Brian Hicks (1) (1966–)
Auteur van Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew
Voor andere auteurs genaamd Brian Hicks, zie de verduidelijkingspagina.
Over de Auteur
Brian Hicks is a senior writer for The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, an historian, and the author of five books. He lives in Charleston.
Fotografie: Photograph by Grace Beahm
Werken van Brian Hicks
Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew (2004) 267 exemplaren
Raising the Hunley: The Remarkable History and Recovery of the Lost Confederate Submarine (2002) 184 exemplaren
When the Dancing Stopped: The Real Story of the Morro Castle Disaster and Its Deadly Wake (2006) 99 exemplaren
Profit from the Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century (Angel Series) (2008) 29 exemplaren
In Darkest South Carolina: J. Waties Waring and the secret plan that sparked a civil rights movement (2018) 11 exemplaren
Greetings from Charleston 2 exemplaren
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Officiële naam
- Hicks, Brian Phillip
- Geboortedatum
- 1966-11-09
- Geslacht
- male
- Nationaliteit
- USA
- Beroepen
- journalist
- Korte biografie
- Brian Hicks, a native of Tennessee, joined The Post and Courier in 1997. He has covered Southern politics for more than 20 years, and his journalism has won more than two dozen awards, including the S.C. Press Association's Journalist of the Year in 1998. His column began appearing on the newspaper's website in 2007 and the print edition in 2008. Hicks' column has won a Green Eyeshade Award from the Society of Professional Journalists as well as Best Column and Best Humor Column honors from the S.C. Press Association. He is also author or co-author of four books. His fifth book will be released in 2011.
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Besprekingen
When the dancing stopped : the real story of the… door Brian Hicks
really enjoyed this read like a combination of mystery book and disaster movie
Raising the Hunley tells the story of the Confederate submarine, the Hunley. The story has three parts: The first part gives the history of the Hunley and its predecessor subs that were sunk before they could be used. It tells what went into the building and testing of the sub, the loss of two crews in testing, and the successful sinking of a Union ship by the Hunley.
The second part of the book covers the mystery of what happened to the Hunley after it sank the Union ship, and the many efforts made to find the missing ship. The third part of the books tells of the struggle to recover the ship after it was found and the subsequent dig by archaeologists into the sub to recover the men and artifacts entombed within.
This book is very interesting, even compelling. There is a lot to learn about the submarine, how it was built, and the battle it engaged in. The section on the search for the missing sub is more interesting than you might think, because it was such a mystery. The writers also make the recovery of the sub and the excavation of the artifacts exciting. I enjoyed the book very much.… (meer)
The second part of the book covers the mystery of what happened to the Hunley after it sank the Union ship, and the many efforts made to find the missing ship. The third part of the books tells of the struggle to recover the ship after it was found and the subsequent dig by archaeologists into the sub to recover the men and artifacts entombed within.
This book is very interesting, even compelling. There is a lot to learn about the submarine, how it was built, and the battle it engaged in. The section on the search for the missing sub is more interesting than you might think, because it was such a mystery. The writers also make the recovery of the sub and the excavation of the artifacts exciting. I enjoyed the book very much.… (meer)
Another one from the “disaster response” wishlist. The Ward Line steamship Morro Castle caught fire within sight of Asbury Park, New Jersey, early in the morning of September 8, 1934. The crew didn’t respond very well, and 134 passengers and crew died. That’s what the first half of this book by Brian Hicks is about (Hicks is also author of Ghost Ship, about the Mary Celeste). The second half is Hick’s attempt to explain the fire; its cause was never determined. Hicks claims arson, and has a suspect: Chief Radioman George Rogers.
Like most disasters, the Morro Castle story was greatly embellished and confabulated in subsequent years. She’s usually described as a “cruise ship” or “luxury liner” (in the publisher’s blurbs for this book, for example) but was actually a hybrid; a cargo ship with space for passengers. The Morro Castle had this interesting configuration because she was built under the Jones Act, which provided money to shipping lines for new vessels with the clause that the ships would be taken up by the US Navy as troop transports in time of war. The Morro Castle was therefore unusually fast for a cargo ship (top speed 22 knots) and had a large and well-appointed passenger space (including ductwork throughout the ship that could carry ventilation air into every passenger cabin; not quite air conditioning, but probably quite satisfactory when the ship was moving at cruising speed. The system was described as “Sea Cooling”). However, passenger service was an afterthought; the Ward Line made most of its money from a contract to carry the US Mail from New York to Havana, secondarily from cargo to and from Cuba, and thirdly from passenger fares. The Morro Castle ran a weekly (Saturday to Saturday) schedule to and from Havana, dictated by the mail contract. Most of the passengers were middle class who wanted a “sea voyage”; cabins started at $65. There was only one day for sightseeing in Havana but there were formal dances on board every night; single female passengers generally outnumbered available men and the ship’s officers and petty officers were often pressed into service as dance partners.
