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Mary Celeste was launched in Nova Scotia in 1860. Her
original name was "Amazon". She was 103 ft overall displacing 280 tons
and listed as a half-brig. Over the next 10 years she was involved in
several accidents at sea and passed through a number of owners.
Eventually she turned up at a New York salvage auction where she was
purchased for $3,000. After extensive repairs she was put under American
registry and renamed "Mary Celeste".
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The new captain of Mary Celeste was Benjamin Briggs, 37, a master with
three previous commands. On November 7, 1872 the ship departed New York
with Captain Briggs, his wife, young daughter and a crew of eight. The
ship was loaded with 1700 barrels of raw American alcohol bound for
Genoa, Italy. The captain, his family and crew were never seen again.
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A British Board of Inquiry in Gibraltar gathered evidence and testimony
from the boarding party that had discovered Mary Celeste as a drifting
derelict. Lack of evidence of violence ruled out piracy or foul play,
but no conclusions as to the fate of the mortals aboard was forthcoming.
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Newspapers in America and England took little passing notice of the
incident, and it soon faded from public interest as the loss of a small
ship at sea was not not uncommon in those days.
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The popular mystery of the Mary Celeste did not begin until 1884 when
Arthur Conan Doyle (the future author of the Sherlock Holmes series)
writing under a pseudonym published a story about a derelict ship which
he called "Marie Celeste". It was titled "J. Habakuk Jepson's
Statement". This tale recounted some of the actual events of the Mary
Celeste with considerable added fictional and provocative detail which
stirred up controversy and captured the public interest. Since then, and
to this day, no two versions of the story are the same.
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