page_title: Mary Celeste
section_title: New York
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Celeste / Abandonment / New York
caption_attribution_description: New York Harbor.
context_page_description: Mary Celeste was an American merchant brigantine discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores Islands on December 4, 1872. The Canadian brigantine Dei Gratia found her in a dishevelled but seaworthy condition under partial sail and with her lifeboat missing. The last entry in her log was dated ten days earlier. She had left New York City for Genoa on November 7 and was still amply provisioned when found. Her cargo of denatured alcohol was intact, and the captain's and crew's personal belongings were undisturbed. None of those who had been on board were ever heard from again.
  Mary Celeste was built in Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia, and launched under British registration as Amazon in 1861. She was transferred to American ownership and registration in 1868, when she acquired her new name. Thereafter she sailed uneventfully until her 1872 voyage. At the salvage hearings in Gibraltar following her recovery, the court's officers considered various possibilities of foul play, including mutiny by Mary Celeste's crew, piracy by the Dei Gratia crew or others, and conspiracy to carry out insurance or salvage fraud.
context_section_description: On October 20, 1872, Briggs arrived at Pier 50 on the East River in New York City to supervise the loading of the ship's cargo of 1,701 barrels of denatured alcohol; his wife and baby daughter joined him a week later. On Sunday, November 3, Briggs wrote to his mother to say that he intended to leave on Tuesday, adding that "our vessel is in beautiful trim and I hope we shall have a fine passage."
  On Tuesday morning, Mary Celeste left Pier 50 with Briggs, his wife and daughter, and seven crew members, and moved into New York Harbor. The weather was uncertain, and Briggs decided to wait for better conditions. He anchored the ship just off Staten Island, where Sarah used the delay to send a final letter to her mother-in-law. "Tell Arthur," she wrote, "I make great dependence on the letters I shall get from him, and will try to remember anything that happens on the voyage which he would be pleased to hear." The weather eased two days later, and Mary Celeste left the harbor and entered the Atlantic.
  While Mary Celeste prepared to sail, the Canadian brigantine Dei Gratia lay nearby in Hoboken, New Jersey awaiting a cargo of petroleum destined for Genoa via Gibraltar. Captain David Morehouse and first mate Oliver Deveau were Nova Scotians, both highly experienced and respected seamen. Captains Briggs and Morehouse shared common interests, and some writers think it likely that they knew each other, if only casually. Some accounts assert that they were close friends who dined together on the evening before Mary Celeste's departure, but the evidence for this is limited to a recollection by Morehouse's widow 50 years after the event. Dei Gratia departed for Gibraltar on November 15, following the same general route eight days after Mary Celeste.
caption: A painting by George McCord of New York harbor in the 19th century
exif: {}