Hicks is writing as an “investigative journalist”; hence he has a preconceived idea about the fire and focuses his narrative around it. His suspect, George Rogers, certainly had an odd career before joining the Morro Castle. He came from a broken home and did time in reform school, until getting thrown out for sodomizing a younger boy. Described as an electronics genius, he had a series of jobs in radio shops which had always ended with Rogers being dismissed for stealing (in one case, the store owner was investigating mysterious shortages when the shop burned down). This wasn’t on his Ward Line resume, of course; instead he claimed to have 20 years of experience as a ship’s radio operator, including a stint in the US Navy during WWI. Rogers got his job as Chief Radioman when the previous Chief got a series of anonymous letters claiming he was under investigation by the Federal Radio Commission for participating in a short-lived strike. He left town and Rogers moved into the post.
On the other hand, Hicks defuses his case a little by noting that almost all Morro Castle officers were slightly strange. The Captain, Robert Wilmont, refused to hold lifeboat drills because they disturbed the passengers, had little confidence in his crew, and spent most of his time being congenial to the passengers while leaving the day-to-day operation of the ship to his First Officer, William Warms. The Second Radioman, George Alagna, had instituted the short strike against the Ward Line (the same on that had eventually promoted George Rogers, even though Alagna had seniority). The Third Radioman was a Finn who could barely speak English and couldn’t operate the radios; he was only there because Federal law required three radiomen.
Captain Wilmont began acting stranger and stranger on the Morro Castle’s final voyage. He became convinced that someone had smuggled sulfuric acid onboard, and kept everybody looking for it. He also thought the Second Radioman, Alagna, was planning sabotage and ordered Rogers to lock up the ship’s radio direction finder when it wasn’t in use. No one ever found out why Wimont had these suspicions, since the day before the fire he was found in his cabin bathroom, with his pants around his ankles and bent double into his bathtub. He had apparently died trying to give himself an enema.
That left First Officer Warms in charge (The Chief Engineer, Eben Abbott, was nominally senior but didn’t dispute Warms as Captain). In his first command Warms was understandably nervous; the weather was deteriorating and the Morro Castle needed to get into New York on time to keep to the terms of the mail contract. Warms spent almost all his time on the bridge, not getting much sleep.
The fire apparently started in a small locker in the Writing Room. This is a point where Hick’s narrative gets a little weak; he’s inconsistent when describing what this locker contained. He first described it as containing pens, paper, and “cleaning supplies”; later it contains a waiter’s jacket, turpentine, and paint; finally it has blankets and “flammable polish”. Although the fire was discovered when relatively small, the crew’s attempt to douse it with water buckets was futile; the Morro Castle was steaming at 20 knots into a 20 knot headwind and the “Sea Cool” vents rapidly spread flames throughout the ship. Warms apparently though the fire could easily be controlled; he didn’t go and see it for himself, didn’t reduce speed, and didn’t order an SOS. Smoke began seeping into the engine room and Chief Engineer Abbott appeared on the bridge, explaining the he would just be in the way below. Finally, Warms realized the seriousness of the situation and ordered “Abandon Ship”; by that time some of the lifeboats were on fire, others couldn’t be launched because the winches were jammed by paint, and the crew took off in the rest (including Abbott, who removed all his insignia first). The passengers were left to their own devices; the ones that didn’t burn to death jumped into the Atlantic. Some were killed or knocked unconscious and drowned by the jump; some died from hypothermia (this wasn’t the Titanic’s Atlantic; water temperature was 70°, but that’s still low enough to kill from hypothermia; it just takes longer). Some were picked up by lifeboats from the Morro Castle or other nearby ships; many were saved by a former rumrunner with a fast power boat, and a few managed to swim or float to shore.
