Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: The Mystery of the Mary Celeste

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

When the Mary Celeste was discovered floating and abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean one day in 1872, the legend of the ghost ship was born. Why did the Mary Celeste’s crew disappear? Was it pirates? Mutiny? UFOs? Well, probably not that last one.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Our podcast. Dude, he messed up the clip. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means

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The Stuff You Should Know gets weird playlist. This is weird stuff, everyone, and this is episode on the Mary Celeste, because that was definitely pretty weird. It's definitely a mystery. And I believe the title is, in full, the mystery of the Mary Celeste. Enjoy it right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from House. StuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Rowland, the triumvirate, the hat trick, the trio, the triage in French. There you go. Is that Latin? I don't know. I just know it as a gambling term. Well, whatever it is, it's stuff you should know. Hey, happy New Year. Happy New Year to you, too, buddy.

Happy New Year. She mouth happy year So in real time This is our first recording of 2018 I know this always feels a little bit weird When we say things like Happy New Year in what February? No this will be late January No, it's like next week

Oh We ate up the kitty Did we get that slim? Yeah, oh yeah During our long break which was wonderful Yeah it was so nice Chuck I actually get this Relaxed

No Yes. I don't buy it. I did. I unwound. My cortisol levels decreased. Although the spare tire didn't actually go down with it. It was replaced by frosting. My webcam begs to differ because I was peeking in on you the whole time. Well, okay, I did a lot of work, but I did relax in between. I saw you pacing. Wondering what to do with myself. Clipping orchids, clipping orchids.

Man, my orchids are doing so well. right now. It's super cold out, of course, right? Yes. But I've got to keep them outside because they have a bit of an ant-vestation. Haven't figured out how to do anything about that one yet. But I built like a little impromptu cold frame around them. And I have a mini crock pot warming water inside the cold frame. So to the orchids, they're in Ecuador right now during the rainy season. It's like downsizing. Have you seen that yet? No. Well, that means nothing to you then.

No, it doesn't. I have no idea what you're talking about. You have to tell me now. What is it? Well, it's that new movie, the new Alexander Payne movie with Matt Damon. Does it have to do with orchids, carpots? It has to do with... It has to do with shrinking people down and living in miniature. Oh, that sounds kind of cool. So there'd be like a miniature crockpot. That's what got me on that tangent. Did you ever see that documentary? I'm sorry everybody who wants to stay on track, but just one more thing. Did you ever see that documentary, Chuck, about the woman?

who created miniature crime scenes for, like, police to study and learn from? No. You should check it out. It was this lady who did exactly what I just said, and they made a documentary about her, and how much these things have actually helped teach techniques and how radical a change it was and presumption of guilt and that kind of thing. You know how much I love miniature things, though. Well, you would love this.

I'm surprised you haven't seen it then. No, because what was, I think it was in Chicago, the museum in Chicago, and the downstairs, I want to say basement, but whatever the lowest floor is, they have the works of the woman who created all the miniature house interiors. And it's just like, I could have spent all day in there. Yeah, I'll bet. It's amazing. I know. There is something about things that are really small. Things that are really small and things that were once above ground that are.

are now underwater. Have you ever get the little tiny tobasco bottle? I just want to hug it. It's about as prized a tobacco bottle as you can get. Man, I love small stuff like that. Yeah. Oh, I know what you're getting next Christmas. Something tiny.

Yeah, well, some tiny tobaccos. I'm going to be like, hug these. Give me a small anything. Okay, good to know. Good to know. All right, so let's talk. Let's wrap. All right.

You know, I love me a mystery, Chuck. I think you do, too. Yeah, this is a good one. The old ghost ship. Yeah, when you cross mystery with history, it just blows up. The whole spot blows up. And that's what this one is. Like, I remember learning about the Mary Celeste back when I was Youngtike.

Probably filmed that, like, time-life unexplained phenomena series. Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure that's where I read about it. Were those time-life books? Yeah, they were great. They were just chock-full of, just outright lies and mistaken facts and things like that, but they were perfect for like a little 10-year-old imagination, you know?

You were tiny. What do you mean? You were tiny 10-year-old. Your imagination was big, though. I wasn't tiny at 10. I was really starting to work on some chubs by then. Oh, yeah. See, I'm going to reverse order.

I was a skinny 10-year-old. Oh, yeah. I was never a skinny kid. Yeah. Well, anyway. It's just imagine little kind of chubby 10-year-old Josh Sitting there reading a time life book Learning about the Mary Celeste

This like you said, ghost ship And just my hair standing up on and going This is what a great universe to live in Yeah, where there can be ghost ships Right Yeah and we'll get to At the end we will reveal the big Well no one knows for sure what happened

But no We'll get to what the best guess is at the very end. Or should we just say that right now? No, no. That'd be weird. I think that I subscribe to the best guess, as we'll see. All right.

So way back machine time, right? But this is our seafaring version. Well, no, we're going to old New York. Oh, okay. So we don't need to get wet yet? No, not yet. We're Daniel Day Lewis reign supreme. Have you seen that yet?

Oh, no, you're talking about... Gangs of New York. I thought you're talking about the new one, Phantom Threat. I don't, where do you hear about these movies? That's my job, dude. Oh, yeah, that's right. That, that's right. Yeah, that, I don't think that movie's even out yet, actually.

Okay. At least not in Atlanta. You know, we're like a second-tier city. Yeah, that's true, but I suspect not for long, because I think Atlanta's actually surpassed L.A. now as far as, like, film production goes. Ooh. Have you heard that? I could certainly believe it. Yeah.

