4.3 KiB
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A very modern ship for its time, the Iron Mountain, 60 m long, 10 m wide, carrying 55 passengers plus crew, vanished in the Missouri (United States).
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The Mary Celeste found abandoned near the Azores, see images/MarieCeleste_300.jpg.
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November 24th, 11am: The Dei Gratia, a brigantine, cuts through the waters near the Azores when it encounters a seemingly helpless ship. The sea is calm. It is the British brigantine, the Mary Celeste, drifting slowly, all sails out. The Dei Gratia sends a boat and some men, who board the ship. The ship is deserted. An uneasiness takes hold of the new arrivals. Laundry is still drying on the deck and, in the cabin, teacups are still arranged, ready to be drunk. In the cabins, a small harmonium is open, with a sheet of music on the music stand. Children's toys are scattered on the floor and, in the captain's office, his gold watch is found. On a cushion, the imprint of a small child's head can be guessed. As no boat is missing, the sailors scan the sea in the hope of seeing a body or a head, floating, but in vain. No other ship was crossing in the area and yet, all these traces of abandonment are recent. Nothing is floating. It seems that the cabins had been abandoned in a hurry, the second of the Dei Gratia, Oliver Deveau, who boarded the Mary Celeste, would later declare. The crew seems to have acted in panic. The men had indeed left their personal possessions, that is to say that their clothes were still in their place... Nothing is missing, not even their pipes, one of which is still warm and smoking, so dear to any sailor.
The captain was accompanied by his wife and daughter. A half-hemmed skirt is still engaged on the table of a sewing machine. Only the chronometer, the sextant and the logbooks, including the nationality certificate, are missing. Only a cat emits faint meows and it is neither hungry nor scared. The cargo --- 1700 barrels of raw alcohol --- has not been touched. The total value of the boat and its cargo is estimated at around 8500 £. Traces of boarding with something are found on the Mary Celeste: grooves from a cutting instrument, on both sides and a few feet from the bow, about fifty centimeters above the flotation, are judged to be very recent, and not due to the action of time. A deep cut is also found on the starboard railing. Oliver Deveau declared that he had no idea of the origin of this cut. Near this cut, brown spots are found on the deck, directly above, seeming to have been caused by blood. It is then suspected that Captain Moorehouse, of the Dei Gratia, and his crew, had massacred the crew of the brigantine in order to receive the reward for any discovery of a drifting wreck and its contents.
However, the report of the doctor who performed an analysis from the blood spots remained in a sealed envelope and was not revealed until 14 years later (which did not prevent the suspects from being prosecuted on mere presumptions). The doctor, Doctor Patron, declared to have removed with a pair of scissors several brown red spots, thick 1 mm and about 1 cm in diameter, on the deck and on the railing. After these negative experiments, I feel authorized to conclude that, in the current state of our scientific knowledge, there is no blood, neither in the spots found on the deck of the Mary Celeste, nor in those found on the blade of the sword I examined. The origin of these brown red spots is not revealed. A sword is found, covered with the same brown spots. In the bosun's cabin, on his table, there is a slate where the temperature, the time, the notes of the dial were written: November 24th, 11am, 36° north latitude, 27° west longitude, fine weather. A line passed, one can read: Strange, my dear wife.. -
December 7th, 1am: In King's Sutton, Banbury (Great Britain), an object resembling a haystack flies in an irregular trajectory. Sometimes at high altitude, sometimes very low, it is accompanied by fire and dense smoke. It produces the same effects as a tornado, causing trees and walls to fall, then suddenly disappears. Fort 189{.source}