Sarah build this up the creaking suspense and like the ocean, it's so creepy
though, like it's spooky. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk
about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin and I'm Michelle.
We're on the ocean. It's December eighteen seventy two. I guess we
should have gone in the time machine. But you know, we can't go
on the time machine all the time. Sometimes we're just already there, guys.
I like it. I like when a story just boom. We're out
at sea. We're four hundred miles west of the Azores. Have no idea
where that is. They're off the coast of Portugal. Okay, you are
a crewman on the British boat the de Gratia. You know you're in the
crows and ask. You're having a good time take. The ocean is calm.
You scan the horizon with your spyglass. You spot something strange. Only
Captain look over there. Captain David Morehouse looks in the direction you're pointing.
There, drifting aimlessly is a ship. Its sails are tattered. Morehouse is
concerned and realized the floundering vessel is the Mary Celeste, a ship that had
left eight days before him from the same port on its way to Italy.
Edwin. You're part of the boarding party sent out to investigate the ship.
You pull alongside in a small boat. You're met with an eerie silence.
Heck, now, climbing on board, there's no sign of the ten person
crew. You ordered the boarding party to search OI. This is peculiar.
Such high and love me lads. The boarding party splits up, searching for
answers. The main hatch was open and secured. Within her cargo hold was
her charge of seventeen hundred and one barrels of industrial denatured alcohol, untouched and
unscathed. In the cabins. All the crew's effects were where they'd been stowed.
Nothing had been touched. But as you search the captain's quarters you find
that the charts and the navigational equipment is missing. In the log book,
the last entry was nine days prior, indicating that the Mary Celeste had been
off the coast at Santa Maria Island in the Azors. So you're like,
even carrious, a mate, I love that it's I can almost imagine what
this guy looks like, if it me, if it wasn't me, blimy.
I understand that my accent might have gone Australian just then, but it's
because you've been to a lot of ports, so I'm doing it intentionally.
But as you search the ship, you find that there's plenty of provisions left,
so you know, go to town. The only odd thing is that
there's three and a half feet of water at the bottom of the hold,
but it's not going to destroy the boat. The amount that's in there,
it's not like a fatal amount. But they also find that the ship's lifeboat
is no longer on board, and there are long cords and ropes just hanging
off the back of the ship, so like just dragging along in the water.
So it seems the crew, while the boat is still seaworthy, has
abandoned ship for some reason out in the middle of the Atlantic. What happened
to the crew of the Mary Celeste. It's a mystery that's lasted to this
day with no lack of ideas or theories. It's one of the most famous
ghost ships to ever sail the seas, But the Mary Celeste may have been
cursed before it even set sail. Now, I'm just gonna start with some
brief background on the Mary Celeste as a boat. I think it's relevant because
I don't know how anybody expected the outcome to be different. So like before
it was a ghost ship, like when it was yeah, before it was
even the Marry Celeste. It was called the Amazon as piloted by Jeff Bezos,
nice on the scene success Jeff Bezos back when he was just importing books.
He just loved books. Anyway, it was actually called the Amazon and
it was launched in eighteen sixty one and a guy named Robert McKellen was selected
as her captain. He has the name of a captain, Like you realize
that it just sounds like a captain. All of them have, like honestly,
as I go through this list, you have to go to see if
you have this name. But anyway, he was about to set sail on
the maiden voyage of the Amazon and he felt a cold setting him. But
he was like, you know, a little salty air is going to cure
this right up. You know, famous last words for anyone in the eighteen
hundreds. I think its original port was Nova Scotia, but the boat didn't
even make it out of Canada because they had to turn around with it a
week because he had turned into pneumonia and he died like a couple days after
they got back. So that was the maiden voyage of the Amazon fail.
So the maiden voyage was then rescheduled and continued under the captain John Nutting Parker.
But a string of misfortunes continued on the ship. As she was sailing
past Maine, it got stuck in some fishing tackle. When it arrived in
England, it ran into a small boat and sunk. The boat sounds like
a clumsy ship. Like it's just like, see, folks are superstitious folks.