So does that mean we're second-tier? In LA's third tier? Maybe so. All right. 2.5. All right. So are you talking early November 1872? Yes, November 4th, to be exact, a Monday.

Are you talking about the Astor House in New York City, New York? Yeah, man. And this was at a time where, like, have you ever read Devil in the White City? No, man, I still have not read that. You should read it. It's pretty good. But one of the things that the book does is it reproduces menus from these dinners that they had when they were planning the expo.

And these things were like, they had chapters, basically. They'd smoke cigarettes in the middle. There'd be a cigarette round because you had to do something to keep all of this food down and help the process of digestion. It was crazy how much they would eat. So I can imagine the food was pretty good at the Astor House in 1872. Yeah, but everything back then was like crown roast and rack of lamb. Yeah. It was just like huge trays of beef.

Right. Live pig that you. You beat to death at your table and then start eating. God. They did it, believe me. The Time Life Books told me, so. That's right. All right.

So at this dinner table, we have a few people. We have one, Captain David Morehouse, and then his buddy, he was a ship's captain. His buddy, another ship's captain, because, you know, they tend to hang out with one another. Sure. Captain Benjamin Spooner, Briggs. And they're sitting down with Briggs's wife, Sarah. And I don't know, did Moorhouse have his? wife there or was he batching it that that's not the impression i have i think that uh sarah was there

because they were she was shipping out the next day too okay i think he was batching it in other words but they were they were good buddies both captains both set to set sail uh out of new york for the mediterranean and i guess they were just talking shop yeah i mean i think they both grew up in nova scotia so they may have known each other there a couple of salty old sea dogs but good people from all accounts. Sure. And they, I mean, the fact that these guys were having dinner in New York on November 4, 1872, totally unremarkable in most senses, right?

Yeah. But a month later, it would be incredibly ironic. Oh, yes. And tell them why. Well, because Morehouse's ship, the, is it DeGratia? I think so. Okay. We'll call it that.

D-E-I-G-R-A-T-E. I A. de gratia. We're sailing along, and we'll get to the specifics of how this happened a second. But they came upon his buddy ship, the Mary Celeste. And by all accounts, it was probably like, hey, that's Briggs. We need to go over and check out how Spoons Briggs is doing. And they weren't doing well because nobody aboard the ship was aboard the ship. No, I mean, just seeing the ship would have caught him by surprise because his ship,

out a full week later, bound for the same city, leaving from the same port, so they should have never caught up to them. And then the fact that, yeah, when they boarded it and there was no one aboard, a mystery that endures to this day was born that day. That is correct. Right. So the Mary Celeste, it's a very famous ghost ship. But what a lot of people don't know, Chuck, is that even before the Mary Celeste became this

famous ghost ship, it was already considered pretty unlucky, actually. Yeah, so 1860 was when not even named the Mary Celestia. It was called the Amazon at the time was born in Nova Scotia. And I believe the very first voyage, what you would call a maiden voyage, was to haul some timber to London across the Atlantic. Yeah, that's what she was used for. Pretty routine. Yeah.

Didn't go very well. No, it didn't. No, her first captain was a guy named Robert McClellan. Yeah. And he apparently had had a cold, and when they shipped out, he took such a turn for the worst that they had to turn around and go back home. And he died two days after they got back from pneumonia. Can you imagine back in those days if you get a cold, you're like, well, I've got about a one in ten chance of dying. Right.

Maybe even worse than that, right? Yeah. So this, but think about this. Like, first of all, sailors are fairly superstitious bunch, right? So a maiden voyage, anything that's like hinky or weird or bad about a maiden voyage, automatically cursed ship. So the captain dying on a maiden voyage that can't even be completed, that's a cursed ship right out of the gate. I would say so. But this is also a business venture, so it's not like the owners gave up on the thing.

They said, well, just get in another captain, you superstitious dogs, and get back out there. And that's what they did. Yes. And captain number two was John Nutting Park. Parker. Great name. It is a good name. And he also sailed to London. And when they left, they actually encountered some trouble right off the bat. They hit some fishing equipment off the coast of Maine, pressed on as you do, and did reach London, dumped off their cargo, set sail for home. And as they set sail for home, they actually sunk another boat in the English Channel. Yes. Cursed ship,

cursed ship. Yeah, and that other boat was probably like, picks a lot. Right, exactly. Amazon. Yeah, and the captain of the other ship even

stubbed his toe on the way down afterward. It was terrible. Insult to injury. So, again, this is a business venture. The owner said, whatever, it was somebody else's ship, our ship's fine.

We're going to keep doing this London to, New York to London timber route. They also did some West Indies trade for a while, and everything was fairly normal, for a while. And then a freak storm caught this ship.

And I'm not, like, I'm not a seafarer by any means whatsoever. Yeah, same here. So I don't know if this actually is like an inordinate amount of things to happen to one ship. But it does seem like a lot in just, you know, less than a decade for a single ship. So the first captain dies. Second captain sinks another ship. They run into some fishing tackle. and then in October of 1867 she's run aground in a storm and is so bad off that the owners say we're abandoning her.

Yeah, that must be pretty bad. So they literally left the ship there to decompose, or I guess you would call it rot if you're wooden. Sure. Or I guess wood decomposes, right? Or is that just rot? I think rod is more slang. Okay. It sounds grosser, too.

Like cool. Right. And at that point, the ship was bought by a dude named Alexander McBean, also from Nova Scotia. Also a great name. And then he, I mean, the ship is changing hands, basically. He sold that shipwreck. And I guess that was just a thing at the time. You would buy a shipwreck, maybe sell it and turn a quick profit.

