Was the Mary Celeste brought to Gibraltar, and what happened at the hearing?
Short answer
Yes. After the Mary Celeste was found drifting and abandoned in the Atlantic in December 1872, three men from the British brigantine Dei Gratia sailed her into Gibraltar, where the salvage claim was heard. The court found no evidence of foul play and awarded the salvors £1,700, far less than the ship and cargo were worth.
Detailed answer
The Mary Celeste was an American brigantine that left New York in November 1872 bound for Genoa with a cargo of 1,701 barrels of alcohol. On board were her captain, Benjamin Briggs, his wife, their two-year-old daughter and seven crew. On Wednesday 4 December 1872 the crew of the Dei Gratia found her between the Azores and Portugal with nobody on board. Her cargo was intact, there were plenty of food and water, the crew's belongings were still there and there was no sign of a struggle. The ship's only boat was missing.
The Dei Gratia's captain, David Morehouse, sent his mate, Oliver Deveau, and two seamen to sail the derelict to Gibraltar, about 800 miles away. The Dei Gratia's crew then claimed salvage, and the ship was held by Gibraltar's Vice-Admiralty Court.
The hearing opened in December 1872 before Gibraltar's Chief Justice, Sir James Cochrane. The Attorney General, Frederick Solly-Flood, suspected foul play. He believed the crew had broken into the alcohol, killed the captain, his family and the mate, and escaped in the boat, and he had marks on the ship examined, including stains on a sword. Tests showed the stains were not blood, and none of the barrels had been tampered with. The hearing found no evidence of foul play.
The court released the Mary Celeste on Tuesday 25 February 1873, and she sailed on to Genoa with a new crew. In 1873 the court awarded the Dei Gratia's crew £1,700. The judge's closing remarks criticised Morehouse for sending the Dei Gratia off with her own cargo while the case was under way, which left a cloud of suspicion over him and his crew.
What happened to the missing crew has never been explained. One widely held theory is that Briggs feared an explosion from alcohol fumes in the hold and ordered everyone into the boat, which was then lost. In 1884 Arthur Conan Doyle published a story inspired by the case, J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement, which spread the spelling Marie Celeste.
Gibraltar's Law Courts, home of the Supreme Court since 1830, stand on Main Street.