Rogers stayed at his radio station as long as he could. The press, looking for a hero among the officers, picked him, and he got a one-week stint on Broadway describing his adventures as the lead-in to an Andy Devine Western. He parlayed that into a radio shop, but it quickly failed. Then he got a job as a radio officer with the Bayonne Police Department. He and his boss, Vincent Doyle, got along well together, swapping stories and fixing radios (although there were a few cases where radio parts disappeared from police stores), until one day Rogers described a time bomb that worked by acid slowly dissolving a barrier until it broke through and ignited a flammable mixture. Rogers said the device could be made as small as a pen and left in the pocket of a waiter’s coat, in a locker for example. Doyle picked up on this pretty quick and asked Rogers why he did it; Rogers replied “Because the Ward Line stinks and the skipper was lousy”. Doyle unaccountably kept this information to himself. Some time later (Hicks doesn’t detail when this conversation occurred) Doyle found a package for him; in it was a short length of pipe attached to an electrical cord. A typewritten note explained that this was a fish tank heater and asked Doyle to install a switch on it. Doyle didn’t think much of it; other officers routinely left stuff for him to repair. He plugged it into the wall and woke up in the hospital with most of his left hand missing and a shrapnel chunk in his leg. Rogers was convicted on circumstantial but compelling evidence and got 25 years in Trenton; he was, however, paroled a few years later after WWII started and served as radioman on a Liberty ship. He went through a series of jobs until he was eventually reduced to poverty as an itinerant radio and TV repairman. He did manage to strike up a friendship with his elderly next door neighbor, who shared his interest in electronics. One day the neighbor and his daughter turned up sledge hammered to death; Rogers suddenly had money again, and a lot of the neighbor’s equipment was found in Rogers’ house. This time he got life; he was apparently a model prisoner and revamped the prison radio system until dying from a heart attack in 1958.
I have to say I find Hicks’ case against Rogers fairly convincing. Rogers was certainly the classic psychopath; someone who can appear friendly and innocent on the surface but who has absolutely no compunctions about harming others, and also someone who believed he was too smart to be caught even while leaving obvious clues at most of his crimes. He had the opportunity to burn the Morro Castle, although what his motive might have been is unclear. The problem is that Hicks’ protests too much; every single odd thing that Rogers ever did is brought up, and he’s made into sort of a criminal mastermind. Hicks also doesn’t tie things together; I’ve already mentioned the inconsistent contents of the Writing Room locker, but he also doesn’t speculate on Captain Wilmont’s fear that sulfuric acid had been smuggled on to the ship; he insinuates that Rogers poisoned Captain Wilmont but never explains how it was done; he cites evidence that gasoline was siphoned from a piece of ship’s equipment but doesn’t follow up with claims that it was used to accelerate the fire; he mentions a piece of “charred paper” in the hold that was supposed to be a second starting point for the fire, but never goes further with it; he doesn’t say how the “pen time bomb” was supposed to work; he never tells us why Vincent Doyle never went public with Rogers’ confession; and he even hints at vague government conspiracies: the Morro Castle was inspected by the Federal Steamboat Inspection Service shortly before the fatal cruise; the inspector only stayed for two hours and somehow didn’t notice that the lifeboats were painted into their davits. The Assistant Director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection Service was Dickerson Hoover, who just happened to be J. Edgar Hoover’s brother. It’s implicit that one or both of the Hoovers “covered up” the cause of the Morro Castle fire to avoid having attention drawn to the incompetence of the Morro Castle inspection, but Hicks never states that explicitly.
