THE MARY CELESTE

The Mary Celeste was built in 1861 in Nova Scotia, Canada, as a cargo-carrying sailing ship. When it was launched, it was given the name Amazon. It was not a lucky ship. The first captain died a few days after it was registered, and on its first voyage, in 1862, it was badly damaged in a collision. While it was being repaired in port, it caught fire.

In 1863, it crossed the Atlantic for the first time, and in the English Channel it collided with another ship that sank. The Amazon was badly damaged itself. In 1867, it ran aground on Cape Breton Island, off the Canadian coast, and had to be rebuilt. It was then sold and the name was changed to the Mary Celeste. Sailors are very superstitious and dislike sailing on ships which have been unlucky or which have changed their names. Many sailors refused to sail on the Mary Celeste.


On November 5,1872, the Mary Celeste left New York, carrying a cargo of industrial alcohol to Genoa in Italy. There were eleven people on board: Captain Briggs, an experienced captain, his wife and two-year-old daughter, and a crew of eight.

A month later, the Mary Celeste was seen by another ship, the Dei Gratia, about halfway between the Azores and the Portuguese coast. Captain Moorhouse of the Dei Gratia, a friend of Captain Briggs, noticed that the ship was sailing strangely. When the Mary Celeste did not answer his signal, he sent a small boat to find out what was wrong.

The Mary Celeste was completely deserted.
•    The only lifeboat was missing.
•    All the sails were up and in good condition.
•    All the cargo was there.
•    The ship had obviously been through storms. The glass cover on the compass was broken.
•    The windows of the deck cabins had been covered with wooden planks.
•    There was three feet of water in the cargo hold, which was not enough to be dangerous.
•    The water pumps were working perfectly.
•    There was enough food for six months and plenty of fresh water.
•    All the crew's personal possessions (clothes, boots, pipes and tobacco, etc.) were on board.
•    There were toys on the captain's bed.
•    There was food and drink on the cabin table.
•    Only the navigation instruments and ship's papers were missing.
•    The last entry in the ship's logbook had been made 11 days earlier, about 600 miles west, but the ship had continued in a straight line from there.
•    The forehatch was found open.
•    There were two deep marks on the bow, near the waterline.
•    There was a deep cut on the ship's rail, made by an axe.
•    There were old brown bloodstains on the deck and on the captain's sword, which was in the cabin.

Captain Moorhouse and his crew were given the salvage money for bringing the ship to port. There was a long official investigation, but the story of what happened on the ship, and what happened to the crew, still remains a mystery.

Exercise
Find words that mean:
1.    all the people working on a ship
2.    the official daily written record of a ship's voyage
3.    the front of a ship
4.    put a boat into the water
5.    an instrument that shows the position of "north"
6.    a weapon
7.    a long, thin, narrow, flat piece of wood
8.    payment given to those who save other's property at sea
9.    goods carried on a ship
10.  a machine for forcing water into or out of something