What happened aboard the Mary Celeste remains one of the greatest mysteries in maritime history. In the afternoon of December 5 1872, the American half-brig carrying 1700 barrels of commercial alcohol, was sighted due east of the Azores completely abandoned and drifting. The ship was seaworthy, cargo and personal belongings were intact, but the captain, his family, and the entire crew of ten were missing, with the lifeboat gone and the last log entry made ten days prior.Maxwell puts forward a specific possible solution to the mystery, aiming to show how the truth was lost amid the sensationalism and the flawed official inquiry in Gibraltar, ultimately pointing to a plausible fate. He  suggests that the true fate of those aboard was overlooked by history  and the subsequent cover-up or misinterpretation of evidence during the salvage hearings.