Product Description

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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #144499 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-28
• Released on: 2005-06-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345466655
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
On December 4, 1872, a small merchant ship, the Mary Celeste, was discovered floating without a crew. Members of another vessel, the Dei Gratia, boarded her and saw no trace of struggle, no serious weather damage or any other trouble that would have prompted sailors to abandon ship. Hicks (Raising the Hunley) is a master of cliffhanging phrases, and he hooks readers with warnings of the ship's bad luck and poor timing. His chronicle, rigorously researched and written with spare, precise clarity, takes a while to gather emotional momentum and present its characters. He generates excitement with the introduction of a colorful villain, queen's proctor Frederick Solly Flood. Convinced the Dei Gratia crew members who brought the Mary Celeste into port were guilty of foul play, Flood indulged in what Hicks calls "a full-fledged witch-hunt." He tautly documents Flood's hysteria, along with his rage upon learning red marks on the ship's floor weren't the bloodstains he'd hoped for. The Dei Gratia crew emerged after a salvation hearing with tarnished reputations, and the Mary Celeste's mystery remained unsolved. With Flood's disappearance from the story, the passionate sweep of the saga diminishes, and Hicks explores so many theories readers are cast adrift on a sea of speculation. Still, the haunting image of a cursed ship lingers, and Hicks succeeds in making the Mary Celeste a character as human as any of the sailors and reporters who spent their lives struggling to make sense of her puzzling, often painful history. B&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Recounting the building in 1860 of the boat in Nova Scotia, her increasingly troubled and profitless journeys, her transfer from owner to owner, and, finally, the possible discovery of her ultimate fate, Hicks brings a surprising freshness to a supposedly well-known story. Descriptions of the life and times of the crew are particularly poignant. Woven into the mystery are interesting vignettes of the transformation of the shipping industry from sail to steam. Well-established companies and dominant sailing families would disappear and new entities and methods would replace generations of practice. Writing about the disappearance would become a cottage industry and provide a foundation for the subsequent notions of the Bermuda Triangle and the abduction of humans by extraterrestrials. Teens should be fascinated by the hunt for what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste,and Hicks's solution invokes the methods of Sherlock Holmes. The inclusion of a dramatis personae and contemporaneous black-and-white photographs and diagrams adds to the interest and value of the volume. Ghost Ship is very readable, can provide useful information for research papers, and gives new life to an old mystery.–Ted Woodcock, George Mason University, Arlington, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
On December 4, 1872, the crew of the Nova Scotia freighter Dei Gratia spotted the merchant ship Mary Celeste adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, 400 miles off the coast of Portugal. There was no evidence of weather damage or traces of a struggle, but there was no one onboard. The last entry in the ship's logbook had been made 10 days earlier and placed it 300 miles west of its position when found adrift. The 10 people who had sailed on the Mary Celeste--the ship's captain, his wife and child, and 7 crewmen--had disappeared, probably the result of bad luck, poor timing, and an "unspeakable accident." Hicks chronicles the ship's history in detail and describes the crews of both vessels, as well as the investigation that followed. In 2001, the writer Clive Cussler found the Mary Celeste entombed in a coral reef, and Hicks now offers his conclusions as to what happened. Drawing on previously unpublished letters and photographs, Hicks does an exceptional job of storytelling. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Fun reading, but be prepared for some wading
Ghost Ship is the detailed history of the Mary Celeste, a ship found abandoned in the late 1800s. It's considered one of history's greatest maritime mysteries, since nothing was found out of order on the ship. All the foul weather gear was intact, all the crew's belongings were still in their proper places - in other words, there wasn't the slightest hint of foul weather or piracy. The crew had simply vanished with no mention of anything out of the ordinary in the captain's log.

Brian Hicks first gives a broad overview of the ship's bizarre past, and then launches into one of the most detailed accounts of anything I've ever read on any topic. He begins with the ship's construction, including not only the man who built it but a brief history of the town he lived in and the economic impact it had on his community. From here he traces the Mary Celeste, then known as the Amazon, through its first captain's strange death while on his first sailing, up to its second captain, Benjamin Briggs. At this point the Briggs family history is given - everything you could possibly want to know about the Briggs' is included here. From the patriarch, Nathan Briggs and his marriage into the Cobb family, to the birth of every Briggs child and each of their own marriages and eventual deaths at sea, Hicks covers minutia at an almost unparalleled depth.

It's at this point that I got slightly annoyed with the book. Since the Mary Celeste is shrouded in mystery, Hicks adopts sort of a "well this is what we *do* know" attitude, and every detail - and I mean every detail - that we actually know of from diaries and newspapers is included in his early chapters.

For the next couple hundred pages this continues, as the history of the Mary Celeste's actual discovery is chronicled, the trial that ensued, and eventually the hoaxes and theories that sprung up, mostly after Conan Doyle's fictional account appeared in Cornhill Magazine. At times the reading is very slow and dense and Hicks refuses to give any hints of what he proposes actually happened, although you know it's coming. While Hicks effectively utilizes the technique of building suspense, he does it to an almost annoying level. Ultimately the excruciating detail that fills this book isn't really enough to satisfy until the anti-climactic ending, where Hicks almost sheepishly reveals his own theory of what happens. With all the tension he tries to create throughout the earlier chapters, I found it surprising that I was halfway through his own explanation before I realized that's what it was.

Having said that, his explanation is a pretty good one. It's by far the most plausible of anything previously put forth, and doesn't leave many holes. The major problems with his idea are that of industrial alcohol transportation safety guidelines. One, it's hard to believe that the shipping companies wouldn't have been aware of the dangers of transporting dangerous substances (and thus taken more precautions against leakage), and two, if they didn't regularly take these precautions it seems like what Hicks suggests as his solution would've happened much more frequently.

Ghost Ship is ultimately a quick and fun read. I recommend it, but be prepared to wade through some dense sections. And after a few days of digesting it, you might come to realize that while the best solution yet, Hicks' ideas are ultimately just one more offering in the dozens of theories already out there.

Interesting Story Stretched Out
Brian Hicks does a satisfying job in Ghost Ship in presenting all angles of the mystery surrounding the Mary Celeste and her missing crew. Particularly interesting is the author's examination of the how this true tale of terror morphed into an almost legendary event as various myths began to attach themselves to an historical occurence, starting with a story by Arthur Conan Doyle. The ship's name even changed from Mary Celeste into Marie Celeste in common usage as if in tribute to its own new iconic status. The book, at times, feels a little padded as the author veers into somewhat related spheres (such as the Bermuda Triangle). The author, though, does provide a solution that seems to answer many of the unanswered questions and seems far more reasonable than anything put forward previously. A nice summer beach read as one looks out at the ocean.

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.