Ghost ship : the mysterious true story of the Mary Celeste and her missing crew

312 Pages·2004·20.823 MB·English

by  Brian Hicks

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Ship
THE MYSTERIOUS
TRUE STORY OF THE
A/Taky Cel^este
AND HER
MISSING CREW
BRIAN HICKS
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$25.95
$37.95
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On December 4, 1872, a 100-foot brigantine was
discovered drifting through the North Atlantic with¬
out a soul on board. Not a sign of struggle, not a
shred of damage, no ransacked cargo—and not a
trace of the captain, his wife and daughter, or the
crew. What happened on board the ghost ship Mary
Celeste has baffled and tantalized the world for 130
years. In his stunning new book, award-winning
journalist Brian Hicks plumbs the depths of this
fabled nautical mystery and finally uncovers the
truth.
The Mary Celeste was cursed as soon as she was
launched on the Bay of Fundy in the spring of 1861.
Her first captain died before completing the maiden
voyage. In London she accidentally rammed and
sank an English brig. Later she was abandoned after
a storm drove her ashore at Cape Breton. But some¬
how the ship was recovered and refitted, and in the
autumn of 1872 she fell to the reluctant command of
a seasoned mariner named Benjamin Spooner Briggs.
It was Briggs who was at the helm when the Mary
Celeste sailed into history.
In Brian Hicks’s skilled hands, the story of the Mary
Celeste becomes the quintessential tale of men lost at
sea. Hicks vividly re-creates the events leading up to
the crew’s disappearance and then unfolds the com¬
plicated and bizarre aftermath—the dark suspicions
that fell on the officers of the ship that intercepted
her; the farcical Admiralty Court salvage hearing in
Gibraltar; the wild myths that circulated after Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle published a thinly disguised
short story sensationalizing the mystery. Everything
from a voodoo curse to an alien abduction has been
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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Kahie/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/detaiis/ghostshipmysteriOObria
Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery
of the Lost Confederate Submarine
GHOST SHIP

SHIP
THE MYSTERIOUS TRUE STORY OF
THE MARY CELESTE AND HER MISSING CREW
Brian Hicks
BALLANTINE BOOKS / NEW YORK
4
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2004 by Brian Hicks
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division
of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hicks, Brian, 1966-
Ghost Ship : the mysterious true story of the Mary Celeste
and her missing crew / Brian Hicks,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-345-46391-9
Mary Celeste (Brig) I. Title.
I.
G530.M3H53 2004
910'.9163*3-dc22
2004043698
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: June 2004
135798642
Book design by Casey Hampton