Stuff You Should Know - The Mystery of the Mary Celeste

Episode Date: January 9, 2018

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's a lot over today. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.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 is 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, Jerry. Thank you, Jerry. Chee-Mouth happy new 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. 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 at this station. I haven't figured out how to do anything about that one yet. I've built like a little impromptu cold frame around them, and I have a mini crock pot warming water inside the cold frame, such that 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. 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? No.

Carpots? It has to do with Ecuador? Shrinking people down and living in miniature. Oh, that sounds kind of cool. So there'd be like a miniature crock pot. 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 police to study and learn from? No. 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 I think it was in 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 now under water. Have you ever get the little tiny Tabasco bottle? I just want to hug it. It's about as prized a Tabasco bottle as you can get. Man, I love small stuff like that.

Yeah. Oh, I know what you're getting next Christmas. Some tiny. Yeah, well, some tiny Tabascos. Oh, yeah. 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. And yeah, when you cross mystery with history, it just blows up. The spot, the whole spot blows up. And that's what this one is. Like I remember learning about the Mary Celeste back when I was a young tyke, probably filmed that like Time Life Unexplained Phenomena series.

Oh, yeah. I'm pretty sure that's where I heard 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. And 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 was, I was, I'm going in a reversal. 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 end 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, the big, well, no one knows for sure what happened, but 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, no, 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, Rain Supreme.

Have you seen that yet? Oh, no, you're talking about, uh, Gangs of New York. Gangs of New York. I thought you were talking about the new Infantum Thread. Where do you hear about these movies? That's my job, dude. Oh, yeah, that's right. Um, yeah, that, I don't think that movie's even out yet, actually, at least not in Atlanta.

You know, we're like a second, second tier city. Yeah, that's true, but I suspect not for long, because I think Atlanta's actually surpassed LA now as far as like film production goes. Ooh. Have you heard that? Uh, I could certainly believe it. Yeah. So does that mean we're second tier and 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, on Monday. Are you talking about the Astor House in New York City, New York?

Yeah, man. And this was at a time where like, uh, 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, uh, a crown roast and rack of lamb and it was just like huge trays of beef. Right, live pig that 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. Uh, all right. So at this dinner table, we have, um, 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. Um, Captain Benjamin Spooner, Briggs, uh, and they're sitting down with Briggs' wife, Sarah, and I don't know, did, did Morehouse have his wife there or was he batching it? That's not the impression I have. I think that, uh, Sarah was there because she was shipping out the next day too. Okay. I think he was batching it, in other words. But they, 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. Uh, a couple of salty old sea dogs, but good people from, from, uh, from all accounts. Sure. And they, uh, the, I mean, the fact that these guys were having dinner in New York on November 4th, 1872, totally unremarkable in, in most senses, right?

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

D-E-I-G-R-A-T-I-A, Degratia, uh, was sailing along and, and we'll get to the specifics of how this happened in a second, but they came upon his buddy ship, the Mary Celeste. And by all accounts, it was probably like, hey, that's, uh, that's Briggs. We need to go over and check out how, how Spoon's Briggs is doing, right? 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 he shipped 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, uh, a mystery that endures to this day was born that day. That is correct. Right. So the Mary Celeste, it's 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, uh, not even named the Mary Celeste yet. It was called the Amazon at the time, was born in Nova Scotia, and, uh, I believe the very first voyage, what you would call a maiden voyage was to haul some, some timber to London across the Atlantic. Yeah. That's what she was pretty routine. Yeah. Didn't go very well.

No, it didn't. No. Her first captain was a guy named, uh, Robert McClellan, 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, they got back from pneumonia. Can you imagine back in those days, if you get a cold, you're like, well, I got about a one in 10 chance of dying.

Right. Maybe even worse than that. Right? Yeah. 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. Yeah.

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 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. Insulted entry. It's a bad scene. So again, this is a business venture. The owner said, whatever, that was somebody else's ship, our ship's fine. We're going to keep doing this London to, or New York to London timber route. Yeah.

And they also did some West Indies trade for a while, and everything was fairly normal for a while. And then a freak storm caught the 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 she, 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 rot 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. He 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. I mean, I think it goes up to 2016 now, which is pretty good.

That's 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. 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. We're starring vanilla ice. You like that one, huh? I've seen that show. Have you seen it? For like five minutes, I'll tell you this. This proves that I relaxed this vacation. You ready?

Yeah. I walked 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.

It was bizarre how it just got its hooks in me. That happens from time to time with me too. You know what scares me about those pools, though, is most of them are just amazing and you have grottoes and waterfalls and all that cool stuff. Some people opt for those death tubes where you can 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 into another part of the pool and potentially get stuck and die is how I see it.

That would be really awful. I don't think that ever happens, though. 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, and then your pool will just have a sheen of butter floating at the top that kind of rocks in the sunlight. I worked at a pool like that once. That's grotesque. It was not butter, but there was a sheen.

