The Last Best Place by John Demont Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Demont
in 1861, the brigantine changed her name seven years later after a freak accident in a gale. Some Americans salvaged her, and on the morning of November 7, 1872,
Mary Celeste
left New York for Genoa, loaded with a cargo of coal, hay and liquor. Onboard was master mariner Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife, Sara, two-year-old daughter Sophia, and a small crew of seven.
On December 4 another brigantine, the
Dei Grata
, also Nova Scotia-built, was making her way to Gibraltar from New York. It had been a stormy crossing for the most part, and halfway between the Azores and Portugal the captain of the
Dei Grata
spotted sails on the horizon. It was the
Mary Celeste
. The seas were high but not dangerous. Three of the
Dei Grata
’s crewmen made it onboard. It was deserted. Two of the sails had blown away. Some of the rigging was gone. One of the lifeboats was missing but there was no sign that the tackle had been used to put it over the side. There was water in the hold, the binnacle was knocked over, the compass in the cabin smashed and the kitchen stove had been knocked out of place. Otherwise everything seemed orderly: gear stowed properly; plenty of still-warm food and water; the child’s toys and clothes scatteredaround an unmade bed. The captain’s sword was still under his bed. But his sextant, chronometer, navigation books and ship’s papers were missing. The final entry in the ship’s log read, “Monday, November 25. At 8 Eastern Point bore S.S.W. 6 miles distant.”
It had sailed on for 378 miles with no one at the helm and no one aboard. Back ashore at least four men surfaced claiming to be survivors of the
Mary Celeste
, but knew none of the details of the voyage or the ship. Newspaper stories periodically speculated that it was all an elaborate murder plot; books postulated the whole thing was some kind of insurance scam. But no answers, just theories. So the story lives on, adding another layer to life here.
Just knowing about it colours your view of the world, particularly when you sit eating your lunch on a log on the beach at Spencer’s Island, looking at the pillars of an old wharf where the
Mary Celeste
was once tied. I get the same odd feeling whenever I look west across Mahone Bay, which is usually how I view the province’s best-known island. To reach it you have to head down Route 324 and drive through Gold River and Western Shore until you see a sign for the Oak Island Inn (“Cable television, tennis courts, murder-mystery weekends”). Cross the causeway, pass a few anchored fishing skiffs and the kids splashing in the water, drive through a wooden gate with a misspelled sign bearing a skull and crossbones and stop in the clearing. Last time I was there two military tents snapped in the wind along the waterline. Twenty yards away a couple of men struggled to raise a giant inflatable Keith’s Beer can.
I was excited. The first time anybody really got animated about Oak Island was in the summer of 1795, when a boy named Daniel McGinnis rowed out to it and walked about a mile through the woods to the eastern end. On the top of a small hill he found a tackle block hanging from the branches of an oak. Below the tree was a slight depression in the earth that looked as if it had been worked on some years earlier. In the late eighteenth century this part of the coast was well known as a pirate haunt. There was a persistent story of an old man who on his New England deathbed confessed to having been one of Captain Kidd’s crew and to helping bury “over two millions of money” beneath the soil of a secluded island east of Boston. So young Daniel raced home, got a couple of friends and some shovels and rowed back. Two feet down, the boys hit a layer of flagstones and under it found a 13-foot-wide shaft. Ten feet down, they found a layer of logs tightly pressed together. Ten feet deeper another log platform, and ten feet below it, another.
At this point, exhausted, they marked the spot, covered the pit
Mary Celeste
left New York for Genoa, loaded with a cargo of coal, hay and liquor. Onboard was master mariner Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife, Sara, two-year-old daughter Sophia, and a small crew of seven.
On December 4 another brigantine, the
Dei Grata
, also Nova Scotia-built, was making her way to Gibraltar from New York. It had been a stormy crossing for the most part, and halfway between the Azores and Portugal the captain of the
Dei Grata
spotted sails on the horizon. It was the
Mary Celeste
. The seas were high but not dangerous. Three of the
Dei Grata
’s crewmen made it onboard. It was deserted. Two of the sails had blown away. Some of the rigging was gone. One of the lifeboats was missing but there was no sign that the tackle had been used to put it over the side. There was water in the hold, the binnacle was knocked over, the compass in the cabin smashed and the kitchen stove had been knocked out of place. Otherwise everything seemed orderly: gear stowed properly; plenty of still-warm food and water; the child’s toys and clothes scatteredaround an unmade bed. The captain’s sword was still under his bed. But his sextant, chronometer, navigation books and ship’s papers were missing. The final entry in the ship’s log read, “Monday, November 25. At 8 Eastern Point bore S.S.W. 6 miles distant.”
It had sailed on for 378 miles with no one at the helm and no one aboard. Back ashore at least four men surfaced claiming to be survivors of the
Mary Celeste
, but knew none of the details of the voyage or the ship. Newspaper stories periodically speculated that it was all an elaborate murder plot; books postulated the whole thing was some kind of insurance scam. But no answers, just theories. So the story lives on, adding another layer to life here.
Just knowing about it colours your view of the world, particularly when you sit eating your lunch on a log on the beach at Spencer’s Island, looking at the pillars of an old wharf where the
Mary Celeste
was once tied. I get the same odd feeling whenever I look west across Mahone Bay, which is usually how I view the province’s best-known island. To reach it you have to head down Route 324 and drive through Gold River and Western Shore until you see a sign for the Oak Island Inn (“Cable television, tennis courts, murder-mystery weekends”). Cross the causeway, pass a few anchored fishing skiffs and the kids splashing in the water, drive through a wooden gate with a misspelled sign bearing a skull and crossbones and stop in the clearing. Last time I was there two military tents snapped in the wind along the waterline. Twenty yards away a couple of men struggled to raise a giant inflatable Keith’s Beer can.
I was excited. The first time anybody really got animated about Oak Island was in the summer of 1795, when a boy named Daniel McGinnis rowed out to it and walked about a mile through the woods to the eastern end. On the top of a small hill he found a tackle block hanging from the branches of an oak. Below the tree was a slight depression in the earth that looked as if it had been worked on some years earlier. In the late eighteenth century this part of the coast was well known as a pirate haunt. There was a persistent story of an old man who on his New England deathbed confessed to having been one of Captain Kidd’s crew and to helping bury “over two millions of money” beneath the soil of a secluded island east of Boston. So young Daniel raced home, got a couple of friends and some shovels and rowed back. Two feet down, the boys hit a layer of flagstones and under it found a 13-foot-wide shaft. Ten feet down, they found a layer of logs tightly pressed together. Ten feet deeper another log platform, and ten feet below it, another.
At this point, exhausted, they marked the spot, covered the pit