The Mary Celeste

by Stan Mason

  On the morning of the twenty-fifth of November, the hold was opened at 8.30 a.m. and Goodshall came down the stairway with a lamp in his hand. As he reached the bottom, the Irishman stood up and swung the axe at his head. The German fell like an ox without ever knowing what had hit him. McCormack then emitted a series of noises as though he was Goodshall complaining he had knocked his shins. Shortly, Boz Lorenzen appeared at the head of the stairs. He called down and after receiving no reply made his way down to be dealt with by the Irishman in the same fashion. Similar noises brought Volkert Lorenzen who saw the body of his brother laying down below. In his haste to help him, he took little care to consider that any danger awaited him below. Consequently, within a period of three minutes, three of the crew lay dead - each struck at the side of the head by a blow with the flat part of the axe. By now, the hold was becoming crowded with bodies and McCormack climbed out of the hold to emerge from the stench of the alcohol fumes. He moved towards the man at the wheel, wielding the axe. Martens stood petrified with shock at the appearance of a giant with seventeen days’ growth of beard who appeared from nowhere, and he hardly moved as the kiss of death was accorded to him by the dangerous weapon. As the ship’s wheel spun away, Albert Richardson emerged from below to investigate the strange movement of the vessel. As he hurried to the spinning wheel, believing that Martens had suffered a heart attack, he saw McCormack with the axe. He moved back at a moment when the vessel lurched sharply and the Irishman charge forward and swung the axe missing him.....the blade embedding itself in the rail. Turning swiftly, he took hold of the First Mate and pushed him over the rail into the sea.

  Accumulating his fading strength, he recovered the axe and moved to the galley. William Head had just finished washing and drying the breakfast cutlery and crockery and had put them all away neatly. He had been sitting at the table about to write a letter to his wife. As the ship began to roll he rose to find out the reason. At that moment, McCormack entered the galley, gripped the handled of the axe horizontally and thrust it over the cook’s head. He pulled it firmly towards him quickly breaking the neck of the unfortunate man. By this time, Captain Briggs had left his cabin to enquire as to the cause of the strange movement of the vessel. He was shocked to see the body of the Arian Martens prostrate near the wheel. He moved across to help him as the Irishman came out on deck again. The Captain saw the axe and challenged the stowaway, demanding to know what he was doing on board. McCormack failed to answer and moved menacingly towards him. They wrestled for a few minutes but Captain Briggs was no match for the other man and he lost consciousness when the stowaway repeatedly banged the Captain’s head on the deck until he was dead. McCormack then removed part of the rail and started to smash a hole in the life-boat with the axe. Accumulating all his strength, he managed to push it over the side. It fell bow first, filling quickly with water and then sank into the depths. He felt quite exhausted at that point and wanted to rest but Mrs. Briggs emerged from the cabin to find out what the commotion was all about. She ran over to the body of her husband and bent down to try to help him. When she looked up, the Irishman was towering over her. Young Sophia toddled out on the deck and ran towards her mother but when she came a few feet from her the wheel spun sharply and the child fell and rolled over the side where the rail had been removed. Mrs. Briggs screamed and ran to the side of the vessel to the point where her daughter was lost. McCormack walked across and simply pushed her into the sea. As the wind took the sails they were left far behind. The Irishman stumbled across the deck, needing to find a bed in which to rest as the sickness spread through his body. Suddenly, to his surprise, he was faced by Andrew Gilling. The Second Mate challenged him wearily because he had taken the night watch and had been sleeping through the commotion until Mrs. Briggs’ scream had awoken him. The Irishman could not find the axe at this point so he put his hands round the young man’s throat and hung on until he had squeezed the life out of him. Then, he went into a cabin, fell into a bunk, and slept throughout the day.

