Entry #5: The Ship of Ghosts (1873)

The Mary Celeste

The star-crossed history of the Mary Celeste began in Spencer’s Island, Nova Scotia, where she was built as the brigantine Amazon. Her first captain died of pneumonia at the beginning of her maiden voyage. Her second captain collided with a fishing boat and was towed back to the yard, where the ship caught fire during repairs. Her third captain led the ship on her first transatlantic crossing, during which she suffered another collision near Dover.

After several years, the Amazon ran aground off of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia and was sold to an American buyer, who reregistered the ship in America and renamed her the Mary Celeste with the intent of running regular trade between the eastern American seaboard and the Adriatic Sea.

*             *             *

After my near-death encounter in Chicago, I started taking lessons in several varieties of self-defense. I was now fairly well versed in boxing and two different forms of stick fighting. If I found myself faced with an assailant, I felt confident that I could keep myself from getting severely injured by a maniac with a relic. The furniture in my office, in addition to the Novoscope and the Apothecary, now included a punching bag and a training dummy. It wouldn’t help against a bullet, of course, but it would definitely even the odds against anything less.

When I got a bearing on a relic in late November of 1872, I almost thought that something had gone wrong with the Novoscope. I figured that a centuries-old instrument had every right to throw the occasional cog. I checked and double-checked the figures that the Novoscope was giving me, but the data were consistent. The Novoscope was telling me that a relic had manifested in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The only thing I could think of was that there had been some kind of event on a ship, most likely a merchant vessel of some kind. I immediately drafted a letter on Cambridge stationery and sent copies to several London shipping companies, asking if any of them had recently commissioned vessels that may have passed through that area. I then refined the letter down to a telegram and sent it to every American shipping firm I could think of. Finally, I gave my pro forma report to the college council, who still officially oversaw my activities as the curator of the Abnormal Relics Collection.

Unfortunately, the council was as skeptical of my readings as I had been at first, and they recommended that I take some well-deserved leave. After nearly eight years as the curator, they said, I was clearly due a break from my duties.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to do. I had devoted too much time to my job to consider any other lifestyle anymore. I could no more take a break from my work than from food and drink. In the absence of any clear course of action, I simply remained in my office, training and watching the Novoscope in case anything else came up. Hopefully, a reply would return from my various missives that would give me a bread crumb to follow.

Two weeks went by. Of the few London firms that were willing to cooperate with an academic investigation, none had sent any ships anywhere near the spot I had specified. However, I did eventually get a cable from one of a group of investors in America who had heard of my investigation. They said that they didn’t wish their names to be revealed, but that they owned a ship that may have passed by that area of ocean. They said that their ship was already late in reaching its destination, and they were concerned for its safety, since the captain, himself a co-owner, had brought his wife and daughter aboard. Finally, they hinted that the ship in question had a somewhat colorful history, and they were worried about the rumors that might arise should people hear about such a tragedy befalling their property.

It was rather a long telegram. It spoke to their level of concern that they were willing to send such a long cable across an ocean. This was obviously a lead that I needed to take very seriously. According to their information, their ship was overdue for arrival in Italy, carrying a cargo of alcohol. On a route from America to Italy, the ship would have to pass through the Pillars of Hercules. There were several ways that I could possibly get to that ship, and they all started from Gibraltar. Perhaps the council were right. A few days under the Mediterranean sun might do me good.

I made my way to Gibraltar, by train when circumstances allowed and by carriage for those rare stretches of the journey that went beyond the reach of Europe’s growing rail network. I brought with me the Titania’s Kiss stone, the Pinkerton Badge from Chicago, and a walking stick that I had been using in my stick fighting training. It wasn’t quite as fine as the cane of a proper English gentleman, but it was very sturdy and had quite a stout head, well suited for use as a weapon in close quarters.

As I headed south, I saw the snows of winter give way to the sun and sand of the Mediterranean. I found it necessary to shed my heavy overcoat when we reached Andalusia. I got off the train at Cadiz and boarded a coach to La Linea de la Concepcion, a small proto-town on the border with Gibraltar. The old fortifications between Spanish and British territory were still very much in place, turning Gibraltar into an oversized medieval castle. There was a secure military checkpoint on the British side of the border, but I showed them the Pinkerton Badge and told them I was with the Foreign Office, and they let me right in with a cheerful greeting. It didn’t matter what the Badge actually said; all the guards saw was a man who outranked them.

I passed through the checkpoint and proceeded to the main harbor. My plan was to speak to a naval officer of some kind, or possibly just interview as many dockworkers as I could find, and find out if any ships had reported anything unusual lately, but by a stroke of fate I spotted a suspicious-looking brigantine entering the harbor. Her sails and rigging seemed somewhat the worse for wear, not quite to the standards of a respectable merchant crew. I always thought that sailors took more pride in their work than that.