The book is interesting as a “True Crime” study, as a profile of a psychopath, and even for my original interest as a disaster response account (mostly for What Not To Do If Your Ship Is On Fire, though). Unfortunately I have to give it a mixed review; there’s just a little too much “investigative journalism” and not enough actual investigation. I will say that Hicks has included extensive references, so you can track down all his sources if you want.… (meer)
Like most disasters, the Morro Castle story was greatly embellished and confabulated in subsequent years. She’s usually described as a “cruise ship” or “luxury liner” (in the publisher’s blurbs for this book, for example) but was actually a hybrid; a cargo ship with space for passengers. The Morro Castle had this interesting configuration because she was built under the Jones Act, which provided money to shipping lines for new vessels with the clause that the ships would be taken up by the US Navy as troop transports in time of war. The Morro Castle was therefore unusually fast for a cargo ship (top speed 22 knots) and had a large and well-appointed passenger space (including ductwork throughout the ship that could carry ventilation air into every passenger cabin; not quite air conditioning, but probably quite satisfactory when the ship was moving at cruising speed. The system was described as “Sea Cooling”). However, passenger service was an afterthought; the Ward Line made most of its money from a contract to carry the US Mail from New York to Havana, secondarily from cargo to and from Cuba, and thirdly from passenger fares. The Morro Castle ran a weekly (Saturday to Saturday) schedule to and from Havana, dictated by the mail contract. Most of the passengers were middle class who wanted a “sea voyage”; cabins started at $65. There was only one day for sightseeing in Havana but there were formal dances on board every night; single female passengers generally outnumbered available men and the ship’s officers and petty officers were often pressed into service as dance partners.
Hicks is writing as an “investigative journalist”; hence he has a preconceived idea about the fire and focuses his narrative around it. His suspect, George Rogers, certainly had an odd career before joining the Morro Castle. He came from a broken home and did time in reform school, until getting thrown out for sodomizing a younger boy. Described as an electronics genius, he had a series of jobs in radio shops which had always ended with Rogers being dismissed for stealing (in one case, the store owner was investigating mysterious shortages when the shop burned down). This wasn’t on his Ward Line resume, of course; instead he claimed to have 20 years of experience as a ship’s radio operator, including a stint in the US Navy during WWI. Rogers got his job as Chief Radioman when the previous Chief got a series of anonymous letters claiming he was under investigation by the Federal Radio Commission for participating in a short-lived strike. He left town and Rogers moved into the post.
On the other hand, Hicks defuses his case a little by noting that almost all Morro Castle officers were slightly strange. The Captain, Robert Wilmont, refused to hold lifeboat drills because they disturbed the passengers, had little confidence in his crew, and spent most of his time being congenial to the passengers while leaving the day-to-day operation of the ship to his First Officer, William Warms. The Second Radioman, George Alagna, had instituted the short strike against the Ward Line (the same on that had eventually promoted George Rogers, even though Alagna had seniority). The Third Radioman was a Finn who could barely speak English and couldn’t operate the radios; he was only there because Federal law required three radiomen.
Captain Wilmont began acting stranger and stranger on the Morro Castle’s final voyage. He became convinced that someone had smuggled sulfuric acid onboard, and kept everybody looking for it. He also thought the Second Radioman, Alagna, was planning sabotage and ordered Rogers to lock up the ship’s radio direction finder when it wasn’t in use. No one ever found out why Wimont had these suspicions, since the day before the fire he was found in his cabin bathroom, with his pants around his ankles and bent double into his bathtub. He had apparently died trying to give himself an enema.
That left First Officer Warms in charge (The Chief Engineer, Eben Abbott, was nominally senior but didn’t dispute Warms as Captain). In his first command Warms was understandably nervous; the weather was deteriorating and the Morro Castle needed to get into New York on time to keep to the terms of the mail contract. Warms spent almost all his time on the bridge, not getting much sleep.
The fire apparently started in a small locker in the Writing Room. This is a point where Hick’s narrative gets a little weak; he’s inconsistent when describing what this locker contained. He first described it as containing pens, paper, and “cleaning supplies”; later it contains a waiter’s jacket, turpentine, and paint; finally it has blankets and “flammable polish”. Although the fire was discovered when relatively small, the crew’s attempt to douse it with water buckets was futile; the Morro Castle was steaming at 20 knots into a 20 knot headwind and the “Sea Cool” vents rapidly spread flames throughout the ship. Warms apparently though the fire could easily be controlled; he didn’t go and see it for himself, didn’t reduce speed, and didn’t order an SOS. Smoke began seeping into the engine room and Chief Engineer Abbott appeared on the bridge, explaining the he would just be in the way below. Finally, Warms realized the seriousness of the situation and ordered “Abandon Ship”; by that time some of the lifeboats were on fire, others couldn’t be launched because the winches were jammed by paint, and the crew took off in the rest (including Abbott, who removed all his insignia first). The passengers were left to their own devices; the ones that didn’t burn to death jumped into the Atlantic. Some were killed or knocked unconscious and drowned by the jump; some died from hypothermia (this wasn’t the Titanic’s Atlantic; water temperature was 70°, but that’s still low enough to kill from hypothermia; it just takes longer). Some were picked up by lifeboats from the Morro Castle or other nearby ships; many were saved by a former rumrunner with a fast power boat, and a few managed to swim or float to shore.