  When he awoke he realised he was seriously ill. His strength had ebbed further and even simple tasks seemed to be laborious to him. Before he brought up the bodies from the hold, he broke open a barrel of alcohol and drank some to give him Dutch courage for what he had to do next. It took him nearly half-an-hour to bring up the bodies from the hold and throw them over the side. Then he hauled the body of Edward Head from the galley and disposed of him and the bodies of Martens, Gilling and the Captain. He looked around the deck thereafter to note that there were no blood stains because he had struck some men with the side of the blade of the axe and strangled or beaten the others to death.....with the exception of Richardson, Mrs. Briggs and her daughter who came to their end by going overboard. After that, he made a number of attempts to reduce sail for his purpose but he was forced by fatigue to desist and returned to a bunk in the Captain’s cabin to sleep. The next day he was considerably weaker but such was his strength and determination that he managed to keep the ship in the same area by arrangement of some of the sails and turning the wheel. However, although he knew he had to splice the mast and stove in the bow but he was too weak to do it which made him very angry. He decided to promote his energies to stoving in the bow and swung the axe at the outer planks under the cat-head about two-and-a-half feet above the water-line on the port side. The result was the splitting of a long narrow strip of the edge of the outer plank. A second stroke extended this to a splinter of wood about six feet long which fell into the sea. He shifted to the starboard side of the bow believing he could produce a better result and did likewise, but the second blow, whilst dislodging a similar type of splinter, caused him to let the axe slip through his fingers and it fell into the sea. The Irishman lost his temper and began to act irrationally, lashing out at everything in his path. He got hold of a belaying pin smashed the binnacle in frustration, threw the ship’s papers over the side with the chronometer and other instruments before staggering into the Captain’s cabin and collapsing onto the bed. That was his last act, for the extent of his illness was severe enough to be the death of him.....but not yet!

  Any evidence which might have been on the deck of the Mary Celeste was washed clean during the violent storms which followed over the next few days. It was just after 1 p.m. on Wednesday the fifth of December, 1872, when the wheelman of the Dei Gratia noticed a ship four to six miles off the port bow and called out to Captain Morehouse. The Master scanned her to note that while the other ship wa sailing on the port tack, her jib and fore-topmast staysail were set on the starboard tack. In addition, he could see no helmsman at the wheel and no one on deck. The brigantine was floating on her marks but there was no sign of any damage. He called for Deveau, who was below at the time, to point out the derelict to him, and he also alerted the Second Mate. As they approached the vessel it was clear that some of the rigging was missing, the sails were furled, and the main staysail lay loose on the forward house. The foresail and the upper fore-topsail had been blown away, and the lower fore- topsail hung by its four corners. By this time the whole of the crew of the Dei Gratia ahd come forward to the rail to witness the vessel yawing in the firm breeze and choppy sea. As the ship fell off in the wind, the stern came into view showing her name clearly.....Mary Celeste, New York. Captain Morehouse suggested to Deveau that he take John Wright, the Second Mate, and John Johnson to investigate the derelict and they rowed across to the vessel. Deveau was unhappy at having to take the two men. He had hoped the Captain would say “take two men with you”, in which case he would have chosen Lund and Anderson. However, it would cause suspicion if he argued with the Captain on this point. But there were ways by which he could divert the attention of the two men when they arrived at the derelict in the row-boat. He ordered Johnson to remain in the boat when they tied up alongside her. The seaman was Russian, his English was very poor and he would say very little to anyone......but Deveau could not take the chance so he forced him to remain in the boat. The decks of the ship were
deserted, the masts and yards creaked, the blocks groaned and rattled, and the sails flapped and banged in the breeze. Deveau instructed Wright to attend to the rigging urgently while he went below to investigate. Everything was perfect from his point of view. The long-boat was missing, the rail had been removed, but the bows were still intact. He searched for McCormack in the hold in vain. There was three-and-a-half feet of water there and Deveau had the uncomfortable feeling that the Irishman had drowned. He couldn’t understand how the skylight was left open so that water could get inside.....in the cabin, the forecastle and the galley. When he entered the Captain’s cabin, he found the body of the Irishman laying on the bunk. He slapped the man’s face a number of times to bring him to consciousness and McCormack eventually opened his eyes to tell him weakly about his experiences on board. Then he passed out. Deveau was not certain whether the Irishman was dead or not but he knew he had to get rid of him. Hiding in the hold was one thing; laying on the Captain’s bed for all to see was quite another. Then he saw a message McCormack had written on the top part of the Log Slate: “All killed overboard”, and hurriedly wiped it off. He collected a chart of the ship, sounded the pumps and then hailed the Second Mate from the rigging. John Wright came to the galley and looked inside. He proceeded with Deveau to look at the quarters of the crew. They were about to leave when he paused outside the Captain’s cabin. The First Mate took his arm and suggested strongly they report back to the Dei Gratia, telling him there was no one inside the cabin. In the haste to discuss details to secure the ship properly and the matter of salvage, Wright shrugged his shoulders and moved on. He never looked inside the Captain’s cabin!

