WEBVTT

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Sarah build this up the creaking suspense
and like the ocean, it's so creepy

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though, like it's spooky. Welcome
to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk

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about scary things that surprised us around
the Internet. I'm Edwin and I'm Michelle.

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We're on the ocean. It's December
eighteen seventy two. I guess we

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should have gone in the time machine. But you know, we can't go

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on the time machine all the time. Sometimes we're just already there, guys.

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I like it. I like when
a story just boom. We're out

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at sea. We're four hundred miles
west of the Azores. Have no idea

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where that is. They're off the
coast of Portugal. Okay, you are

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a crewman on the British boat the
de Gratia. You know you're in the

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crows and ask. You're having a
good time take. The ocean is calm.

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You scan the horizon with your spyglass. You spot something strange. Only

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Captain look over there. Captain David
Morehouse looks in the direction you're pointing.

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There, drifting aimlessly is a ship. Its sails are tattered. Morehouse is

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concerned and realized the floundering vessel is
the Mary Celeste, a ship that had

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left eight days before him from the
same port on its way to Italy.

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Edwin. You're part of the boarding
party sent out to investigate the ship.

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You pull alongside in a small boat. You're met with an eerie silence.

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Heck, now, climbing on board, there's no sign of the ten person

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crew. You ordered the boarding party
to search OI. This is peculiar.

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Such high and love me lads.
The boarding party splits up, searching for

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answers. The main hatch was open
and secured. Within her cargo hold was

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her charge of seventeen hundred and one
barrels of industrial denatured alcohol, untouched and

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unscathed. In the cabins. All
the crew's effects were where they'd been stowed.

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Nothing had been touched. But as
you search the captain's quarters you find

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that the charts and the navigational equipment
is missing. In the log book,

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the last entry was nine days prior, indicating that the Mary Celeste had been

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off the coast at Santa Maria Island
in the Azors. So you're like,

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even carrious, a mate, I
love that it's I can almost imagine what

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this guy looks like, if it
me, if it wasn't me, blimy.

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I understand that my accent might have
gone Australian just then, but it's

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because you've been to a lot of
ports, so I'm doing it intentionally.

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But as you search the ship,
you find that there's plenty of provisions left,

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so you know, go to town. The only odd thing is that

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there's three and a half feet of
water at the bottom of the hold,

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but it's not going to destroy the
boat. The amount that's in there,

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it's not like a fatal amount.
But they also find that the ship's lifeboat

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is no longer on board, and
there are long cords and ropes just hanging

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off the back of the ship,
so like just dragging along in the water.

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So it seems the crew, while
the boat is still seaworthy, has

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abandoned ship for some reason out in
the middle of the Atlantic. What happened

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to the crew of the Mary Celeste. It's a mystery that's lasted to this

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day with no lack of ideas or
theories. It's one of the most famous

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ghost ships to ever sail the seas, But the Mary Celeste may have been

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cursed before it even set sail.
Now, I'm just gonna start with some

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brief background on the Mary Celeste as
a boat. I think it's relevant because

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I don't know how anybody expected the
outcome to be different. So like before

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it was a ghost ship, like
when it was yeah, before it was

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even the Marry Celeste. It was
called the Amazon as piloted by Jeff Bezos,

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nice on the scene success Jeff Bezos
back when he was just importing books.

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He just loved books. Anyway,
it was actually called the Amazon and

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it was launched in eighteen sixty one
and a guy named Robert McKellen was selected

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as her captain. He has the
name of a captain, Like you realize

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that it just sounds like a captain. All of them have, like honestly,

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as I go through this list,
you have to go to see if

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you have this name. But anyway, he was about to set sail on

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the maiden voyage of the Amazon and
he felt a cold setting him. But

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he was like, you know,
a little salty air is going to cure

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this right up. You know,
famous last words for anyone in the eighteen

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hundreds. I think its original port
was Nova Scotia, but the boat didn't

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even make it out of Canada because
they had to turn around with it a

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week because he had turned into pneumonia
and he died like a couple days after

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they got back. So that was
the maiden voyage of the Amazon fail.

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So the maiden voyage was then rescheduled
and continued under the captain John Nutting Parker.

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But a string of misfortunes continued on
the ship. As she was sailing

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past Maine, it got stuck in
some fishing tackle. When it arrived in

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England, it ran into a small
boat and sunk. The boat sounds like

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a clumsy ship. Like it's just
like, see, folks are superstitious folks.

