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Commercial Bulletin, Price-Current and Shipping List
New-Orleans Price-Current and Commercial IntelligencerNew Orleans, Louisiana · Saturday, December 14, 1872
The Mary Celeste
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New Orleans, Louisiana · Saturday, December 14, 1872
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The Daily Evening Express
Lancaster, Pennsylvania · Saturday, March 01, 1873
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Like so many of the newspaper stories about the Mary Celeste, much of what is reported above is untrue or misportrayed. For example:
“There was no evidence that she had… encountered unusually heavy weather.” {the brig Dei Gratia departed Gibraltar eight days after the Mary Celeste, following the same general route all the way to the Azores before discovering the derelict ship on 4 December (5 December, ‘sea time’). They reported stormy weather all the way, with the sea running high. Mary Celeste’s sails were observed partly set and in poor condition, some missing altogether, and much of the rigging was damaged, with ropes hanging loosely over the sides. Dei Gratia’s mate Oliver Deveau boarded the ship and observed that the cabin interiors were wet and untidy from water that entered through doorways and skylights, but were otherwise in reasonable order. He found personal items scattered about Captain Briggs' cabin. The binnacle housing the ship's compass had shifted from its place and its glass cover was broken.
“The captain had his wife and two children with him.” [Only his wife Sarah and their two year old daughter Sophy (Sophia Matilda) were aboard. Their son (Arthur Stanley) had been left at home in his grandmother’s care.
“A little phial of oil was still standing by a sewing machine and a reel of cotton and a thimble had not yet rolled off the table.” [This comes from the report by Surveyor John Austin commissioned on 23 December. The report reads “On the Starboard side of the main cabin was the chief mate’s cabin, on a little bracket in which I found a small phial of oil for a sewing machine in its proper perpendicular position a reel of cotton for such a machine and a thimble. If they had been there in bad weather then they would have been thrown down or carried away.” However, this was more than two weeks after the ship had been found. Austin did not acknowledge that the phial might have been replaced since the abandonment and the other items tidied up, nor did the court raise this point when he testified. When the ship was originally boarded, Deveau only reported “various sewing paraphernalia in a bag in the captain’s cabin”. In fact Mary Celeste had been tidied up and made shipshape for her run to Gibraltar for examination and spent a further ten days in port before the examination actually took place. The ship’s condition at the time of the survey was therefore in many ways very different from how she was found as a derelict. Even if it cannot be definitively proven that she experienced stormy weather in the open Atlantic, she most certainly did in the Straits of Gibraltar during the recovery back to port and it’s a mystery how the sewing items could have remained undisturbed during that voyage.
“A sword was in its scabbard, rusty, and with marks of blood having been wiped off.” [Austin’s actual survey report reads: "I also observed in this cabin [Captain Briggs’ cabin] a Sword in its scabbard which the Marshall informed me he had noticed when he came on board for the purpose of arresting the vessel. It had not [been] affected by water but on drawing out the blade it appeared to me as if it had been smeared with blood and afterwards wiped.” Subsequent examination determined the ‘blood’ to be iron citrate staining, probably as a result of the blade being cleaned with lemon juice].
What isn’t mentioned in those newspaper articles is that one of Mary Celeste’s bilge pumps was found dismantled (perhaps in an aborted attempt to repair it) and there was three and a half feet of water in the hold. A makeshift sounding rod for checking the depth of water in the hold was found abandoned on the deck, but the hold was so tightly packed with cargo that it would have been nigh on impossible to use it in any meaningful way to assess whether the ship was taking on water at a dangerous rate.
See posts #14 and #16 here:
https://www.treasurenet.com/threads/the-mary-celeste.624332/#post-6428572
“There was no evidence that she had… encountered unusually heavy weather.” {the brig Dei Gratia departed Gibraltar eight days after the Mary Celeste, following the same general route all the way to the Azores before discovering the derelict ship on 4 December (5 December, ‘sea time’). They reported stormy weather all the way, with the sea running high. Mary Celeste’s sails were observed partly set and in poor condition, some missing altogether, and much of the rigging was damaged, with ropes hanging loosely over the sides. Dei Gratia’s mate Oliver Deveau boarded the ship and observed that the cabin interiors were wet and untidy from water that entered through doorways and skylights, but were otherwise in reasonable order. He found personal items scattered about Captain Briggs' cabin. The binnacle housing the ship's compass had shifted from its place and its glass cover was broken.
“The captain had his wife and two children with him.” [Only his wife Sarah and their two year old daughter Sophy (Sophia Matilda) were aboard. Their son (Arthur Stanley) had been left at home in his grandmother’s care.
“A little phial of oil was still standing by a sewing machine and a reel of cotton and a thimble had not yet rolled off the table.” [This comes from the report by Surveyor John Austin commissioned on 23 December. The report reads “On the Starboard side of the main cabin was the chief mate’s cabin, on a little bracket in which I found a small phial of oil for a sewing machine in its proper perpendicular position a reel of cotton for such a machine and a thimble. If they had been there in bad weather then they would have been thrown down or carried away.” However, this was more than two weeks after the ship had been found. Austin did not acknowledge that the phial might have been replaced since the abandonment and the other items tidied up, nor did the court raise this point when he testified. When the ship was originally boarded, Deveau only reported “various sewing paraphernalia in a bag in the captain’s cabin”. In fact Mary Celeste had been tidied up and made shipshape for her run to Gibraltar for examination and spent a further ten days in port before the examination actually took place. The ship’s condition at the time of the survey was therefore in many ways very different from how she was found as a derelict. Even if it cannot be definitively proven that she experienced stormy weather in the open Atlantic, she most certainly did in the Straits of Gibraltar during the recovery back to port and it’s a mystery how the sewing items could have remained undisturbed during that voyage.
“A sword was in its scabbard, rusty, and with marks of blood having been wiped off.” [Austin’s actual survey report reads: "I also observed in this cabin [Captain Briggs’ cabin] a Sword in its scabbard which the Marshall informed me he had noticed when he came on board for the purpose of arresting the vessel. It had not [been] affected by water but on drawing out the blade it appeared to me as if it had been smeared with blood and afterwards wiped.” Subsequent examination determined the ‘blood’ to be iron citrate staining, probably as a result of the blade being cleaned with lemon juice].
What isn’t mentioned in those newspaper articles is that one of Mary Celeste’s bilge pumps was found dismantled (perhaps in an aborted attempt to repair it) and there was three and a half feet of water in the hold. A makeshift sounding rod for checking the depth of water in the hold was found abandoned on the deck, but the hold was so tightly packed with cargo that it would have been nigh on impossible to use it in any meaningful way to assess whether the ship was taking on water at a dangerous rate.
See posts #14 and #16 here:
https://www.treasurenet.com/threads/the-mary-celeste.624332/#post-6428572
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