I headed down to the harbor to get a better look, but I got caught up in the bustle of men on the dock. This ship seemed to be eagerly awaited by everyone nearby, and there was quite the parade of officers here. The crew of the bedraggled ship were greeted first by a different captain, who shook hands warmly with the sailors. He seemed genuinely glad and relieved to see them. From what I could overhear of their conversation, the man in charge of the ailing ship was the other man’s first mate. They had discovered the ship at sea, and the captain had instructed the mate to bring the ship into port behind him. Judging from the look on the captain’s face, he had worried that his first mate wouldn’t reach port safely. I wondered what had happened to this ship that represented a threat to even a replacement crew.

Before I could get any closer, the assembled corps of officers took charge of the gathering and ushered the captain and his entire crew into a nearby building that reminded me of a courthouse. I realized why as I approached closer and read the words “Vice Admiralty Court” on the building’s façade. Whatever had happened on this ship, these officers were gathered to get to the bottom of it, come hell or high water. If I wanted to know what had happened on that ship, I needed to be in at this hearing. I walked up to the courthouse, but I was stopped at the door by an armed Royal Marine.

“Only involved personnel beyond this point, sir,” said the Marine.

I flashed him the Badge. “Dr. Israel St. James. Foreign Office sent me to witness the hearing.”

The Marine’s brow furrowed. His instinctual obedience to authority was flying in the face of the evidence. “Beg your pardon, sir, but I didn’t know that the Foreign Office employed Americans, sir.”

“I’m on loan from Cambridge University. The Foreign Secretary felt that my field of expertise would be of aid in this situation.”

“Very good, sir.” The Marine stood aside, and I entered the courthouse. I was glad that he didn’t ask me how the Foreign Office had known about the ship so far in advance, seeing that it had only just arrived. Even granted the amount of governmental mystique that I was tapping into with my Foreign Office cover, I was starting to enjoy the Pinkerton Badge. There was nothing like an air of pure, platonic Authority to grease my way onto a military base.

One by one, the court room filled with naval officers and assorted seamen, and I made myself as comfortable as I could at the back of the room. The witnesses’ box, or whatever it was called in the Navy, was filled with about a dozen sailors, including the captain and first mate I had seen on the pier. The judge took his seat and banged his gavel, and the hearing began.

It turned out that it didn’t matter how comfortable I had made myself, because no amount of comfort could have made that hearing any easier to endure. I had sat through faculty meetings at Cambridge that were fountains of revelry compared to that hearing. However, over the next several weeks I was able to get a pretty good idea of what had taken place.

On the evening of the fourth day of November, David Morehouse and Benjamin Briggs had dinner together with their wives. They had sailed together as young men, and they were now captains of their own brigantines, respectively the Dei Gratia and the Mary Celeste. The following day, Captain Briggs set sail from Staten Island with 1,701 barrels of commercial alcohol bound for Genoa, by way of the Strait of Gibraltar. Aboard the ship with him were his wife, his daughter, and a crew of seven.

On the fifteenth day of November, Captain Morehouse set sail himself with 1,735 barrels of petroleum, also headed through the Strait of Gibraltar. Their journey was uneventful, despite reports of rough seas all through October, until the fourth day of December, when the helmsman of the Dei Gratia sighted a ship approximately six hundred miles west of Portugal. Other crewmen were summoned, and the ship was confirmed as the Mary Celeste. The crew of the Dei Gratia were concerned because the Mary Celeste was yawing slightly, her sails were torn, and she ought to have already reached Italy given her ten-day head start. She appeared to be drifting without a crew, and two hours of observation confirmed this to be the case.

Oliver Deveau, Captain Morehouse’s first mate, boarded the Mary Celeste and conducted a search and inspection. The ship appeared to be still seaworthy, but there was water all over every deck and three and a half feet of water in the hold. All of the ship’s papers were missing, except for the logbook. The ship’s clock and compass were damaged. The ship’s lifeboat, sextant, and marine chronometer were missing. The peak halyard was also missing, but a line was found tied to the ship with one end trailing in the water, and it was believed that this was the missing halyard. The cargo of alcohol was largely intact, except for nine barrels, which were found to be empty. It was decided that First Mate Deveau would sail the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar with a small contingent of the Dei Gratia crew, so that the salvage rights could be determined.

Fortunately, the judge allowed a recess for the celebration of Christmas, but other than that, I could barely perceive the passage of time. I think I must have spent nearly two months in Gibraltar waiting for any hints about what I was looking for. There was so much unexplained about the fate of the Mary Celeste that anything could have been the relic. I even searched the ship myself one evening, using the Badge to get past the guards on the pier, but nothing on the ship piqued my interest.

