It was the first lie he had ever told her.
Sarah suddenly stood up, eyes staring in her hysteria. Gilling grabbed out, to bring her down, so the inrush of water caught him first, lifting him and carrying him bodily into the woman, knocking her backwards over the stern. For a moment they surfaced, about a yard apart. Briggs fell into the stern, reaching out for her and momentarily she stretched her hand towards his, trying to grasp at his groping fingers; and then she went under and he never saw her again.
He still had the baby in his left arm, holding her roughly. He turned, feeling beneath the water for the stern- seat, and then sat with the lifeless bundle in his arms, clutched high against him, the clothes raised around her again, to keep the water off.
He never saw the wave, but was aware of its movement, lifting him from the boat like a giant hand; and then he knew he was going under water and that his heavy clothes were dragging him down. He tightened his grasp upon Sophia.
Everything else had gone. But it wouldn’t take her. He’d promised Sarah it wouldn’t take the baby.
Epilogue
Could this have been the fate of the Mary Celeste and the people aboard?
It was the conviction held, in varying degrees, by nearly everyone most closely involved in the mystery.
In 1886, Captain Winchester told a friend: The cause of the hurried stoppage of the vessel, of the launching of the boat and of the abandonment was, in my opinion, that the alcohol which formed her cargo being in these red-oak barrels, a wood which is extremely porous, enough of its fumes exhaled through the pores of the wood to mingle with the foul air of the hold and generate an explosive gas which blew off the fore-hatch. Believing that she was on fire below and considering the inflammable nature of her cargo and mindful of the fact that his wife and child were on board, Captain Briggs, on the spur of the moment, resolved to heave the vessel to, launch the longboat, get into it and remain at a safe distance from the brig awaiting further developments. This was probably done, but the brig’s mainsail being stowed, she had no after-sail to keep her to the wind and she got stem away and backed off until the wind filled her topsail when, like a frightened deer, away she went, leaving her crew behind.
It was a theory supported by Captain Henry Appleby, the man who in Cadiz loaned Winchester the bail-bond money to retrieve his vessel. A minor explosion actually happened aboard Captain Appleby’s Daisy Boynton, with a cargo of alcohol en route for Bilbao, in northern Spain.
And it was the conclusion reached after an exhaustive investigation by Dr Oliver Cobb, of Easthampton, Massachusetts, a cousin of both Captain Briggs and his wife, who was Sarah Elizabeth Cobb before her marriage.
Said Dr Cobb: I think that the cargo of alcohol, having been loaded in cold weather at New York, early in November and the vessel having crossed the Gulf Stream and being now in comparatively warm weather, there may have been some leakage and gas may have accumulated in the hold. The captain, having care for his wife and daughter, was probably unjustifiably alarmed and, fearing a fire or an explosion, determined to take his people in the boat away from the vessel until the immediate danger should pass… whatever happened, it is evident that the boat, with ten people in her, left the vessel and that the peak halyard was taken as a tow line and as a means of bringing the boat back to the Mary Celeste in case no explosion or fire had destroyed the vessel. Probably a fresh northerly wind sprang up, filled the square sails and the vessel gathered way quickly. The peak halyard made fast at the usual place on the gaff would be brought at an acute angle around the stanchions at the gangway. With the heavy boat standing still at the end, I do not wonder that the halyard parted. This would tally exactly with the evidence given in court — that the peak halyard was broken.
The meteorological evidence also supports this theory. Surviving records of the Servico Meteorologico dos Acores, the Portuguese authority covering the islands, attest that ‘stormy conditions prevailed over the Azores on November 24 and 25’. However, those same records show that ‘calm or light winds prevailed on the forenoon of the 25th’. The improvement did not last, however. In the afternoon a storm broke of almost unnatural ferocity. During the twenty-four-hour period, at Ponta Delgada, only fifty miles from where the disaster occurred, there was recorded a rainfall of 11.4 inches. The ‘cold front’ passed between three and eight p.m. Then the wind veered from south-west to north-west, which would have carried any small vessel not towards Santa Maria, but out into the Atlantic, where the nearest coast would be that of Portugal, eight hundred miles away.
There is recorded evidence that the alcohol had seeped from the Mary Celeste’s barrels. After the ship’s eventual release from Admiralty custody in Gibraltar, she completed her voyage to Genoa, where it was discovered upon unloading that nine barrels were empty.
One person who never wavered in his belief that Captain Briggs and his family had been murdered was Gibraltar Attorney-General and Admiralty Proctor, Frederick Solly Flood. It was not until July 28, 1887 — fourteen years after he had had it made — that the analysis of the supposed blood upon the sword blade found in Captain Briggs’s cabin was released, and then only because of pressure from the American State Department in Washington.
In the letter supplying him with the findings of Dr Patron, court registrar Edward Baumgartner wrote to the U.S. Consul on that date: This analysis which was made by Dr Patron MD at the instance of Mr Solly Flood speaks for itself, it being rather remarkable, however, that the analysis or report so brought in, was brought in under seal on the 14th March, 1873, and the seal remained unbroken until I opened it for the purpose of giving you a copy.
The Mary Celeste continued to sail the oceans — although always with a crew — for twelve years after her mystery voyage.
Her ending was ignominious. The last registration entry in the records of the United States government — Number 28, issued on August 4, 1884 — is endorsed ‘lost by stranding, January 3, 1885, on reefs off Rochelais, near Miragoane, Haiti. 7 on board. None lost.’
Kingman Putnam, a New York surveyor, discovered that a near-worthless cargo had been insured for $30,000 and that an insurance fraud had been planned between the master, Captain Gilman Parker and the U.S. Consul in Haiti. The consul fled into the jungle interior of Haiti and escaped arrest. Parker was arraigned on a charge of conspiracy and barratry, the wilful wrecking of a vessel, the penalty for which was death. There was a failure to agree at his first trial. He died before he could be brought before a second court.
It was two years after that — in July 1887 — that Consul Sprague responded to the American government’s pressure about the blood sample and wrote in his letter to Washington: This case of the Mary Celeste is startling, since it appears to be one of those mysteries which no human ingenuity can penetrate sufficiently to account for the abandonment of this vessel and the disappearance of her master, family and crew about which nothing has ever transpired. Consul Sprague could have been mistaken. On May 16, 1873, the Liverpool Daily Albion reported: A sad story of the sea — a telegram from Madrid says ‘Some fishermen at Baudus, in Asturias, have found two rafts, the first with a corpse lashed to it and an Agrican [American?] flag flying and the second raft with five decomposed bodies. It is not known to what vessel they belonged.’
It was never established nor even investigated if they might have been those of the people who disappeared from the Mary Celeste.
