Pirates 'n' Ghosts

[Morgan La Scylla]

Hatteras Jack

The Hatteras region has been the setting for many moving legends. One of the best is the story of Hatteras Jack, a tale sure to bring a smile to anyone who has ever watched the fluid play of a bottlenose dolphin. By 1790, the story goes, most shipping had moved north from Ocracoke to the new Hatteras Inlet. Just as it is today, the channel was a twisting snake liable to convulse into new turns with every tide. Those were the days before buoys, daymarkers, or any other aids to navigation. As can be readily imagined, passage of the tortuous cut was fraught with peril.

Help for distressed mariners soon came in a most unusual form. Pilots began to notice the lithe figure of a snow-white albino dolphin preceding each boat through the cut. Amazingly, the creature seemed always to follow the ever-changing channel. Soon, captains came to trust Hatteras Jack, as he was called. They would blow their foghorns just outside the inlet to summon this master of sea and sand. Legend tells us that Hatteras Jack would even appraise the draft of the incoming vessel and carry her through only when the tide was high enough for a safe passage. Once the boat was through the passage, the porpoise would invariably put on a fascinating show of tail walks, jumps, and barrel rolls, seemingly in delight at a job well done. As the federal government began to place aids to navigation in the inlet, Hatteras Jack must have felt his work was no longer needed. He was seen less and less, and finally his visits ceased altogether.

[Morgan La Scylla]

Annie of the Lighthouse

North Island, lovely and windswept, is located overlooking the shipping channels at the entrance to WInyah Bay. Many years ago, when weather forecasting was based on instinct rather than technology, furious storms sometimes slammed the tiny island unexpectedly and with great force. These storms were feared by shrimpers and ship pilots for they made the shoal-riddled Bay even more treacherous to cross. Consequently, in the early 1800s, a thick stone lighthouse, featuring a great whale-oil lantern and cozy living quarters, was erected on North Island. In time, a lighthouse keeper came to live there with his small, fair-haired daughter, Annie.

When supplies ran low, Annie and her father rowed across the Bay into the bustling port of Georgetown. Always, they were careful to schedule their excursions to travel with the tides and arrive back on the Island in time to light the great lantern before darkness fell. One afternoon, after a pleasant visit in town, the pair loaded their small boat and set off for home. Usually the trips were relatively easy and not unpleasant, but on this day, the lightkeeper warily took note of a brisk wind that had come up while they were in town. Soon ominous clouds gathered overhead and mercilelssly dumped rain and hail on the little boat. Relentless, the wind grew stronger and whipped up tall imposing waves. With more that a quarter of the trip still before them, the boat was swamped. Desperate, the lightkeeper tied his beloved daughter to his back and tried to swim. Overcome with shock and exhaustion, he did not remember crawling ashore. Many hours later, he awoke to find his drowned daughter still strapped to his back.

From that day until this, sailors have reported stories af a sweet blonde child appearing on their boats-usually on calm, sunny days-pointing to the Bay and pleading "Go Back" Always, her entreaties precede violent, unanticipated storms. Legend as it that those who ignore her well-timed warning soon find themselves facing a watery grave.

[Morgan La Scylla]

Mary Celeste

Launched in 1860 under the name Amazon, the Mary Celeste started her ill fated life. In the 10 years before she was to become the Mary Celeste, the ship was involved in several accidents and went through several owners. She was sent to the New York salvage auction where she was purchased for $3,000. After extensive repairs, she was christened Mary Celeste.

The new captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife, and young daughter, along with 8 crew members departed New York on November 7, 1872 bound for Genoa, Italy. The cargo consisted of 1700 barrels of raw American alcohol.

On December 5, 1872, the ship Dei Gratia came upon the Mary Celeste floundering on the sea. The captain of the Dei Gratia knew Captain Briggs and was surprised to see the ship derelict as Briggs had a reputation as an excellent captain. Men from the Dei Gratia boarded the abandoned Mary Celeste to determine what was going on.