Rogers stayed at his radio station as long as he could. The press, looking for a hero among the officers, picked him, and he got a one-week stint on Broadway describing his adventures as the lead-in to an Andy Devine Western. He parlayed that into a radio shop, but it quickly failed. Then he got a job as a radio officer with the Bayonne Police Department. He and his boss, Vincent Doyle, got along well together, swapping stories and fixing radios (although there were a few cases where radio parts disappeared from police stores), until one day Rogers described a time bomb that worked by acid slowly dissolving a barrier until it broke through and ignited a flammable mixture. Rogers said the device could be made as small as a pen and left in the pocket of a waiter’s coat, in a locker for example. Doyle picked up on this pretty quick and asked Rogers why he did it; Rogers replied “Because the Ward Line stinks and the skipper was lousy”. Doyle unaccountably kept this information to himself. Some time later (Hicks doesn’t detail when this conversation occurred) Doyle found a package for him; in it was a short length of pipe attached to an electrical cord. A typewritten note explained that this was a fish tank heater and asked Doyle to install a switch on it. Doyle didn’t think much of it; other officers routinely left stuff for him to repair. He plugged it into the wall and woke up in the hospital with most of his left hand missing and a shrapnel chunk in his leg. Rogers was convicted on circumstantial but compelling evidence and got 25 years in Trenton; he was, however, paroled a few years later after WWII started and served as radioman on a Liberty ship. He went through a series of jobs until he was eventually reduced to poverty as an itinerant radio and TV repairman. He did manage to strike up a friendship with his elderly next door neighbor, who shared his interest in electronics. One day the neighbor and his daughter turned up sledge hammered to death; Rogers suddenly had money again, and a lot of the neighbor’s equipment was found in Rogers’ house. This time he got life; he was apparently a model prisoner and revamped the prison radio system until dying from a heart attack in 1958.
I have to say I find Hicks’ case against Rogers fairly convincing. Rogers was certainly the classic psychopath; someone who can appear friendly and innocent on the surface but who has absolutely no compunctions about harming others, and also someone who believed he was too smart to be caught even while leaving obvious clues at most of his crimes. He had the opportunity to burn the Morro Castle, although what his motive might have been is unclear. The problem is that Hicks’ protests too much; every single odd thing that Rogers ever did is brought up, and he’s made into sort of a criminal mastermind. Hicks also doesn’t tie things together; I’ve already mentioned the inconsistent contents of the Writing Room locker, but he also doesn’t speculate on Captain Wilmont’s fear that sulfuric acid had been smuggled on to the ship; he insinuates that Rogers poisoned Captain Wilmont but never explains how it was done; he cites evidence that gasoline was siphoned from a piece of ship’s equipment but doesn’t follow up with claims that it was used to accelerate the fire; he mentions a piece of “charred paper” in the hold that was supposed to be a second starting point for the fire, but never goes further with it; he doesn’t say how the “pen time bomb” was supposed to work; he never tells us why Vincent Doyle never went public with Rogers’ confession; and he even hints at vague government conspiracies: the Morro Castle was inspected by the Federal Steamboat Inspection Service shortly before the fatal cruise; the inspector only stayed for two hours and somehow didn’t notice that the lifeboats were painted into their davits. The Assistant Director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection Service was Dickerson Hoover, who just happened to be J. Edgar Hoover’s brother. It’s implicit that one or both of the Hoovers “covered up” the cause of the Morro Castle fire to avoid having attention drawn to the incompetence of the Morro Castle inspection, but Hicks never states that explicitly.
The book is interesting as a “True Crime” study, as a profile of a psychopath, and even for my original interest as a disaster response account (mostly for What Not To Do If Your Ship Is On Fire, though). Unfortunately I have to give it a mixed review; there’s just a little too much “investigative journalism” and not enough actual investigation. I will say that Hicks has included extensive references, so you can track down all his sources if you want.… (meer)
Sometime between 08:00 on November 25 and 13:30 on December 5, 1872, something happened to the brigantine Mary Celeste, bound from New York to Genoa with five crew, three officers, the captain's wife and two-year-old daughter, and a cargo of alcohol in barrels. Whatever it was left the ship seaworthy (although somewhat worse for wear) but devoid of human life. It also turned her into fodder for years of sensational stories and an illustration of how ordinary events can be turned into deep occult mysteries.