I don't know what it was. I'm sure it was sunblock. Yeah, I guess so. It 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 a 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. That would explain it. Well, that might have been it. Okay.

All right. So Winchester, and by the way, Winchester is just the major investor. There was a very notable other investor, and what was his name? Oh, you're asking me? Yeah. It's been a couple of 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. 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 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. But 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 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 ship, 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 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 as 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 the 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. 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'll 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.

Right. 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. 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 as well, back on land. So he was pretty well-regarded. I'm assuming his wife was equally well-regarded. And 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 shadeballs, because you don't want any shady sailors out in the middle

of the Atlantic Ocean with your wife and child. 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 1700, actually 1700 and one, 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 set sail 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. On the podcast, Paydude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

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Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second-hand astrology.

And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends, and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, cancelled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology? It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck, so... We're out at sea.

Okay, so there was an investigation, as you can imagine. We'll talk about that more later. But this investigation determined that probably, although they definitely ran into some storms and heavy weather here or 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 voyage turned a little odd or became a little unusual. 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 at sea, 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 Azores 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 easternmost island of the Azores is like 400 miles west of Portugal, something like that.

It's quite lovely, I imagine. Anyway, 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 where if you do the Google map, you will see these tiny specks and nothing but blue. Right. 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. Right. Yeah, for sure. But 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 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. Oh, yeah, because the crew ship, modern day crew ship is the same as a 19th century sailing

vessel. It's not. You're right. 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 about? It's a cell-Yankovic type instrument. Oh, well, we should get Aaron Cooper to write us because he will surely do. And they, yes, I'm sure. So they would have had that aboard, which would have been all the pleasure you could imagine.

Yeah. Like one wooden doll in an accordion is really going to keep it to your old occupied. And the communal salt lick is still 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're about six miles from Santa Maria, 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. So the reason we know this is not because anybody on the Mary Celeste told anybody, at least not verbally, they found the logbook and the log slate, which is kind of like 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 at 8 a.m. on November 25th, the Mary Celeste sighted land and by their calculations were six miles off of Santa Maria, right? That's right. So that was November 25th. Yes. They, I guess they just had a nice Thanksgiving. Yeah, maybe with their salt lick.

Yeah. Now they had food, as we will see. So the, remember the Degacia, Degatia, Degratia. 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 sails had either blown away, weren't raised. None of this bodes well and Captain Morehouse, I don't think he probably recognized from that distance that it was the Mary Celeste yet. Right.

So he sent his first mate, Oliver Develle, 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, Develle and Wright, were the ones who actually got on deck 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 Develle 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 this ship and find nobody aboard but everything 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 Gate 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. 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 there's blood on the walls and people have been killed. There was just nobody there, no signs of distress.

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, there was food, there was drinking water, everyone's clothes were there, that little girl's two, the salt lick was there, her two toys were there. Shoot, there was the impression from her sleeping on the bed in the captain's cabin. That's super creepy. It is.

Yeah. There was no signs of violence. There was no signs of 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 by itself. Like a broken compass. Right, a broken compass, like some of the sails have been blown down onto the deck itself. There was some water in there, 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, but 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. One of the pumps was found disassembled. So there was basically like these guys came onto the ship, and there are all these weird out of context things that were the result of decisions made by people who were now vanished. 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 Morhouse what was going on, in pretty short order, somebody said, well, we should probably take this ship to Gibraltar with us. How about that? Is there 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 denatured alcohol that they

were shipping was there and intact. It's not like they had been axed into or like, what would you, pillage? Exploded. Or exploded. It was all there. 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.

Right. And what it came out to like between 45 and 80 grand and today dollars is what he could have potentially gotten for salvaging this thing. Yeah, because 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. It would pay good dollars.

Which I mean, man, you want to see a board stuffed with neckbeards? Yeah. Go to that bank. Oh, that's good. And all right, so they, like you said, decided to do the smart thing and the right thing because, 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, I 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 day, Gratia. He was in charge of sailing this. Yeah, very important note. Yeah. He sailed with just two other guys, this, 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 on to 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 Solly Flood. Man, that could not be more British.

I know. And he basically said, hmm, this is, he said 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. No, I think there was, 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, Solly Flood said, this seems really hinky to me, guys. And DeVoe, you sir, since you boarded the 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, they had nothing to hide. But Solly Flood was suspicious from the beginning. Yes. 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 the state you're in charge of taking through probate, 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 so that's basically what happened to these guys. So they were pretty surprised by this. And Solly 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' sword. This is clearly blood. Well, it turned out that the hatchet marks, the ax marks were actually from the construction of the ship. That wasn't ax marks, so no violence there. There wasn't blood on Briggs' sword, it was just rust. But Solly 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 too. Well, yeah. And here's the deal. Solly Flood was really ramped up when, here's what happened before all of this deep investigation. Remember, the Morehouse still has his ship that was waylaid. And so he says, hey, Devo, I got to stay here for this thing to collect this dough. You just go on to Genoa, you've already testified, and take our cargo, a petroleum, because I

got to get this stuff here. I'm losing money. Right. And so he did so. And so all of a sudden, Solly Flood was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. He was the number one witness. And you've just sent this guy away. So now I'm super suspicious.

