About this website
The website was first created in 2001 when the internet was new.
The first page used the image shown here taken from the balcony of my
new apartment. Previously my version of the story was published as a
text file on the Interlink BBS which predated the Internet in Gibraltar as an
online resource.
The Mary Celeste became a Gibraltar story when it arrived at the port in 1872 and
subsequently the salvage inquiry was held in the Admiralty Court. But otherwise it has an
international dimension of trade between the USA and Europe. The records of the inquiry are
now in the Gibraltar archives. The story was also first reported in the 'Gibraltar
Chronicle' which is the second oldest English laguage daily newspaper in print.
Their contemporary content is reproduced here after some research, and OCR
work on the faded pages.
There have been numerous books published about the story, as it remains
a fascinating topic of mystery and imagination. There are also many pages
about it on the Internet ranging from the excellent Smithsonian museum to
some utter rubbish. This site attempts to be comprehensive and present
reliable facts.
Since it started I have had a large number of contacts about the topic
and many the people have helped.. Two companies have made TV
documentaries in recent years. But the mystery remains unsolved.
Technical Stuff
- This website is built using Hpage 5, my template driven site creation tool.
20 years in development. It generates readable neat compact code, not cryptic bloat.
- The site uses Cloudflare for protection against attacks and to enhance content
delivery speed.
- The framework used is W3-CSS from
www.w3schools.com This is free, open source, and uses standard CSS
only and does not depend on JavaScript. Although I have added some features
using my original code.
- The font is Montserrat, an open font Copyright 2024 The Montserrat.Git
Project Authors who can be contacted
Here
- The Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License,
Version 1.1.
- The author of this website is Jim Watt of Interactive Systems based in
Gibraltar since 1980. It is copyright and subject to the published
Terms of use
Special thanks
- Phil Cox and Bill Radcliffe, my college friends who have proofread the
pages and corrected my typos and bad English.
- Captain David Williams, for his pages about the seaquake theory.
- Clive Cussler, who sent me a copy of 'The Sea Hunters II' for review.
- Dave Andrews, an expert on alcohol, who advised on its chemistry and who
got the nonsense about denatured alcohol removed from Wikipedia in 2022.
- The Gibraltar Garrison Library for photocopies of the pages of the Gibraltar
Chronicle which I scanned and included here.
- Many others who are mentioned on the pages where they have helped.
