The legend of the Mary Celeste, ghost ship of the Atlantic, has sort of always been in my periphery, coming from an ocean-going family. It is at its core a terrible mystery that escaped containment and became a legend that was pulled apart and put back together again from its inception and lasted over a hundred years to the point that its story became almost unrecognizable, even shifting the ship’s name in the retellings.
The Mary Celeste had the sort of history that would lead some to call it cursed from the beginning. Built in Nova Scotia in 1861 it didn’t get through the first few days of its inaugural sailing before its first captain died. She would later ram and sink a brig in London and be abandoned after being driven ashore in the North Atlantic. She was salvaged and retrofitted and in 1872 Benjamin Spooner Briggs took captaincy and prepared for a trans-Atlantic sailing from New York to Italy. He, his wife and youngest child, and his crew would never be seen again. The ship was found without major damage and no evidence of foul play the first week of December between the Azores and Portugal.
In Ghost Ship Brian Hicks sets out to tell the story of the Mary Celeste, the Briggs family, the crew who discovered her, and the aftermath as truthfully as possible based on the historical record – including information that was lost for a hundred years – as well as the story of how the legend developed (including Arthur Conan Doyle’s first foray into shaping the legend) and posits the most likely set of events that befell the crew of the Mary Celeste in the fall of 1872. Hicks very obviously did the work and writes the story in a manner that is accessible and interesting, balancing the tragedy and the mystery and providing some resolution, to the best of his ability.
CBR Sweet 16 Book: Exciting. I was excited to read a well-researched history of the Mary Celeste when so much of the truth has been obscured over the years by the farfetched fictions that have evolved over time.
Bingo Square: Fiasco. Mary Celeste’s story was unfortunately likely a disaster created by human actions, in this case ones that came with the best of intentions.