MYSTERY OF MARIE CELESTE

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 July 1935, Page 12

MYSTERY OF MARIE CELESTE

A CITY FATHER’S SOLUTION. Superstition dies hard on the high seas, and where “men in sail” are concerned, it may. fairly be said that it never dies. So one was very surprised the other evening when yarning with City Father Cr A. E. Kane, of the Melbourne City Council—who estimates that he would approach the millionaire class if he had a silver cpin for every tr-ail he has helped to reef—to hear him snap his fingers at ilie great bulk of those superstitions which have afforded romancers endless and entrancing materials for gripping narratives. “Well,” I commented, as I gazed into my glass, “I admire your matter-of-fact deductions, but can you explain the niyjstery of the “Marie Celeste?” (writes:,E.A.P., in the Melbourne ’Age’). I’m not much like an albatross, but Cr Kane looked at me like the original ancient mariner. “It wasn’t the Marie Celeste in the first instance,” he declared, with no doubt in his tone, “and in the second place there was no mystery.’ ”■

We refilled our pipes, and through the purple haze came this story: , “It was 50 years ago that I first heard the yarn of-this ship,” he commenced, ‘‘and the tale was then only 13 years old, and in those days it seemed to be the most favoured topic of unending and acrimonious discussion on those grand ships which sailed the seven seas by the grace of God and loyal seamen. I’ve seen men come to blows about this yarn, what with all- the- contradictory accounts, and • stupid phantasies spun by the spider -of- superstition. As I’ve said, she was not the Marie Celeste, and there was. no ‘mystery’ about her. She was the ‘Mary Celeste,’ and she was the subject of a common criminal conspiracy. It’s a sordid tale at best, and, in spite of the imaginative brilliance of the* romancers, such as Abeb Fosdyke, which was an assumed name, and Klein, Lockhardt, and Conan Doyle, the Mary Celeste hoax merely constituted a cunning stunt which brought ill-gotten wealth to a gang of ruffians who were nothing more or less'than nineteenth-century pirates.” Well on his course by now, the sedate City Father pointed with the stem of his pipe to a map of the world stretched across one side of his “cabin,” as he will insist on calling his study.. It was the youngster, “injsail” who was “talking animatedly to me. ' f . \ • “See there—New York. Well, in October. of .1872 Were were two small vessels lying alongside? that wharf. They were brigs loading timber and raw spirit for Genoa'.. The spirit was for fortifying Italian twines, and you had to be tough as ‘twist’ to stomach it. One of the brigs was the Mary Celeste, of 216; tons net register, with a rough fellow' named. Benjamin Briggs as her master. The other brig was the Dei'Gratia with a scoundrel by the name of James Moorehouse as master. ■ ' Now, Briggs aind Moorehouse were different types. Briggs was erratic, frank, and he had a great lick tor the liquor. He had a terrific temper, but that did not stamp him as unusual as the master of a vailing shipT'Not bya long pull,” and Cr. Kane paused to chuckle as sea memories billowed through his mind. ‘‘No; but his tempre was rendered none the less sweet by his marriage to a dwarf, and this woman accompanied him on many of his voyages. He became very attached to her. She was the only one who could tame him. The skipper of the Dei Gratia —Moorehouse —was a cool, calculating customer; very sober, and very hated by his men. They feared him for his cunning, and they knew his pull with the ‘crimps’—the boardinghouse . masters of the New York waterfront, who held sailors in pawn. He could get crews of picked men, whilst a fellow like Briggs had to be content with the sweepings of the Bowery. Whilst the ships were loading Moorehouse conceived the idea of making a pile of money out of the Mary Celeste, and with characteristic cunning, he studied the failings of the mate of the Mary Celeste—T. J. Hullock—and by a ruse he got him into his clutches. He arranged the conspiracy at one night meeting in a boarding house within sight of the brigs.. Hullock was to see that the Mary Celeste was in a certain latitude and longitude about a date which they fixed, and the main point was that there were to be as few of the original crew as possible abciard. Moorehouse was then to rescue the Mary Celeste, put a crew of his own men aboard, take her to port, and claim salvage. To implement this plan he generously offered the master of the Mary Celeste four picked seamen whom he had signed on his own articles. Briggs,’ pushed for men and eager to set sail, readily agreed to take on these men from Moorehouse, and, with a cunning kindness, Moorehouse suggested that they need not be removed from his articles. So they sailed in the Mary Celeste, but to the world they were sailors aboard the Dei Gratia. They were brought into the conspiracy, and were promised a share of the loot. “At the last minute the dwarf wife of the skipper of the ‘Mary Celeste’ decided to take passage, and she insisted on bringing with her a piano, which she termed her ‘baby.’ You've heard all the nonsense about ‘the baby of the Mary Celeste.’ Well, it was a ‘baby’ piano—that’s all. Now, Hullock, the mate, hated many things, but music on a ship and music anywhere made him blind with rage. He loathed. Mrs Briggs under any conditions. but he simply couldn’t tolerate her at any price aboard a ship. As for her ‘baby’—well, 1 leave you to guess. When a gale threatened the ship on her way to Genoa it was deemed prudent to lash the baby grand piano, and Hullock did this — with a ‘slippery hitch.' The result was that when the gale did strike the brig with terrific force the piano got adrift and crushed Mrs Briggs to death. There must have been a terrible scene if one is to judge by the shifty testimony of the cook. .John Pemberton, who was a co-conspirator with Hullock. The skipper carried on like a maniac, and he had the free run of the cargo of raw spirit to help him along the road to madness. He cried and roared for his wife, sousing himself with the raw spirit, whilst the mate, with a groat show of solicitude, took charge of the brig. They said that the drink-maddene 1 skipper jumped overboard to join his wife, but there is every reason to believe that he was tossed over the rail by Hullock, and that one man aboard was a witness to the act of murder—the man at the wheel, Carl Venholdt. He subsequently disappeared. Hullock and his gang didn’t want too many to share in the loot.

