The crew’s meal was still warm on the table.
Boarding testimony does not describe a staged, steaming dinner. That detail is later folklore.
Unsolved is not a licence to invent pirates or a warm breakfast.
Aftermath is historiography and the correction of a short story.
Still open
- Why the boat was launched — Fear of explosion, a false sinking reading, weather — none is proved.
- Where the ten people went — No verified landfall. The Atlantic kept the yawl, or the yawl never reached a beach that was reported.
- How much water was dangerous — Hold water in the testimony is real and not clearly catastrophic. The crew’s perception is lost.
- What the empty barrels mean — Leakage can support a vapour story. It can also be ordinary cargo loss.
- How to teach the case — Whether English media keep Marie and the ghost, or Mary and the docket, is still an editorial choice.
Myth vs record
The ship’s name was Marie Celeste.
The registered name was Mary Celeste. Marie comes from Conan Doyle’s 1884 fiction.
Dei Gratia’s men were found guilty of murder.
Solly-Flood suspected them. The court paid salvage and did not convict them of harming Briggs’s company.
The 1885 Haiti wreck explains 1872.
A later master and a later reef are a separate insurance episode. They do not place the 1872 boat.
Local notes
British newspaper English
Gibraltar cables and London shipping columns gave the first factual voice. Cornhill and later weeklies gave the voice most readers still hear.
American maritime English
New York and New England accounts keep Briggs, the alcohol cargo and an American-owned hull. They are less attached to Marie than British quiz English is.
Documentary English
United States, British and Australian television still restage a ghost ship. The usable correction is Deveau’s notes and the 1873 award.
Mary Celeste remains an unsolved abandonment whose English afterlife is larger, and more fictional, than its salvage file.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.