Mary Celeste still mystifies, intrigues
By Chris Orchard/ Correspondent
Thursday, March 25, 2004
SHERBORN - Last Thursday at the Sherborn Library, Faith Tiberio confronted a 131-year-old mystery of the sea - a mystery that's puzzled generations of historians, ghost hunters, armchair detectives (including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and above all, Tiberio's great-grandparents.
Tiberio, president of the Sherborn Historical Society, is the great-granddaughter of Isaac Hall, a New York ship-owner of 22 vessels. Emma Hall, Tiberio's great-grandmother, kept a series of diaries that have been treasured in the family for generations - diaries that describe the Halls' shipping business and daily lives.
It was in the voice of Emma Hall that Faith Tiberio told the story:
On Dec. 5, 1872, halfway between the Azores and Portugal, Capt. Morehouse of the merchant vessel Dei Gratia came upon a ship he recognized: the Mary Celeste.
What Morehouse found was shocking and puzzling. The Mary Celeste was completely abandoned, yet, for the most part, untouched. Nothing was stolen; there was no blood or signs of violence. Below was soaked with water, and items were strewn about. One of the pumps wasn't working, but otherwise the ship was in good shape. The ship's boat was gone, along with the chronometer, sextant, and ship's papers.
A month earlier, the Mary Celeste had sailed from New York Harbor, only a week before Dei Gratia. The merchant marine in New York those days was a tight-knit community, said Tiberio, and Capt. Morehouse knew the Mary Celeste. It belonged to the shipping fleet of J.H. Winchester & Co. Isaac Hall, a friend of J.H. Winchester and a partner in the company, owned part of the Mary Celeste along with the ship's master, Capt. Benjamin Briggs.
Briggs was a top-notch seaman, highly respected in the shipping industry. His first mate, Albert Richardson (a distant cousin of Isaac Hall), was also a top seaman, and the entire crew was known to be skilled and affable.
How could such a professional and skilled crew disappear at sea? What happened to this seemingly happy ship? They're questions that have baffled generations of mystery seekers.
Some people suggest piracy or mutiny. Others suggest insurance fraud. It's possible a seaquake washed the entire crew overboard. Maybe the ship was cursed. Maybe the crew drank itself to death (the Mary Celeste was holding gallons of industrial-grade alcohol destined for Genoa, Italy.)
Yet none of these theories seem to hold water. There were no signs of piracy. Mutiny wouldn't make sense in such a professionally run ship on a short voyage. Insurance fraud is also unlikely because the cargo was worth little.
A natural disaster, like a seaquake, could have occurred. Yet the clues indicate that, while the crew left in haste, they left by choice.
Tiberio has her own opinion. "I think something struck the ship," she said, whether it was a large wave, an object or something else.
The collision jostled the ship, shaking a sailor from the rigging. She suspects the fallen sailor must have been seriously injured.
The collision, coupled with an untimely change in barometric pressure and a faulty pump, probably convinced Briggs that the ship was sinking, said Tiberio. (A change in barometric pressure, thought Capt. Morehouse at the time, would play folly with the ship's pumps, making it appear that the ship was sinking.)
The entire crew, along with the injured sailor, got into the ship's boat (a yawl), ready to abandon ship. Briggs grabbed his sextant, chronometer and ship's papers just in case.
The yawl was attached to the Mary Celeste by a halyard, which snapped, dropping the yawl into the Atlantic (a snapped halyard was found at the top of the mainmast).
At this point, thought Tiberio, the crew struck out for land. They found uninhabited land, which they ultimately tried to leave. The injured crew member, now dead, was put on a raft and wrapped in an American flag. The rest of the crew struck out on another raft.
But they didn't make it. Years later, two rafts washed up on the Spanish shore. One had the dead body of a man wrapped in an American flag; the other had five dead bodies. These people, thought Tiberio, were the crew of the Mary Celeste.
The American flag in question would have been similar to one from Emma Hall's ship, the Betsy Perkins. Tiberio still has this original flag, which she showed at the library. It's a little worn from years of use at sea, and later at family Fourth of July celebrations.
Tiberio owns several artifacts from her family's shipping past, including Emma Hall's diaries. Yet much has been lost.
"We had bushels and bushels of paper" from the different ships, said Tiberio. Over the years, they've been lost and mistakenly thrown out. History disappears over time.
After anchoring for the night off Staten Island, the Mary Celeste sailed from New York Harbor on Nov. 7, 1872. It was the last time that fateful ship was seen by Tiberio's ancestors. Tiberio, speaking as Emma Hall, said, "It sailed on November 7, 1872 into history." At the same time, as its topsails dipped below the horizon, the Mary Celeste also sailed out of history, its crew disappearing like so much of the past.
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