{"id":4544,"date":"2026-05-22T11:03:44","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T11:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/mary-celeste-ghost-ship-mystery-solved\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T11:03:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T11:03:46","slug":"mary-celeste-ghost-ship-mystery-solved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/22\/mary-celeste-ghost-ship-mystery-solved\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Celeste ghost ship mystery &#039;solved&#039;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>2026-05-22 11:03:44<\/b><br \/>\n<BR>The haunting mystery of the Mary Celeste &#8220;ghost ship&#8221; may have finally been solved after 150 years.<BR><br \/>\nDebate has raged over the fate of the 19th-century American merchant ship every since it was found abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean 900 miles west of Portugal on December 4, 1872 with the captain and crew all having seemingly vanished without a trace. Now experts from the University of Manchester claim to have finally worked out what may have happened onboard &#8211; dispelling years of theories which suggested pirates, illness or even a paranormal encounter could have been to blame for the missing crew.<BR><br \/>\nIn new Channel 5 documentary Mary Celeste Solving The Mystery, Jack Rowbotham and Frank Mair of the University of Manchester tested the theory that the ship&#8217;s cargo of 1,700 barrels of ethanol could have been to blame.<BR><br \/>\nRowbotham said: &#8220;The Mary Celeste was a merchant ship that was sailing from New York to Genoa in Italy, and it was transporting a cargo of industrial-strength ethanol.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\nHe went on to suggest alcohol vapours leaking from the barrels could have caused an explosion &#8211; prompting the crew to abandon ship &#8211; but it wouldn&#8217;t have left an signs of fire because ethanol burns at a very high temperature &#8211; up to 2,000 degrees Celsius &#8211; and the incident would have been &#8220;over in a second&#8221;.<BR><br \/>\nThe documentary suggests a spark from a pipe or metal rubbing together could have ignited the vapours.<BR><br \/>\nScientists were seen recreating the conditions onboard using a model of the ship to show how an ethanol-related explosion could could a catastrophe without leaving any clues behind for those who discovered the ship floating abandoned in the ocean.<BR><br \/>\nRowbotham added: &#8220;We don\u2019t know exactly what played out after the explosion happened, but we are pretty convinced that the cocktail of factors that comes together presents a very convincing case.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\nThe experiment built on the previous work of scientists University College London, who carried out a similar recreation in 2006 in an attempt to prove ethanol vapours could have led to the doomed vessel being abandoned.<BR><br \/>\n Dr Andrea Sella, a chemist at UCL, said at the time: &#8220;What we created was a pressure-wave type of explosion. There was a spectacular wave of flame but, behind it, was relatively cool air. No soot was left behind and there was no burning or scorching.<BR><br \/>\n&#8220;Given all the facts we have, this replicates conditions on board the Mary Celeste. The explosion would have been enough to blow open the hatches and would have been completely terrifying for everyone on board.&#8221;<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Visit Bang Bizarre (main website) <\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><script src=\"https:\/\/geo.dailymotion.com\/player\/xtbac.js\" data-video=\"\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2026-05-22 11:03:44 The haunting mystery of the Mary Celeste &#8220;ghost ship&#8221; may have finally been solved after 150 years. Debate has raged over the fate of the 19th-century American merchant&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bizarre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4546,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4544\/revisions\/4546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangbizarre.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}