A very interesting story, but quite improbable.
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.
The arrival of the barkentine off the port of Halifax with the three bodies of the murdered victims in a canvas covered boat towed behind the Fuller, unfolded a tale of horror to shock humanity and unequalled in criminal history.