Probably not a ton of money. But he sold that shipwreck to a dude who then sold it to another dude named Richard. Haynes. So he paid about $1,750 for it, which is about $32,000, according to our favorite inflation calculator, which is... West Egg. That's correct. It's just got a good name. Plus, it's easy to use, and it's been around forever. Yeah, and they're, I mean, I think it goes up to 2016 now, which is pretty good. That's pretty, pretty good.

They're always just like a year behind, which I can respect. That's fine. They need the data. So Haynes went through bankruptcy, and that boat was seized, and then that was sold to a group led by a man named James Winchester. Okay. And Haynes had fixed it up a little bit, but Winchester really put a lot of money into it, lengthened it to over 100 feet, added a deck. Basically, the show would have been called Flip This Brigantine. It was starring Vanilla Ice. You like that one, huh?

I've seen that show. Have you seen it? For like five minutes of it. I'll tell you, I'll tell you this. This proves that I relaxed this vacation. You ready? Yeah. I got hooked on an animal planet show called Insane Pools.

Oh. Have you heard of it? I do watch one of those pool shows, but I don't think it's that one. It's another one. I was like, I have to go to bed now or else I'm going to be up to like 5 a.m. watching this marathon about a pool renovation show that has nothing to do with animals. Yeah, yeah. It was bizarre how it just got its hooks in me. Yeah, that happens from time to time with me, too.

And you know what scares me about those pools, though? Most of them are just amazing, and you have, like, grottos and waterfalls and all that cool stuff. But some people opt for those death tubes where you can, like, swim through a thing to another thing. Oh, I haven't seen one with that yet. Yeah, they're like, hey, we want to be able to swim through a tube to another part of the pool. and potentially, you know, get stuck and die. That's how I see it. That would be really awful.

I don't think that ever happened, so. They need to just leave a stick of butter at the mouth of that thing so you can grease yourself up real good as you're going through. You know? Your pool would just have a sheen of butter floating at the top. It kind of rots in the sunlight. I worked at a pool like that once. That's groating.

It was not butter, but there was a sheen. I don't know what it was. I'm sure it was a sunblock. Yeah, I guess so. Has to be. What else is it going to be? I don't know. Body funk. It could be, there's probably a little body funk fixed in there. But does that cause it rainbow sheen?

Oh, a rainbow sheen, no. I don't know what that was. There should not be a rainbow sheen on your pool. Unless you had like pool, like swimmers covered in gasoline going into your pool. Oh. That would explain it. Well, that might have been it. Okay. All right, so Winchester, and by the way, Winchester is just the main.

major investor. There was a very notable other investor, and what was his name? Oh, oh, you're asking me. Yeah. It's been a couple weeks, hasn't it? Sorry about that. You were just staring up in the space. That was weird. His name was Benjamin Spooner Briggs. Right, who you will notice is the dude from dinner. Yes, so he's not only the captain of the Mary Celeste. He was a two-fifth stake investor in it. And what's notable is that at the time, he invested in the Mary Celeste, he and his brother were actually considering getting out of the sailing game. Yeah. And buying a hardware store together in New Bedford Mass.

And instead, Briggs said, no, you know what? This is too good of a deal. This is a great ship. I'm going to pour my savings into a two-fifth stake. And not only that, I'll be the captain of it. And not only that, for its maiden voyage, I'm going to bring my wife and daughter along with me. Yeah, it's one of those sliding doors things, like should have gone into hardware. Yeah, yeah, rather than sailing into history.

So, by the way, that is when the ship was officially renamed the Mary Celeste from the Amazon. Mm-hmm. Is when it was re-registered, I guess. And I looked it up. I was kind of curious because there is a Marie Celeste, which was a fairly famous World War II, or I'm sorry, Civil War II. And I was just curious where the name came from, and nobody really knows. but they said there is a theory that it was an error by the painter because it's an English and a French name and it's just a weird mix-up to not have been Marie and be Mary Celeste. So they think it might have been either the Mary Sellers or another Marie-Celeste.

Huh. So either way, who knows? Well, even today, though, like still there's like some confusion when you, if you Google, Mary Celeste, Google says, do you mean Marie-Celeste? And I say, no, Google, I mean Mary Celeste. It says, do you mean vanilla ice? Right. Vanilla ice flipped us pool. So Briggs, like you said, brought along his wife who was at dinner, and then their two-year-old daughter, Sophia Matilda.

They left Little Arthur behind because he was seven and he was in school. And they said, we don't want to take Little Arthur out of school. No, he was already pretty dim-witted, so. Oh, was he? No, I don't know. Okay. But they didn't want to interrupt his schooling. So they said, Arthur, you stay here with some relatives.

And they took Sophia Matilda with them. And this was a huge decision. I don't know if this was unusual or not, but whatever. Briggs said, I'm bringing my wife and daughter with me on this ship on the maiden voyage. And everyone went, oh, brother. I know. They were like, oh, good, good. This will be fun.

Well, we'll not only have to work really hard for weeks at sea, we'll also have to entertain your two-year-old whenever she wants our attention. And we can't curse. Right. Exactly. So that decision, though, probably had some effects on the voyage overall. It definitely had an effect on who Briggs chose for the crew. Yeah. He, you know, he had his wife, his daughter.

He was known as a Christian, an upstanding person. Apparently, he didn't drink much, if at all. He was known as fair, just level-headed, and just an overall honorable person, not just at sea, but in life, you know, as well, back on land. So he was pretty well regarded. I'm assuming his wife was equally well regarded. And he, because his family was on the boat with him, he went to some trouble to make sure that the seven crew members that he picked were of upright character themselves, that there weren't any shade balls, because you don't want any shady sailors out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with your wife and child.

