U.S. cargo ship that was found sailing erratically between the Azores Islands and the coast of Portugal, with cargo intact but with no signs of life aboard. The ship was found in December 1872, one month after it had started its voyage from New York City to Genoa, Italy. All aboard, including Capt. Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife and young daughter, and the crew of eight, had disappeared without a trace. Although evidence on the ship suggested that some kind of violent or hasty event may have occurred, no human traces were found either at the time the ship was recovered or later. Discovered by the Dei Gratia, another cargo ship that had left New York about the same time as the Mary Celeste, the ship was boarded by members of the Dei Gratia’s crew, who found a stained sword beneath the captain’s bed, a smashed glass in the box containing the ship’s compass, two broken barrels among the ship’s crude alcohol cargo, two hatch covers awkwardly thrust aside from their normal position, and no lifeboat. The ship’s log remained aboard (the last entry was 11 days before the ship was found), but the navigation instruments and ship’s papers were missing. The food and water stores remained on board, as did the captain’s and the crews sea chests and other personal belongings.
Dei Gratia crew members sailed the abandoned ship to Gibraltar with the Dei Gratia accompanying them. An official investigation ensued, with many possible explanations offered for the puzzling disappearance of captain and crew. These included suggestions of mutiny by the crew, an insane massacre by the captain who then jumped into the sea himself, conspiracy on the part of the two captains Briggs and the Dei Gratia’s Capt. Morehouse to commit insurance fraud, and an unwarranted hasty abandonment of the ship when water was found in the holds. The British Admiralty court in Gibraltar, for the first time in its history, was unable to reach a conclusion about the fate of the Mary Celeste’s crew, but it did award a salvage fee to the Dei Gratia crew, and it returned the ship to its surviving owner (Briggs was part-owner) in New York. He quickly sold the ship, which resumed its unlucky history. (It had been involved in several accidents before the 1872 voyage, including a collision and a fire, and its history continued in this vein. Ultimately, the ship’s career ended in 1885 when its owner scuttled it on a reef as part of an insurance scam.)