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The name Marie Celeste, also Mary Celeste, is used of a place that is found inexplicably deserted, as well as of a person’s sudden and inexplicable disappearance.
This alludes to the Mary Celeste, a U.S. cargo ship which in December 1872 was found mysteriously abandoned in the North Atlantic with sails set. The form Marie Celeste reflects the spelling used in the highly fictionalised account by the British author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement, published pseudonymously in The Cornhill Magazine (London, England) of January 1884; before this the mystery had received little public attention.
The name Marie Celeste, also Mary Celeste, has often been used of later similar cases involving other ships than the Mary Celeste. The following early occurrence, for example, is from Society, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Thursday 6th March 1913 [page 12, column 2]:
“Petifi” recalls an ancient tale—with a modern counterpart:—
For 38 weary years the mystery of the ship Marie Celeste has baffled the theorists. […] Now, just when one was inclined to class the story among impossible legends, alongside Vanderdecken and the Flying Dutchman, comes the weird yarn of Captain Claridge, of the steamer Roumanian, which made New York Harbor recently. He declares that he found, in mid-Atlantic, the three-masted Norwegian barque Remittent, 300 tons. It was undamaged, all sails were set, but there was not a soul aboard. Evidence that the vessel had been abandoned only a few hours previously was abundant. The Roumanian took the derelict in tow, but had to cast off during a gale. Is it another Marie Celeste case? If it is, what is the uncanny thing that lurks in mid-Atlantic, and so mysteriously empties healthy ships of their human cargoes?
The following are, in chronological order, a few occurrences of the name Marie Celeste, also Mary Celeste, used of a place—other than a ship—that is found inexplicably deserted, as well as of a person’s sudden and inexplicable disappearance:
1-: From All Souls’, originally published in Ghosts (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1937), by the U.S. author Edith Wharton (1862-1937)—as reprinted in Short stories of Edith Wharton 1910-1937 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968) [chapter 3, page 889]:
The back premises remained to be visited. From the dining room she entered the pantry, and there too everything was in irreproachable order. She opened the door and looked down the back passage with its neat linoleum floor covering. The deep silence accompanied her; she still felt it moving watchfully at her side, as though she were its prisoner and it might throw itself upon her if she attempted to escape. She limped on toward the kitchen. That of course would be empty too, and immaculate. But she must see it.
She leaned a minute in the embrasure of a window in the passage. “It’s like the “Mary Celeste”—a “Mary Celeste” on terra firma,” she thought, recalling the unsolved sea mystery of her childhood. “No one ever knew what happened on board the “Mary Celeste.” And perhaps no one will ever know what has happened here. Even I shan’t know.”
2-: From Points of View, published in The Australian Women’s Weekly (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 19th February 1938 [page 10, column 3]—here, the name Marie Celeste is used of an unidentified murdered woman:
The Thrill of the Unsolved
With the discovery that a “missing” girl was proprietress of a dress-shop in Melbourne, one more alleged clue to the identity of the Albury (N.S.W.) “Pyjama Girl” was exploded.
Now that the most intensive efforts of police all over Australia, and, indeed all over the world, have failed to discover either who did the murder four years ago, or who was its victim, the Pyjama Girl case becomes another Marie Celeste legend.
3-: From The Villa Marie Celeste, published in The Allingham Case-Book (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969), by the British novelist Margery Louise Allingham (1904-1966)—as reprinted in 1992 by Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., New York [page 43]:
The newspapers were calling the McGill house in Chestnut Grove ‘the villa Marie Celeste’ before Chief Inspector Charles Luke noticed the similarity between the two mysteries, and that so shook him that he telephoned Albert Campion and asked him to come over.
They met in the Sun, a discreet pub in the suburban High Street, and stood talking in the small bar-parlour which was deserted at that time of day just after opening in the evening.
“The two stories are alike,” Luke said […]. “I read the rehash of the Marie Celeste in the Courier this morning and it took me to the fair. Except that she was a ship and twenty-nine Chestnut Grove is a semidetached suburban house, the two desertion stories are virtually the same, even to the half-eaten breakfast left on the table in each case. It’s uncanny, Campion.”
4-: From Solitude is the enemy on lamp-posts of the sea, about lighthouse keepers, published in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph (Blackburn, Lancashire, England) of Tuesday 27th October 1970 [page 6, column 7]:
On the Flannan Isles Lighthouse three keepers disappeared without trace, and the relief keeper found a prepared meal set out on the living room table. The lighthouse service has its own Marie Celeste mystery.
5-: From Guide to Bees & Honey (Emmaus (Pennsylvania): Rodale Press Inc., 1977), by Ted Hooper [Section 3, chapter 9: Pests and diseases, page 184]:
Robbing
This is the nightmare of all beekeepers, because once started it is so very difficult to bring to an end. […] Silent robbing is when the colony robbing and that being robbed are on completely friendly terms. There is no sign of fighting or unusual behaviour at the entrance; everything is peaceful […]. Often this will go on until the robbed colony is devoid of all stores, when they will starve or possibly all go home to the robber’s hive. I always think that this must be the way in which what I call ‘Marie Celeste’ hives are produced—a hive which is completely empty of bees, stores and brood, but in which every cell is cleaned up and in perfect condition.
6-: From Glasgow makes capital out of its cultural wealth, by Anne Campbell Dixon, published in The Sunday Telegraph (London, England) of Sunday 31st December 1989 [page 38, column 2]:
Another cosy museum is really not a museum at all, but an ordinary, lower middle-class flat. […] The Tenement House […] was lived in by a shorthand-typist, Miss Agnes Toward, from 1911 to 1965. She was then taken to hospital, where she died ten years later, so the rooms (hall, bedroom, parlour, bathroom and kitchen) have the fascination of a Marie Celeste on dry land. Everything is as she left it, even to the medicine bottles, wartime gas mask and box bed in the parlour.
7-: From the North Norfolk News (Cromer, Norfolk, England) of Friday 8th April 1994 [page 6, column 5]:
—Context: The British schoolgirl April Fabb (born 1955) disappeared without trace on Tuesday 8th April 1969 between the villages of Metton and Roughton in Norfolk:
Tribute book scheme
Retired detective Maurice Morson wants to preserve the memory of April Fabb by writing a book.
He describes the case as Norfolk’s own “Mary Celeste” mystery, and it fascinated him as a young Detective Sergeant at the time.
8-: From Open questions all Paris is asking, by Alan Attwood, published in The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Monday 30th May 1994 [Sport Extra: page 8, column 5]:
—Context: The tennis player Monica Seles (born 1973) had, in 1993, been the victim of a knife attack:
Wen will Monica Seles come back?
Last year’s French Open was the first Grand Slam event Seles missed after being attacked. A year on, she has indefinitely postponed any comeback, which is regarded as meaning she’ll make any decision on that in her own time. […] Will she come back? Nobody knows. Perhaps she’ll become the Greta Garbo of tennis. Or another Marie Celeste, simply disappearing without trace…
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