Interesting Events: The Vanishing Of The Mary Celeste
On November 7, 1872, with Captain Benjamin Briggs in command, the Mary Celeste set off from New York for Genoa, Italy. On board were a crew of seven alongside Briggs, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter, all of whom were ready to deliver 1,700 barrels of commercial alcohol needed to fortify Italian wines. Unfortunately, the Mary Celeste never docked in Italy.
Instead, the ship was discovered adrift in the Atlantic near the Azores Islands on Dec. 5, with no signs of struggle, a lifeboat missing, the captain’s log and alcohol intact, but without a single living person on board.
Theories of what happened range all the way from alien abduction to mutiny to cargo fumes that forced abandonment, but no conclusive proof exists as to what actually happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste.