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I don't know what about this is, like, you know, let's

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keep sailing. The ship cursed,
Yeah, it's cursed. It just seems

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cursed. After its disastrous maiden voyage, it basically had kind of a normal

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two years as a merchant ship.
It went to the West Indies, it

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went across the Atlantic a couple times. When Captain Parker left, he was

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replaced by a captain William Thomas,
who continued to operate the vessel and nothing

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crazy happened until eighteen sixty seven when
it was caught in a storm and he

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had to beasically run the ship aground
to save the crew. The ship was

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like severely damaged at that point,
so it was a derelic wreck. And

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then someone acquired it after a few
months, and his name was Richard Haynes,

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and he cleaned up the wreck and
then made it seaworthy again, and

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then renamed the ship to the Mary
Celeste, which is a big no no

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and maritime superstition. And I went
and I looked this up. Legend states

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that when every ship is christened,
its name goes into quote unquote the ledger

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of the deep, maintained by Neptune
or Poseidon himself. Renaming a ship or

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a boat means that you're trying to
slip something past the gods, and you

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will be punished for your deviousness.
Sailors are a superstitious people. I mean,

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there's so many things out of your
control, like the weather, the

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ocean, like you would be like, uh, don't make stuff you don't

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understand, angry. And then a
more practical reason is that the boats are

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used to transport cargo. Each vessel
has its own reputation, good or bad,

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all over the world and then a
sudden name change, therefore its reputation

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would be unrecognizable, and then you
know, they could cause problems for the

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crew and the captain. You know, that's the basic branding. It's all

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about branding. Baby. I think
I've ever been on a boat. You've

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never been on a ferry. I
don't think so, just the one on

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Disneyland. Oh well, all right, that's fair. I need to go

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on a boat. Yeah, yeah, you should go on a boat.

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That's fun. So Richard Hayes had
bought the ship, but basically he renamed

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it. He registered it in New
York, but he wasn't a very good

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businessman or captain, so like within
a year it was seized by the creditors.

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But honestly he kind of lucked out. He's just part of the curse,

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I guess, by losing the ship. But so anyway, it was

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then sold off to a guy named
James H. Winchester and in October eighteen

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sixty nine, he retrofitted the ship
and like just increased its size and then

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hired Benjamin Briggs, a thirty seven
year old Massachusetts man, to be the

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captain. So the fact that a
brig is a ship and then his last

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name is Briggs. I mean,
come on, what else were you going

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to do with your life? He
was going to take the ship to Italy,

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and he decided to bring his wife, Sarah and their infant daughter,

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Sophia on the trip as well.
The Mary Celeste departed Peer fifty in New

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York and made her way out of
the harbor. But this would be the

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last time that any of the ten
people on board would be seen alive.

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Are you ready for theories? I'm
ready? Yeah, what's your theory right

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now? From the opening scene,
I think that pirates had to do with

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it. Like, let's just say
they showed up through some ropes, they

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climbed up the ship, found the
captain, told the captain, I'm the

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captain now, and then tied them
up to a chair. Kill the rest

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of the crew or dump them out
into the ocean so that there's no blood.

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Then they made the captain watch as
they I don't know, something suffering

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worthy here, like maybe they just
dumped them out and then they hopped back

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on their ship and then they left
after taking wait, they didn't take anything

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right or oh dang it, Okay, so that just ruins it. Yeah,

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because pirates would steal. Dang it, that just ruined my whole time.

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Now, you that's so funny because
that's one of the whole theories.

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You just literally reasoned it all.
Yeah. I guess I don't have to

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cover that now. But yes,
pirates were suspected at one point, but

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pirates aren't serial killers necessarily, They're
not going to just come and kill an

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entire crew and then not take the
loot. So the fact that the whole

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ship was still fully stocked means that
it was not irates, so that got

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eliminated. Okay. Second theory m
hm, aliens that's also on the list.

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Really, I I don't know.
This story is that like family feud

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or whatever. Top five theories of
where what happened to the Mary celest Third

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theory then mass psychosis? Oh interesting, I don't know. Maybe they started

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talking about something that was happening,
they all believed it, they reinforced it.

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They're like, the only way to
save ourselves is to jump out hope

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for the best, and they did
and then they just disappeared. I guess

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I don't know. That's a good
theory. I mean that goes along with

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there's another theory about how the fumes
of the industrial alcohol might have consumed them,

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and there might have been Yeah,
like there might have been a tiny

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explosion which sent everybody to the lifeboat
because they were scared of that. Yeah,

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so that's a good theory. If
any sort of fumes are involved,

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your brain's not working right, so
you know, it could have been a

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mass psychosis. It could have been
something like that. Maybe something was threatening

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their lives. They jumped on the
lifeboat, but then the lifeboats didn't make

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it. Yeah, the cord got
disconnected somehow. Oh that big octopus thing,

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you know, that that thing?
Who that's on my list too?

