Ok losers, just in case you don’t know about The Mary Celeste was here’s some background:

In October the 20th 1872, a boat named The Mary Celeste set sail from New York to Genoa. The next time anyone would see it, it was adrift and crewless. No sign of a struggle, food still half eaten on plates, and the only lifeboat gone.

Lesser minds have spent centuries trying to figure out what happened, and debate amongst themselves incessantly. But I woke up this morning and decided to have a whack at it and I think I’ve solved it.

Now, like me, your first conclusion may be that the boat got sick of the crew’s shit and told the crew to leave, but those ivory tower intellectuals insist that boats can’t speak and I must begrudgingly defer to their judgement.

Now, I have never set foot on a boat but since I’ve read Treasure Island (well, most of it (some of it (a couple of small excerpts))) I think I have a pretty clear idea of what went on in boats of this era and thus can finally solve the mystery.

Ok, so in the before times, when youths weren’t skibbying toilets on their tockticks, the key role of a child was to hide in an apple barrel so they could observe Long John Silver planning a mutiny.

My theory is this: the captain and crew were below decks, eating their dinner and waxing nostalgic about their life on the high seas. One of them (I don’t know which one) brings up hiding in an apple barrel sending the rest of them cascading backwards down memory road. “I bet I could still fit in an apple barrel!” One yells. “Could not!” Yells another. Before you know it, everyone is up on deck trying to fit inside barrels (smaller ones than they’re used to since the sole cargo was a 1,700 barrels of alcohol). Unfortunately since they all squeezed into their respective barrels at the same time (to see who could do it quicker) they all got trapped within the barrels.

It’s at that point a particularly strong gust of wind caused the boat to list starboard causing them to all fall into the lifeboat, which unable to support the weight of an entire crew plus barrels, snapped from its moorings and plunged into the ocean below.

I believe this is the mostly likely course of events and both smugly and patiently await my Nobel Prize in big brain having.