The Billy Lids

This line drawing is of a half-brig of the same period. Captain Briggs was the captain of an American sailing ship called the Mary Celeste. In 1872 he left New York in his ship with his wife and little daughter and a crew of eight men. They were taking a cargo of industrial alcohol, probably methanol, across the Atlantic Ocean to Genoa in Italy.

Captain Brigg's friend, Captain Moorhouse, was the captain of another ship called the Dei Gratia. Captain Moorhouse and his crew set sail a week later. After sailing for a month, Captain Moorhouse saw the Mary Celeste ahead of him. The ship was sailing along so wildly that Moorhouse knew something was wrong. He sent some of his crew in a rowboat to take a look. They found the Mary Celeste deserted - no captain, no family and no crew - and the lifeboat was gone too.

Captain Moorhouse and his crew couldn't work it out. Why had everyone left the Mary Celeste? The ship was in good order and there was penty of food and drinking water. Everything seemed to be in place, but it looked as though everyone had left in a hurry. The crew left without their boots and their coats. They hadn't even taken their pipes and tobacco, nor had they taken any food and water. The only things that were gone were the lifeboat, the ship's papers and the navigation instruments.

The ship's log was there. Captain Briggs had written in it 11 days before. He wrote down the position of the Mary Celeste, which was somewhere 950 kilometres to the west of where Captain Moorhouse had found her. It seemed that the Mary Celeste had sailed 950 kilometres by herself.

When Captain Moorhouse looked for clues, he found four things.

• One of the hatch covers was off.
• There were two strange grooves along the front of the ship, one on each side above the waterline.
• On the ship's rail there was a cut that looked as if it had been made by an axe.
• Some brown stains that could have been blood were found on the deck and on the captain's sword in his cabin.

Many ideas were put forward to explain what happened. Some people said that Captain Moorhouse and his men murdered everyone on the Mary Celeste. That would explain the axe cut on the ship's rail. It would explain the brown stains that looked like blood. But when the brown stains were tested they weren't blood. So there was no proof that there had been a fight on the ship. Anyway, Captain Moorhouse was a friend of Captain Briggs. It wasn't likely that he would murder him.

Some people said the crew must have got drunk on the alcohol, murdered the captain and his family and rowed awiay in the lifeboat.But the alcohol on the Mary Celeste was not the sort of alcohol you drink, and anyone who did drink it would be sick.

Maybe there was a wild storm and Captain Briggs thought the ship was about to sink. Everyone climbed quickly into a lifeboat and a big wave sank the little boat and they all drowned.

Some people thought this was the most likely thing to have happened, but Captain Briggs had been a sailor for years and had been trough many storms. He wouldn't make a mistake like that, would he?

Could some sea monster like a giant octopus have grabbed all the people from the Mary Celeste? It's not very likely, and if it did, what happened to the lifeboat?

It's over 100 years since the Mary Celeste was found deserted. It's too late now to go looking for clues and the fate of the people remains a mystery today.