A more reasonable explanation of this mystery lies in the fact that a
slight fire developed in the galley, and those on board knowing what an
inflammable and dangerous cargo was beneath them hurriedly launched the
boats and all of the crew scrambled in and pulled away from the vessel
but probably lay by for a while to see if an explosion would follow,
then a breeze sprang up and the Celeste, with all sails set, sailed
rapidly away and they could not overtake her.
Very likely before those in the boat could reach land a gale came on,
swamped the boat and all were drowned.
THE SELF-STEERED CRAFT
Late in the afternoon of October 23, 1854, a great storm was sweeping
the New England coast. Watchers on the cliffs sighted through the
thick and driving mists a brig rigged vessel over which the sea was
constantly breaking, heading directly towards the shore. Soon, wind and
sea driven, she drove through the onsweeping waves over the outlying
line of sand bars. Suddenly, when directly between the outer and inner
line of bars, she swung broadside to the sea and headed straight up
the coast, when it was seen that her crew had been forced to mount and
cling to the main rigging, where they were clinging desperately above
the raging sea which was pouring in torrents across the vessel’s deck,
making any attempt to regain the use of the wheel impossible. Before
being driven to the rigging the crew had lashed the wheel. Then up the
coast, under short sail, the vessel drove onward without guiding hand
clear to the end of the Cape and around Race Point into Massachusetts
Bay; across this tumbling sea of mad waters she rushed on until she
piled up on the rocks at Scituate, and there in a few hours she was
ground to pieces, where the entire crew of seven men were swallowed up
in the sea.
As she drove along the surf opposite Highland Station a great brown pig
was swept from her deck and came rolling up in the surf on the shore.
He was a good swimmer and had made the distance, somewhat out of breath
but intact. A spectator took him home and he grew to be a big and lusty
porker. If he could have talked we would have known the name of his
ship.
TRAGEDY OF THE HERBERT FULLER
The death of Lester H. Monks, early in 1927, recalls one of the most
mysterious crime cases in the history of the country. It was that of
the murders committed on the barkentine Herbert Fuller, which in 1896
sent a chill of horror down the spine of everyone who read the details
of these wicked murders.
Somewhere between the port of Halifax and Delaware Breakwater, on a
starlit night in early June of that year, the captain and second mate
and the captain’s wife were brutally murdered with an axe, in the cabin
of the Fuller. This vessel was carrying a cargo of lumber to Cuba.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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