ISSUE 18 - BOOK REVIEW

GHOST SHIP
written by Brian Hicks

The mythology surrounding the Mary Celeste is one of the great nautical mysteries of our time. Easily, the ship is the Hope Diamond of nautical history. No luck, except bad, ever came to whoever owned and worked the vessel. Legend has it that the ship was found with its crew missing but no evidence of foul play on board. The ship was later salvaged by another company and disappeared until Clive Cussler funded an expedition that located it in 2001.
South Carolina journalist Brian Hicks, senior writer for The Post and Courier in Charleston, spent over a year researching and writing Ghost Ship, a novel that seeks to debunk the mythology surrounding the ill-fated ship and poses his own theory as to what happened to the missing crew. A book about the Mary Celeste has not been written since 1942 and Hicks recently stopped by Bristol Books to discuss his novel.
“A general accident that turned into legend,” Hicks says regarding the history versus myths about the Mary Celeste.





When Hicks’ publisher asked about a follow-up to his book on the H.L. Hunley the Mary Celeste came up. So did Cussler’s name. Hicks pestered the right people long enough that he found out that Cussler’s financed expedition had found the legendary ship. Ballantine Books okayed following around Cussler to write the book. Hicks had been interested in the Mary Celeste “since he was a kid” but was interested in more than the discovery itself, he became interested in the people who fell victim to the ship, especially the Briggs family and their small hometown of Marion.
During his research, which lasted as late as submitting page proofs to his publisher, Hicks read handwritten letters by members of the Briggs family and located research materials on eBay.
“There were lots of news articles,” Hicks says. “And a lot of information that survives in the nooks and crannies of libraries.”
On the Internet he found newspapers from 1873 that recounted grisly tales Hicks calls “more Poe than the truth” and a variant edition of a book about the Celeste he’d already purchased. Hicks bid on it anyway and received a curious e-mail from the seller. The seller inquired about Hick’s intent. Hicks told him about his book and learned the seller is a genealogist and a descendant of the Briggs family. Hicks eventually sent the seller a copy of the manuscript for Ghost Ship. The seller sent something to Hicks that, understandably, took him aback. Hicks received a Briggs – Hicks family tree.
“The seller thought it so odd that I was doing this book,” Hicks says. “There’s probably no relation but it was definitely odd.”
Hicks also read through materials kept in Maritime Museums and National Archives, read unpublished autobiographies and old travel books fro the 1930’s.
Long ago the story of the Celeste was far more popular than it is today. Its legend was fueled by people willing to feed tall tales to the newspapers. One fabrication, in part, inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write A Study in Scarlet.
“Later on, Doyle felt bad for doing it to the Mary Celeste,” Hicks says. “Because it had a snowball effect.”
That snowball effect led to theories about the disappearance that can be traced to a giant squid (Jules Verne) to hitting an iceberg (Titanic) and giving notoriety to the Bermuda Triangle although the Mary Celeste was never near it.
Nonetheless, the Celeste had suffered many strange incidents. The vessel was built in Nova Scotia and on the first day at sea the captain died. It ran aground in Maine and in London struck another ship that sank shortly thereafter. The Celeste was an unprofitable ship whose investors sometimes lost everything before the ship could even set sail.
The Briggs family is at the heart of the book, descendents of the Mayflower and whose members fought in the Revolutionary War. One family member is believed to be buried in Morehead City.
What people succinctly remember about the Mary Celeste is that the ship was found drifting in the North Atlantic Ocean with its crew missing. There were no signs of a struggle, the ship was soaking wet and the crew’s foul weather gear was still stowed on board. It is a mystery that has mystified the world for 130 years. Theories have been reasonable (pirates) to far-fetched (alien abduction). Hicks takes a more common sense approach, a theory that combines bad luck and human error.
“I believe those people got off with the intention of returning,” Hicks says. “However, they were not able to.”
Ghost Ship recounts nautical history that intertwines a cursed family, tall tales, politics, fraud, mystery and finally, discovery. In Hick’s deep Tennessee voice he sums up the story that involves many twists of fate.
“No one would ever buy it as fiction,” he says.