Logbook and slate
Document
The last slate entry of 25 November 1872 near Santa Maria is the final writing from Briggs’s company. It records weather and position, not alarm.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Notoriety82
Mystery94
Scale28
Evidence45
Legal impact22
Culture80
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Quick answers
Where was the Mary Celeste sailing when she was found in 1872?
She was found derelict under sail near the Azores in December 1872 on a New York–Genoa cargo voyage. Gibraltar’s salvage inquiry never proved why the people left.
What was the Mary Celeste?
A brigantine built in 1861 at Spencer’s Island, Nova Scotia, originally named Amazon, later American-owned. In 1872 she carried denatured alcohol from New York toward Genoa under Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs.
When and where was she found abandoned?
Dei Gratia sighted her on 4–5 December 1872 in the Atlantic east of the Azores. The last log-slate entry was 25 November near Santa Maria. No one was aboard. The small boat was missing.
Who should have been on board?
Ten people: Briggs, his wife Sarah, their daughter Sophia, and seven crew. None was found. No verified landing of the boat was ever recorded.
Did the cargo and ship look plundered?
Most of the 1,701 alcohol barrels were still there; a few were empty or leaking. Personal effects remained. The hull was sailed to Gibraltar. That is not the picture of a stripped prize.
What did the Gibraltar court decide?
The Vice-Admiralty court in 1873 granted salvage to Dei Gratia at a reduced figure and did not find murder, mutiny or a proven cause of abandonment. Attorney-General Solly-Flood’s suspicions were not adopted as a verdict.
Evidence quality is moderate for a nineteenth-century salvage and poor for a cause-of-loss.
What survives is good enough to reject several fictions and not good enough to name a reason the boat was launched.
Exhibits
Deveau’s boarding notes
Testimony
The first-mate account of sails, water, missing boat and remaining stores. It is the primary scene description.
Cargo survey
Inquiry
Most alcohol barrels intact; a few empty or leaking. Enough to feed a vapour-fear theory, not enough to prove one.
Gibraltar salvage record
Archive
Solly-Flood’s questions, surveyors’ replies and a reduced award. The docket is the legal heart of the case.
Hull examination
Physical
Bow marks that the attorney-general hoped were violence and that later survey reading treated as ordinary wear or old damage.
Conan Doyle’s 1884 text
Literary
A source about English myth, not about 1872. It renamed the ship and added events the court never heard.
How strong is the record?
Cause of abandonment15
No finding. Vapour, weather and a lost boat remain hypotheses.
Salvage-court paper70
Depositions and surveys survive in published and archival form.
Fate of the ten people5
No verified boat landing, wreckage of the yawl or remains.
Fiction versus file40
Historians can separate Doyle from Deveau; popular English often cannot.
The strongest evidence is evidence of an empty, still-sailable ship. It is not evidence of a crime that a court would take.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.