“Nearing the end of November—and you can imagine the state of affair? aboard tho 'Mary Celeste’ by this time—the ‘bucko’ mate’s nerves be-

gan to fray. Things went from bad to worse, and it has been testified that he became a raving lunatic. Whatever happened on board the ‘Mary Celeste’ with a madman at the helm and a crew of pirates in the rigging has been left to the imagination, but,” caustically commented my storyteller, “it must have been uncomfortable for everybody. However, on November 29, as I make it out from my research in this matter, the mad mate anchored the brig off Santa Maria, the southernmost island of the Azores, and almost in a direct line between New York and the Straits of Gibraltar. Then something strange happened, strange even for this weird environment. Hullock destroyed the ship’s papers, took the ship’s chronometer with him, and went ashore. The four men left aboard were the men signed on by Moorehouse, and their names were in his articles — Tom Moffat, Charles Manning, William Hawley, and the cook (John Pemberton). “No sooner had the mad Hullock landed than they promptly ‘up anchored’ and sailed away with all speed to the rendezvous arranged with Moorehouse. Things panned out better than Moorehouse expected, for Hullock was missing, The ‘Dei Gratia’ then rescued the bogus crew of the • ‘derelict’ brig ‘Mary Celeste’ and a prize crew was substituted, and both vessels in due course arrived at Gibraltar with only the original crew of the ‘Dei Gratia’ in both. “Then followed tjie Admiralty inquiry, which was held aboard a British man-o’-war in a just and proper manner. The very fairness of this tribunal played into the hands of Moorehouse and his men, and thi£ conspirator-captain was awarded £l,7oo—a fifth of the value of the ‘Mary Celeste’—not for salvage, but according to the actual finding of the court, for ‘rendering assistance to a distressed vessel.’ ” There was a long pause, broken by my question: ‘‘How did the ‘Mary Celeste’ and Moorehouse and his crowd finish up? What happened to Hullock? And what about the cut in her bows, the bloodstained sword, and- —” “Just a minute,” interposed my ancient mariner, “I haven’t finished yet. As for the ‘Mary Celeste,’ she finished up. on the rocks off the coast of Cuba in 1885, and it seems that she was sunk as she was sailed—ingloriously. It was ascertained that her reputed cargo of molasses, consisted of water, only a few casks on top containing ‘black jack.’ Moorehouse merely disappeared, and of course, none of his gang had any desire to bring him officially to book fordheir own sakes. Hullock died a violent death in the West Indies, where he had roamed under an assumed name. Pemberton, the cook, lived for many years in Liverpool. As for the rest—well, they have gone, tO “As for the cut in the bows of the ‘Marie Celeste’ indicating that some thing had gone amiss,” remarked Cr Kane, “that was caused through striking a submerged derelict after leaving the Azores. Then, of course, the romancers had to have their stock-in-trade, so they fabricated a bloodstained sword, and the uncorked oil bottle, a half-eaten egg, the warm ashes in the galley fire, and so forth. Mere trimmings—that’s all! “Apd that,” concluded Cr Kane with the finality of Scotland Yard at its best, “is my solution of the mystery of the ‘Mary Celeste.’ ”