This is an accessibly written, intelligent and thorough history of the topic, including the historical background to the ship, the histories of the cast of characters, the theories, and the story to date with the recent discovery of the wreckage.

Mary Celeste is an iconic mystery – a perfectly seaworthy ship found wandering aimlessly at sea, her crew strangely and inexplicably missing. Mary Celeste quickly became the subject of stories that told of half eaten meals, mugs of still-warm tea on the galley table, and the aroma of fresh tobacco smoke lingering in the captain’s cabin. Theories to account for the missing crew ranged from mutiny and murder to a giant octopus snatching the crew one by one from the deck, and lately to abduction by UFOs to the strange forces said to exist in the so-called Bermuda Triangle. Mary Celeste is the maritime mystery.