Over the ensuing weeks, I noticed that one of the crew seemed increasingly agitated. I first noticed him when the list of missing and damaged objects was read off. Of all the crew of the Dei Gratia, he was the one who seemed to be keeping the tightest rein on his emotions, as though he were trying to avoid reacting. The other sailors were reacting in small ways to the mention of the missing objects, but this one’s face was a stone. He seemed like he was hiding something. As the hearing proceeded, he grew more and more agitated, looking around the room as though he were being pursued. He seemed to be paying less attention to the hearing as it went on. I could only imagine what sort of torment might have been holding his attention.

One day, the sailor in question failed to appear for the hearing. The judge asked Captain Morehouse about the whereabouts of the missing sailor, but he had no idea. The sailor had been in the garrison with the rest of the Dei Gratia’s crew that morning, according to the captain, but there was now no sign of him. He suggested that the sailor must have slipped away from the others as they were on their way to the courtroom. He hinted that he, like myself, had noticed some aberrant behavior in the young man over the past several weeks, which he had put down to nerves regarding the outcome of the hearing. The judge ordered two of the Marines in attendance to go to the garrison and search for the missing sailor. I immediately rose from my seat and followed them out. If the missing sailor had been somehow influenced by a relic, no mere Royal Marine could help him.

With the Pinkerton Badge, I convinced the Marines to let me help them find the missing sailor. We searched the garrison, but it was empty, along with the mess, a local tavern, and anywhere else where a sailor might be hiding. We spoke to the guards at the checkpoint between Gibraltar and La Linea de la Concepcion, but no military personnel had left since the hearing had begun. We spoke to the harbormaster, and no ships had left the harbor, not even a rowboat. Either the missing sailor had taken it upon himself to swim to Tangier, or he was somewhere in Gibraltar still.

The Marines and I proceeded to the headquarters of the Gibraltar Police to solicit their help in finding this sailor. They were worried that they were somewhat overstepping their bounds, that they would see trouble for involving colonial authorities in a military investigation, but I assured them that I would authorize their actions on behalf of the Foreign Office. We contacted the local constabulary, and they agreed to help us with our search. I suggested a methodical quartering of the area, starting with the public houses, boarding houses, and anywhere else that a runaway might take refuge. The marines went out into the colony, each with a constable, and the other constables split into pairs. As they went out to canvass the neighborhood, I went off on my own to follow a hunch. If I were being tormented by forces beyond the ken of mortal man, the first thing on my mind would be finding a place of safety, a place of sanctuary. In the minds of men, one kind of place meant sanctuary more than any other.

The look of Gibraltar was very different from that of Andalusia, just a few miles to the North. Except for the occasional Moorish horseshoe arch, and of course the flawlessly bright blue sky overhead, I might have been back in England. The people wore British fashions. The streets were covered with British cobbles. And on my way to the police headquarters, I had seen the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the seat of the Gibraltar diocese of the Anglican Church. I was about to go back and check it out when I looked down the street from the headquarters and saw an older looking church, the Cathedral of St. Mary the Crowned, the seat of the local Roman Catholic diocese.

I thought to myself: well, why not? It looks like an older building, so it’s likely to have more of a metaphysical presence. The sailor is more likely to be Anglican than Roman Catholic, but nothing says solidity quite like a Roman Catholic cathedral. And if I turn up empty, I thought, I can always try Holy Trinity next. It’s only a couple of blocks away.

I stepped into the nave of St. Mary the Crowned and surveyed the assembled parishioners. There weren’t many people in the pews at that time of day in the middle of the week, but near the front I saw someone who looked very much like a terrified young Jack Tar. He didn’t have a rosary, and he wasn’t crossing himself or anything, but he did appear to be praying. As I got closer, I could tell that he actually wasn’t praying. He was doing what people do to whom praying does not come naturally, just asking for help from anyone who might be listening. In my limited experience, sailors were the sort of people who didn’t closely associate with God, but they spent their lives face to face with Fate and Chance. They spent too much time at the whim of the wind and the sea to believe in an omnipotent, benevolent God, but there were always times when even a sailor needed someone to pray to. At times like that, a man could only show up at God’s house and hope that he was in a mood to accept unannounced visitors.

I walked down the center of the nave and sat down next to the sailor. He was sitting with his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes screwed tightly shut. I looked up at the crucifix behind the altar and quickly crossed myself, just to show willing. I knew more than most how important it could be to show proper respect in another man’s house.

“Are you all right, sailor?” I said.

He jumped in his seat and turned to face me. I gave my friendliest smile to try and calm him down, which probably wasn’t that charming, given that I spent most of my time in my office or in training, but he didn’t seem too picky.

“Who are you?” he said.

“My name is Dr. Israel St. James. I’m an archaeologist from Cambridge University. I’m the curator of the Abnormal Relics Collection.” He began to look a little guilty when he heard me talk about abnormal relics. “I have reason to believe that such a relic manifested on board the Mary Celeste last November, and I suspect that you now have possession of that relic.”

