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0Episode: Mary Celeste: The Ship That Sailed Itself
Subtitle: 玛丽·赛勒斯特号：自己航行的船
Duration: approximately 7 minutes
Level: B1
PubDate: 2026-11-06
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[Mike]: Welcome back to Learn English with Podcasts. Sarah, imagine this. You are on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic, and you see another ship. Its sails are up. There is food on board. The cargo is fine. But there is not one person on it. What do you think happened?
zh:欢迎回到 Learn English with Podcasts。Sarah，想象一下。你在大西洋中央的一艘船上，看见另一艘船。帆还挂着，船上有食物，货物也完好。可船上一个人都没有。你觉得发生了什么？
[Sarah]: A ghost ship? Honestly, my first thought would be, did everyone just disappear? That is the stuff of horror films.
zh:幽灵船？老实说，我第一个念头是，所有人都凭空消失了吗？这简直是恐怖片里的情节。
[Mike]: And that is exactly why people still talk about this one. It is a true story. On December 4, 1872, a ship called the Dei Gratia found the Mary Celeste drifting about 400 miles east of the Azores.
zh:这也正是人们到今天还在讲它的原因。这是个真实故事。1872年12月4日，一艘叫 Dei Gratia 的船发现 Mary Celeste 号在亚速尔群岛以东大约400英里的海上漂着。
[Sarah]: The name sounds familiar, but I always mix it up with something spelled Marie. Let's start from the beginning. Where was she going?
zh:这名字听着耳熟，但我总把它跟拼成 Marie 的某个名字搞混。我们从头讲吧。它本来要去哪儿？
[Mike]: She left New York on November 7, 1872, for Genoa, Italy. Her cargo space, the hold, was full: 1,701 barrels of industrial alcohol. On board were ten people: Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife Sarah, their two-year-old daughter Sophia, and seven crew members.
zh:它1872年11月7日从纽约出发，驶往意大利热那亚。装货的舱，也就是货舱，装得满满的：1701桶工业酒精。船上一共十个人：船长 Benjamin Briggs、妻子 Sarah、两岁的女儿 Sophia，还有七名船员。
[Sarah]: Wait, a two-year-old on a cargo ship, crossing the Atlantic in November? That part makes my stomach turn a little.
zh:等等，两岁的孩子在一艘货船上，11月横渡大西洋？光是这点就让我心里有点发紧。
[Mike]: It was normal for a captain's family to travel with him. And the first two weeks were rough. The logbook mentions bad weather and heavy seas almost every day.
zh:当年船长的家人随船出行很常见。而头两周非常难熬。航海日志里几乎每天都写着坏天气和大浪。
[Sarah]: So they were tired and cold. And then the entries just stop?
zh:所以他们又累又冷。然后记录就断了？
[Mike]: They stop on November 25. The last note puts the ship near Santa Maria, one of the Azores islands. Nine days later, the Dei Gratia sees her again, hundreds of miles away, still sailing, with nobody at the wheel.
zh:记录在11月25日断了。最后一条把船定位在亚速尔群岛的圣玛丽亚岛附近。九天后，Dei Gratia 又看见它，在几百英里之外，还在航行，舵边却没有人。
[Sarah]: Hold on. Nobody at the wheel, for nine days? The ship sailed itself across the ocean?
zh:等一下。九天里都没人掌舵？这艘船自己横穿了大海？
[Mike]: That is the part that makes this story so hard to shake. She was not sinking. She was wet, and there was some water in the hold, but she was perfectly able to sail.
zh:这正是这个故事最让人放不下的地方。它没有在下沉。船身是湿的，货舱里进了些水，但它完全还能航行。
[Sarah]: OK. So let me play detective. What did the men from the Dei Gratia actually find when they climbed on board?
zh:好，那我来当一回侦探。Dei Gratia 的人爬上甲板时，到底看见了什么？
[Mike]: A very strange kind of order. The cargo was still there. Six months of food and water were still there. The crew's clothes, pipes and boxes were still in their places. Even the captain's things had not been touched.
zh:一种非常奇怪的整齐。货物还在。够吃六个月的食物和水还在。船员的衣服、烟斗、箱子都在原位。连船长的东西都没人动过。
[Sarah]: No fight, no robbery. People do not leave everything behind when they run from pirates.
zh:没有打斗，也没有抢劫。人要是从海盗手里逃命，不会什么都不带。
[Mike]: Exactly. But one thing was gone, and it is the most important clue of all: the small lifeboat. Not smashed, not washed away. Lowered into the water, on purpose.
zh:没错。但少了一样东西，而且这是所有线索里最关键的一条：那艘小救生艇。不是被撞碎，也不是被冲走，是被人有意放到水里的。
[Sarah]: So they chose to leave. They were not taken. That changes everything.
zh:所以是他们自己决定离开的，不是被别人带走。这一下整个故事都变了。
[Mike]: It does. Somebody on that ship decided a small open boat was safer than a sound, well-stocked ship. Can you imagine being the person who made that call, with your wife and little girl on board?
zh:确实。船上有人判断，一艘没有顶棚的小艇比一艘完好、补给充足的船更安全。你能想象做这个决定的人吗？他的妻子和小女儿都在船上。
[Sarah]: No. I would need a very good reason. Or at least a reason that felt very good at that moment.
