WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO THE "MARY CELESTE

There's nothing quite as creepy as a ghost ship, and perhaps the most famous of all is the Mary Celeste. Captained by Benjamin Briggs, the merchant ship left New York on November 1872. In addition to Briggs, the Mary Celeste carried his wife, his infant daughter, several sailors, and around 1,700 barrels of alcohol, all heading for Italy.

According to Briggs' diary, the trip was pleasant, but before they made it to Europe, something unusual happened. The Mary Celeste was discovered sailing along without a single person aboard. However, the lifeboat was gone, and there was a strong rope running from the ship into the sea. While the hatch doors had been removed, there weren't any other signs of distress. The Mary Celeste looked good as new. Tragically, no one ever found Captain Briggs or the crew. Some historians have blamed waterspouts for their disappearance, while others have considered pirates, giant waves, or mutinous sailors. But there's little evidence to support those theories.

However, 19th century investigators did find something strange. Of the 1,700-odd barrels on board, nine were empty. Not only that, but those nine barrels were made of red oak, while the others were made of white. So, what's the significance there? Well, as Brian Dunning of Skeptoid explains, white oak is watertight, whereas red oak is porous. It's likely that 300 gallons of alcohol seeped out of those red oak barrels and began evaporating in the ship's hold. Worried the alcohol might explode, the sailors tried venting the room by removing the hatch doors, but to no avail.

Desperate, everyone gathered in the lifeboat, but not before tying the raft to the Mary Celeste. That way, they could trail along from a distance, and not worry about the larger vessel sailing away. Unfortunately, before they could make a plan to deal with the alcohol, it seems the rope was accidentally sliced in two. The Mary Celeste quickly floated off, leaving ten terrified humans lost in the Atlantic Ocean.