@3A LOOK AT THE MARIE CELESTE IN "THE CHASE"
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@1            A few months ago I was talking to someone about `The Chase' 
and, in particular, the episode which featured the `Mary Celeste'. The 
person to whom I was writing (forgive me, I've forgotten your name) asked a 
series of questions about the `real' Mary Celeste, one of which concerned 
the size of the crew and whether or not this number was adequate for a ship 
like the Mary Celeste.

I promised that I would, eventually, get back to him with the precise 
details about the ship and its crew and so here they are...

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Mary Celeste was a brig, or half-brig, often called a hermaphrodite brig. 
She was carvel-built (her planks were flush overlapping) and was 
brigantine-rigged, which meant that had two masts, and-aft-rigged. She had 
a billet head - a carved scroll under bowsprit - and a square stern. She 
was built in venture of a group of pioneers on Spencer's Island, Nova and 
was 99.3 feet long with a gross tonnage of 198.42. She launched in 1861, 
originally named Amazon and registered at Parrsboro. On her maiden voyage, 
her master, was taken ill and died within a few days of reaching home, was 
almost an omen. 

For the next six years she voyaged between North America ports, England, 
the West Indies and the Mediterranean, but 1867 she ran ashore in a gale at 
Cow Bay, Cape Breton, where she had gone to load coal for New York. She 
then passed through various owners until 1868, when she was transferred to 
American registry with the new name of Mary Celeste. In 1872, just before 
her final voyage, she became the property of a consortium consisting of 
James H. Winchester, Sylvester Goodwin, Daniel T.Sampson and Benjamin 
Spooner Briggs, of Marion, Maine. They stripped her down to her copper and 
at a cost of $10,000 increased her length to 103 feet, giving her a total 
tonnage of 282.28. She thus became a double-decker, and for the sake of 
easier handling, her topsail was divided into upper and lower topsails. 

Benjamin Spooner Briggs, who became her new master, was born at Wareham, 
Massachusetts, in 1835, the second of the five sons of Captain Nathan 
Briggs. All Nathan Briggs's sons but one followed the sea. The elder Briggs 
was an affectionate father who was something of a poet and a philosopher, 
but he was also a spartan aboard ship who made sure his sons were granted 
no favours, and a strict disciplinarian who did not allow grog aboard, a 
rule his sons followed. Aboard ship, the sons were expected to do the same 
work as the crew , take their trick at the wheel, stand watch and furl 
sails, and to be first aloft in an emergency. In addition, they had to 
study regularly and recite to their father what they had learned of 
navigation, geography and literature. 
Three of the four became masters at an early age. 

The Briggs family was close and affectionate, though unlucky . One son, 
Oliver, was lost with his ship; a daughter, Maria, was drowned in a 
shipwreck ; another son, Henry, died at sea of yellow fever; and Nathan 
Briggs himself was killed by lightning at the door of his home. And 
Benjamin was to become the centre of the sea's most celebrated mystery. 

He was a quiet, retiring man, a regular reader of the Bible and a 
Freemason, an order he had joined while in Gibraltar. In 1862 at the age of 
27 he had married a 20-year-old cousin who had been a childhood sweetheart, 
Sara Elizabeth Cobb, a pastor's daughter. When he took command of Mary 
Celeste in the autumn of 1872, he was 37 and had previously commanded the 
schooner Forest King (in which he and his new wife spent their honeymoon on 
a voyage to the Mediterranean), the bark Arthur and the brig Sea Foam. His 
reputation as a master mariner was well established, and, of sturdy, God-
fearing New England stock, he had the highest of characters for seamanship 
and correctness. 

Contrary to later accounts, Mary Celeste's crew seem to have come from much 
the same mould as their captain, and, contrary to the stories which 
suggested they numbered an unlucky 13, in fact there were only ten people 
aboard, including Briggs. 

Briggs was sufficiently impressed to write to his mother just before he 
sailed that they had a good mate and steward, that the vessel was in 
"beautiful trim" and that he hoped they would have a good passage. 

The ship was manned well within the recommendations of the Seamen's 
Congress held some years later in England, when a crew of seven was 
recommended for sailing vessels of 200 tons and crew of nine for vessels of 
300 tons, and, as he was taking his, wife and two-year-old daughter, Sophia 
Matilda, with him, it more than likely that Briggs selected his men with 
particular care. Another child, Arthur, aged seven, was left behind to 
start his schooling under the care of Captain Winchester, one of the part 
owners of the ship. 

Steve Williams