The ship was found in good seaworthy condition. It appeared as though the crew had left in a great hurry. They discovered that the chronometer and sextant were missing. There was water between the decks and the Galley was in bad shape. The stove was knocked out of place and cooking utensils were strewn about. There were no lifeboats aboard the ship and everything was soaked. A rope was found hanging over the side of the ship trailing in the water.

The crew from the Dei Gratia managed to get the Mary Celeste into port. When the cargo was unloaded, they found 9 of the barrels of alcohol empty.

What happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste? Some feel that the cargo became unstable and that the captain decided to trail behind the ship in the lifeboat until such time that it was safe to board. However, for some reason, the ship outdistanced the lifeboat leaving the crew helpless on the sea.

Another theory involves foul play. However, no evidence was ever found to prove that. Still other think that the ship was caught in the middle of a seaquake. And still others claim the crew was eaten by sharks during a swim.

Whatever the reason, the story of the Mary Celeste stills fascinates people. Something about the image of a ship sailing alone, the crew and captain missing..... without a trace.

[Morgan La Scylla]

J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement About The Mary Celeste

One of the first real successes of Conan Doyle's literary career was the publication of J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement in 1883. The short story was published anonymously in the prestigious Cornhill Magazine. Conan Doyle was paid almost the equivalent of a year's rent for the tale. It also stirred up some controversy.

The fictional story was based on true events, the story of the Mary Celeste.

On December 4, 1872 the British brigantine Dei Gratia was about 600 miles off the coast of Portugal. The lookout spotted another sail on the horizon. As the two ships grew nearer Captain Morehouse of the Dei Gratia recognized the other ship as the Mary Celeste.

The Mary Celeste, under the command of Morehouse's friend Benjamin Briggs, was in trouble. Some of her sails were missing while others flapped uselessly in the wind. Most alarming of all was the fact that there was no one at the wheel.

Morehouse and some of his crew boarded the Mary Celeste. They discovered that the ship was relatively undamaged. They even located the missing sails. The cargo was intact. There was plenty of food and water aboard. However there was no sign of Captain Briggs, his wife, their daughter or any member of the crew.

Morehouse did note that the lifeboat was missing. However the evacuation must have been done with incredible haste. No supplies or personal belongings seemed to be missing from the ship. If Briggs and the rest did go into the lifeboat, they must not have had much more than the clothes on their backs. What could have happened to force an experienced captain to order such a speedy evacuation of a seaworthy ship?

No one will ever know. No crewmember or passenger of the Mary Celeste was ever found.

In J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement Conan Doyle wrote about an abandoned vessel named the Marie Celeste. In this story the ship was taken over by a black passenger. He and his fellow conspirators commandeered the ship, sailed it to Africa and murdered the passengers and crew.

Conan Doyle's tale was so vivid that it raised protests from people who mistook the work of fiction for an article. Frederick Solly Flood, Her Majesty's Proctor and Attorney General at Gibraltar had been in charge of the salvage of the Mary Celeste. He stated that J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement was "a fabrication from beginning to end". He further stated that this false account might damage England's relations with foreign countries.

At the same time U.S. consul Horatio J. Sprague asked Cornhill Magazine to investigate the origins of the fraudulent article.

Conan Doyle was pleased that his short story was so well done that it could be mistaken as a true accounting of events. He was also delighted that hundreds of readers, who did understand the work was fictional, thought it was written by a man known for his tales of adventure. They suspected that the anonymous author was none other than Robert Louis Stevenson.

[Morgan La Scylla]

Occultisms - The Mary Celeste

Ship found adrift on December 4, 1872 (some accounts say December 5), by the Dei Gratia, a bark sailing from New York to Gibraltar, and considered by many one of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries in the annals of maritime history.

