Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

The vanishing crew of the “Mary Celeste” is one of the most famous sea mysteries.  However, finding inexplicably abandoned ships is a more common occurrence than you might think.  A typically eerie example was noted in the “San Francisco Call,” January 27, 1892:

One of the very strangest of tales of the sea was that which the Italian bark Colombo D brought to this port. It was fully as strange, though true, as that which Captain Marryat evolved in the world-famed "Flying Dutchman." It has the same elements of mystery with the added fearful uncertainty of the fate of the living men, of whom no trace remains. 

On the 11th inst., while the Colombo D was about 150 miles off the coast of Bermuda, Captain Vigilana states that his lookout sighted a vessel about three miles off on the starboard bow. She was a three-master and square rigged.  She was signaled but no answer came. 

She was steering very erratically too, and although the shadows were gradually deepening into twilight, Captain Vigilana decided to bear down upon and see what, if anything, was the matter. Nearer and nearer they came, but to their repeated hailing not a sound of answer came. 

Not a trace of life was on board. All was silent save the soughing of the wind through the rigging.  Stranger still, all sail was set, and the ship, in charge of the fates, was sailing on with no hand on the helm.  As the Colombo sailed by her stern her name could be plainly made out. It was Hutchins Brothers; a Nova Scotian ship.

Captain Vigilana held a consultation with his officers and called a volunteer crew to investigate, but the night was growing dark and the superstitious sailors refused to go. It was finally decided to stay by the strange vessel until morning. Lights were already in the rigging of the Colombo, but none shone from the Hutchins, giving additional evidence that no life was on board her. 

Strange as had been the experience already, and great the expectancy on board the Colombo, the morning brought deeper mystery, for when dawn broke there was only a waste of water where the lifeless Nova Scotian ship had been. The night had been calm and peaceful. A skiff could have lived in the roll of the gentle sea. There was no land within sight and no storm had arisen, and yet nowhere could be found the strange ship. She had disappeared as mysteriously as she had come into sight.

As far as I know, the mystery of what happened to the crew of the Hutchins Brothers--not to mention their ship--remained forever unsolved.