-
Title
-
The Mystery of the Marie Celeste
-
Description
-
Geelong Advertiser (Vic. : 1859 - 1929), Thursday 23 November 1899, page 4
THE MYSTERY OF THE MARIE
CELESTE.
0 ' ? I
BT DB. ASDBEW" "WHSON. I
Did you. ever hear the story of the Maria Celeste, a brig -which sailed from Boston in the sixties, bound for Mediterranean ports with a general cargo of merchandise? No. "Well, yon shall hear it as I heard it told the other night by a friend oyer a pipe and something else which cheers the heart of; mail. X shall tellyoa_the story as it was told to me, a plain unvarnished tale, the details of which are writ large in the. records of the American Poreign Office, or -whatever -bureau in "Washington corresponds to our own department at home that looks after the affairs of other folks; This is no mere myth or fiction of the sea", bnt a sober tale of fact, and when X have told the story-I hope I shall" relate it circumspectly-ay readers will have presented to them as pretty a puzzle as ever was Betbefore the niind of man to solve. - So far as I know, it has never been solved yel.
The Marie Celeste set sail from Boston
| with a crew of seventeen hands, the
-captain, his wife, and His little daughter, twenty souls all told. Nothing, as far as we know, occurred on tha voyage across the Atlantic other than the routine life of a trading brig at sea.: But one fine day the brig came within hail of the Spanish coast. She was heading - probably for Gibraltar on her way to enter the great inland sea. All her Bails -were set. The weather was fine, the sea calm, and a light wind bore the vessel along. Duly tha Spanish authorities hailed the brig, without receiving any answer to thsir signals. Then came a visit of inspection, by the coastguard I "presume, ana. an astonishing -state " of things revealed itself. Not a soul of the twenty
persons who set sail from Boston in the brig was found on board. Every man had disappeared, - from the captain to the boy, and - the captain's wife and child were also as if they had never been. The vessel was minutely and carefully examined. There was- an inspection bj the American Consul; there was a business-like noting of all details ; and a report was duly prepared for the
authorities on the other side of the sea. '
Listen to the astounding particulars which an examination of the brig revealed. Not a rope or stay, not a sail was inj ured or a bolt missing. Everything from truck to keel was in its proper place. The brig's boats-note this fact, please, were all on board slung on ihoir davits or stowed on deck. Below, everything was in the same undisturbed state. The watches of the captain and Mb wife hung oil nails in the cabin. In the men's quarters, as in the cabin-another fact to be noted-there "were the remains of halfeaten dinners, cooked apparently no long time before the brig drifted towards the Spanish coast. Below and aloft all was silence-a ghastly, significant silence, appalling by reason of its inexplicable nature, and causing the faces of the searchers to pale before the mysterious possibilities which offered as solutions of the grim deadnes3 of the ship.
Sinca the day when the Marie Celeste drifted on hsr- course to the European shores not a trace of any one of the twenty
souls has been discovered. Needless to say, strict 'inquiries were made both in America and in Europe concerning cap*tain and crew. Every bailors' Home was notified of the story of the brig, in case some derelict Eeamcn should have come to a restful haven therein. The names and nationalities of the crew were known. I believe they inoluded Americans, Danes, Norwegians, and men of other nations in their numbers. But not a scrap of intelligence, not a wave-washed bottle with a message in it, not even a dead body, ever came to light which could suggest a solution of this horrible mystery. - Suppose we set our wits agoing on the problem of the Marie Celeste, what explanations are possible or likely to merit attention ? Pirates and a wholesale slaughter of the crew by ordinary murder or by walking the plank? Nonsense. Piracy was no more
common in the Atlantic in the 'sixties
than it is now, and pirates do not attack a ship merely for the sake of murdering ihe crew or without looting the vessel and sinking her, and a piratical attack surely would have left traces of a struggle on the deck. The pirato idea clearly will
not hold water at all.
A storm which swept everybody away f Equally untenable ah a theory; for storms there were none at the time the brig drifted eastward, end storms leave traces of damage such as were absent in a vesssl with all sails set and not a rope or bolt missing. Some calamity in the way of illness, you suggest. ?'Well, where were the bodies ? And if, mayhap, yoii main* tain that the last survivor Ditched hi3 dead friends into the sea and then drowned himself, you have first to find that mysterious epidemic, end to regard it as very unlikely that any disease should attack a whole crew rapidly and instantly, *o as to cut them off in a few hours' time. Don't forget the half-eaten dinners, for that fact proves that within a short distance of the land thecrew were practically at rest, undisturbed by any omen of approaching calamity; and no' disease I know of save, perhaps, cholera of malignant type oan kill people in a few hours. Besides, you must have infection, and whence did the pestilent microbes oome to the brig ? Sudden insanity on the part of one of the erew, leading to homicidal slaying of the others * "Well, if you elect to believe that theory, you may. I don't, for the plain reason that seventeen men could surely have overpowered one. The insanity idea will not work. It does not explain the facts as a true theory should, and a truo theory should explain them and b» contradicted by nane.
Have I any suggestion to make. I have, though I offer it in all modesty, seeing that, if my information is correct, American scientists were consulted re
garding the possibilities of catastrophes arising from tha denizens of the sea themselves, and rejected the idea. But we know more about certain sea monsters in this j'Par of grace than they did in the 'sixties,and my explanation of the mystery .of the Marie Celeste is that which -attri^ butes the disappearance of the crew to the attack of a huge octopus, or ~ devil-* fish, or some other member of the cuttle» fish group. 1st me picture what I think may have happened. There is a . man at the wheel. Ail the others are below at mess. A huge octopus arises from, the deep, and with a wave of its suckerstudded arm's, encircl«3 the steersman. He yells for help. Everybody rushes on deck. Then up sweep the other arms of the monster, and one by one, or en mass* the whole are included in the tenacious
grasp of the sea-devil. They - are swept over the side and perish. There is.no damage done to the veisel,and the octopus leaves no trace of its attack as it sinks itself, a loathsome, mass of flesh and muscle, into the ocean abyss. If we find squids, which are cousins of tno octopus" forty and fifty long, if octopi abound in Southern seas with'bodies as big as vats and anus .twenty'- foot in length-these things we know we may go farther and fare worse in our attempt to explain- this mystery of the deep.
-
Date Issued
-
1899-11-23
-
Creator
-
Andrew Wilson
-
Publisher
-
Geelong Advertiser
-
Location State Territory
-
Victoria
-
Location Town City
-
Geelong