No. You don't want that. So that is to say that the crew of the Mary Celeste on her maiden voyage with Benjamin Briggs, his wife and daughter, were all pretty top-notch dudes, by all accounts. Yeah, for sure. So they set sail. What they were carrying was about 1,700, actually 1,701, to be exact, barrels of what's called denatured alcohol. This is not rum. This is not something you're going to drink. It is undrinkable. It is like fuel

basically, industrial fuel. And they finally sit sale on November 7th, 1872, bound for Italy, bound for Genoa. And I think we should probably take a break right here. Let's do it. All right. We'll be right back about The Haunted Ghost Ship.

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Wherever you're from, whatever you're like, you're welcome. Listen to out of character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Pods, or wherever you get your podcasts. Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Yuwanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references,

occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get anywhere fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are.

Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. liar listen on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i don't really care right chuck chuck chuck chuck there's there's an investigation as you can imagine and we'll talk about that more later, but this investigation determined that probably,

although they definitely ran in some storms and heavy weather here, there, but most of the voyage of the Mary Celeste was fairly unremarkable overall, right? Yeah, they made it a long way. It wasn't, they did. It wasn't until the last five days before they are suspected to have disappeared

that the Mary Celeste's voyage turned a little odd or became a little unusual. Yeah. And they figured out that from looking at the logbooks, that within that last five days, Captain Briggs decided that he really should have seen land by this time. And if you're a captain in your chronometer, which is basically like, from what I was reading about this, it's like a portable time zone that you can use for celestial navigation to basically tell exactly. where you are in the world. It's a very valuable tool to have it see, but if your chronometer

is faulty, you're not necessarily going to be where you think you are. So based on his calculations with his chronometer, he thought that they should have seen land, the Azois by then, this island chain in the Atlantic kind of

toward Portugal. Yeah, it's like just like dead west of southern Portugal. Yeah, I think the eastern most island of the Azores is like 400 miles west of Portugal, something like that. Quite lovely, I imagine. I can imagine, too, but I think it's also basically in the middle of nowhere, in the mid-Atlantic. Yeah, it's one of those things that if you do the Google map, you will see these tiny specs and nothing but blue. Right.

So you've got to start zooming out to see where the heck you are. Right. It's like the Hawaii of the Atlantic, I think. Okay. So he thought that he should have seen the Azores by then, and he hadn't. So I think he started to get a little nervous because they changed course. They went northward, which he suspected would have taken him toward the Azores. And he may have been either looking to kind of reorient himself or just looking for Haven.

Who knows? But they know that they did change course and that he wasn't. where he thought he was. Yeah, and I also get the idea, which we'll jive with one of the theories, is that he may have been a little nervous having his two-year-old and his wife aboard in general. Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, he's not just, it's not just his safety now, or even the safety of the crew. It's his little kid and his wife's safety.

Of course he's going to be worried about that. Exactly. Man, I can't imagine having a two-year-old on a ship. What a nightmare. I know. Good God. I don't know. Just go on a cruise.

You can experience it a million times over. Yeah, because the cruise ship, modern-day cruise ship is the same as a 19th century sailing vessel. It's not. You're right. Like, there's nothing to do. No, that's true. Although they did have a Melodian, which I had to look that up as well. It's like an accordion.

Yeah, I don't see why they even call it something different. Right, an accordion with keys. All right, so on, oh, as opposed to what? the little buttons oh or maybe it's the accordion with the buttons right on the keys

it's one of the two okay you know what I'm talking it's like a weird el Yankovic type instrument oh well we should get Aaron Cooper to write us

because he will surely do and they yes I'm sure he um so they would have had that aboard which would have been

all the all the pleasure you could imagine yeah like one wooden doll and an accordion is really going to keep it two year old occupied And the communal salt lick

in the middle of the above deck. All right. So the next morning they wake up and the Mary Celeste actually sees land, which I can imagine

if you were a seaman out there in the 19th century and you're a little worried there is no more welcome sight than seeing land. You know, after seeing nothing but water for weeks and weeks.

So they see land. The logbook says they saw land. They were about six miles from Santa Ramaria, which is the easternmost of the Azores, and this was sort of the last stop before you hit Portugal. Right. I can imagine there, like, there's just,

he just was so relieved when he saw this land. Sure. So the reason we know this is not because anybody on the Mary Celeste told anybody, at least not verbally, they found the log book and the log slate, which is kind of like your, you're just keeping track of stuff on the slate before you actually transcribe it into the logbook. And the log slate was where they noted that 8 a.m. on November 25th, the Mary Celeste sited land,

and by their calculations were six miles off of Santa Maria, right? That's right. That was November 25th. Yes. I guess they just had a nice Thanksgiving. Yeah, maybe. With their salt lick? Now, they had food, as we will see.

So the, remember the der Gacia, der Gaetia, de gratia. Di Gratia. I think that's it, that last one. So the other ship that was being sailed by his buddy, Captain Morehouse, remember, seaman John Johnson of that ship said, hey, Cappy, there's another ship out here. And it's about 400 miles further east from where that log had placed that ship, the Mary Celeste. Not only that, it was a good 10 or 11 days later. Right.

