This ship's story is unique in that it may be among the most enigmatic shipwreck tales. The Bermuda triangle had somehow been connected to in order to unravel the enigma of its whereabouts despite being discovered at sea in another area of the Atlantic Ocean.
The ship was found stranded on the sea on December 4, 1872, just days after setting out from New York to Genoa, Italy, with everything in its place save for the entire crew.
On board the schooner, which was filled with raw alcohol, were seven crew members, Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter.
However, Mary Celeste was unmanned with no crew aboard and the lifeboat was also missing when a British ship called Dei Gratia came across her days later under partial sail in the Atlantic off the Azores Islands.
Nine of the barrels in the cargo were discovered to be empty, and there was a sword on the deck. There has never been any evidence of the passengers outside the ship or the missing lifeboat.
Studies of the ship made it evident that there was no chance of a pirate attack because everything on board, even the barrels of booze it was carrying and the crew's prized possessions, were all in undamaged.
The possibility of a criminal plot, alien abduction, or even an attack by a huge squid were among the theories surrounding the mystery of the Mary Celeste.
On the list was the potential for a natural catastrophe. Few believed that the ship's unintentional entry into the Bermuda Triangle was the cause of the tragedy, while many suggested that an undersea earthquake played a role in it.
These theories, however plausible they may sound, are obviously untrue. After all, why would a completely competent crew abandon their ship on a day with favourable weather and an unharmed ship, only to disappear forever?
The American white oak schooner Ellen Austin is linked to an unsettling triangle mystery. On her way from London to New York in 1881, the 210-foot-long Ellen Austin stumbled upon a wreck close to the Bermuda Triangle. With the exception of the crew's disappearance, everything appeared to be alright on the unidentified schooner sailing close to the Sargasso Sea.
Captain Baker of the Ellen Austin requested two days to observe the abandoned ship to make sure it wasn't a trap. The ship had been abandoned for two days when the captain and his crew entered it. They discovered a well-packaged freight but no sign of the crew.
The skipper put a prize crew on board and set sail in order to bring it back with Ellen Austin. But after two days of sailing in calm waters, a squall cut off the path of the two ships, and the abandoned ship vanished.
According to the legends, days after the storm, Captain Baker's lookout thought he saw the ship through his spyglass, but upon closer inspection found that it was once more floating aimlessly far away. Ellen Austin was able to catch up with the ship at last after several hours of labour.
But oddly, nobody was on board. Another version of the story, however, claims that Baker made a second attempt to land her, but that his efforts met the same demise as Ellen Austin's before he abandoned the cursed ship.
According to other sources, the derelict may have been discovered again, but this time a different crew than Ellen Austin's prize crew was on board.
It is a fascinating tale of the ship's disappearance, reappearance, and absence of the prize crew. It resembles a Bermuda Triangle mystery more, one that doesn't seem likely to be solved anytime soon.
