Mary Celeste
Mary Celeste
On Nov. 7, 1872, the merchant ship Mary Celeste left from Staten Island for Genoa, Italy.

The ship -- and the 1,701 barrels of alcohol for fortifying wine it carried -- would never make it to its destination.

And so the mystery began.

The ship was found on Dec. 4 of that year by sailor David Morehouse at the Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal located in the mid-Atlantic.

Morehouse, however, didn't find any traces of Benjamin Briggs, the captain of the Mary Celeste, his wife and two-year-old daughter, and the seven crew members.

Briggs, his family and the crew were never heard from again.

Morehouse noticed only one lifeboat was missing as well as most of the ship's papers. He also saw that one of the ship's pumps had been dismantled.

On board, Morehouse found six months worth of food, the captain's logbook, and the cargo and crews' personal possessions were found intact.

"We seem to have a very good mate and steward and I hope I shall have a pleasant voyage," Briggs wrote to a letter to his mom before leaving.

Historians have been investigating this nautical mystery since the ship was first discovered, drawing up several theories including seaquakes, piracy, mutiny, or waterspout.

Among others, the most reliable thesis remains that some of the barrels of alcohol started emanating fumes that led the captain and his crew to abandon the Mary Celeste, History Channel reported.

The mystery of Mary Celeste even encouraged the father of crime fiction Conan Doyle to publish "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" in 1884, an account which set off waves of speculation about the ship's fate, the Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2007.

Doyle himself wasn't able to solve this long-lasting question and the fate of the crew of the Mary Celeste remains a mystery.