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The Mary Celeste is one of the most famous ghost ship mysteries. The mysterious case of the vessel remains unsolved and has invited much speculation over time, also of a paranormal nature. The ship was built in the year 1860 in the Nova Scotian hamlet of Spencer’s Island and was originally named Amazon. The Mary Celeste was a brigantine, a dual-mast ship.
Following its launch on May 18, 1861, the ship encountered a series of mishaps. Firstly, the captain developed pneumonia during its maiden voyage and eventually died. The ship also suffered damage in accidents several times, most notably in October 1867, when it ran aground in Cow Bay, Cape Breton Island. In 1868, the Amazon was sold to American Richard W. Haines, who renamed it the Mary Celeste. The ship underwent major structural reworks over the next few years and was later sold to a group that came to include Capt. Benjamin Spooner Briggs.
On November 7, 1872, the Mary Celeste set sail from New York City, loaded with more than 1,700 barrels of alcohol and bound for Genoa, Italy. It carried ten people on board, including Captain Briggs, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter. Over the next two weeks, the ship met with harsh weather conditions at sea. The last log entry (dated November 25) recorded that the Mary Celeste was some 6 nautical miles from the Azores. Ten days later, the vessel was spotted by the British brig Dei Gratia.
Restored photograph of Mary Celeste | Source: Cumberland County Museum and Archives, Amherst, Nova Scotia Canada
Having noticed the drifting vessel, the Dei Gratia crew boarded the Mary Celeste and discovered that there was no one on the ship. Other than the accumulation of 3 feet of water in the hold (not a dangerous amount) the vessel remained seaworthy. One puzzling aspect of the Mary Celeste mystery is the fact that the cargo and personal belongings of the crew were mostly left undisturbed, although a longboat was missing. It appeared that the ship had been abandoned quickly. The Dei Gratia crewmen sailed the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar, approximately 800 miles away.
In Gibraltar, a British vice admiralty court convened a salvage hearing, a process usually dedicated to determining whether the salvagers were entitled to payment from the ship's insurers. Suspecting crime, the attorney general in charge of the inquiry, Frederick Solly-Flood, conducted the investigation, but after more than three months no evidence of foul play was found. The salvagers eventually received payment of one-sixth of the full $46,000 insured amount for the ship and its cargo. This may suggest that the authorities were not entirely persuaded of the Dei Gratia crew's innocence.
The legend of the Flying Dutchman regards a phantom ship cursed to sail the seas and oceans forever. The myth can be traced back to seventeenth-century nautical folklore, propagated in part by superstitious beliefs common among sailors at the time. Early written accounts of the Flying Dutchman are dated to the eighteenth century and alleged sightings of the vessel had also been frequently reported through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The first reference to the ship in print can be seen in a book published in 1790, entitled Travels in Various Parts of Europe, Asia and Africa During a Series of Thirty Years and Upward, authored by John MacDonald. A passage in one of the chapters makes mention of the myth as so:
The weather was so stormy that the sailors said they saw the Flying Dutchman. The common story is that this Dutchman came to the Cape in distress of weather and wanted to get into harbor but could not get a pilot to conduct her and was lost and that ever since in very bad weather her vision appears.
A later reference is found in A Voyage to Botany Bay, a book by George Barrington published in 1793. Barrington recollects a similar story as MacDonald, elaborating that the author heard of this superstition most often from sailors, many of whom were prone to believe in apparitions and bad omens. As Barrington retells the story of a lost Dutch frigate off the Cape of Good Hope, he concludes that the narrative spread quickly among mariners and was widely known.
The Flying Dutchman by Elbridge Kingsley (copy after Albert Pinkham Ryder) | Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum
Yet another reference to the mythical ship can be found in Scenes of Infancy, written by the Scottish orientalist John Leyden, a contemporary of Barrington, who would depict the Flying Dutchman as a “common superstition of mariners.” His accounts affirm the phantom ship was most frequently spotted on the southern coast of Africa, where “hurricanes are frequently ushered in by the appearance of a spectre-ship, denominated as the Flying Dutchman.”
There have been numerous reports of purported sightings of the Flying Dutchman. For instance, novelist Nicholas Monsarrat, noted for his book The Cruel Sea published in 1951, has claimed to have witnessed the phenomenon in the Pacific while serving as a Royal Navy officer during World War II. Many of the known sighting reports have claimed that the ship appeared to glow in a sort of ghostly light. In nautical lore, for a long time the sight of this phantom ship was regarded as the worst possible omen. Upon seeing the Dutchman, a vessel crew member would have been likely to fear that misfortune would soon befall them.