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Are you? Are you? Yeah? That's also a theory, is that

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it was the kraken. But then
it's like, okay, yeah, why

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would you leave the big boat if
the kraken is there and go in the

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tiny boat? Right, Yeah,
that wouldn't make any sense, same with

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all sea monsters. Like, that's
also a theory, is that a sea

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monster crawled up and ate the crew
or whatever. But then like, why

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were some of the navigation equipment things
moving, and like a little lifeboat is

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missing. Why would a sea monster
just pick and choose what it was going

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to eat? Off the boat or
whatever. Maybe one of the crew got

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I don't know when all murdery,
and people try to say that's also a

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theory mutiny. Maybe some of the
crew went crazy and killed the officers and

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then took the life vote. And
then it's a theory that maybe they'd gotten

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into the alcohol. But if somebody's
drinking industrial alcohol, they're not gonna not

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going to do anything. They would
have been knocked out pretty much. Wait,

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so this ship, was it still
floating around or like it is?

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It was just floating around looking totally
fine. It was seaworthy when the De

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Gratia found it, and what do
they do with it? There's this thing

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called salvage, right, So what
ended up happening is that they towed it

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to shore and then they got accused
of killing everybody on board. Oh no,

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which there just wasn't any evidence that
they had actually been murdered or anything.

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There's no blow on the ship,
there's no anything like that. The

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De Gratia had left eight days after
the Mary Celeste, so the Mary Celeste

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would have had to have just been
sitting there in order for them to even

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catch up with it. So that's
one of the theories as well, Yeah,

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that makes it. That was about
to say, like, so that's

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a theory that they could have done
it, but it just doesn't seem quite

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right. It sounds like they just
actually came upon it, which is way

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spookier. The how do you tow
a boat like that? Well, they

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had to split the crew, right, so it's like they towed it.

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But also you know, they had
like six people manning it and then six

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people manning the regularship, so it
was tricky, but they did it.

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Also, another thing about the De
Gratia, it had been caught in really

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bad weather, probably the same bad
weather that the Mary Celeste got caught in

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that like tore up the sails.
This is the most likely theory that people

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have is that it got caught in
bad weather. It took on water one

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of the pumpston work and so the
captain got panicked it was like the ship's

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going down, even though it didn't
go down, and put everybody in the

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lifeboat since he was with his family. And apparently according to the logs,

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they could see Santa Maria, Island
of the Azores from the boat at the

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time. So it's theorized that they
loaded up the lifeboat with the crew and

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made for land. But then they
just never made it. That is so

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awkward though. It's like the ship
is sinking and then they leave and then

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it's like they're off into the distance, almost by the island. Yeah,

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the kid, it's like, oh, the ship seems fine, Should we

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go back or that is like the
most likely theory is that, yeah,

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he loaded his family and his men
into the lifeboat, set out for the

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relative safety of shore, never to
be seen again. But Edwin, you're

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at sea again, on your way
back to New York. This whole ghost

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ship business has been pretty unsettling,
especially getting accused of like murder as well

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and then not doing that. But
it's nighttime and the full moon illuminates the

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sky. You spot something in the
chop of the waves. You grab your

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spyglass, ready to call Captain Morehouse. It's the pale outline of a lifeboat.

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It shimmers in and out of existence. You see the crew still rowing

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furiously to land, not aware that
they never made it, and with the

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crest of a wave, the image
is gone and the ocean will keep its

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secrets. Blimey, I'm just staying
in the Edwin character. So it continue

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to be used for ten more years
after it was salvage. Wow, and

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also well, another fricking captain died. What this other captain named Edgar Tuthill

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like, he just took ill and
died. So they lost three captains on

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this ship. When the ship turned
twenty, whoever owned it decided it wasn't

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worth either continuing to have it or
just declaring it a wreck, so they

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decided to use it in an insurance
scam and ran it into a reef in

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Haiti to try and collect money as
a part of the insurance scam. But

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they got caught, so they didn't
get any money. Good but yeah,

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and that was the end of the
Mary Celeste twenty years in service. The

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cursed sailing of the Mary Celeste.
I don't know, like it just sucks,

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that's the end. But it was
like it sounded like a curse ship,

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so cursed that even the insurance fraud
didn't work. Like this, the

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worst the sidon is watching you.
He can't even get away with just simple

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00:17:59.200 --> 00:18:03.599
insurance from I love those stories like
out in the Open Seat because it is

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00:18:03.640 --> 00:18:07.000
a little it's creepy, like it's
I think about it, like how high

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you are but it's like, you
know how deep the ocean is below you?

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That is pretty crazy. Yeah,
you're just like kind of floating on

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this really deep bowl the bull hole. What are we going to talk about

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next week, Edwin, I don't
know. I think good of your surprise.

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Scary Mystery Surprise is hosted by Michelle
Newman and Edwin Komarubyes. This podcast

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00:18:36.839 --> 00:18:41.119
was edited and sound designed by Sarah
borhe'z Wendel a VW sound