FtV - The Ghost Ship Mary Celeste

New England Legends Podcast

Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger revisit a classic episode to explore the enduring mystery of the ghost ship Mary Celeste. The hosts recount the

Key takeaways

• The Mary Celeste was originally launched in 1861 under the name Amazon.
• Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs was transporting 1,701 barrels of denatured alcohol toward Genoa, Italy.

Main topics

• The Mary Celeste mystery
• Maritime legends and ghost ships

Notable quotes

A ship sailing with no crew is the very definition of a ghost ship.

Conclusion

The episode offers a compelling look at how modern science attempts to

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Amazon Great Indian Festival is here. Amazon Speaker 1 (0:06) Great Speaker 2 (0:27) Indian Festival is Speaker 3 (0:30) Welcome, Legendary listeners! Thanks for tuning in to From the Vault, a second look at some of our classic episodes. Look for a new episode every week. here. Speaker 5 (0:37) Now, can you go back and listen on your own at OurNewEnglandLegends.com? You Speaker 3 (0:41) bet! But you won't get the added bonus of an After the Legends segment featuring new commentary about that episode from your old pals Jeff and Ray. Speaker 5 (0:50) So let's open up the New England Legends Vault and revisit another legendary episode. Speaker 3 (0:56) Hey kids, welcome to the vault. Glad Speaker 5 (0:58) to have you back here in the vault. This week we're going to re-explore the ghost ship Mary Celeste. First aired April 25th, 2019. Enjoy. Speaker 3 (1:11) Ah, it's a beautiful day for a stroll on the beach here in Marion, Massachusetts. The weather is gorgeous, the salt air, the waves, the... Jeff, you seem distracted. What are you doing? I'm, uh, I'm keeping my eyes out on the water, Ray. All right, well, what are you looking for? I'm searching for Mary Speaker 5 (1:27) Celeste. Ooh, who is Mary Celeste? Not who, what. Mary Celeste is a ghost ship. Speaker 3 (1:38) I'm Jeff Belanger. And I'm Ray Ogier, and welcome to episode 88 of the New England Legends podcast. If you give us about 10 minutes, we'll give you something strange to talk about today. Thanks for joining us on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England one week. and one story at a time. And Speaker 5 (1:52) we couldn't do that without the help of our Patreon patrons who keep these episodes ad-free. That's right. For as little as three bucks per month, you get early access to new episodes, plus bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear. So just head over to patreon.com slash newenglandlegends to find out more. Speaker 3 (2:09) And if you truly enjoy what we do each week, tell a friend about our podcast. Yeah, please do. You can subscribe for free on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Great things happen when we share these stories. They do. All right, so we're looking for a ghost ship, Jeff? That's right. Ghost ships freak me out. Speaker 5 (2:28) Okay. Speaker 3 (2:29) I can only imagine what life at sea was like before radar, Doppler weather, and radio communications. Yeah, Speaker 5 (2:35) yeah. Speaker 3 (2:35) Just your boat out in the open ocean. I can imagine sailors were a superstitious bunch. The most famous ghost ship of all time would be the Flying Dutchman. Right, Speaker 5 (2:43) right. Most often seen off the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. And SpongeBob SquarePants. Right. Speaker 3 (2:49) The story of the Flying Dutchman goes way back to the 1600s. Right, right. It's a ship that can never make port. It's doomed to sail the seas forever. They say if you spot the Flying Dutchman at sea, it's a sign of bad things to come. And if the Dutchman hails your ship and you stop to take a postal mail from her? It means your ship is doomed. And you may recall, we looked into the ghost ship of New Haven, Connecticut back in episode 43 of the podcast. That's right. Is the Mary Celeste similar to the New Haven version? A ghostly ship sailing through the clouds? Speaker 5 (3:20) No, no, this ship is different. The Mary Celeste is a more traditional ghost ship, meaning it's a ship found sailing in the open ocean, but without a crew or passengers. Speaker 5 (3:33) The year is 1872, and the place is Marion, Massachusetts. Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs lives in town with his wife, Sarah, his son, seven-year-old Arthur, and his two-year-old daughter, Sophia. Briggs is a respected and well-seasoned man of the sea. His father was also a sea captain, so you could say the ocean is in his blood. Even though Briggs is a sea captain at heart, the endless travel is wearing on him. Plus, now he's got young children, so he considers going into Speaker 3 (3:59) business with his brother, Oliver. Now, Oliver is also a sea captain and also growing tired of life at sea. The brothers discuss pooling their resources to buy a hardware business in New Bedford. But sometimes opportunity knocks in the form of a great deal. Captain Briggs finds this ship for sale. It's a brigantine called Mary Celeste. He knows with some refitting. It could be a great cargo ship for transatlantic voyages. So Captain Brigg buys into part ownership of the vessel and has it refitted and upgraded in New York's harbor. Here's the thing about the Mary Speaker 5 (4:30) Celeste. That's not her original name. Originally called Amazon, this ship launched May 18, 1861 from Nova Scotia. And if I were the superstitious sort, I might even call the Amazon an unlucky ship. All right, how so? There were a series of unfortunate events that occurred to the ship. She collided with fishing equipment in Eastport, Maine, which caused some damage. There was the sudden illness and death of her first captain and a collision with another ship in the English Channel that actually sank the other vessel. In October of 1867, Amazon was driven ashore by a storm and was so badly beaten that the owners just left her for a wreck. Yeah, that does sound unlucky. In 1868, she was sold as a derelict to an American captain named Richard Haynes, who had her fixed up. Haynes is the one who renamed the ship... Speaker 3 (5:17) Mary Celeste. All right. I've heard more than once that sailors consider it unlucky to rename a ship. Is that right? Yeah, Speaker 5 (5:24) I've heard that. Speaker 3 (5:24) So I looked into it. The legend goes when a ship is christened, its name goes into the ledger of the deep, which is overseen by the god of the sea, Neptune. Oh, okay. If you rename a ship... Neptune believes you're trying to slip something past him, and he'll punish you for having the audacity. Speaker 5 (5:40) So maybe there's something to that, because Richard Haynes went bankrupt, and the Mary Celeste was seized by his creditors. For the next three years, Mary Celeste changes hands a few times, but there's no record of her making any significant voyages until Captain Briggs comes into the picture Speaker 3 (5:54) and refits the ship in New