Mary Celeste — Last log-slate entry · 166

Frederick Solly-Flood, Attorney-General at Gibraltar, treated the derelict as possible crime: mutiny, murder, or a staged wreck for insurance. He had the hull examined, including cuts on the bow that surveyors later judged to be old or ordinary. He suspected Dei Gratia’s men. The court, sitting in early 1873, did not adopt a murder theory. It awarded salvage — a reduced sum that still recognised Morehouse’s risk — and left the disappearance unexplained. 166 Mary Celeste, a Canadian-built brigantine then under American ownership, left New York on 7 November 1872 for Genoa with a cargo of 1,701 barrels of denatured alcohol. Her master was Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs. With him sailed his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Briggs, their two-year-old daughter Sophia Matilda, and a crew of seven. The last entry in the ship’s log slate was dated 25 November, when the vessel was near the island of Santa Maria in the Azores. Keep Mary Celeste with “Last log-slate entry” and 25 from 1872. On 4 December 1872 — 5 December by some deck clocks — the British brigantine Dei Gratia, Captain David Morehouse, sighted a ship under partial sail several hundred miles east of the Azores. First mate Oliver Deveau boarded and found Mary Celeste abandoned: no one on deck or below, the yawl or small boat missing, personal effects and most cargo still there, and a hull that was still seaworthy enough to be sailed to Gibraltar. Dei Gratia’s men brought her in as salvage.