The Ghost Ship of Mary Celeste

On Dec. 4, 1872, an American ship called the Mary Celeste was found abandoned and floating in the Atlantic Ocean. The ship was found to be perfectly intact, except for a lifeboat which appeared to have been boarded in an orderly fashion.

Aboard the ship was the captain, Benjamin S. Briggs, his wife, Sarah, and their two year old daughter, along with eight crew members. History claims that Mary Celeste was spotted, at full sail and adrift about 400 miles east of the Azores, by a passing British ship. There was no sign of the captain, his family or any of the crew.

According to Parade, there were six months worth of supplies on the ship, and everything aboard the ship looked to be intact; the last entry on the ship’s daily log reveals nothing unusual. Historians also claim that in order to abandon such a ship, some alarming circumstances must have arisen.

Mary Celeste has an alleged shady past. Originally called Amazon, the ship was given a new name due to a series of mishaps, including the illness and sudden death of its first captain, and a collision with another ship in the English Channel. An investigation of the ship also found no foul play.

No one on the ship was ever heard from again, and there are several theories about what could have happened to the passengers from mutiny to a pirate attack and even a sea monster or giant octopus attack. Scientists think that a more logical explanation is an explosion caused by fumes from the 1,700 barrels of alcohol in the ship's hold, although no one really knows because the case remains unsolved to this day.