00:00Strange things are happening in the cold waters of Antarctica.
00:04One of these things happened to a ship called Jenny.
00:07It was a small gullet whose story began in 1822.
00:12The boat and its crew took to the sea and disappeared a year later.
00:16For 18 years, the ship was considered a shipwreck.
00:20Then, people forgot about it.
00:22But in 1840, the whole world heard about it again.
00:27That year, the whaler Hope was sailing in the Drake Canal in Antarctica
00:32when his crew noticed a ship in the middle of the ice.
00:36It was the Jenny gullet.
00:38It was floating slowly in the darkness without any sign of life.
00:42Hope's captain, Mr. Brighton, gave the order to approach the mysterious ship.
00:48They all thought it was a ghost ship.
00:51But soon, they saw crew members on the deck.
00:56The sailors addressed them, but received no answer.
01:00It was clear that something terrible had happened.
01:04When Brighton boarded, he realized that the crew had not disappeared,
01:09as it had been believed.
01:11They weren't there, but they were frozen like statues.
01:15Brighton descended on the lower deck and found the captain.
01:19He was sitting at his table, frozen, with a pen in his hand.
01:24Brighton consulted the board newspaper.
01:27The last entry was dated May 4, 1823.
01:31The captain had written that he was the last survivor.
01:35They had spent 71 days without eating.
01:38It seems that the ship got lost at sea because its captain had decided to change course
01:43or that an iceberg had hit it.
01:46But no one is sure.
01:48As a result, no one has ever seen the Jenny again.
01:52According to rumors, Hope's crew had abandoned the frozen ship
01:56and left it drifting in the cold waters.
02:00According to other rumors, this whole story is only fiction.
02:05The story of the Jenny appeared in a German magazine in the middle of the 19th century.
02:10But there is no proof of the existence of this ship.
02:13Recently, researchers from the University of Cambridge decided to look into the mystery.
02:20They discovered that one of the members of Hope's crew,
02:24remained anonymous, had told someone the legend of the frozen ship.
02:29This person had then spoken to someone else,
02:32and the story had been published in a German magazine called Globus.
02:36And that's all, no additional clues.
02:40One of the most famous ghost ships is the Mary Celeste,
02:44whose existence makes no doubt.
02:47The history of this ship is well documented.
02:50The newspapers have talked about it.
02:53But what is interesting is that this ship continued to be used
02:56after the disappearance of ten of its crew members.
03:01The story of the Mary Celeste began in Canada in 1861.
03:06During its construction, the ship was called the Amazon.
03:10It had several captains and also had some difficulties.
03:15The ship was sold, bought, then resold, repaired,
03:18then it sailed under the name of Mary Celeste.
03:23In 1872, its captain was called Benjamin Briggs.
03:27He was an honest and courageous man,
03:29with a great experience in navigation.
03:32He had a wife, a daughter and a son.
03:36On his last trip, he took his wife and daughter with him,
03:40and his son stayed in America.
03:43In November 1872, the Mary Celeste left the port of New York
03:48with ten people on board and disappeared.
03:51Eight days later, another ship, the Dei Gratia,
03:55also left New York and followed the same route.
03:59The captain of the Dei Gratia, David Morehouse,
04:02saw the Mary Celeste and immediately understood
04:05that something was wrong.
04:07The ship was moving too freely, as if no one was controlling it.
04:11The captain tried to contact the crew members,
04:14but no one answered him.
04:16So, with other sailors, he boarded the Mary Celeste.
04:21The ship was in good condition.
04:23There was no damage.
04:25The hull was slightly filled with water, but it was without gravity.
04:30Everything seemed to be in order, but there was a rescue channel missing.
04:35The valuables of the crew members were in their cabins.
04:39The cargo was in the hull.
04:41The water and food reserves were intact.
04:44According to the on-board log, the ship had wiped out a storm,
04:47but nothing too violent.
04:49Other ships had crossed this storm,
04:52and nothing serious had happened to them.
