The inconclusive nature of the hearings fostered continued speculation as to what had happened to the ship's occupants, and the story has repeatedly been complicated by false detail and fantasy.

Hypotheses that have been advanced include the effects on the crew of alcohol fumes rising from the cargo, submarine earthquakes, waterspouts, attack by a giant squid, and paranormal intervention.

In 1884, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", a short story based on the mystery, but spelled the vessel's name as Marie Celeste.

The keel of the future Mary Celeste was laid in late 1860 at the shipyard of Joshua Dewis in the village of Spencer's Island, on the shores of the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.

[32] On October 20, 1872, Briggs arrived at Pier 50 on the East River in New York City[33] to supervise the loading of the ship's cargo of 1,701 barrels of alcohol;[34][35] his wife and infant daughter joined him a week later.

[37] While Mary Celeste prepared to sail, the Canadian brigantine Dei Gratia lay nearby in Hoboken, New Jersey, awaiting a cargo of petroleum destined for Genoa via Gibraltar.

[35] Some accounts assert that they were close friends who dined together on the evening before Mary Celeste's departure, but the evidence for this is limited to a recollection by Morehouse's widow 50 years after the event.

It recorded Mary Celeste's position then as 37°1′N 25°1′W / 37.017°N 25.017°W / 37.017; -25.017 off Santa Maria Island in the Azores, nearly 400 nautical miles (740 km) from the point where Dei Gratia encountered her.

He found personal items scattered about Briggs' cabin, including a sheathed sword under the bed, but most of the ship's papers were missing along with the captain's navigational instruments.

Under maritime law, a salvor could expect a substantial share of the combined value of rescued vessel and cargo, the exact award depending on the degree of danger inherent in the salvaging.

[54] The testimonies of Deveau and Wright convinced Flood unalterably that a crime had been committed,[55] a belief picked up by the New York Shipping and Commercial List on December 21: "The inference is that there has been foul play somewhere, and that alcohol is at the bottom of it.

"[56] On December 23, Flood ordered an examination of Mary Celeste, which was carried out by John Austin, Surveyor of Shipping, with the assistance of a diver, Ricardo Portunato.

Austin noted cuts on each side of the bow, caused, he thought, by a sharp instrument, and found possible traces of blood on the captain's sword.

[60] On January 22, 1873, he sent the reports to the Board of Trade in London, adding his own conclusion that the crew had got at the alcohol and murdered the Briggs family and the ship's officers in a drunken frenzy.

[73] In 1931, an article in the Quarterly Review suggested that Morehouse could have lain in wait for Mary Celeste, then lured Briggs and his crew aboard Dei Gratia and killed them there.

[80] Macdonald Hastings argues that Briggs was an experienced captain who would not have led a panicked abandonment, writing: "If the Mary Celeste had blown her timbers, she would still have been a better bet for survival than the ship's boat."

[82] Commentators generally agree that some extraordinary and alarming circumstance must have arisen to cause the entire crew to abandon a sound and seaworthy ship with ample provisions.

Rising fears of an imminent explosion could have led Briggs to order the ship's abandonment; the displaced hatches suggest that an inspection, or an attempted airing, had taken place.

[88] The same journal's issue of February 9, 1913 cited a seepage of alcohol through a few porous barrels as the source of gases that may have caused or threatened an explosion in Mary Celeste's hold.

"[93] The November 1906 Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine reported that Mary Celeste drifted off the Cape Verde Islands, some 1,400 nautical miles (2,600 km) south of the actual location.

[97] In the story, a fanatic named Septimius Goring with a hatred of the white race has suborned members of the crew to murder Tibbs and take the vessel to the shores of Western Africa.

"[106] In 1924, the Daily Express published a story by Captain R. Lucy, whose alleged informant was Mary Celeste's former boatswain,[107] although no such person is recorded in the registered crew list.

[120][121] In November 1884, Parker conspired with a group of Boston shippers, who filled Mary Celeste with a largely worthless cargo, misrepresented on the ship's manifest as valuable goods and insured for US$30,000 ($1,050,000 today).

[122] On January 3, 1885, Mary Celeste approached the port via the channel between Gonâve Island and the mainland, in which lay a large and well-charted coral reef, the Rochelois Bank.

Begg observes that "if the court of man could not punish these men ... the curse that had devilled the ship since her first skipper Robert McLellan had died on her maiden voyage could reach beyond the vessel's watery grave and exact its own terrible retribution.

[128] However, dendrochronological tests carried out by Scott St George of the Geological Survey of Canada showed that the wood came from trees, most probably from the US state of Georgia, that would still have been growing in 1894, about ten years after Mary Celeste's demise.

[141] A 1938 short film titled The Ship That Died presents dramatizations of a range of theories to explain the abandonment: mutiny, fear of explosion due to alcohol fumes, and the supernatural.

[142] In November 2007, the Smithsonian Channel screened a documentary, The True Story of the Mary Celeste, which investigated many aspects of the case without offering any definite solution.

The filmmakers postulated that the chronometer was faulty, meaning that Briggs could have ordered abandonment thinking that they were close to Santa Maria, when they were 120 miles (190 km) farther west.

[143] At Spencer's Island, Mary Celeste and her lost crew are commemorated by a monument at the site of the brigantine's construction and by a memorial outdoor cinema built in the shape of the vessel's hull.