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What was found on the Mary Celeste.

The desk below is the signature of this site: each place on the ship is given as the boarding party, the surveyor or the chemist recorded it. A list of details that were never in that record sits beside it.

The Mary Celeste was completely deserted.⁠1 The only clue as to the whereabouts of her crew was the missing boat, which was normally stowed over the main hatch.⁠1 The fore and aft cargo hatches had been lifted and were lying on the deck.⁠1 One of the ship’s two pumps was partially disassembled, and nearby was a sounding rod.⁠1 The only items missing were the ship’s papers and Briggs’s navigational instruments.⁠1

The found-aboard desk

What was recorded in each place

Pick a place on the ship. The text is taken from the boarding account, the Gibraltar survey, or the chemist’s report, and is sourced on the page. There is no score and no timer.

Never in the record

These familiar details are later inventions, or were not found in the court testimony.

  • Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictitious “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement,” published in the 1880s, is riddled with factual inaccuracies that are still sometimes taken as fact, including the misspelling of the ship’s name as Marie Celeste.⁠1 The 1884 story also helped fix the spelling Marie Celeste.
  • The testimony given before the Vice-Admiralty Court at Gibraltar affords no evidence that a cat was found on board, or that the fore-hatch was found upside down.⁠3 Fay also records no evidence that the fore-hatch was found upside down.
  • Half-eaten breakfasts, steaming mugs of tea, a clock turning backwards, and an oil phial balanced on a sewing machine belong to later retellings, not to the survey or the boarding testimony used on this site.

The same desk, in order

The interactive above is not the only way to read this material. Here is the same list, as ordinary text.

  1. The missing boat. The boat that was normally stowed over the main hatch was missing when the Dei Gratia’s men came aboard. Royal Museums Greenwich treats that absence as the only clue as to the whereabouts of the crew.
  2. The cargo hatches. The fore and aft cargo hatches had been lifted and were lying on the deck.
  3. Pumps and sounding rod. One of the ship’s two pumps was partially disassembled, with a sounding rod nearby. Austin later recorded that the valve of one pump had been removed so that a sounding-apparatus could be passed into the well, and that the apparatus was lying near and in good order.
  4. The captain’s cabin. The ship’s papers and Briggs’s navigational instruments were missing. A sword was found in the cabin. Deveau and Wright saw no obvious signs of violence. Austin, surveying the ship in Gibraltar, thought the blade looked as if it had been smeared with blood and afterwards wiped — a first impression later tested by the court chemist.
  5. Stores and provisions. Provisions on the cabin floor were perfectly dry. Under the forehatch Austin found a new hawser, unused and perfectly dry.
  6. The log slate. The log slate had been left behind, with a final entry for the morning of 25 November. Fay’s 1942 publication of the court papers gives the wording as “Eastern point of St. Mary’s bore 6 miles SSW,” dated 8 a.m. that morning.
  7. The sword, tested. Dr J. Patron, asked by the Attorney General to examine supposed blood-stains, concluded in January 1873 that there was no blood either on the deck or on the blade of the sword.
  8. Fire or explosion. Austin found not the slightest trace of an explosion or a fire, or of anything calculated to create an alarm of either, and was wholly unable to discover any reason why the vessel should have been abandoned.
An open wooden lap desk with compartments, papers and small personal objects arranged on a dark surface
The lap desk of Captain Benjamin Briggs, recovered from the Mary Celeste and now at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (inv. M6557, acquired in 1949 from Mary B. Cobb). Photograph by Crawdad Blues, August 2026, CC0. The museum caption notes that some of the personal items displayed with the desk are reproductions.Credit: Crawdad Blues · CC0 · Commons

The desk in Salem is a surviving object from the ship, not a reconstruction of the cabin as found. The photograph caption notes that some of the personal items displayed with it are reproductions.

Sources on this page

  1. Royal Museums Greenwich, “The mystery of the Mary Celeste,” Andrew Choong Han Lin
  2. John Austin, Surveyor of Shipping, affidavit, Gibraltar Vice-Admiralty Court, as transcribed from a photostat in Charles Edey Fay, The Mary Celeste, Peabody Museum, 1942
  3. Charles Edey Fay, The Mary Celeste, Peabody Museum, 1942, common-errors chapter as transcribed at maryceleste.net/facts.htm
  4. Dr J. Patron, “Supposed Blood-stains,” Gibraltar, 30 January 1873, as transcribed from the court papers in Fay, 1942