So this is all spelling trouble. There are only three sails set. The rest of the sales had either blown away, weren't raised. None of this bodes well on Captain Morehouse. I don't think he probably recognized from that distance that it was the Mary Celeste yet. Right. But he sent his first mate, Oliver DeVille, and second mate John Wright, and another dude and said, get in that boat. row over there and see what the heck's going on right so these guys devaux and right were the ones

who actually got on deck and and investigated the mary celeste and i read this one article that i think just put it so perfectly like just ropes creaking like a door kind of banging open and closed in the wind and just utter silence as far as humans are concerned nobody on board the ship would be so creepy. I think that Oliver DeVoe and John Wright probably experienced one of the creepiest experiences that any human ever has in the history of people. So is it creepier for Josh Clark, Seaman Josh,

to get upon the ship and find nobody aboard but everything's seemingly okay or to see dead bodies in each of the bunks? It would be, okay, so it depends on the position of the dead bodies. Are they just kind of like crumpled and tossed like they've been thrown down onto the bed or something like that? Or are they like sitting up at the dinner table or sitting up in bed? Or is it a Walt Disney ride? That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, or are they laying there with purple robes and Nikes, Heaven's Gavems, state style. Yeah, that would be something as well. So to me, creepier is, I think, no one there. I think it would be more horrific to find the bodies, of course. But creepier would be just finding a ghost ship. Okay. I agree, I think. Because there's the absence of something that's supposed to be there, and that's, I think, what would make it so creepy. Well, yeah, and I think the thing that really makes it creepy, as we will see, is that it wasn't like, hey, this ship has clearly been pirated. and people, there's blood on the walls and people have been killed. There was just nobody there, no signs of distressed. The sextant, the chronometer. I know it's tougher than you'd think to say. The chronometer.

The nav book, they were gone, but that logbook was still there. So basically, like, there was food, there was drinking water. Everyone's clothes were there. That little girl's two, the Salt Lake was there, her two toys were there. there was the impression from her sleeping on the bed in the captain's cabin. That's super creepy. It is. Yeah.

There was not, there were no signs of violence. There was no signs of like panic. No kind of disorder. I mean, some things were out of order, but it was the kind of stuff that you could chalk up to a ship drifting at sea for a week or so. Yeah. By itself. Like a broken compass. Right.

Broken compass. Like some of the, some of the, um, some of the, uh, sea. have been blown down onto the deck itself. There was some water in there. Yeah, in the hold. Right. And then one of the things they found, which is a pretty big clue, was improvised sounding rod, which is basically just a stick with markings on it to show feet, right?

Yeah. And you would lower that into the hold to see where the water mark hit. It's just to figure out how deep water is in a hold. So they clearly knew that there was water. in the hold because they built the sounding rod and it had been found on the deck by the two guys from the day gratia yeah and it was only about three and a half feet of water by all accounts and that's not that sounds like a lot to a guy like me who's not an experienced sailor sure but uh apparently on a ship that size that's like no big whoop one of the other things that ties in with the water too is

they had two pumps aboard yeah one of the pumps was found disassembled so there was basically like these guys came on to the ship and there are all these these weird out-of-context things that were the result of decisions made by people who were now vanished. Yeah. And they had to try to figure this out. But one of the first things that came into their head, eventually, I think when they went back to the day Gratia and told Morehouse what was going on, in pretty short order, somebody said, well, we should probably take this ship to Gibraltar with us. How about that?

because there's something called salvage rights. And whether it was your friend who was missing or what have you, you would have been pretty foolish to have just continued on your way and left the Mary Celeste because what they found pretty quickly, and this adds to the mystery itself as well, the Mary Celeste was totally saleable. Well, yeah, and I don't even think we pointed out that all the, all the denatured alcohol that they were shipping was there and intact.

Like it's not like they had been axed into and or like what would you pillage. Exploded. Or exploded. It was all there. All the all the gear on board was there. So there was a lot to salvage, in other words. Because not only can you salvage the ship, but the cargo. Exactly.

And what had come out to like between 45 and 80 grand and today dollars is what he could have potentially gotten for salvaging this thing. Yeah, because the, at the. At the time, the insurers owed a reward to whoever salvaged the ship like this, and it could run up to 100% of the value of the cargo or the ship. Mutual of Nova Scotia. Right. Who paid good dollars. Which, I mean, man, you want to see a board stuffed with neckbeards? Yeah.

Go to that bank. Oh, that's good. All right. So they, like you said, decided to do the smart thing and the right thing. And it was his friend, besides the fact that, I mean, anyone would have tried to salvage the ship, but it was also his pal. So I think that probably had a little to do with him saying, or maybe it was just all the money. No, I think it was both. I'm sure he was concerned.

I've read accounts that he was concerned by this. He said, aye, very concerned. Yeah, the end. So they take this boat. They actually took, there was three guys. one of them was Oliver DeVoe, who was the first mate of the de Gratia. He was in charge of sailing this. Yeah, very important note.

Yeah, he sailed with just two other guys, the Mary Celeste. They pumped out the water from the hold. They fixed the sails. And the night of the day that they found it, they set sail for Gibraltar. And just three dudes sailed this thing successfully, a thousand kilometers from where. It was found onto Gibraltar. Not bad. Where they took it to the salvage court and said, pay up.

That's right. And this is where things get a little bit weird because there was a man there, the Queen's Proctor in Gibraltar by the name of Frederick Sully Flood. Man, that could not be more British. I know. And he basically said, hmm, this is, you say there was nobody there at all. there's no explanation for any of this, and you want the equivalent of $2017 of $45,000 to $80,000? Thank you, West Egg.

We should have done a reverse. I think that was in their dollars, $1872. No, it says contemporary estimate. Doesn't that mean? No, contemporary at the time. Oh, okay. I think that was an estimate in their dollars. Is there such a thing as contemporary at the time?

Doesn't that always mean now? I don't know. I could have gotten it wrong. It's entirely possible. All right. Well, it's 2018, and we're just figuring stuff out here, folks. So give us a break. So it's in their dollars, so I'm almost positive.

