Mary Celeste, an American sailing ship, was found abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872. The disappearance of the crew is one of the great sea mysteries.
The Mary Celeste was built in 1861 in Nova Scotia, Canada. On Nov. 7, 1872, it left New York City for Genoa, Italy, carrying a cargo of industrial alcohol. A month later, the crew of another ship, the Dei Gratia, sighted the Mary Celeste halfway between the Azores and the Portuguese coast. A boarding party found nobody on board, although the cargo, the provisions, and most of the equipment were there. The only things missing were the lifeboat and the navigation instruments. The ship was taken to Gibraltar, where a naval court of investigation examined all the available evidence.
Many theories have been put forward for the disappearance of the captain, his wife and child, and the crew of the Mary Celeste. Some investigators believed that they tried to escape in the lifeboat because the ship was in danger of sinking, or because the casks of alcohol were exploding. Some people suggested that pirates had attacked the ship, or that it had collided with a great squid. But no satisfactory explanation has ever been found, and the mystery remains unsolved.