“Look,” he said, “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I just wanted to get a little cash for myself. You know, we don’t get paid real well. I thought I could find something that no one would miss that I could flog for a quick profit. Lots of other things were stolen, you know. Who’s to say that the pirates didn’t take it or it washed overboard or something?”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I got off the Gratia, free and clear. We bunked up in the garrison for the hearing, and all of a sudden . . . You’re going to think I’m a madman.”

“Oh, I could tell you stories,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me one?”

“After I had the sextant for a few weeks, I started to hear voices. I heard whispering all the time. I couldn’t tell what they were saying because they were talking over each other all the time, but they were definitely trying to get my attention. Over time, it just got louder and louder. Being in here is the first piece of quiet I’ve had in months.”

He was clearly in a bad state. I needed to be gentle or he might go to pieces in front of me. “Do you still have the relic?”

He unbuttoned his coat and pulled out a shiny brass sextant. I took it in my hand, and I felt the rush of knowledge. It was no wonder that the sailor was hearing voices, because the sextant was like a beacon for ghosts. Looking through its eyepiece and adjusting its mirrors and shades allowed the viewer to see ghosts and auras, and any ghost in the area would be drawn to such a person like a moth to a flame. A ghost was nothing more than a bundle of memories and unfulfilled desires, cursed to haunt the earth until their needs were met. They were virtually powerless without a receptive mortal to do their bidding. The discovery of the sextant from the Mary Celeste must have been like setting off a fireworks show. Suddenly, the sailor had the attention of who knew how many restless spirits. No wonder he had been distracted during the hearing. However, the sailor had made a good guess about the church; ghosts apparently didn’t like trespassing on consecrated ground.

Ghosts, fairies – there were more and more creatures of folklore out there that were turning out to be all too real. Maybe my next job would send me up against a werewolf or two.

“What do you make of it?” said the sailor.

“You were right,” I said. “The voices you’re hearing are because of this sextant. Without it, they should leave you alone. Wait here for an hour, and then head back to the hearing. The problem should be gone by then.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the sailor. “Thank you so much.”

“Think nothing of it,” I said. “Now, do you know the way to the nearest cemetery?”

He gave me directions to Trafalgar Cemetery, a few blocks south of the cathedral. As I left the church, I could already hear the whispers that had plagued the sailor for the past few months. Unlike him, though, I was no stranger to the weird and unearthly. When I reached the cemetery, I sat down on a bench and brought the sextant’s telescope to my eye.

I immediately saw a throng of spirits around me, all of them reaching for me and mouthing words. If I pointed the telescope at one of them and manipulated the sextant just right, I could pick out that voice a little more clearly among the cacophony, but the cloud of voices was always there.

Well, if I were going to do something for these things, better sooner than later.

“Well, I think we can have some quiet time now,” I said. “What do you want?”

The whispering grew louder.

“What do you expect me to do for you?”

If they hadn’t been ghosts, they would have been shouting at this point. With the sextant, I could see them pounding the air with their fists and baring their teeth at me. The force of their glares was starting to fray my nerves. Because of the extra pressure I was putting on the ghosts to get an answer out of them, I was getting in fifteen minutes what the discoverer of the sextant had gotten over the course of months. The shouts turned to screams. It was all I could do to remain of sound mind under the onslaught.

I pulled myself together and brought the sextant back up to my eye, focusing on the voice of each ghost in turn. After several minutes of concentration, I felt that I had a rough handle on what they wanted. Each of them represented a person who had died at sea, all unremembered and uncelebrated. From what few details I could discern from what they were telling me, most of them had died before the days of well-mapped shipping routes, when ships were sent out into the wild ocean without any reassurance that they would return. These were the original explorers, who wagered their lives for a chance at riches. Men with wives and families needed not apply.

All of them wanted the same thing. They wanted nothing more than a memorial.

Well, if a memorial was called for, then I was in the right place. While Trafalgar Cemetery mainly contained victims of yellow fever, it was named for the Battle of Trafalgar, and it contained victims of several naval battles during the Napoleonic Wars. Most of the actual victims of Trafalgar had been buried at sea, but they were all commemorated here. If there was a better place to commemorate the forgotten victims of early sea travel, I couldn’t think of it.

The cemetery featured a small chapel, really nothing more than a light shelter with an altar, but on a metaphysical level, it was more than enough. I stepped up to the altar, lit a candle, and said a few words about the eternal profundity of the ocean and remembering those who were lost. It wasn’t exactly an award-winning sermon, but it had plenty of feeling behind it, and to the dead, that was what mattered. The whispers died down, and through the sextant’s eyepiece, I saw the ghosts fade away, their wishes appeased.

I made my way back to the naval base and collected my things. I had planned to take the train back to England, but I decided that it would be more fitting to go by ship.