed a similar reputation although less is known of him other than that after his death his wife revealed that the two captains had had dinner together the night before Mary Celeste sailed and that her husband thought that peril had prompted the Mary Celeste 10 of captain with daughter and wife, three officers and four seamen to abandon ship and drown in an overloaded lifeboat.

Alcoholism, imagination and the desperation of poverty are reasons why people might not believe Billy Foyle's viewpoint about the half brig Mary Celeste. William Foyle claimed to have fallen asleep aboard the hermaphrodite brig and to have severed the lifeboat's 330-yard (301.75-meter) tether when the Mary Celeste Ten (of captain with daughter and wife, three officers and four seamen) abandoned ship because of the volatile cargo of 1,701 industrial alcohol-filled barrels marking sounds prefatory to mass explosions. He purported that Captain David Reed Morehouse of Dei Gratia secreted him to Gibraltar, for subsequent passage to England, in order to claim salvage on the derelict, yawing part barkentine part schooner Mary Celeste.

Ghost ships and nineteenth-century occurrences are the connections between Dracula and Mary Celeste. The first-mentioned item references a novel by Bram Stoker (November 8, 1847 - April 20, 1912) and tells the story of the Russian ship Demeter running aground on Whitby with all crew missing except a captain lashed to the steering wheel. The second-mentioned object refers to a famous, real cargo ship that was found yawing, with contracted cargo and personal possessions aboard but without any captain or crew of passengers, halfway between the Azores and Portugal.

Never and nowhere are the "when" and "where" regarding finding the crew members of the half brig Mary Celeste. Everyone known to have been aboard the hermaphrodite brig in question as of Tuesday, November 5, 1872, is considered as having disappeared without a trace. Captain David Williams, who understands the direction and flow of currents between the Azores, Portugal and Spain, suggests, in his online article "Mary Celeste Was Abandoned during a Seaquake," that some of those aboard the part barkentine part schooner may have accounted for never identified bodies found tied to a plank off Spain in early 1873.

The abandonment of a cargo-laden ship for unknown reasons and without witness is the mystery of the half brig Mary Celeste. The hermaphrodite brig in question left New York -- with a listed destination of Genoa, Italy for early December 1872 -- on Tuesday, November 5, 1872, and Staten Island on Thursday, November 7, 1872, and seemed to have crossed no ship's path until the afternoon of Wednesday, December 4, 1872 (civilian reckoning, from midnight to midnight), or Thursday, December 5, 1872 (nautical reckoning, noon to noon). It was sighted by the captain and crew of Dei Gratia with cargo intact but nobody on board -- despite personal possessions appearing to have been left -- and without lifeboats.

Nobody knows what happened to the lifeboat of the half brig Mary Celeste in November or December 1872. Benjamin Spooner Briggs, captain and minority shareholder and owner, thought that the three lifeboats needed to be replaced even though historians question whether James H. Winchester, majority owner and shareholder, ever complied. There was no evidence of lifeboats having been on the hermaphrodite brig in question other than a frayed halyard that may have served as a towline along with unexplained marks that may have occurred in the course of mooring a rickety lifeboat on the deck.

Industrial alcohol is the load that the half brig Mary Celeste was carrying at the time of the hermaphrodite brig's accidental or deliberate abandonment in November or December 1872. The part barkentine part schooner's first load, under the ship's original name of Amazon, in 1861, was lumber. Its last load, in 1885, was a mix of such cargo as fish and footwear.

It did not go missing but was found on December 4 1872.

Source Wikipedia

Mary Celeste was a British ship built in Canada during the British ownership of the US and Canada.

Mary is the name of the daughter of the man who built the ship. Celeste is Spanish roughly meaning "heavenly beauty".

There was no search and rescue team search for the missing passengers of Mary Celeste. The Mary Celeste Ten went missing off the southernmost Azores during or subsequent to the morning of Sunday, November 24, 1872. The captain and the crew of Dei Gratia were the first-known contacts with Mary Celeste between the hermaphrodite brig's departure on Thursday, November 7, 1872, from Staten Island and its discovery yawing between the Azores and Portugal on Wednesday, December 4 or Thursday, December 5, 1872.

The Dei Gratia found the Mary Celeste.

Yes, Mary Celeste sailed past the Azores. The Canadian-built, United States-registered hermaphrodite brig transported cargo from northeastern North America to American, Asian and European ports over Atlantic and Indian Ocean and Caribbean and Mediterranean Sea shipping lanes. The nineteenth-century vessel's most famous and mysterious swing around the northern part of the Atlantic archipelago was during November 1872, with the course-charting map and the daily ship's log identifying a location off the Azores' most southerly island, Santa María, Monday, Nov. 25, 1872.

Murder or survival describes a personal opinion as to happenings to the people aboard the fictitious Marie Celeste. The cook, the page, two passengers and two sailors survived a bloody mutiny that is the subject of the short story J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement. Captain Tibbs was shot after his five-year-old son and 31-year-old wife were thrown overboard whereas one passenger was strangled and everyone else, excepting the above-mentioned casualties and survivors, was suspected of being brutalized and drowned.

Competent, dependable, hard-working, honest and responsible are words that describe the captain of the half brig Mary Celeste. They describe the above-mentioned hermaphrodite brig's most famous captain, the family-oriented Benjamin Spooner Briggs, under whose command the ship became the world's greatest maritime mystery. They may not describe the part barkentine part schooner's last captain, Gilman C. Parker, who was accused by first mate Joseph E. Howe and helmsman Ernest Berthold of deliberate grounding and fraudulent cargo in 1885 even though he died before conviction or exoneration.

During the fall and winter of 1860 and the winter and spring of 1862 is the time that the half brig Mary Celeste was built. The hermaphrodite brig in question was built in the northeast Canadian province of Nova Scotia. It was constructed by shipbuilder Joshua Dewis for launching on Saturday, May 18, 1861, under the name Amazon, a name that the ship held until sometime between November 1868 and October 1869.

Beech, birch, maple, pine and spruce are the types of wood that Mary Celeste was known to have been made of. Beech, birch and maple went into the framework, pine into the cabins and spruce into the rails. All of the wood was available from the 2,500-acre (1,111.74-hectare) timber farm owned by Jacob and Isaac Spicer, co-shareholders with and relatives of Joshua Dewis, the ship's majority shareholder and shipwright under the vessel's original name Amazon.

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