The tale resonates with me, because I remember reading a book of "unexplained mysteries" when I was ten or so, with the Marie Celeste figuring prominently along with the Moving Coffins of Barbados and the Treasure of Oak Island. I could imagine the first curious, then frightened sailors of the Dei Gratia boarding the drifting ship, only to find the galley stove still hot, the meals on the crews table, and a spool of thread balanced on a sewing machine - but no sign of the crew, the captain, or his family. What happened? Space aliens? Atlanteans? The Bermuda Triangle? Giant Squid? Submarine earthquake?
The start of the story is, in a way, more moving than the occultified aftermath. Benjamin Spooner Briggs was from the small seafaring town of Marion, Massachusetts, and came from a seafaring family. His uncle was lost off Block Island when he was only four. His eldest brother died off Havana from yellow fever and was buried at sea. His only sister and her sea captain husband were lost in a collision off Cape Fear. His youngest brother died of yellow fever off South Carolina. His father quit the sea while he was ahead; shortly afterwards he was watching a thunderstorm from the doorway of his house (probably congratulating himself that he didn't have to be out in that) when he was struck by lightning and killed instantly. Benjamin himself, off course, disappeared (with his wife and daughter) from the Mary Celeste, and some years latter another brother went down in a storm in the Bay of Biscay. I would have moved to Kansas. The author of Ghost Ship, Brian Hicks, has done yeoman service in tracking down the fate of the Briggs family. I suppose I tend to think of people from Massachusetts as Volvo-driving wimps now, but back then was obviously a different story.
The story remains interesting through Captain Brigg's last voyage, though it's been told many times before. It's straightforward enough; another New England brigantine, the Dei Gratia spotted a ship somewhere between the Azores and the Portuguese coast. Something didn't look right and the Dei Gratia drew close enough to send a boat over. The Mary Celeste was empty, with hatches and scuttles open, no small boats, the wheel not lashed, and the crew's foul weather gear still hanging on hooks. Although there was 3 ½ feet of water in the well and the sails and rigging were torn up, the mate of the Dei Gratia though he could pump her out and get her into Gibraltar. Although it was a near thing with a half crew, he made it.
Then things went from bad to worse. The Queen's Advocate for the Vice Admiralty Court of Gibraltar, a Mr. Frederick Flood, was absolutely convinced that there was something criminal about the Mary Celeste. He appears to have thought it was some sort of insurance fraud, but never presented a theory. Instead he had the ship inspected and picked on every minute detail - there were "mysterious" cut marks around the bow, and equally "mysterious" marks on the railings. Various stains on the deck were interpreted as blood. A short sword or long knife in the captain's cabin was supposed to have been bloodstained and wiped clean. One of the alcohol barrels in the hold had been "tampered with". And so on. After a long delay, the crew of the Dei Gratia was not found guilty of anything, but was only rewarded with a fraction of what the Mary Celeste and her cargo were worth in salvage fees.
Then, of course, the fun started. As mentioned, the Mary Celeste has been a staple of the woo-woo crowd for more than a century. Mr. Hicks doesn't really explore the reasons for this; he's a journalist interested in telling a good story himself, not a psychologists, but most of the wacky explanations for the fate of the Mary Celeste have things in common:
*Failure to exclude the null hypothesis. It's assumed that the case of the Mary Celeste was extraordinarily unusual, and therefore must have extraordinarily unusual explanations. In fact, ships went missing all the time - Hicks cites 19 a month. And other, apparently intact but crewless ships had been found before and have been found since. What made the Mary Celeste different was she was brought into Gibraltar - one of the busiest ports in the world - and kept there long enough for the principal owner to come from New York and then to summon a ship inspector from the U.S. Hundreds of seamen must have come through Gibraltar while the Mary Celeste was in court, and each probably spun his own yarn about what happened. And spread it around - which brings up the second problem with the Mary Celeste case:
*The original data have been so confabulated and muddled by subsequent retellers and dramatizers that it's impossible to tell what the starting conditions really were. With the Mary Celeste the principal (but unintentional) culprit is an English doctor and author who achieved his first major literary success with "J. Habbakuk Jephson's Statement", a short story published in the prestigious Cornhill's Magazine purporting to be the "truth" about what happened on the "Marie Celeste". The story was so successful that its account of the state of the "Marie Celeste" when discovered became accepted as the fact; it even partially convinced the members of the Admiralty Court at Gibraltar, who wrote indignant letters to Cornhill's protesting the inaccuracies (including the ship's name) in what they apparently assumed was a documentary rather than fiction. (To this day, if someone refers to the ship as "Marie Celeste" rather than Mary Celeste, you can assume that they are getting their "facts" from the Arthur Conan Doyle story, not the actual event). These subsequent retellings are where the “hot galley stove” and “spool balanced on the sewing machine” come from; there was no spool and the galley stove was not only cold, it was broken loose from its chocks.