The Flying Dutchman by Albert Pinkham Ryder c. 1887 | Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum
One prominent report comes from King George V, who describes the sighting completing a three-year-long journey in his youth, in the company of his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, the future King Edward VIII. The log of the royals dates the event of seeing the Flying Dutchman on July 11, 1881. The occurrence reportedly happened off the Australian coast, amid the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Sydney. As described in their log, the phantom ship appeared in an unusual glowing red light. As the ship of Prince George approached the place where the vessel was supposed to be, there was no trace left of it in any direction, although the night was clear and the sea was calm.
When the Sea Bird sailed close to Newport Harbour, Rhode Island, onlookers noticed there appeared to be no crew on board. According to witness accounts, the ship then sailed itself through significant breakers to land on Easton’s Beach. The onlookers boarded the vessel and found it deserted, though the cargo was still intact in the hold. By some accounts, an elaborate breakfast was laid out on the table and a dressing gown was carelessly tossed aside.
Excerpt from "The Lonely Ship" newspaper story.
There was no evidence of violence, robbery, or sickness, and the possessions and instruments of the crew were left undisturbed. However, one of the longboats was absent, suggesting the crew might have escaped the ship. Following the mysterious event, no crew or debris was ever discovered and the Sea Bird was never seen again, which some historical accounts explain by claiming that the vessel was sold to a wealthy local merchant who changed its name, refuting the supernatural aspects of Sea Bird's story.
In October 1885, a murder story entitled "The Lonely Ship" was published in a Boston newspaper based on the story of the Sea Bird. It was a fictional account written as a confession by an old man who recounts the murders of the crew and captain aboard the Sea Bird by two disgruntled sailors. The story drew comparisons to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem "The Rime of The Ancient Mariner."
The term "ghost ship" can also refer to technologically advanced, uncrewed, autonomous ships. In late 2014, DNV GL, an international registrar, certification body, and classification society, developed a concept design for a nearly 200-feet long, uncrewed, battery-powered, and zero-emission vessel for applications in short-sea shipping, codenamed the ReVolt. This was followed by a three-year research project by the EU-funded (for a total of $4.8 million) Maritime Uncrewed Navigation through Intelligence in Networks (MUNIN) group, which planned a prototype for simulated sea trials to assess potential costs and benefits.
Rolls-Royce entered into a partnership with Tekes, the Finnish Agency for Technology and Innovation, for a project aimed at accelerating the design and real-world testing of uncrewed ships, called the Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications initiative (AAWA). In 2016, the initiative revealed its concept of land-based control centers that enable captains to remotely control more than ten vessels simultaneously through interactive smart screens, voice recognition systems, holograms, and surveillance drones, to monitor activity on board and surrounding the ship.
The Rolls-Royce Blue Ocean team has developed a virtual-reality prototype of an uncrewed cargo ship. According to the company, this concept envisages that in the future, captains will be located in fully-automated, shore-based command centers, controlling hundreds of crewless ships. A similar concept has been successfully applied on oil and gas supply ships in the North Sea, which use remote-controlled dynamic positioning systems with data collected from satellites, gyrocompasses, and stabilizing sensors to hold position in stormy seas during the process of transferring cargo.
In 2010, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), funded the Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Vessel (ACTUV) project that focused on developing nearly autonomous drone ships.
The Flying Dutchman prop from the Disney movies Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest (2006) and At World's End (2007) at Castaway Cay.
The Flying Dutchman is a ghost ship that appears in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean movie series and rides with the same name in Disney theme parks. Based on the legend of the same name, the Dutchman is first introduced in Dead Man's Chest and has also appeared in the sequel At World's End. Among other appearances, the Dutchman appeared in The Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park from Dec. 2012 to Nov. 2014, as well as in several books and video games.
Ghost Ship (2002) movie poster
Ghost Ship (1952) movie poster
Ghost Ship is a 2002 American-Australian horror film directed by Steve Beck. The film is about a salvage crew that discovers a long-lost 1962 passenger ship in a remote region of the Bering Sea and encounters the ghosts of its dead inhabitants.
Ghost Ship is a 1952 American feature film in the horror genre, written and directed by Vernon Sewell. In the film, characters Guy and Margaret, who are a married couple, buy a yacht since they cannot afford a house. They host a "housewarming" party to celebrate the move-in, but shortly after, strange, inexplicable events occur. Concerned, Margaret opts to avail of the services of a medium, who reveals unfortunate events that took place onboard the ship in the past that have come to haunt the vessel.
