Ship time begins in 1861. Mystery time is six weeks in 1872.
Dates below prefer log, boarding notes and the Gibraltar docket.
Timeline
- Launched as Amazon
Built at Spencer’s Island, Nova Scotia. Later renamed Mary Celeste and placed under American ownership.
- Sails from New York
Briggs, family and seven crew leave for Genoa with 1,701 barrels of denatured alcohol.
- Last log-slate entry
Position near Santa Maria, Azores. No later writing from the ship’s company survives.
- Dei Gratia boards
Morehouse’s brigantine finds Mary Celeste abandoned. Deveau reports a missing boat and a still-workable hull.
- Arrival at Gibraltar
The derelict is brought in for salvage. Solly-Flood opens a suspicious inquiry.
- Salvage award
Vice-Admiralty court pays Dei Gratia a reduced award and does not find a cause for the abandonment.
- Ship returns to trade
Mary Celeste is released and works again under later masters. The ten people are not found.
- Conan Doyle’s story
“J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” publishes Marie Celeste and a fictional plot that English memory will keep.
- Rochelais Reef wreck
The brigantine is lost off Haiti under Gilman Parker. Insurers suspect a staged wreck. It is a separate case.
- Fay’s documentary study
Charles Edey Fay’s The Story of the Mary Celeste sends English readers back to the Gibraltar paper and away from the warm-meal myth.
After 1873 the court paper ends and the magazine paper begins.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.