The Mysterious Disappearance of the Mary Celeste

Last Updated: 31 Mar 2023
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The Mary Celeste was a ghost ship found off the coast of Portugal in 1872. The Mary Celeste is a ship was discovered atlantic ocean unmanned and apparently abandoned and she was fine and the people and it remain a mystery. Her cargo was virtually untouched and her crew was never seen or heard from again. The crew’s disappearance was the greatest mystery of all time. Eyewitness Account The only eyewitness is Captain Morehouse. Captain Morehouse said that he thought that the crew was panic. Reports that likely to be true.

The weather was very bad and for four days before the storm was very heavy and they found and maybe they have unlikely survive but the ship remains good and thus it remains a mystery. It seems reasonable to suggest that in order to take a break from the pounding sea, the captain gave the order to sail to the lee side of Santa Maria Island where the cook started a fire in the large galley stove to make hot food while other members of the crew furled most of the sails, leaving just enough canvas up to hold her heading as they made their way slowly along the lee shore of the island.

Other crew members set about pumping the bilge and doing other chores. When the food was ready, the men stopped what they were doing and ate. After taking a smoke break, the Captain gave orders to get underway and the crew went back to work. Some went back to pumping the bilge; others started to set the sails they had recently furled. Just then the seafloor near Mary Celeste was ripped apart by a shallow-focused earthquake, a relatively common occurrence in the Azores.

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Report that might be exaggerated Conan Doyle (the author) was dramatized Mary Celeste's story by adding such touches as meals laid out on the table, tea boiling on the stove, and the ship was sailing boldly into the harbor at Gibraltar with nobody at the helm. Today, most people who have heard of the ship think these details are part of what actually happened. They aren't. Conan Doyle's was only the first of many such treatments.

A 1913 magazine article was forged account of a man named Fosdyk who claimed the stowaway on board the Mary Celeste, witnessed the entire crew fall overboard as they pressed against the rail to watch three men have a swimming race, then managed to be the only one not eaten by sharks and eventually washed ashore on Africa. In the 1920s an author named Keating forged an article for Chamber's Journal telling the story of a man named Pemberton who survived. Keating soon expanded the fictitious Pemberton's tale into a book called The Great Mary Celeste Hoax.

Unfortunately, the book's success has become its downfall: Interviews with Pemberton were widely sought. Keating tried to weasel his way out with excuses, and even offered a picture of his own father as a photograph of Pemberton, but it was soon discovered that he made the whole thing up. Some information about the court inquiry held in Gribraltar The Inquiry into the Mary Celeste An inquiry into Mary Celeste disaster was held at the Admiralty Court by the British Royal Navy. Witnesses, experts, sailors, friends, business-partners and acquaintances were all questioned and interrogated.

It was a slow, frustrating process. Not least a man who’s name was Flood. Flood was the Attorney-General of Gibraltar at the time. During the inquiry the judge listened acutely listened that was told and praised the crew Dei Gratia for their attention to detail and their bravery and skill in rescuing the ship , and bringing it safely back to land. Frederick Flood, however, had his own agenda. Flood was hell-bent on proving that the passengers was Mary Celeste had all met with some horrible and violent bloody end was suggested the theory of a drunken mutiny.

He even rowed out to the ship to find evidence! He found the broken leaking barrels and the alcohol and the captain’s sword had cut-marks along the railings. He proposed the theory that the crew got an alcohol, drank themselves blind, murdered the captain, his wife, his daughter, his first mate has chucked them all overboard, then into the lifeboat and rowed…away…from a perfectly good ship… Indeed, not a single piece of ‘evidence’ Flood submitted was found to be what it was!

The barrels were empty because they were leaking (they’d been built of red oak, a porous wood which would’ve explained the empty barrels). The damage of railings? Ropes across the wood. The blood on the captain’s sword? It wasn’t blood. It wasn’t even the captain’s sword…that sword was stored under his bed! The sword that Flood found was an old, rusty knife lying on the deck. Scientists examined the blade and determined that the red substance was nothing but rust and old paint. It was probably used to lever open paint-cans and stir coagulated paint around!

Examples of theories about the Mary Celeste crew’s disappearence Theories range from, alcoholic gas or smoke (fumes) to underwater earthquakes, to waterspouts, to paranormal explanations involving extraterrestrial life, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), sea monsters, and the phenomenon of the Bermuda Triangle, although the Mary Celeste is not known to have sailed through the Bermuda Triangle area. The Mary Celeste is often described as the ghost ship, since she was discovered without any apparent explanation, and her name has become a synonym for similar occurrences.

The ship was said to be "cursed" and had a long history of disasters and catastrophes, and three captains died on the ship. The ship was destroyed in 1885 when it was intentionally wrecked off the coast of Haiti in an attempted insurance fraud. My opinion about Mary Celeste I think the story is half true and half right. The truth part is the storm and the earthquake in the water. The false part is the curse or the ufo and the phenomenon of the Bermuda triangle.

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The Mysterious Disappearance of the Mary Celeste. (2017, Apr 30). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/mary-celeste/

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