00:00It is December of 1872. A British ship, the Dei Gratia, is crossing the Atlantic Ocean,
00:08400 miles from the nearest land. And there, drifting in the open waves,
00:14her captain spots another ship. It is the Mary Celeste. The Dei Gratia's crew climbs aboard,
00:22and what they find has never been explained. The Mary Celeste's sails are set.
00:30She is sailing herself, with no hand at the wheel. Her cargo, 1,700 barrels of industrial alcohol,
00:39sits undisturbed below deck. The crew's belongings are exactly where their owners left them.
00:46The galley is clean. Food is laid out on the table. But there is not a single soul on board.
00:54Captain Benjamin Briggs is gone. His wife Sarah is gone. Their two-year-old daughter Sophia is gone.
01:03And all seven of his crewmen, gone.
01:07One lifeboat is missing. The ship's chronometer and her navigation instruments are gone. But nothing
01:16else is touched. No blood. No signs of a fight. No sign of panic. It is as if ten people
01:24simply stepped
01:25off the ship. Into the middle of the empty ocean. And disappeared. Then there is the ship's log.
01:33The final entry is dated November 25th. Nine days before the ship was found. Placing the Mary Celeste
01:40far from where the day Gratia spotted her. The log simply stops. Nine days of silence.
01:47What happened in those nine days? Nobody knows. For over 150 years, investigators have tried to solve it.
01:57Did alcohol fumes make the crew fear an explosion, forcing them to abandon ship in terror? Did a water
02:05spout sweep them off the deck? Did mutiny turn violent? Every theory falls apart. Nothing was stolen.
02:13Nothing was broken. There was no violence anywhere. The Mary Celeste was towed to Gibraltar.
02:21The courts held her for months. Salvage was paid. And the case was closed. Unsolved.
02:29The ship kept sailing under new owners, until she wrecked in 1885. But her mystery outlived her.
02:38Ten people vanished from a sound ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. No wreck, no bodies,
02:45no answers. And the greatest mystery of the sea has never been solved.