So what really happened? Of course, Mr. Hicks has his own theory - the alcohol cargo leaked, the crew opened all the hatches then left the ship to allow the hold to air out, then a wind came up and blew the Mary Celeste into history. Based on what I know about hazmat, he might be on the right track - but he doesn’t make his case very strong. The original log and cargo manifest of the Mary Celeste are long gone, but there are still some trial records. Mr. Hicks thinks the cargo was “industrial alcohol” but doesn’t cite any evidence. Various confabulators have claimed it was industrial alcohol (i.e., methanol or denatured ethanol) going to Genoa to be made into paint, but others claim it was raw grain alcohol to be used to fortify Italian wine. Mr. Hicks is needs some help with hazmat chemistry here; he claims that denatured alcohol could be used to fortify wine, that alcohol will float on water, that the “stench” of some industrial alcohols is comparable to ammonia, and that formaldehyde is a kind of alcohol. What’s more, we have the statement made at the trial that the cargo had a specific gravity of 0.815 and was 93.95 proof. Hicks argues that the trial confused proof with percent, and that it was actually 93.95% alcohol; however, that isn’t consistent with the specific gravity. Maybe there’s something to Mr. Hick’s theory, but it needs a little more digging - and there’s really nothing left to dig. I suspect we’ll know what happened to the Mary Celeste when we know what song the sirens sang and the name Achilles used among women.… (meer)
The tale resonates with me, because I remember reading a book of "unexplained mysteries" when I was ten or so, with the Marie Celeste figuring prominently along with the Moving Coffins of Barbados and the Treasure of Oak Island. I could imagine the first curious, then frightened sailors of the Dei Gratia boarding the drifting ship, only to find the galley stove still hot, the meals on the crews table, and a spool of thread balanced on a sewing machine - but no sign of the crew, the captain, or his family. What happened? Space aliens? Atlanteans? The Bermuda Triangle? Giant Squid? Submarine earthquake?
The start of the story is, in a way, more moving than the occultified aftermath. Benjamin Spooner Briggs was from the small seafaring town of Marion, Massachusetts, and came from a seafaring family. His uncle was lost off Block Island when he was only four. His eldest brother died off Havana from yellow fever and was buried at sea. His only sister and her sea captain husband were lost in a collision off Cape Fear. His youngest brother died of yellow fever off South Carolina. His father quit the sea while he was ahead; shortly afterwards he was watching a thunderstorm from the doorway of his house (probably congratulating himself that he didn't have to be out in that) when he was struck by lightning and killed instantly. Benjamin himself, off course, disappeared (with his wife and daughter) from the Mary Celeste, and some years latter another brother went down in a storm in the Bay of Biscay. I would have moved to Kansas. The author of Ghost Ship, Brian Hicks, has done yeoman service in tracking down the fate of the Briggs family. I suppose I tend to think of people from Massachusetts as Volvo-driving wimps now, but back then was obviously a different story.
The story remains interesting through Captain Brigg's last voyage, though it's been told many times before. It's straightforward enough; another New England brigantine, the Dei Gratia spotted a ship somewhere between the Azores and the Portuguese coast. Something didn't look right and the Dei Gratia drew close enough to send a boat over. The Mary Celeste was empty, with hatches and scuttles open, no small boats, the wheel not lashed, and the crew's foul weather gear still hanging on hooks. Although there was 3 ½ feet of water in the well and the sails and rigging were torn up, the mate of the Dei Gratia though he could pump her out and get her into Gibraltar. Although it was a near thing with a half crew, he made it.