  For the second trip across, after they had ‘persuaded’ Captain Morehouse to split the crew and claim the salvage, Deveau told the Captain he wanted to take Charles Lund and Augustus Anderson with him. Morehouse had been forced to let the crews divide for fear of mutiny or being thrown overboard if he refused to take in the salvage ship. There was no point in fighting Deveau over the crew he wanted to take with him. But there was another point which disturbed Morehouse greatly. He expected the crew to be euphoric in find a salvage ship but he also noticed the strange attitudes of Deveau, Lund and Anderson. There were also some comments made by one of them which led him to believe a conspiracy had been hatched. He was no fool, however, and realised it was in his best interests to keep his views to himself and say nothing. This accounted for his own strange attitude at the inquiry in Gibraltar, and the reason why he let Deveau deliver the cargo of the Dei Gratia while he himself remained in Gibraltar.

  Not surprisingly, when the three men boarded the Mary Celeste, both Lund and Anderson reacted badly when they realised what had happened. They were not enthused with the First Mate when he advised them they would all be hanged if the Salvage Court learned of their complicity in the matter. To allay their fears, Deveau informed them that their share of the salvage money would be considerable, but the most important thing for the moment was to work hard to get the ship to Gibraltar. As far as the small crew was concerned, this was the easy part. McCormack had done all the evil work. Their part in the conspiracy had been to catch up with the Mary Celeste which they had done. The seamanship required to get her to Gibraltar was not going to be very testing.

  That night, they dumped the body of the Irishman overboard, not knowing fully whether he was alive or dead. Not that it mattered much because by that time McCormack was far beyond the reach of medical aid. As such, they disposed of the evidence which could have brought them to the gallows. Deveau wiped the top of the Log Slate clean and checked that there was nothing which could implicate him or his crew, and within two days the vessel was fit enough to go round the world. No one would ever know what had happened! But other problems were looming for them on the horizon.....not least in the guise of an old man by the name of Frederick Solly Flood, the Queen’s Proctor. They had not yet met him, but he was an adversary for which they had not accounted. A man determined to find out the truth at all costs!

  Epilogue

  In the final analysis, there are two schools of thought on the subject of the Mary Celeste. One refers to the ethical concepts relating to a tragedy; the other relates to poetic licence based on true fact. It could be suggested that authors had the right to handle the mystery laissez-faire which, after all, produced creative work. On the other hand, the Mary Celeste was a real-life unsolved mystery.....an incident painful to the living relatives of the missing people. On this account many authors denied them any sympathy whatsoever solely for personal gain. They wrote stories and submitted theories with distorted facts, having never bothered to research the incident, and often added their own innovations. It caused confusion to such an extent that careless errors became standard belief. Most significant of these is reflected in the fact that the name of the vessel for one hundred years was indexed in libraries as the ‘Marie’ Celeste. Some part of the blame must be apportioned to sensationalists, novelists, and newspaper reporters willing to clutch at straws, elevating even the greatest hoaxers to the realms of logic and reality. Many shabby tales should have been relegated to the far end of a down-town bar and left to fade into the oblivion they deserved. What were the errors which crept into the mystery on such a gradual basis over the last one hundred and twenty-five years? Some of the major items are set out below.

  When sighted, the Marie Celeste was under full sail, a long stern chase was necessary by the Dei Gratia to catch up with her. A German tramp steamer was crossing her bows, and the sea was calm. When she was boarded there was not a soul on board, yet a half-eaten breakfast stood on the cabin table, three cups of tea were still warm to the touch, a bottle of cough mixture open on the table, a phial of oil and a thimble standing by a sewing machine in which a child’s garment was in the act of being repaired. The Captain’s watch hung from a bracket still ticking, the stove in the galley was warm, the galley fire was burning brightly, a cat was peacefully asleep on a locker. The sailors’ pipes were half-smoked, their washing hanging out to dry, a bloodstained axe was evident, a cutlass lay on the deck, the ship’s boats stood intact on their davits, and there was no sign of damage or violence. There was the implication that the crew were a gang of cut-throats who came from all over the globe, thirteen to thirty in number, drunken, dissolute and murderous. Captain Briggs was a homicidal maniac, or a criminal or a bully. He murdered his wife and child. Similar aspersions were cast on the Captain and crew of the Dei Gratia, while the size and type of both ships have been variously mis-stated. The reason why the Captain should change character within a few weeks of leaving New York has never been established, neither has his involvement in any nefarious arrangement ever been explained satisfactorily.....not that one existed. The Captain had a stable personality. He was religious, owned a home in New England, had a ship to command, a wife and two children, an unblemished reputation, and a one-third share in his vessel. But most of all he was an experienced sailor. Why should he do something entirely out of character.....why should he risk everything in some wild crazy conspiracy? It was more than unlikely he would behave in such a manner. Unfortunately, it was Mr. Solly Flood, the Queen’s Proctor, who spread more doubt than existed! He smelled evil doings on the high seas. Mutiny and foul murder.....conspiracy. He did not believe that ships could be found strangely abandoned with their valuable cargoes intact. Nor did he believe that derelict ships could sail themselves for ten days and seven hundred miles across the wintry Atlantic without a human hand on the wheel.

