The Legend Of The Mary Celeste Explained

In most tellings, the tale stops there. Empty ship, creepy situation, theories about what happened, the end. But that was far from the end for the Mary Celeste. Despite the fact that everyone onboard had seemingly vanished into thin air, the ship was still a useful, valuable piece of property.

According to Naked History, she eventually finished the voyage to Italy and then returned to New York the next year. By now, the vessel was infamous in the sailing community, and it took another year before anyone bought her. After that, the Mary Celeste had years of boring normality, sailing between Boston, the West Indies, and Africa, per Slate. But some bad luck still seemed attached to her: Captain Edgar Tuthill died during one voyage, and the ship continually lost money on her cargoes. The Mary Celeste appears to have been such a bad investment that people couldn't get rid of her fast enough: She had 17 owners in the next 13 years.

The Mary Celeste certainly hadn't been lucky for the captain of the Dei Gratia, David Morehouse, either. He was only awarded about one-fifth what the ship and cargo were worth, much less than would be expected in such a case normally. And the court made it clear they thought something fishy was going on, which put Morehouse under a cloud of suspicion for the rest of his career. It just didn't make sense that ten people would vanish from a perfectly good ship in the middle of the ocean.

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