Okay. Well, at any rate, he was solely flood said, this seems really hinky to me, guys. And DeVoe, you, sir, since you boarded the things, thing first. You sailed it here. You are the star witness in this case. He gave his testimony. It was very clear. Nothing weird about it. He was very honest because by all accounts, he had nothing to hide. But Solly Floods just was suspicious from the beginning. Yeah, so much so that during this investigation, and this would be like going to probate court,

and all of a sudden, the representative for the state accuses you of murdering your grandma, who's state you're in charge of taking through probate. Yeah. And then suddenly there's this murder investigation. Without any evidence of anything. Right. Just based on the prosecutor's suspicions, right? Well, and that granny disappeared without a trace. Well, oh yeah, that's a big one to you. I forgot that part.

But, you know. But so that's basically what happened to these guys. So they were pretty surprised by this. And Sully Flood launched this investigation. They inspected the Mary Celeste. They found marks on the railing which Solly Flood was like, these are clearly hatchet marks. There was discoloration on Captain Briggs's sword. This is clearly blood. Well, it turned out that the hatchet marks, the axe marks, were actually from the construction of the ship.

That wasn't axe marks, so no violence there. There wasn't blood on Briggs's sword. It was just rust. But Sully Flood was so determined to prosecute these guys that he suppressed the test results that showed that this was not blood on the sword that it was actually rust. He really wanted to get these two. Well, yeah, and here's a deal. I think things really ramped up when here's what happened. Before all of this like deep investigation, remember, Morehouse still has his ship that was waylaid. And so he says, hey, DeVoa, I got to stay here for this thing

to collect this dough. You keep, you just go on to Genoa. You've already testified. And and take our cargo of petroleum, because I've got to get the stuff here. I'm losing money. Right. And so he did so. And so all of a sudden, Soli Flood was like, well, whoa, whoa, whoa. He was the number one witness. And you've just sent this guy away.

So now I'm super suspicious. Yep. But DeVos came back. He's like, what? What's going on, everybody? He was the big deal. Here's some salami. So finally, Soli Flood just couldn't come up with any evidence of foul play.

but apparently did raise enough suspicion that the probate judge said, you know what, we'll give you guys a reward, but it's going to be like a tenth of what you actually deserve. Yeah. So they got a reward of 1,700 pounds, which was Jack, even in that day. Yeah. And they were allowed to go on their way. The Mary Celeste was finally released in February. This will be. began in December. She was released in February to finally carry her cargo of alcohol to Genoa, or Genoa, and that would have been that. And what's weird is when you think about this ghost ship, you just think like, well, obviously they took her out of service or commission. You got to remember, this is a business venture, a ship in those days, just like they are today, it's a business venture.

And business people are not exactly the sentimental types usually. So once she got to Genoa, they got a new crew, a new captain, and put her right back into service again. So as you say, it just is back out there on the market again, taking cargo around the world. And it ran a ground off a reef of Haiti in 1885. And this was all, this is just kind of a weird ending to this ship that was super unlucky. Or maybe cursed, who knows. Of course, that stuff isn't real. it ran aground in Haiti as part of this insurance fraud scheme.

So they cooked up this scheme. Who was the, what was the guy's name? The captain? Captain Gilman Perkins. All right, so here's what he did. He basically, it's like any insurance fraud you can imagine today. Like when I was a kid, there was this, you know, I didn't grow up in a big neighborhood. I grew up on a street with like seven houses, and it was a dirt road until I was like 12.

With the murder house? No. Oh, what murder house? Was it a murder house or a haunted house? I can't remember. There was one down the street from you that you were scared to death. Oh, yeah. This was that.

So that one was torn down, but a big house was built in its place, but the old barn from the murdery haunted house was still there. And my brother and I used to go exploring, is what we'll call it now. We basically busted into this barn and we're just checking things out one day. And then about two weeks later, the thing burned down. And I remember being a little kid in these insurance detectives. Is that what they're called? They are now. Insurance? Whatever. Investigators?

Claims investigators? Yeah, they came by and questioned Scott and I. We're like, what was in that thing? Because this guy is claiming like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of – I can't remember what all he said was in there. And we were a little kid, so we just told the truth. We were like, no, none of that stuff was in there. We stole that.

It was a bunch of old file cabinets and just a bunch of junk. It was just like a junk barn. So I'm not even, I need to ask my mom. I'm not sure whatever happened with that. That guy's probably still in jail because of eight-year-old Chuck. Good. That's funny. You got some guy sent up the river.

The law prevailed. But that's basically what happened here is this guy purposely wrecks the ship and says, man, there was a lot of really valuable stuff on board. I was toting a bunch of bass ale, like the real bass ale, that we still enjoy today. Sure. And then what else was? There was a bunch of really expensive shoes. Cutlery.

Yeah, a bunch of cutlery. Fine fish, fine butter. And what was in there? A bunch of garbage. It was. So this guy purposely runs the ship of ground. It's insured by five different insurers for a total of $34,000. A lot of dough.

In 1872, contemporary dollars. and they probably would have gotten away with this. But the captain, Gilman Perkins, went ashore and sold salvage rights to this cargo, this fine cargo that was supposedly on the ship, to a local salvage person in Haiti. And had he not conned the salvager, then they may, again, they may have gotten away with this. But the salvager went aboard to get this to recover this cargo, this bass, this great butter, great shoes, cutlery, all this stuff, and found, like you said, just pure nastiness there. There's a bunch of junk ale. A lot of the bottles weren't even filled.

