The new column by John Corrado was really good. I don’t have any facts to add, or any points to argue, or even any questions to ask. I just wanted to say how very complete and well-researched it was.
Link to the column: What really happened to the Mary Celeste?
Wasn’t this mentioned on Unsolved Mysteries? And they claimed to have found some evidence on a nearby island? Or was that something else…
Oh, I don’t usually nitpick but careen is one of favorite words. It means to take a ship or boat up on shore to scrape its bottom surfaces clean of barnacles and what-you-will. When Senhor Corrado says “careening out of control” he implies that the ship is beached and the whole process is poorly supervised.
The word he is looking for, I believe, is career, which means to run out of control, as a car careering down a steep road. Of course career has another meaning, but it’s easy to keep these meanings straight if you, like I, have a careering career.
That is all.
My Webster’s Universal College Dictionary says for careen:
http://www.m-w.com , the Merriam-Webster web site, pretty much agrees with this, although it does put your definition first.
So his usage was fine; careen means that something is tipped over or leaned to one side, usually a boat, and often in order to clean the hull, but not necessarily. The meaning of career that you suggest, on the other hand, means “go at full speed.” So maybe your career is not going as badly as you think.
Well, as Ed Zotti properly informed me in the “Marines” column that I used ‘wrangle’ when I should have used ‘wangle’, I can accept that I use ‘careen’ when I should have used ‘career’. But I’ve always heard ‘careen’ used to refer to something moving erratically and out of control- “the car was careening down the sidewalk as little Billy tried to reach a foot down to the pedals”.
And thank y’all for the compliments!
I’ve heard and used the word careen a long time, but this is the first time I’ve ever looked it up. The usage I’ve always had was “lurching about out of control” or “swerving from side to side”.
My Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary supports John Corrado’s use:
Definition 3 is the one you mean, but definition 1 and 2 are the way John Corrado used it.
Whereas career has as definitions speed and rapid progression, but no sense of a lack of steering.
One question regarding the Mary Celeste column: is there any account that tells how the sails were set when the ship was discovered? The “careening out of control” description makes it sound like she was moving at a fair clip and thus had a good bit of sailcloth spread. If the ship was abandoned for a storm or some such, as seems to be most likely, I would think that the crew would have furled the sails before leaving.
Of course, IANA sailor (obviously).
RR
Great column, but you forgot to mention that the Bermuda Triangle might have had something to with it.
Great column! My only nitpick:
Going on the Gilligan’s Island riff, shouldn’t that have been “Just sit right back, and you’ll hear a tale…”?
I think it was a great column too.
What would have made it more perfect would have been mentioning that Clive Cussler (writer of the Dirk Pitt novels) found the remains of the ship in Haiti earlier this year.
I agree! Great column, I am happy to now know some of the facts from the false.
Does anyone know if this story was the inspiration for Lord Jim? It seems like Conrad would have recognized a case of premature abondonment, with the result that the abandoned ship arrived at port before the captain. Perhaps he read about it and wrote a story about what would happen if the captian showed up? Of course, from there Conrad’s story careers off in another direction, but the two stories seem to have a lot in common.
Great column. I especially like the conclusion.
[Dave Barry]Wouldn’t that make a great band name?[/Dave Barry]
Good column.
If the crew believed they were doomed on the ship, and evacuated to the life boat, I wouldn’t consider that “irony” like Corrado. Any sailor knows that leaving the ship for a life boat is a calculated risk. Doing something based on a calculated risk kind of spoils the real irony.
Sure, the lifeboat wasn’t as safe as the ship. I guess you could make that a case for irony.
So what happened to the sails? Did they take them for cover? Has this ever happened before - a crew takes sails when abandoning a ship?
Was there ever a precedent to leave a note or some ship log behind explaining why the ship was abandoned?
<< So what happened to the sails? >>
She sold the sea sails at a sail sale at the sea shore.
Damn fine column, John Corrado!
I hate even to mention it, but since this is an article to be proud of, I’m sure you’ll want to correct the spelling of “promptly” in paragraph 11.
And if said alien’s name is “Stroeher,” we’re all in an awful lot of trouble. Great stuff, John. Glad to know you’re checking to see if we’re keeping track. 
~ k.
RiverRunner- with a name like that, you’re not a sailor? Anyways, I saw no direct reference to how the sails were set, but I didn’t read in-depth the Admiralty’s Inquiry, which probably contained the information. And the sails need not have been set at all for the ship to have been careening- again, we’re talking about the North Atlantic in the middle of winter, and rough, turbulent water would have been the norm.
jmonster- Actually, if my understanding is correct, the St. Mary’s Island referenced as the last point in the log is east of Puerto Rico, meaning the ship was well out of the Bermuda Triangle unless aformentioned Nazi time-traveling aliens forged the log to throw us off the track. But I could be wrong about the location of St. Mary’s Island.
peepthis- You are correct, that is the way it starts off. However, I had a full parody of the song prepared, and realized that said full parody was just a bit too much (hey, my reports are long enough without throwing extraneous weirdities in them), and so just pared it down to the original lines, not remembering that I had changed the second one. Ah, well.
jab1- Well, again, it’s a matter of space and time (and how much of my meandering dialogue Ed is willing to deal with); I didn’t expect that discussing the unfortunate follow-up of what actually happened to the ship (namely, eventually being wrecked in an attempt at insurance fraud) would really interest people.
GuanoLad- Thanks!
saoirse- not being at all familiar with the Conrad story, I can’t honestly opine.
Teach- Actually, that’s half the reason I picked up this question. A friend of mine by the name of Jim MacDougall writes theater-style Live Action Games (as do I), and one of his most famous works is “The Last Voyage Of The Mary Celeste”. In that one, not only does he throw in nearly all of the various theories about what happened (from New Age crystals to kraken attacks), but he throws in many plots that were becoming standard cliches of the writers in our community- time traveling Nazis, vampires, Atlanteans, etc. So that particular line is an homage to him and his work.
Philster- well, irony is irony regardless of whether it was the smart thing to do. I don’t at all fault the crew for making the choice they did, but the situation was ironic. As for the sails- I’m positive they were left on the ship, otherwise the skeleton crew from the Dei Grata never could have gotten it to Gibraltar. And I don’t know whether there was any precedent to leave a note behind, but given the state of the evacuation it seems the crew didn’t think they really had time.
C K- Ouch. Just… ouch.
KneadToKnow- I’d love to correct that. Unfortunately, only C K has access to the tools to do so, so it’s up to him or Ed. But I expect he’ll get around to noticing it one day.
Casta Lusoria- A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat, say no more, eh?
That was my point. Look at the map again. The little dots have all been attributed to the magical forces of the Bermuda Triangle. 
Whoa. I have no idea how I completely missed the point of that website, but apparently, I did. Had it been a snake, I’d be in the hospital right now. Thanks, j.