Yeah. But Devo came back. He's like, what's going on, everybody? What's the big deal? Here's some salami. So finally, Solly 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.

So they got a reward of 1,700 pounds, which was Jack, even in that day. And they were allowed to go on their way. The Mary Celeste was finally released in February. This all began in December. She was released in February to finally carry her cargo of alcohol to Genoa, Virginia. 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.

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 aground 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. But 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 could 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 would 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 and these insurance detectives, is that what they're called? They are now. Insurance. Whatever.

Investigators. Claims investigated. Yeah. They came by and questioned Scott and I and 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 you know, we were a little kid, so we just told the truth. We're like, 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. But 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. And then what else was there? 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. The guy purposely runs the ship aground. It's insured by five different insurers for a total of 34 grand in 1872 dollars, 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. Yeah. 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.

Oh, 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. When the first captain died, the third or fourth captain disappeared. And the last captain of the ship is facing the gallows for baritry, which is deliberate

destroying of a ship and 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, suppose 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 baritry 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. 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 flying. 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 fateful day in November. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? You'll leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikulur and, to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second-hand astrology.

And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop, but just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 it didn't sweep the world. But there was a story written by one, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, called J. Habacook Jepson's

statement in 1884. That's the worst made-up name I've ever heard. In Corn Hill Magazine, also worst magazine name ever. Yeah, but it was like a huge magazine at the time. Oh yeah? I know it, outsold Corn Hole Magazine. 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 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. 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 don't know what exactly he made up, but basically over the years, everyone just started adding stuff like the lifeboat was still there, like none of that stuff was true. So all of those facts are making scare quotes, as you can see. They lend credence to really outrageous solutions to this mystery, right? There've been a lot.

Well, 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, remember that one?

Giant squid, giant octopus, which fall under the subcategory sea monster, that's the natural stuff. Sigmund 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. Now there was a movie in the 30s with Bella Locosi, that he was a, one of the crew members was a murderous sailor. With a hook. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. All right. Well, they always had hooks.

Captain Briggs was overcome with religious mania, killed everyone on board, 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, he would die almost immediately. Yeah, I guess just got the drunken murderers, 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 US 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, piratory like, hey, this was where

there were North African pirates, and that's probably what happened is there was just a regular run-of-the-mill pirate operation. Yeah, but whether it's like any kind of violence, like a 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 two of the crew members, Volkert and Boy Lorenzen, and they were suspects for a little while

because none of their personal possessions were found. But apparently there was no motive whatsoever, and a descendant of them said 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 off, set sail to start a new life elsewhere, 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 DeGratia found the Mary Celeste, that's even, it lends even less credence to that. So 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? 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. 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. What about paranormal? Let's go ahead and dismiss that too. Okay.

Because I don't think that the Rebuta 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 floods obsession with this whole 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? Because we do know some facts about the thing.

We know that, like we said, the ship was found with just 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. Many of the 1701 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 1701 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 kind of create this explanation that, again, isn't definitive, doesn't prove it once and for all what happened. That'll never happen now, which I love, but there's a pretty good explanation, I think that we both kind of agree is the likeliest explanation. Yeah. So those casks 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 that 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 likeliest thing

we should do here, the most reasonable thing we should do here is get off of the 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. It was in 2006.

It 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 use 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, it didn't 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, the explosion of the exploding alcohol theory had been around for

a while, but it 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 scared 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 a Hellyard, 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 it was going to, 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 like 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 adrift 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. And 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, you would, 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, man.

Yeah. It's heartbreaking. So that's the story of the Mary Celeste. Good job. Good job. You, Chuck. I feel like we kicked 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 Listener Mail. I'm going to call this a 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 buy 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 while you're engaging in well-developed topics reignited my love of learning. Since leaving Emory, I frequently imagine bumping into you guys and Decatur in Atlanta and having the opportunity to chat about your journey from college kids at UGA to potentially the most interesting and vibrant guys I've heard.

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I still have not declared a major. She wrote a lot more really nice stuff, but I had to edit it for content or for time. I have still not declared a major and I'm still essentially a ball of frenetic energy, but you guys have helped me because you helped me tap into that frenetic energy and productively exercise my burning and satiable desire to learn to think, to question, and to grow. Now as a young adult and until the nurses need to pinch my oxygen tank and physically made me stop. Well done.

A million thanks, that is Sally Jinx. Thanks a lot, Sally. That's pretty great. Very sweet. Yeah, it is. And good luck with the rest of your schooling. Okay. If you want to get in touch with us and pay us some high compliments like Sally did, we're

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