There were dog collars instead of shoes. Yeah. What else? The cutlery, no, the cutlery was dog collars. These boots were old galoshes. Yeah, the women's fine shoes. And the butter was rank slush, I think, is what it was called. So this con man, or the salvagers, like, I've been conned and alerts the authorities who get on the case and finally track it all the way back to Boston.

And Captain Perkins, the last captain of the Mary Celeste. Remember the first captain died. The third or fourth captain disappeared. And the last captain of the ship is facing the gallows for Baratry, which is deliberate destroying of a ship. That's a great crime. Narrowly avoided being executed for it. I think the jury came back seven to five, and he got off, just narrowly avoided being killed for it. Yeah.

I don't know why he got off. The article I read by a guy named Paul Collins, supposed that the jury just couldn't bring themselves to kill a person for an insurance fraud scheme. And that was it. And actually, a couple of years after, they changed the law so that, That barretary was no longer a capital offense. But you could still get in big trouble for it, but a jury would be more likely to convict if it didn't mean your death, you know?

Right. So the Mary Celeste run aground on this reef met its fate when, I guess, the government of Haiti paid for it to be dousing kerosene instead of flame. All right, well, let's take a break, and we'll come back and talk a little bit about how the legend of the Mary Celeste lived on. and then what may have actually happened that faithful day in November. Heart Radio Experience. Carly Pierce, live at the Opera House, October 16th. Win your way in to the exclusive IHeartRadio sound check party, an intimate pre-show performance and Q&A.

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Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I don't really care. Jack. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. All right. So the Mary Celeste, it wasn't some huge sensational story of the time.

Locally, it probably got a little news, but it wasn't like, you know, it didn't sweep the world. But there was a story written by one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called J. Habakkuk Jepson's Statement in 1884. That's the worst made-up name I've ever heard. In Cornhill magazine, also worst magazine name ever. Yeah, but it was like a huge magazine at the time. Oh, yeah? Mm-hmm. I know it outsold Cornhole magazine.

Right. So he writes a story, and what it is is basically this. sensationalistic fake account of the Mary Celeste, but everyone takes it as real. Yeah, and he renamed the ship the Marie Celeste. I don't know if it was a mistake on his part or whatever, but that also muddies the waters these days, too, as far as Google searches go. Yeah, so everyone thought this thing was real. All of these basically presented a bunch of things as fact, made up a bunch of stuff

like the tea was still hot and steaming when they climbed aboard and the beds were still warm. And it was sailing perfectly and fully sailed and breakfast was half eaten. And like there's a cigar still burning. None of this stuff was true. It was all cooked up to make the myth just even creepier. But a lot of people, even today, still think that stuff is kind of true. Did he make all that up? Or was it just kind of added to later on?

Well, I think, I don't know what exactly he made up, but it basically over the years, everyone just started adding stuff like that the lifeboat was still there, you know? Right. Like, none of that stuff was true. Right. So all of those facts, I'm making scare quotes, as you can see, they are, they lend credence to, like, really outrageous solutions to this mystery, right? Yeah. Like, there've been a lot.

Well, some, some aren't. exactly outrageous or preposterous. They're just, the evidence doesn't support them. Some are just totally outrageous, right? Yeah. So you can kind of divide them into different categories, like the natural phenomenon. There could have been a sea quake, which I guess happens, and that usually disturbs the sea above when the seafloor has a massive earthquake.

Water spouts, rogue waves. Remember we did a really good episode on rogue waves? I remember that one? Giant squid. giant octopus, which fall under the subcategory C monster. That's the natural stuff. Sigma and the sea monster? Yeah.

All right, then there's piracy and murder. These just for the time would make a little more sense. Like Conan Doyle said that there was an ex-slave bent on revenge who just wanted to kill white. people. And that was in his story. So that clearly ramped things up. There was a movie in the 30s with Bella Lagosie, that he was a, one of the crew members was a murderous sailor. With a hook. Oh, really? All right. Well, they always had hooks. Captain Briggs was overcome with religious mania, killed everyone, and bored, including his family, then killed himself. Then there was the mutiny theory that everyone got into this alcohol that you couldn't even drink.

No, you would die like almost immediately. Yeah, I guess just got the drunken murders, the drunken murder rampage. You know what happens when you drink a little, you just want to kill. Right, exactly. Do you remember, I guess in our prohibition episode, it was shown years on that the U.S. government had poisoned the bootleg hooch supply with denatured alcohol and people died and went blind from it? This is this stuff. Yeah. That's what they put into the supply.

Well, and then there's just the kind of mundane pirate, piratry, like, hey, this was where there were North African pirates. And that's probably what happened is it was just a regular run-of-the-mill pirate operation. Yeah, but whether it's like any kind of violence, like religious fervor or pirates or something like that, there was not any sign of struggle, remember. And the one lifeboat was missing. So it would seem that if they got off the ship, they probably got off willingly rather than there having been some sort of violence. Yeah, and then also the two brothers, there were a couple of brothers who were to the crew members, Volkert and Boy Lorenzen. And they were suspects for a little while because none of their personal possessions were found. And apparently there was no motive whatsoever, and a descendant of them said, you know, they had lost all their gear in a previous shipwreck.

So just none of that makes any sense. They were good guys. Right. So it probably was not murder, right? Probably not. Plus also the idea that the crew had come across another ship pirated it, turned pirate all of a sudden, and were led by Briggs. The idea that – and then just took this other ship and set up. off set sail to start a new life elsewhere.

It doesn't make much sense on its face, but even if you dig down just one more degree and remember that they left their son Arthur behind, who became an orphan on the day that the de Gratia found the Mary Celeste, that's even, it lends even less credence to that. Unless they didn't like Arthur. Yeah, again, he was fairly dim-witted. They left him behind. Not a very likable kid. He had a real temper for no good reason.

