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No Lazarette Hatch & Stow Hold Hatch covers could have been taken off & the body of Ship Ventilated, often done, common practice. Several researchers suggested that icebergs threatened the brig and, therefore, the fear-stricken crew took flight only to become victims of other icebergs. However, one of the most painstaking historians of the enigma is Charles Eddy Fay, who now lives at Lake Worth, Florida. He went directly to the Navy Department to ask whether icebergs were common in the part of the ocean where the ghost ship was picked up. On December 7, 1940, the hydrographic office told him: "As to the possibility of icebergs being found in the locality—that is highly improbable, due to the long drift, through comparatively warm water, necessary for any ice to reach this vicinity. However, small pieces of ice have been sighted exceptionally far south as follows—up to 1934." Another more popular assumption saw Captain Briggs and his crew fall prey to merciless pirates. On this one, too, Fay sought government information. A letter dated January 15, 1941, came from the Naval Archives: "—concerning the possibility of pirates—records do not reveal that any piratical operations took place as late as 1872 between the Azores and the coast of Portugal." A swirling flood of conjectures continued to pour forth as to the fate of Captain Briggs and his men and women. Was J. L. Hornibrook any nearer the facts in Chamber's Journal, September 17, 1904? "Suddenly a huge octopus rises from the deep, encircles the helmsman. His yells bring every soul running on deck. One by one they are caught by the waving wriggling arms. Then, freighted with its living load, the monster slowly sinks into the deep, leaving no trace of its attack." Or do you prefer the story from the Washington Post, December 19, 1931, quoting a feature published earlier in the London Daily Express? An R.E. Greenbough found a document in a floating bottle which told of the crew being kidnapped from the Marie Celeste by an undisclosed ship. Kathleen Woodward wrote in the New York Times Magazine, October 12, 1924: A man referred to as Triggs, a bo'sun's mate on the Marie Celeste, quoted as charging Captain Briggs and crew abandoned ship, boarded a derelict steamer, broke open its safe, stole gold, fled and arrived with a misleading tale at Cadiz. In the British Quarterly Review, July 1931, there appeared a story by Harold T. Wilkins. The Dei Gratia, on a predatory mission, purposely waited in the middle of the ocean for the brig, somehow induced the crew to come aboard and slaughtered all hands. In Nautical Magazine, July 1922, D.G. Ball tried to wash the log page clear once and for all "the whole story is just a myth without any foundation of fact.". He assured his readers that no such ship had ever existed. He regretted that he must divulge this truth for the controversy fascinated him. That the Marie Celeste did exist is proven by subsequently recorded voyages after her release March10, 1873, by the Gibraltar court; and by the court records themselves. EXTANT, STILL ED: The following has no obvious reference or necessary position. Alcohol fumes partly inebriated the Whole Crew & L-Ms WERE OVERHEAD; Drunk men naturally are not Mentally Paralyzed by "Freeze They seized Lines as they were starting to ascend & Hung on Grimly. Some fell on Deck, L-M SHIP STOPPED M-C & took them all off. Captain George W. Blatchford, of Wrentham, Massachusetts, finally delivered her alcohol cargo to Genoa, then sailed to Boston. "When she arrived," related Winchester, her owner, "a great many people came to look at her, but as soon as they found out her history they would not touch her." Those 87