The Mary Celeste ghost ship

The sea has been surrounded by mysteries that confuse our mind and none of the mysteries in the sea have been more confusing to people than the abandoned ships that seem to be drifting without the people. You can also concur with it that the most famous ghost ship of all times is Mary Celeste and its mystery still puzzles investigators to the present day. I think that this case is one of the few cases where all the logical explanations could not have all the facts. I mean that we can theorize endlessly but the reality of what transpired in that ship is still confined in the past. I say it because this mystery made me remembrance of how human beings pretend to figure out everything through the use of logic and science and yet happen to come across some events that cannot be explained by any means and leave us in total helplessness.

The Mary Celeste was a merchant vessel which left New York in November 1872 to Genoa Italy carrying a cargo of industrial alcohol. In the olden times such expeditions were normal and usual but very hazardous because of the harsh weather and sea conditions. It used to occur to me that it was logical that the ships that went into the sea would vanish as storms were able to sink the ships and the Mary Celeste did not sink and this is what is so disturbing about this case. After the ship was lost at sea, lasting a month after it sailed, it was found abandoned, but in a perfectly seaworthy condition off the Azores islands. In addition to this the ship had been preserved with most of its cargo intact the ship structure had not been damaged and there was not a trace of struggle or violence but all ten persons on board including the captain his wife their young daughter and seven other crew members were gone without a trace.

The accident was found when the Mary Celeste was sailing randomly and was detected by another ship known as the Dei Gratia who dispatched a few members of the crew to investigate. You can guess how they were shocked on boarding and finding no one there except things seeming in a fairly good state of order. It is this state of the ship that sets this mystery so unnerving in my eyes since in case of some tragedy you would anticipate seeing evidence of panic or severity. They were the ones who conducted the research into the ship and discovered that the lifeboat of the ship was missing which was an indication that the crew had intentionally left the ship but why would they leave a perfectly working ship. Rather than being thrown overboard by pirates, or damaged by storms which causally led the crew to abandon ship, they chose to do so themselves so that is completely illogical. This irrational move made no sense to me back then when I read it in many theories and up to this time I still do not understand why the experienced sailors would leave behind a safe ship and be in a small lifeboat on the ocean.

The captain had left a logbook in the ship and the last entry was made nine days prior to the vessel being found with no unusual detail being made. Some of the speculations that were put across earlier days were that the crew was drunk on the alcohol cargo but the alcohol that was contained was industrial grade and it could not be drunk. I understood that the majority of the most popular theories crash on their own and it is impossible to find a reasonable solution. So I grew to the conclusion that some horrible thing had come up out of the blue that had made the captain think it was safer to stay on the ship than to risk the ocean in a lifeboat. And that was the manner when panic dominated the logic and what might bring about such fear is not known.

There are numerous theories which have been put forward through the years such as pirate attack waterspouts fear of explosion due to alcohol fumes and even sea monsters or paranormal activity. The explosion theory would have the most sense since a small vapor explosion would have scared the crew and they thought a larger explosion would have happened, so they would have vacated the area temporarily with the intention of going back once the area was safe and the lifeboat might have gotten swept away or sunk before they could do so. However, simultaneously this is merely conjecture and we do not have any hard facts to prove any theory beyond reasonable doubt.

There is absolutely no information concerning the fate of the ten people who were aboard. In rare instances the debris of shipwrecks or human forms are washed ashore at long last but there was never any trace of the crew or lifeboat of the Mary Celeste. They were those families who lost their dear ones without any idea of what happened or where they died and it is maybe the most cruel part of this mystery. Without someone finding new evidence which is not probable in the history of the world after the past 150 years the truth will lie in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean forever.

The Mary Celeste was eventually recovered and sold but acquired the reputation of being a curse and unlucky. I believe it actually influenced the value of the ship since sailors are superstitious and no one would want to travel in a ship related to such a black mystery. In addition to this, the ship passed into the hands of various owners and it ended up wrecking in 1885 in what some would call insurance fraud accident.

It is highly questionable therefore, whether we shall ever know what became of the crew of the Mary celeste. They did not understand the disturbance of not knowing where they have gone and not being able to move on without any explanation is something the families would never have done. It is, at least, not a bad idea to accept that fact that some secrets are designed to stay unraveled and it is not always a bad thing.

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