I don't know what about this is, like, you know, let's
keep sailing. The ship cursed, Yeah, it's cursed. It just seems
cursed. After its disastrous maiden voyage, it basically had kind of a normal
two years as a merchant ship. It went to the West Indies, it
went across the Atlantic a couple times. When Captain Parker left, he was
replaced by a captain William Thomas, who continued to operate the vessel and nothing
crazy happened until eighteen sixty seven when it was caught in a storm and he
had to beasically run the ship aground to save the crew. The ship was
like severely damaged at that point, so it was a derelic wreck. And
then someone acquired it after a few months, and his name was Richard Haynes,
and he cleaned up the wreck and then made it seaworthy again, and
then renamed the ship to the Mary Celeste, which is a big no no
and maritime superstition. And I went and I looked this up. Legend states
that when every ship is christened, its name goes into quote unquote the ledger
of the deep, maintained by Neptune or Poseidon himself. Renaming a ship or
a boat means that you're trying to slip something past the gods, and you
will be punished for your deviousness. Sailors are a superstitious people. I mean,
there's so many things out of your control, like the weather, the
ocean, like you would be like, uh, don't make stuff you don't
understand, angry. And then a more practical reason is that the boats are
used to transport cargo. Each vessel has its own reputation, good or bad,
all over the world and then a sudden name change, therefore its reputation
would be unrecognizable, and then you know, they could cause problems for the
crew and the captain. You know, that's the basic branding. It's all
about branding. Baby. I think I've ever been on a boat. You've
never been on a ferry. I don't think so, just the one on
Disneyland. Oh well, all right, that's fair. I need to go
on a boat. Yeah, yeah, you should go on a boat.
That's fun. So Richard Hayes had bought the ship, but basically he renamed
it. He registered it in New York, but he wasn't a very good
businessman or captain, so like within a year it was seized by the creditors.
But honestly he kind of lucked out. He's just part of the curse,
I guess, by losing the ship. But so anyway, it was
then sold off to a guy named James H. Winchester and in October eighteen
sixty nine, he retrofitted the ship and like just increased its size and then
hired Benjamin Briggs, a thirty seven year old Massachusetts man, to be the
captain. So the fact that a brig is a ship and then his last
name is Briggs. I mean, come on, what else were you going
to do with your life? He was going to take the ship to Italy,
and he decided to bring his wife, Sarah and their infant daughter,
Sophia on the trip as well. The Mary Celeste departed Peer fifty in New
York and made her way out of the harbor. But this would be the
last time that any of the ten people on board would be seen alive.
Are you ready for theories? I'm ready? Yeah, what's your theory right
now? From the opening scene, I think that pirates had to do with
it. Like, let's just say they showed up through some ropes, they
climbed up the ship, found the captain, told the captain, I'm the
captain now, and then tied them up to a chair. Kill the rest
of the crew or dump them out into the ocean so that there's no blood.
Then they made the captain watch as they I don't know, something suffering
worthy here, like maybe they just dumped them out and then they hopped back
on their ship and then they left after taking wait, they didn't take anything
right or oh dang it, Okay, so that just ruins it. Yeah,
because pirates would steal. Dang it, that just ruined my whole time.
Now, you that's so funny because that's one of the whole theories.
You just literally reasoned it all. Yeah. I guess I don't have to
cover that now. But yes, pirates were suspected at one point, but
pirates aren't serial killers necessarily, They're not going to just come and kill an
entire crew and then not take the loot. So the fact that the whole
ship was still fully stocked means that it was not irates, so that got
eliminated. Okay. Second theory m hm, aliens that's also on the list.
Really, I I don't know. This story is that like family feud
or whatever. Top five theories of where what happened to the Mary celest Third
theory then mass psychosis? Oh interesting, I don't know. Maybe they started
talking about something that was happening, they all believed it, they reinforced it.
They're like, the only way to save ourselves is to jump out hope
for the best, and they did and then they just disappeared. I guess
I don't know. That's a good theory. I mean that goes along with
there's another theory about how the fumes of the industrial alcohol might have consumed them,
and there might have been Yeah, like there might have been a tiny
explosion which sent everybody to the lifeboat because they were scared of that. Yeah,
so that's a good theory. If any sort of fumes are involved,
your brain's not working right, so you know, it could have been a
mass psychosis. It could have been something like that. Maybe something was threatening
their lives. They jumped on the lifeboat, but then the lifeboats didn't make
it. Yeah, the cord got disconnected somehow. Oh that big octopus thing,
you know, that that thing? Who that's on my list too?