  As the Mary Celeste lay under close arrest at Gibraltar, Mr. Flood boarded her with four British naval captains and a Colonel of the Royal Engineers. There were no signs of the Mary Celeste having met damaging stormy weather. Triumphantly, he found a phial of sewing-machine oil on a narrow shelf in the Captain’s cabin. If the ship had encountered a storm, he said, why hadn’t the phial fallen over? He also found the old sword under the bed in the Captain’s cabin. He declared:

  “Undoubtedly blo
odstained and cleaned with lemon to disguise the fact.”

  He marshalled his accusing evidence and found a scar in the wood on the ship’s starboard topgallant. He affirmed:

  “Undoubtedly made by an axe!”

  Of the marks on the decks washed by the sea, he said:

  “Undoubtedly blood.”

  And down in the hold he made the biggest discovery of all. Nine of the 1,700 barrels of crude alcohol were dry, and another one had been broached. Mutiny! The naval captains with him aboard the ship believed this was the explanation of anything which destroyed good order in a ship. Given half the chance, seamen would drink anything.....and no Captain would desert his command except under duress. The American Consul in Gibraltar, and an American naval captain who examined the Mary Celeste, dismissed with contempt the British theory that there had been mischief aboard. But that did little to alter the convictions of the Queen’s Proctor.

  For three months the wrangling went on. All parties were sure that survivors of the Mary Celeste would turn up, or that another ship would report news of them. But, as time passed, Mr. Solly Flood looked for a darker explanation. Soon he was in pursuit of what he considered to be ‘a Yankee conspiracy to collect the salvage money.’ The plot would be revealed when someone from the Mary Celeste was found. But this never happened. On the tenth of March, 1873, after eighty-seven days of acrimonious argument where the Judge and the Queen’s Proctor chased down numerous blind alleys, the Court of Inquiry came to an end. The Mary Celeste was released. The Court reluctantly awarded £1,700 salvage money to the Master and crew of the Dei Gratia. It was a miserable sum, less than a fifth of the total value of the brig and her cargo, when they had expected at least one-third.

  One key to the solution of the mystery could be found with regard to a decision made by Captain Morehouse at Gibraltar. He was no fool. From the attitude of Deveau on the Dei Gratia after sighting the Mary Celeste he knew that his First Mate was implicated in some kind of fraud. He was not party to it, nor did he know the devious plan, but Deveau was clearly up to something. Ultimately, the Captain practically refused to give proper answers to the Court and despatched Deveau off on the Dei Gratia at the earliest possible moment. Why should he entrust the ship and its cargo to sail from Gibraltar under the command of his First Mate? No Master would allow that to happen! The owners of the vessel and the owners of the cargo would quickly show their feelings towards that decision as soon as they found out. Yet that is exactly what the experience Captain did.....and one must demand to know the reason why he did it. In the evidence he gave, Deveau stated he had only been to Gibraltar once before, yet Captain Morehouse told him to take his ship and deliver the cargo from that port. It didn’t make sense.....or perhaps it did. It indicated that Captain Morehouse was desperate to get rid of Deveau from Gibraltar. After all, they could all hang if someone broke down and told the truth......a truth of which the Captain was not truly aware! He didn’t want to hang for someone else’s conspiracy! Deveau, in later evidence, declared that the Captain had stayed in Gibraltar to receive the salvage money. What a load of nonsense! Why should the Captain wait around for that and risk someone else taking his ship and a valuable cargo.....especially a man who had only been the First Mate on the Dei Gratia or any other vessel! The award had not yet been made when the First Mate sailed. The salvage money would have been still there when the Captain returned.