04:55The last entry was dated November 25,
04:58and stated that everything was fine.
05:01The sails of the Mary Celeste were slightly damaged,
05:05but this may have happened after the crew disappeared.
05:08The whole ship was in excellent condition.
05:11So, what had pushed these men to abandon it?
05:15Part of the crew of the Dei Gratia remained on board the Mary Celeste
05:18to bring it back to land.
05:20Everything was going well.
05:21The ship was sent to the nearest port.
05:25Then, the captain of the Dei Gratia appeared in front of a tribunal
05:28and told his story.
05:31But the prosecutor and the judge did not believe his story.
05:35They were convinced that the captain had actually gotten rid of the crew of the ship
05:39to recover its cargo.
05:42According to the maritime laws of the time,
05:45if you found a ghost ship with a cargo of value,
05:48then a substantial part of this cargo belonged to you.
05:51Many people therefore thought that David Morehouse
05:54had decided to make a little money.
05:58This version seemed more credible
06:00than that of the mysterious disappearance of 10 people.
06:03Fortunately, no one accused the captain of having committed a crime.
06:07He was thanked for his services
06:09and was given a reward in cash.
06:12However, his reputation was tarnished,
06:15which greatly affected his career,
06:17because many thought that he had attacked the crew of the Mary Celeste.
06:21But even after this terrible affair,
06:24this trial and this investigation,
06:26the story was not over.
06:28The Mary Celeste was still an effective ship.
06:31It sailed again several times,
06:33until a captain crushed it on a reef
06:36in order to touch the insurance.
06:39A tribunal revealed the maneuver
06:41and accused the captain of having caused material damage in a deliberate way.
06:46The story of the Mary Celeste became famous all over the world.
06:50People began to scaffold more or less realistic theories.
06:55Some believed that the ship had crossed the Bermuda Triangle.
06:59But this version was quickly refuted,
07:02because the Bermuda region was thousands of kilometers
07:05from the itinerary of the Mary Celeste.
07:08Did the Kraken or another giant monster attack the ship?
07:12No.
07:14The boat having been found in almost perfect condition,
07:17this theory was also refuted.
07:19According to one of the most widespread versions,
07:21the crew of the Mary Celeste would have stolen a load of value
07:24and would have gone to Spain on board a rescue ship.
07:28However, those who knew Captain Benjamin Briggs
07:31say that he was an honest man.
07:34And then, he had a son in New York.
07:36He would never have abandoned him.
07:39A more in-depth investigation revealed
07:41that a series of fortuitous circumstances
07:43could be the cause of the crew's disappearance.
07:47Before his last trip, the ship had delivered coal.
07:51The pump intended to suck water
07:53would then have clogged with this material.
07:56And when the ship had crossed a storm,
07:59the hull would have simply been filled with water.
08:02Briggs could not have realized
08:04the amount of water present,
08:06because the barrels stored in the hull
08:08prevented him from seeing well.
08:10He would have estimated that it was dangerous
08:12to stay on board the ship,
08:14and therefore would have evacuated his passengers
08:16on a rescue ship.
08:18But maybe at the time of reaching the mainland,
08:21the storm had suddenly intensified
08:23and had overturned the ship.
08:26In addition, an entry in the newspaper
08:29indicates that the stopwatch was defective.
08:32It is a device allowing to determine
08:34the position of a ship at sea
08:36using the length.
08:37Briggs had got lost
08:39and did not know in which direction to sail.
08:41The storm was violent,
08:43and Briggs could not know
08:45if the ship was about to sink.
08:47He might have decided to abandon it
08:49when approaching the coast of the Azores.
08:52The originality of this ghost ship case
08:54lies in the fact that it is possible
08:56for everyone to investigate.
08:58You will find a lot of information
09:00about Mary Celeste on the Internet.
09:02There are documentaries and many articles.
09:05Maybe you will be able to discover
09:07something that others have not seen
09:09and elucidate the mystery of this disappearance.
09:13NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
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