When it was found, the Mary Celeste was sailing itself alone across the wide Atlantic. The ship was in first-class condition. Hull, masts, and sails were all sound. The cargo-barrels of alcohol were still lashed in place in the hold. There was plenty of food and water. When he examined the ship's log, the captain of the Dei Gratia found that the last entry was on November 24. That would have been 10 days earlier, when the Mary Celeste had been passing north of St. Mary's Island in the Azores — more than 400 miles west of where it was found. If it had been abandoned soon after that entry, the ship must have drifted unmanned and unsteered for a week and a half. Yet this could not have been. The Mary Celeste was found with its sails set to catch the wind coming over the starboard quarter: in other words, it was sailing on the starboard tack. The Dei Gratia had been following a similar course just behind. But throughout the 400 miles from the Azores, the Dei Gratia had been obligated to sail on the port tack. It seems impossible that the Mary Celeste could have reached the spot it did with its yards and sails set to starboard. Someone must have been working the ship for at least several days after the final log entry.

No one, from the 10 people that supposedly sailed aboard the Mary Celeste, including 7 crewmen and captain Benjamin Briggs' wife and daughter, was ever found.

The explanation that seemed most reasonable at the time was the official one put out by the British and American authorities. This suggested that the crew had got at the alcohol, murdered the captain and his family, and then somehow escaped to another vessel. But the story does not really stand up. There were no visible signs of a struggle on board, and if the crew had escaped, some of them would surely have turned up later.

The yawl boat — a small four-oared boat carried over the main hatch — was missing, suggesting that at least some of the missing people could have left the Mary Celeste in it.

Dozens of theories have been put forward since then, ranging from attacking monsters from the deep and aliens kidnapping to nature's wrath, piracy and mutiny. But no one has ever found any evidence or proof to confirm any of them. The only other evidence to what really happened may be the so called Fosdyk papers.

According to an article written by a schoolmaster named Howard Linford and published in 1913 (41 years after the Mary Celeste was found) in the Strand magazine of London, a well-educated and much-traveled employee of his named Abel Fosdyk, had left some papers and notes after his death explaining not only the fate of the crew but also the curious cut ~~~~s that were found in the bows of the Mary Celeste.

Fosdyk claimed that he had been a secret passenger on the ship's last voyage and the only survivor of the tragedy that overtook it. Being a close friend of the captain, Fosdyk convinced Briggs to give him secret passage because, for some undisclosed reason, he had to leave America in a hurry. During the voyage Briggs had the ship's carpenter build a special deck in the bow for his small daughter. It was the supporting struts for this deck that were slotted into the cuts in the bow planks.

One day, after a lengthy argument with the mate about how well a man could swim with his clothes on, Briggs leaped into the water and started swimming around the ship, as to prove his point. Couple of men followed while the rest of the crew watched from the deck. Suddenly, one of the sailors swimming around the bow gave a yell of agony. Everyone, including the captain's wife and child, crowded onto the newly built deck which promptly collapsed under their combined weight. They all fell into the sea, where all were devoured by the sharks that had attacked the first seaman.

Being the only survivor of the shark attacks because of his luck of falling on top of the shattered decking, Fosdyk clung to it as the Mary Celeste drifted away. He floated for days until he was washed up half dead on the northwest coast of Africa.

The Fosdyk papers tell a neat tale. But they offer no solution to the mystery of how the ship got to where it was found. And they are wrong on details that should not have escaped an educated man. Fosdyk says the Mary Celeste weighed 600 tons. In fact, the ship weighed a third of that. Fosdyk also says that the crewmen were English, when, in fact, they were mostly Dutch. And most of all, it seems highly improbable that anyone would go swimming around a ship that, according to the Dei Gratia evidence, must have been making several knots at the time. Bizarre as it is, no better explanation than Fosdyk's has so far emerged. And after more than 120 years, it is unlikely to do so. The enigma of the ship that sailed itself seems destined to puzzle us forever (Parts of this text are excerpts from Reader's Digest's "Strange Stories, Amazing Facts").

Related books:

The Mary Celeste.

The Mary Celeste: An Unsolved Mystery from History.

The Shadow of the Mary Celeste.

The Story of the 'Mary Celeste'.

[Morgan La Scylla]

The Captain of the Mary Celeste

An Extract From "The Rose Cottage" Chapter XIV

by Oliver Cobb, the cousin to Benjamin's wife Sarah.

