Mary Celeste found abandoned

On December 4 or 5, 1872, the crew of the British brigantine Dei Gratia sighted another ship drifting in the Atlantic between the Azores and the coast of Portugal. It was the Mary Celeste, which had left New York in November bound for Genoa with 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol. A boarding party found no one aboard. The ship was seaworthy though wet below, with some water in the hold, the cargo largely intact, and food and personal belongings in place. The single lifeboat was missing, and the ship's papers except the logbook were gone. Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife Sarah, their two-year-old daughter Sophia and seven crewmen had vanished.¹²

The Dei Gratia's crew sailed the ship to Gibraltar and claimed salvage. The British attorney general there, Frederick Solly-Flood, suspected murder or fraud, but the court found no proof and awarded a reduced salvage payment. Arthur Conan Doyle's 1884 short story about the ship, which renamed it the Marie Celeste and invented details such as half-eaten meals, turned it into a legend. Most researchers think the crew abandoned ship in a hurry, perhaps fearing an explosion from alcohol fumes or believing the ship was sinking, and were lost when the lifeboat separated from it.¹²