Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew

by Brian Hicks

Book Overview

On December 4th, 1872, a 100-foot brigantine was discovered drifting through the North Atlantic without a soul on board. Not a sign of struggle, not a shred of damage, no ransacked cargo--and not a trace of the captain, his wife and daughter, or the crew. What happened on board the ghost ship Mary Celeste has baffled and tantalized the world for 130 years. In his stunning new book, award-winning journalist Brian Hicks plumbs the depths of this fabled nautical mystery and finally uncovers the truth.

The Mary Celeste was cursed as soon as she was launched on the Bay of Fundy in the spring of 1861. Her first captain died before completing the maiden voyage. In London she accidentally rammed and sank an English brig. Later she was abandoned after a storm drove her ashore at Cape Breton. But somehow the ship was recovered and refitted, and in the autumn of 1872 she fell to the reluctant command of a seasoned mariner named Benjamin Spooner Briggs. It was Briggs who was at the helm when the Mary Celeste sailed into history.

In Brian Hicks's skilled hands, the story of the Mary Celeste becomes the quintessential tale of men lost at sea. Hicks vividly recreates the events leading up to the crew's disappearance and then unfolds the complicated and bizarre aftermath--the dark suspicions that fell on the officers of the ship that intercepted her; the farcical Admiralty Court salvage hearing in Gibraltar; the wild myths that circulated after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published a thinly disguised short story sensationalizing the mystery. Everything from a voodoo curse to an alien abduction has been hauled out to explain the fate of the Mary Celeste. But, as Brian Hicks reveals, the truth is actually grounded in the combined tragedies of human error and bad luck. The story of the Mary Celeste acquired yet another twist in 2001, when a team of divers funded by novelist Clive Cussler located the wreck in a coral reef off Haiti.

Written with the suspense of a thriller and the vivid accuracy of the best popular history, Ghost Ship tells the unforgettable true story of the most famous and most fascinating maritime mystery of all time.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345466659
• ISBN13: 9780345466655
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

I Never Received This Item And Was Charged For It Along With 3 Other Items Ordered The Same Day

I ordered 4 items the same night and i have not received anything and i was charged for it all i do not recommend to buy from this site

Riveting account with well thought out conclusions !

Well written and enjoyable read that is intellectual and factual. Mr Hicks does a wonderful job with backstory and biographical information without going overboard (no pun intended). His conclusions are riveting and well thought out and are also very plausible. I would recommend this book to anyone who has even a remote interest in the subject matter.

A good sea yarn

This book is a good, brisk read by a sharp journalist. The Mary Celeste was a ship found adrift in the Atlantic in the 1870s, with nobody aboard and no sign of a struggle or bad weather. Since that time the mystery of her crew's fate has puzzled and intrigued writers and historians. Hicks lays out all the known facts of the case, while delving into the personal life of the captain and the details of the lawsuit which followed the incident, when the ship was salvaged. He then takes a few amusing detours, recounting the ship's subsequent ill-fated story, the absurd tales that grew up around it, and more plausible early theories of what had happened. In the end, Hicks lays out what he believes occurred, and his case as presented here is certainly the best explanation to date; I do fancy he's solved it. We close with a brief discussion of the Mary Celeste's wreck, which was found recently by divers off Haiti, and this satisfying, well-rounded true tale is complete.

Masterful mix of mystery & history

It's hard to understand it now, but the mystery about this ship, found vacant on the Atlantic in 1872, had a profound grip on the public in the years around the turn of the century. Obscure to us today in the 21th century, the mystery of the Mary Celeste had the appeal then that UFOs and Kennedy assassination conspiracies have for some today. Author Hicks is to be congratulated for conducting mountainous research on this facsinating story, yet making it all accessible and readable. While perhaps not as engaging as a detective novel, it nonetheless was hard for me to put down. In the end, Hicks' elegantly simple expanation for the mystery ties up all the loose ends that the crackpot consipracy theories couldn't explain. Well-written, enjoable, and highly recommended.

A fascinating modern probe

Readers seeking a gripping true sea mystery will already know of the legend of the Mary Celeste, found drifting with crew missing in 1872: Brian Hicks tackles this 130-year old mystery in Ghost Ship : The Mysterious True Story Of The Mary Celeste And Her Missing Crew, re-creating events leading up to the disappearance and revealing the aftermath of suspicion and intrigue which followed a puzzling investigation after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sensationalized the event in fiction. A fascinating modern probe of all the facets of an old unsolved mystery.