The Mary Celeste (1872)

The Mary Celeste is well-known today as a "ghost ship", primarily due to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story, "Marie Celeste"(he wrote it using a pseudonym). However, the Mary Celeste began life as the AMAZON, a half-brig, and didn't have a very good record. She was involved in several accidents and was bought and sold until a New York salvager auctioned her off for $3,000 - she was then renamed Mary Celeste. The name change didn't work. She left New York harbor on November 7, 1872 with Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife and baby daughter, a full crew and 1,700 barrels of raw alchohol. She was headed for Genoa, Italy, but never made it. The ship was found floating, completely devoid of human life or any signs of why the Captain and crew left her.

This is when the story gets even odder - she sailed under more different owners for the next 12 years, then the last captain, fed up with the bad luck, loaded her up with what some people report was cheap rubber boots and cat food, and others claim were empty barrels, sank her off of Haiti, then claimed a ridiculous amount on the insurance claim. But bad luck still clung to the Mary Celeste, even in her last days - she refused to sink and clung to Rochelais Reef in Haiti. When insurance inspectors found she wasn't carrying the cargo the captain claimed, the captain and his first mate were criminally charged and the Mary Celeste was left to finally rot in peace. Or so it was thought.

Clive Cussler, best-selling author of the Dirk Pitt adventure novels, put his real-life National Underwater & Marine Agency (NUMA) crew to work to find the remains of the Mary Celeste.

"With so many stories written about Mary Celeste," Cussler stated in a press release, "it was time to write the final chapter, although the true story of her missing crew may never be solved." NUMA found the Mary Celeste and announced their findings on August 9, 2001. The search for it will be featured in Cussler's new book, THE SEA HUNTERS II now available at Amazon.com and on the National Geographic cable channel in a series called "The Sea Hunters."

Cussler commissioned Christopher Hitchcock to build a model of the Mary Celeste, which was a task in itself, as there were no known photographs, drawings or plans of the ship. Christopher ended up delving in his vast library of maritime books and read as much as he could on the ship before beginning work.

Delivery of the Mary Celeste was made on March 27, 2002 at Cussler's office in Phoenix, Arizona, where he writes many of his books and has a collection of ship models of many of the wrecks NUMA has discovered.

Christopher has since been commissioned to build a model the CSS HUNLEY for Cussler, as well as future ship models. For more information on the Mary Celeste, visit this informative links page Check out our ship books recommendations!

Did you know. . .

Christopher and his wife Jayne are featured in The Sea Hunters II. They contributed a photo taken by Christopher and Jayne wrote the text for the last half of Part Fourteen - "America's Leonardo DaVinci" (pages 431 & 432) in Clive Cussler's The Sea Hunters II (audio and hardcover)