Didn't like cake? Who doesn't like cake? I know. So the murder piracy, or lastly, so remember the Captain Morehouse, yeah, dined with Captain Briggs and his wife the night before they headed out. Yeah. And then Captain Morehouse was the one who found the ship and claimed salvage rights to it. The idea that it was fraud, and maybe a fraudulent scheme cooked up,

that one's really dismissed too, again, by the presence of Arthur. Right. Arthur ruined everything. So you can dismiss murder, piracy, or fraud typically. Yes. What about paranormal? Let's go ahead and dismiss that, too. Okay.

Because I don't think that the Brubuiting triangle ate them or that aliens. It's aliens, man. I don't think that happened. Yeah, that's a big one. So let's just go ahead and not even talk about that too much because that's dumb. So that Frederick Sully Flood's obsession with this whole thing? thing at the time, contemporarily, presented like the documented evidence we have concerning the case. So it's good that he did this, that he was gripped by this paranoia, the suspicion,

right? Yeah. Because we do know some facts about the thing. We know that, like, we said the ship was found with just three, three sails up, and the rest were either blown down or unfurled. The lifeboat was missing. There was a rope dangling over the side from the back of the ship into the water. Yeah. Nine of the 1,701 casks were intact, but were actually empty. And on closer inspection, they were made of red oak, which is more porous than white oak, which the other 1,701 barrels were made of, and were intact and still full. So we know these things about this ship that are actually correct and they've been put together to to kind of create this explanation that again isn't definitive doesn't prove it once for all what happened that'll never happen now which

I love but there's there's a pretty good explanation I think that we both kind of agree is the likeliest explanation yeah so those casks that that leaked but did not explode or anything there could have been a smell there could have been a sound there could have been just some indication that maybe this ship is about to blow up or we are in danger. They had taken on a little water that might have played into it. But what really everyone thinks played into it is, like we said at the beginning, was he had his wife and toddler aboard. So he was taking no chances, which would thoroughly explain why they got off of that boat really quickly at the very first signs that something could be wrong.

Right. So those nine red oak barrels that were empty had 300 gallons of denatured highly flammable alcohol in them. Yeah, that would have smelled. Yeah, it would have smelled. It could have created a fireball explosion. It could have blown the hatches off. It could have done a lot of things that would have made a reasonable person, especially one that's also concerned for the life of his wife and child, say the likelyest thing we should do here, the most reasonable thing we should do here is get off of the shift. ship. So considering that there was this alcohol aboard, some of it was missing, and that the lifeboat was gone, and that the logbook showed that they were within sight of land the last time they'd made any kind of entry, supports the idea that they had all gotten into the lifeboat willingly because probably that alcohol and then the water that the ship had taken on. Yeah, and apparently in 2006, there was a study at University College of London where they tried to reproduce what that explosion might have looked like and sounded like.

And they did it with butane, so I guess is that about the same thing? I don't know why they used butane instead of alcohol vapors. I have no idea why, but they feel like it was pretty definitive. Yeah, and so basically it caused a big, brilliant flame and made a sound. but because it was this vapor, there was no, it didn't like burn everything up. It didn't scorch anything. There was no soot. There was no evidence.

So if this would have happened on board, this guy's got his wife and his toddler, that would have been enough to create a panic. And that's where my money is, for sure. For sure. And plus also, I mean, like that the explosion of the exploding alcohol theory had been around for a while, but had been dismissed because they were like, well, it would have left some evidence. But this study showed that, no, it could have actually. blown up and scare the heck out of these people and gotten them off this boat into the lifeboat, which they would have had connected to the ship, the Mary Celeste, by this 400 foot or 400 yards. It was a very long rope, inch thick rope, called the Halliard, and they had connected the lifeboat to it.

And what they supposed happened was that they kept a few of the sails down, some of them still furled, to let the ship keep going, but at a slow pace, because they were going to have to ride behind it for an indefinite period of time. And the wind caught it just right, sped the ship up, snapped the line, and then within an hour the lifeboat was adrift with the Mary Celeste out of sight. So is the idea that they got in the boat attached with the rope attached to just say, hey, let's get away from it and see what happens here? Yes.

Okay. And then it just starts going. The rope is gone. And then they're like, well, can't catch it now. Right. And they would have been left to drift at sea to die, which is what everybody thinks happened. Yeah, and I guess at the time there would be, unless it got really lucky or unlucky, and the rowboat eventually washed ashore somewhere, there would just be no trace, right?

Yes. They just were fish food. Yeah, I mean, if they're out in the Atlantic, especially if they just, six miles away from an island that's in the middle of nowhere, is pretty, pretty middle of nowhere. So if you're in a small boat, it'd be very easy to vanish without a trace forever. Man, I bet that, like that story is the sad one is what those final days were like. Yes. That kid? Yeah.

Heartbreaking. So that's the story of Mary Celeste. Good job. Good job, you, Chuck. I feel like we kick the rest off the sword on this one. If you want to know more about the Mary Celeste, there is plenty more to dig into. This is a nice rabbit hole to jump down if you want to do that kind of thing. Just go search Google, say no, Google, I mean Mary Celeste, and start off.

You'll have fun. That's right. And in the meantime, it's time for a listener, ma'am. I'm going to call this local listener. Hey guys, my name is Sally, and I am a sophomore at Emory University. Started listening to stuff you should know two years ago when I was on a school exchange in Beijing, what began as a fun way to bide time and bumper-to-bumper traffic turned into a complete obsession. Your quick banter made me feel at home on the other side of the world,

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