Then things went from bad to worse. The Queen's Advocate for the Vice Admiralty Court of Gibraltar, a Mr. Frederick Flood, was absolutely convinced that there was something criminal about the Mary Celeste. He appears to have thought it was some sort of insurance fraud, but never presented a theory. Instead he had the ship inspected and picked on every minute detail - there were "mysterious" cut marks around the bow, and equally "mysterious" marks on the railings. Various stains on the deck were interpreted as blood. A short sword or long knife in the captain's cabin was supposed to have been bloodstained and wiped clean. One of the alcohol barrels in the hold had been "tampered with". And so on. After a long delay, the crew of the Dei Gratia was not found guilty of anything, but was only rewarded with a fraction of what the Mary Celeste and her cargo were worth in salvage fees.
Then, of course, the fun started. As mentioned, the Mary Celeste has been a staple of the woo-woo crowd for more than a century. Mr. Hicks doesn't really explore the reasons for this; he's a journalist interested in telling a good story himself, not a psychologists, but most of the wacky explanations for the fate of the Mary Celeste have things in common:
*Failure to exclude the null hypothesis. It's assumed that the case of the Mary Celeste was extraordinarily unusual, and therefore must have extraordinarily unusual explanations. In fact, ships went missing all the time - Hicks cites 19 a month. And other, apparently intact but crewless ships had been found before and have been found since. What made the Mary Celeste different was she was brought into Gibraltar - one of the busiest ports in the world - and kept there long enough for the principal owner to come from New York and then to summon a ship inspector from the U.S. Hundreds of seamen must have come through Gibraltar while the Mary Celeste was in court, and each probably spun his own yarn about what happened. And spread it around - which brings up the second problem with the Mary Celeste case:
*The original data have been so confabulated and muddled by subsequent retellers and dramatizers that it's impossible to tell what the starting conditions really were. With the Mary Celeste the principal (but unintentional) culprit is an English doctor and author who achieved his first major literary success with "J. Habbakuk Jephson's Statement", a short story published in the prestigious Cornhill's Magazine purporting to be the "truth" about what happened on the "Marie Celeste". The story was so successful that its account of the state of the "Marie Celeste" when discovered became accepted as the fact; it even partially convinced the members of the Admiralty Court at Gibraltar, who wrote indignant letters to Cornhill's protesting the inaccuracies (including the ship's name) in what they apparently assumed was a documentary rather than fiction. (To this day, if someone refers to the ship as "Marie Celeste" rather than Mary Celeste, you can assume that they are getting their "facts" from the Arthur Conan Doyle story, not the actual event). These subsequent retellings are where the “hot galley stove” and “spool balanced on the sewing machine” come from; there was no spool and the galley stove was not only cold, it was broken loose from its chocks.
So what really happened? Of course, Mr. Hicks has his own theory - the alcohol cargo leaked, the crew opened all the hatches then left the ship to allow the hold to air out, then a wind came up and blew the Mary Celeste into history. Based on what I know about hazmat, he might be on the right track - but he doesn’t make his case very strong. The original log and cargo manifest of the Mary Celeste are long gone, but there are still some trial records. Mr. Hicks thinks the cargo was “industrial alcohol” but doesn’t cite any evidence. Various confabulators have claimed it was industrial alcohol (i.e., methanol or denatured ethanol) going to Genoa to be made into paint, but others claim it was raw grain alcohol to be used to fortify Italian wine. Mr. Hicks is needs some help with hazmat chemistry here; he claims that denatured alcohol could be used to fortify wine, that alcohol will float on water, that the “stench” of some industrial alcohols is comparable to ammonia, and that formaldehyde is a kind of alcohol. What’s more, we have the statement made at the trial that the cargo had a specific gravity of 0.815 and was 93.95 proof. Hicks argues that the trial confused proof with percent, and that it was actually 93.95% alcohol; however, that isn’t consistent with the specific gravity. Maybe there’s something to Mr. Hick’s theory, but it needs a little more digging - and there’s really nothing left to dig. I suspect we’ll know what happened to the Mary Celeste when we know what song the sirens sang and the name Achilles used among women.… (meer)
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