Sherlock Holmes and the Ghost Ship Mystery

Ghost ship inspired Sherlock Holmes creator: When the brigantine Mary Celeste was first found abandoned and drifting helplessly in the Azores, just off the coast of Portugal in December 1872, speculative news of the crew being abducted or murdered by aliens, huge sea monsters, or pirates, no doubt inspired an inquisitive young Scottish schoolboy, Arthur Conan Doyle, to eventually write his own fictional tale. Then aged just 13, and setting his mind to a medical career, it would be...
More Description

Ghost ship inspired Sherlock Holmes creator: When the brigantine Mary Celeste was first found abandoned and drifting helplessly in the Azores, just off the coast of Portugal in December 1872, speculative news of the crew being abducted or murdered by aliens, huge sea monsters, or pirates, no doubt inspired an inquisitive young Scottish schoolboy, Arthur Conan Doyle, to eventually write his own fictional tale. Then aged just 13, and setting his mind to a medical career, it would be another 12-years before he finally put pen to paper whilst working as a surgeon on a whaling ship bound for an Arctic adventure. His story about the incident, entitled: J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement, was first published anonymously in the Cornhill magazine in January 1884 and created a worldwide sensation, promoting news about the bizarre abandonment. Fiction however, soon became interpreted as fact, with newspapers and journals worldwide promoting his tale and creating an unstoppable roller coaster of intrigue about this mysterious ghost ship, and what was thought to have really happened. In later years, it has been compared to Orson Welles, when in October 1938, his dramatic reading of a 62-minute radio play in New York based on HG Wells science fiction novel - The War of the Worlds - suddenly created a mass panic with many thousands of listeners believing every word. Although Conan Doyle changed the names of crew members, and some other varied details, including altering the 'Mary Celeste' to the 'Marie Celeste,' he still retained the name of the rescue ship Dei Gratia, and introduced many fairly similar facts that helped persuade a rather gullible audience. If he had not written his own fictional account, readers though would have been completely unaware of several other similar abandonments and ghost ships, which occurred around the same period, and captivated audiences, all eager for more news about these extraordinary events. And just a year later after publishing his story, the real Mary Celeste finally ended her career in dramatic style, after she was deliberately wrecked on a coral reef off Haiti by a skipper, who had become embroiled in a fraudulent conspiracy. So perhaps it was a fresh inquiry and a revelation of other previous dramatic events that put Conan Doyle back in the spotlight, but whatever the reason, his story was again accepted as genuine with even Admiralty officials forced to review their original findings. The real incident would have been worthy of investigation by his notable Sherlock Holmes character, a fictional detective, introduced just three years later. This book examines the whole incident, before, during and after, and compares fact with fiction to analyse the brilliant workings of Conan Doyle, who used many of his experiences to later develop some memorable characters.