A New Look at the Mary Celeste

[josh54739]

Greetings everyone!

I was doing research recently on the unsolved mystery of the Mary Celeste. For those of you who don't know, the Mary Celeste was a ship that was to transport 1,700 barrels of alcohol from New York to Portugul in November, 1872. It was boarded by crew members of another ship who saw it was sailing strangely and it was seen that all the crew members and one lifeboat was gone. These men were never heard from again, and anything from mutiny, evacuation due to bad weather or supernatural occurrence have been suggested.

I decided that it was important to look for these men in official records available back then to make sure that they all disappear after they sailed on the Mary Celeste and, if they didn't, it could perhaps add an important clue to the mystery. I've seen that several people who escaped prison in the United States in the early 20th century did not change their names and simply moved around, so it is quite possible that, if these men survived, at least one could have lived under his regular name and simply not come under anyone's attention.

Four of the crewmen-Captain Benjamin Briggs, First Mate Albert Richardson, Second Mate Andrew Gilling and Cook/Steward Edward William Head-and two passengers, Briggs' wife and daughter, were said to be Americans. Captain Briggs appears in Massachusetts town and census records, as well as federal census records, and disappears after the 1872 sailing, which leads me to believe he died. I could not find First Mate Richardson in any census records, but a 1902 newspaper article about his widow "Mrs. Fanny Richardson", who had not remarried since his disappearance and 1871 marriage record in New York of him to Fanny Spates leads me to believe he, too vanished without a trace. Although I did not do a long search for Second Mate Gilling, I could not find him in any records. I spent a long time searching for Cook/Steward Edward William Hand, although the closest person I found was William Hand, born in Pennsylvania in February, 1849 (correct age) and lived in New York for a lot of his life but no indication he was a sailor and he lived many decades after the Mary Celeste.

The rest of the crew were Germans, all of whom were seamen, and I thought finding records of them would be a challenge. At least three of four of them were from Schleswig-Holstein, a German state that I've never had much luck of finding records in.

I could not find Volkert and Baz Lorenzen, who were apparently brothers, in any vital or census records, but did find them in some passenger lists in Hamburg and New York, and they claimed to live on Föhr, an island in Schleswig-Holstein. Volkert is listed as serving on the Cimbria going to New York in 1870. Baz (listed as Boy or Baus) and Volkert are both listed as serving on the Doctor Barth in on a journey from March to June, 1872, before they were on the Mary Celeste (strangely, many Lorenzens rode on that boat over the year). Arian Martens was listed as being on the same voyage on the Doctor Barth, and his residence was Amrum, Schleswig, but I could not find any records of him anywhere else. I was also unable to track down Gotlieb Gondeschall, although this name could easily have had various spellings over time.

The only record I found indicating any of their survivals so far was an 1880 Hamburg passenger list lists a "Volkert Lorenzen" as serving as a Landmann on the Lessing. It could be him because of the exact same name and same residence (Föhr). However, this man is listed as being 16, making him way too young to have been the man on the Mary Celeste, and he could possibly be a cousin or other relative of the missing sailor. I believe that, if the age was an error, Lorenzen, and possibly other crewmen could have gotten off the Mary Celeste-perhaps the theory of the Germans killing the officers and fleeing in the lifeboat is true. Although I do not have enough evidence to prove this, I believe this was at least an outstanding coincidence and thought I'd place it here for all of you to leave your opinion on and any thoughts on if this man could be proven as the same Volkert Lorenzen as the one on the Mary Celeste. I got the passenger lists from Ancestry.com, and, if any of you would like to view them, I'll see if I can post them.

Thanks!

Josh Nieters