Are you? Are you? Yeah? That's also a theory, is that
it was the kraken. But then it's like, okay, yeah, why
would you leave the big boat if the kraken is there and go in the
tiny boat? Right, Yeah, that wouldn't make any sense, same with
all sea monsters. Like, that's also a theory, is that a sea
monster crawled up and ate the crew or whatever. But then like, why
were some of the navigation equipment things moving, and like a little lifeboat is
missing. Why would a sea monster just pick and choose what it was going
to eat? Off the boat or whatever. Maybe one of the crew got
I don't know when all murdery, and people try to say that's also a
theory mutiny. Maybe some of the crew went crazy and killed the officers and
then took the life vote. And then it's a theory that maybe they'd gotten
into the alcohol. But if somebody's drinking industrial alcohol, they're not gonna not
going to do anything. They would have been knocked out pretty much. Wait,
so this ship, was it still floating around or like it is?
It was just floating around looking totally fine. It was seaworthy when the De
Gratia found it, and what do they do with it? There's this thing
called salvage, right, So what ended up happening is that they towed it
to shore and then they got accused of killing everybody on board. Oh no,
which there just wasn't any evidence that they had actually been murdered or anything.
There's no blow on the ship, there's no anything like that. The
De Gratia had left eight days after the Mary Celeste, so the Mary Celeste
would have had to have just been sitting there in order for them to even
catch up with it. So that's one of the theories as well, Yeah,
that makes it. That was about to say, like, so that's
a theory that they could have done it, but it just doesn't seem quite
right. It sounds like they just actually came upon it, which is way
spookier. The how do you tow a boat like that? Well, they
had to split the crew, right, so it's like they towed it.
But also you know, they had like six people manning it and then six
people manning the regularship, so it was tricky, but they did it.
Also, another thing about the De Gratia, it had been caught in really
bad weather, probably the same bad weather that the Mary Celeste got caught in
that like tore up the sails. This is the most likely theory that people
have is that it got caught in bad weather. It took on water one
of the pumpston work and so the captain got panicked it was like the ship's
going down, even though it didn't go down, and put everybody in the
lifeboat since he was with his family. And apparently according to the logs,
they could see Santa Maria, Island of the Azores from the boat at the
time. So it's theorized that they loaded up the lifeboat with the crew and
made for land. But then they just never made it. That is so
awkward though. It's like the ship is sinking and then they leave and then
it's like they're off into the distance, almost by the island. Yeah,
the kid, it's like, oh, the ship seems fine, Should we
go back or that is like the most likely theory is that, yeah,
he loaded his family and his men into the lifeboat, set out for the
relative safety of shore, never to be seen again. But Edwin, you're
at sea again, on your way back to New York. This whole ghost
ship business has been pretty unsettling, especially getting accused of like murder as well
and then not doing that. But it's nighttime and the full moon illuminates the
sky. You spot something in the chop of the waves. You grab your
spyglass, ready to call Captain Morehouse. It's the pale outline of a lifeboat.
It shimmers in and out of existence. You see the crew still rowing
furiously to land, not aware that they never made it, and with the
crest of a wave, the image is gone and the ocean will keep its
secrets. Blimey, I'm just staying in the Edwin character. So it continue
to be used for ten more years after it was salvage. Wow, and
also well, another fricking captain died. What this other captain named Edgar Tuthill
like, he just took ill and died. So they lost three captains on
this ship. When the ship turned twenty, whoever owned it decided it wasn't
worth either continuing to have it or just declaring it a wreck, so they
decided to use it in an insurance scam and ran it into a reef in
Haiti to try and collect money as a part of the insurance scam. But
they got caught, so they didn't get any money. Good but yeah,
and that was the end of the Mary Celeste twenty years in service. The
cursed sailing of the Mary Celeste. I don't know, like it just sucks,
that's the end. But it was like it sounded like a curse ship,
so cursed that even the insurance fraud didn't work. Like this, the
worst the sidon is watching you. He can't even get away with just simple
insurance from I love those stories like out in the Open Seat because it is
a little it's creepy, like it's I think about it, like how high
you are but it's like, you know how deep the ocean is below you?
That is pretty crazy. Yeah, you're just like kind of floating on
this really deep bowl the bull hole. What are we going to talk about
next week, Edwin, I don't know. I think good of your surprise.
Scary Mystery Surprise is hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Komarubyes. This podcast
was edited and sound designed by Sarah borhe'z Wendel a VW sound