The Truth about the 'Mary Celeste'
A Great Sea Mystery. By J. C. Lockhart. (Philip Allan. 68.) MR. LOCKHART'S retelling of the famous incident of the
Mary Celeste' is partly an essay in restitution. Some time ago he published a suggested solution of this great mystery of the sea, and, as many others have done, wrote with ingenious light-heartedness, not stopping to consider that the attri- bution of crimes or felonious acts to dead men might give pain to their relations who are still alive. The communica- tions which Mr. Lockhart subsequently received started him on the researches which resulted in this new solution of the mystery. His solution is much more satisfactory than any we have yet heard of, and it has the honourable merit of soothing Mr. Lockhart's conscience and clearing the character of the captain of the ' Mary Celeste.
No wonder that romancers have busied themselves over the perplexing material of this sea puzzle ! On December 5th, 1872, the Dei Gratia,' a brig of Nova Scotia, bound from New York to Gibraltar under the command of Captain Morehouse, when about 130 miles from the Portuguese coast overhauled the brigantine ' Mary Celeste,' which was sailing a curiously wayward course. Captain Morehouse was at one& struck by the haphazard movements of the-brigantine, which would run off aimlessly before the wind, then be brought up to the windby• the pressure on her mainsail, only to fall off the wind again through the action of' her headsaili, which were aback. The ' Mary Celeste,' in fact, was in- the trim of a'ship which had been partly or carelessly hove-to and was forging steadily ahead although with wide zigzag movements. Captain Morehouse hailed her several times, but perceiving no sign of life on board he went in a boat to inspect her.
Surely "no seaman before or since has ever seen quite such a baffling sight. Here was a ship with not a living soul on &aid but nearly all her sails were set ; everything was in gOOd order ; the ship was staunch, tight, and thoroughly seaworthy ; there was no lack of food or water and there was no unmistakable sign of there having been any trouble with the crew. One of the hatches over the hold had been displaced and was lying the wrong side up. Numerous pieces of private property, including money, had been left about as though the crew had departed in haste. Some tins of meat kid apparently been hurriedly removed as well as most of the -slaWs irapers; AlthoUgh 'the crew had departed hastily. they cannot, it seems, hive' depirted exactly in panic. A cutlasi was noticed on which were marks that were at first taken to be -blood-stains but were afterwards proved by analysis to be rust. The ship carried a cargo of crude alcohol. One of the barrels had apparently been tampered with. Anether curious thing observed was that on both sides of the ship, near the bows and about three feet above the water line, "incisions had been made in the planking as though deliberately. But these incisions did not penetrate very deeply and they in no wise affected the seaworthiness of the ship. Still, here was a fact which was naturally enough fastened upen by many of those who have " reconstructed a crime " out of the facts. Possibly the crew before abandoning the ship had' wished to leave on her visible marks which would suggest that she had struck on rocks. If so, they did their work with amazing futility. But then, again, it may be said that they had only begun upon the work of false suggestion when they were interrupted and left the ship without finishing the job.
The Advocate-General at Gibraltar who drew up the official report when the crew of the Dei Gratis ' claimed salvage suggested that the crew of the ' Mary Celeste ' had got at the alcohol, murdered Captain Briggs (the master), his wife and child and the chief mate, and had then damaged the bows of the vessel in the hope that no passer-by on the high seas would think her worth salving. The Advocate- General made no reference to the analysis—perhaps not available when he wrote—that the stains on the cutlass were rust, not blood. Since those days people who follow the strange affairs of the sea have been in continual contact with the story of the ' Mary Celeste.' There has been a succession of versions and explanations. Private papers bearing on the case are said to have been discovered, or sonic survivor on the point of death has wished to make a confession. Mr. Lockhart examines most of these stories, and in a very work- manlike way is able to dismiss them all. They all err in material facts—getting the size and even the rig of the brigan- tine wrong,. the names and number of the crew wrong, the date of sailing and, the character of the weather during the voyage wrong, and so on.
Moreover, pure romance which did not profess to be any- thing else has been mistaken for attempts at accurate eluci- dation.. For example, Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle in 1884 wrote a story—a very good one, too—which was obviously based on the facts of the `. Mary Celeste.' It was the result of a Sherlock Holmes mind applying itself to the discovery of a credible.explanation of how a ship could be found sailing the high seas with not a soul on board, although she still carried her,small boat or boats. If the boats, or one boat, had been missing there would obviously have been no. entrancing lure for ingenuity. But how to get the crew, away from the ship without the- use of a single boat ? That was the question. At least, it was the question for Sir Conan Doyle and for nearly all, the others who have produced variations, either as fiction or, fact, of the mystery. One of the most interesting of Mr. Lockhart's revelations is that the common belief that the ' Mary Celeste ' still carried her boat (by mischance she had sailed with only one boat instead of her proper complement of two) is entirely unfounded. The evidence of Captain
Morehouse shows plainly that the davits which carried the brigantine's yawl were empty.
In that respect notably, but in, many minor respects also, the romancers and expositors have all worked en incorrect inform-ation. For a romancer it does not matter ; inaccuracies
of this kind are his provender ; but it was inexcusable for those who professed to approach the mystery scientifically not to take the trouble which Mr. Lockhart has taken to examine Lloyd's records and the documents relating to the ' Mary Celeste' which are still in existence in America and to find out what sort of weather the Mary Celeste ' met, for there is, of course, ample evidence from the logs of other ships which made the same passage at the same time.
Mr. Lockhart's own solution is very like that of Captain Moiehouse and identical with that of Dr. Oliver Cobb, who is intimately connected with the Briggs family in America. He believes that the cargo of alcohol had generated some dan- gerous gas, and that upon noticing this the crew lifted the hatch to investigate. Probably there was an explosion, and Captain Briggs, thinking that a worse explosion might follow, gave the necessary orders for safety. The ship was pre- sumably more or less hove-to ; the captain snatched up some of the papers ; a few tins of meat were seized and the whole crew made away from the ship in, the one boat. Possibly the boat capsized and they were all drowned or—more likely— a breeze came up and the ship, not being properly hove-to, ran away from them. In the latter case they may have been all lost if they tried to land through the surf at the nearest land, which was Santa Maria.
Mr. Lockhart's statement has an air of finality. There is only one fact which does not fit in quite easily—that barrel of alcohol which is said to have been broached. Why was it broached ? The only possible general objection to Mr. Lockhart's excellent piece of work is that he has made the mystery much less of a mystery. The legends of mutiny, piracy, murder, and barratry have become distinctly dimmer.
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