In 1862, Benjamin S. Briggs married Sarah E. Cobb, daughter of Rev. Leander Cobb. He had for several years sailed the brig Sea Foam but now was in command of the three masted schooner Forest King and in this vessel Benjamin and Sarah made their honeymoon trip to Europe. Later Benjamin gave up command of the Forest king to his brother Oliver and in 1865 he was in command of the bark Arthur. His son Arthur S. was born that year at Rose Cottage, Marion, Massachusetts.

The next year Mrs. Briggs and Arthur went with Capt. Briggs in the bark Arthur to Marseilles, France. On October 31, 1870, Their daughter Sophia M. was born at Rose Cottage.

Capt. Benjamin had tired of the sea. Both he and his brother Oliver now had growing families and wished to live at home. In 1871, they planned to buy a hardware business in New Bedford, but when it came to making a decision they were influenced by the disastrous experience of their father and did not venture. In 1872, Capt. Briggs bought an interest in the Brig Mary Celeste. He had the cabin remodeled so as better to accommodate his family. The brig was loaded with a cargo of 1700 barrels of Alcohol for Genoa. The captain took with him his wife and two year old daughter Sophia M. Briggs. The son Arthur S, Briggs, being seven years old, was left with his grand mother at Rose Cottage so that he might go to school.

I, the writer was again living at Rose Cottage. At this time the following letters were received by Mrs. Briggs from her son and daughter-in-law. These letters not only indicate the spirit in which they sailed away, but they also fix certain dates.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^

New York, Nov. 3d, 1872

My dear Mother:

Its been a long time since I have written you a letter and I should like to give you a real interesting one but I hardly know what to say except that I am well and the rest of us ditto, It is such a long time since I composed other than business epistles.

It seems to me to have been a great while since I left home, but it is only over two weeks but in that time my mind has been filled with business cares and I am again launched away into the busy whirl of business life from which I have so long been laid aside. For a few days it was tedious, perplexing, and very tiresome but now I have got fairly settled down to it and it sets lightly and seems to run more smoothly and my appetite keeps good and I hope I shan't lose any flesh. It seems real homelike since Sarah and Sophia got here, and we enjoy our little quarters.

On Thurs. we had a call from Willis and his wife. Took Sophia and went with them on a ride up to Central Park. Sophia behaved splendid and seem to enjoy the ride as much as any of us. It is the only time they have been away from the vessel. On account of the horse disease the horse cars have not been running on this side of the city, so we have not been able to go and make any calls as we were so far away from anyone to go on foot and to hire a private carriage would at least $10.00 a trip which we didn't feel able to pay and we couldn't carry Sophia and walk a mile or two which we should have had to do to get a ferry for Ivamacs(?) or E-port. It has been very confining for S. but when we get back I hope we can make up for it.

We seem to have a very good mate and steward and I hope I shall have a pleasant voyage. We both have missed Arthur and I believe we should have sent for him if I could of thought of a good place to stow him away. Sophia calls for him occasionally and wants to see him in the Album which by the way is a favorite book of hers.

She knows your picture in both albums and points and says Gamma Bis, She seems real smart, has gotten over her bad cold she had when she came and has a first rate appetite for hash and bread and butter. I think the voyage will do her lots of good. We enjoy our melodeon and have some good sings. I was in hopes that Oli might get in before I left but I'm afraid not now.

We finished loading last night and shall leave on Tuesday morning if we don't get off tomorrow night, the Lord willing. Our vessel is in beautiful trim and I hope we shal have a fine passage but I have never been in her before and cant say how she'll sail. Shall want to write us in about 20 days to Genoa, care of Am. Consul and about 20 days after to Messina care of Am. Consul who will forward it to us if we don't go there.

I wrote to James to pay you and A's board and rent. If he forgets call on hom also for any money that may be necessary for clothes. Please get Eben to see his skates are all right and the holes in his new thick boot heels. I hope he'll keep well as I think if he does he'll be some help as well as company for you. Love to Hannah. Sophie calls Aunt Hannah often. I wish I had a picture so she could remember the countenance as well as the name.

Hoping to be with you in the spring with much love

I am Yours affectionately

Benj