zh:想象不了。这得有一个非常充分的理由。至少是那一刻听起来非常充分的理由。
[Mike]: The men from the Dei Gratia sailed her to Gibraltar, about 800 miles away. A court there spent three months looking for a crime: a fight against the captain, pirates, or a plan to cheat the insurance company.
zh:Dei Gratia 的人把它开到了大约800英里外的直布罗陀。当地法庭花了三个月找犯罪证据：船员反抗船长、海盗，或者骗取保险金的圈套。
[Sarah]: And? Please tell me they found something. A letter, a name, anything.
zh:结果呢？拜托告诉我他们找到了点什么。一封信、一个名字，什么都行。
[Mike]: Nothing they could use. No signs of violence. Nothing valuable missing. No bodies, no lifeboat, no message. Nobody from that ship was ever seen again.
zh:没有能用的证据。没有暴力痕迹，没有值钱的东西丢失，没有遗体，没有救生艇，也没有留言。那艘船上的人从此再没有被谁见过。
[Sarah]: So the official answer is, we don't know. That is a frustrating answer for a court.
zh:所以官方结论是，不知道。对法庭来说，这结论真让人憋屈。
[Mike]: It is. But the record did leave us clues. A measuring rod was lying on deck, the long stick they used to check water in the hold. One of the pumps had been taken apart.
zh:是啊。不过那些记录确实给我们留了线索。甲板上扔着一根测量杆，就是用来量货舱积水的长杆。其中一台水泵被拆开了。
[Sarah]: So maybe they thought the ship was filling with water, and it was not. A wrong reading, a broken pump, and a very tired captain.
zh:所以也许他们以为船正在进水，其实没有。一次误读、一台坏掉的水泵，再加一位疲惫极了的船长。
[Mike]: That is one idea. There is another. Later, when the cargo was unloaded in Genoa, nine of the 1,701 barrels were empty. They were made of red oak, a softer wood that leaks more easily.
zh:这是一种猜测。还有另一种。后来在热那亚卸货时，1701个桶里有九个是空的。它们用的是红橡木，木质更松，更容易渗漏。
[Sarah]: Alcohol leaking into a closed hold, and then a loud bang from below. I would run too.
zh:酒精漏进密闭货舱，接着底下「砰」的一声。换我也会跑。
[Mike]: Plenty of people think so. Some say the leaking barrels made a frightening noise and smell in the hold. But I want to be careful here: both stories are only guesses. Nobody has proved either one.
zh:很多人都这么想。有人说漏了的桶在货舱里发出吓人的声响和气味。不过这里我得说清楚：两种说法都只是猜测，没有任何一种被证实过。
[Sarah]: Fair. And honestly, the guesses are not even the strangest part of this story for me.
zh:有道理。而且说实话，对我来说这故事最奇怪的地方还不在于这些猜测。
[Mike]: Oh? Go on.
zh:哦？说说看。
[Sarah]: I have heard that when they boarded, breakfast was still on the table and the tea was still warm. People say that all the time. Is it true?
zh:我听说他们登船时，早餐还摆在桌上，茶还是热的。大家一直都这么说。是真的吗？
[Mike]: No. That detail comes from a short story published in 1884, twelve years later, by a young doctor named Arthur Conan Doyle, before he created Sherlock Holmes.
zh:不是。这个细节出自1884年的一篇短篇小说，比事发晚了十二年，作者是当时还年轻的医生 Arthur Conan Doyle，那时他还没写出福尔摩斯。
[Sarah]: Wait. So the most famous detail of the Mary Celeste was written by a novelist?
zh:等等。所以 Mary Celeste 最有名的那个细节，是小说家写出来的？
[Mike]: Yes. He even spelled the ship's name wrong, as Marie Celeste, and newspapers repeated his story as if it were a report. The warm tea was never in the official record.
zh:是的。他甚至把船名拼错成了 Marie Celeste，而报纸把他的小说当成真实报道转来转去。那杯热茶从来没出现在官方记录里。
[Sarah]: That is almost funny. The real ship was strange enough, and people still felt they had to add a cup of tea.
zh:这几乎有点好笑。真船已经够离奇了，人们还非得给它添上一杯茶。
[Mike]: And there is one more twist. The Mary Celeste kept working for years. In 1885, a captain deliberately drove her onto a reef near Haiti, hoping to claim the insurance money.
zh:还有最后一个转折。Mary Celeste 之后又跑了很多年航运。1885年，有位船长故意把它开上海地附近的礁石，想骗保险金。
[Sarah]: Let me guess. It did not go as planned.
zh:让我猜猜。事情没按计划走。
[Mike]: She refused to sink quickly enough. The plan was discovered, and the captain was caught. Think about that: ten people left her because they believed she was going down. Years later, someone tried hard to sink her, and she would not.
zh:它沉得不够快，没如愿。骗局被查出来，船长也被抓了。想想看：十个人离开它，是因为相信它要沉；多年以后，有人拼了命想让它沉，它偏不肯。
[Sarah]: A ship that would not sink, and a mystery that would not end. I wonder which of those two that captain would find funnier. If you have a theory of your own, tell us, we would love to hear it.
zh:一艘不肯沉的船，一个不肯完结的谜。不知道那位船长会觉得哪一个更可笑。如果你自己有一套推测，讲给我们听听，我们很想听。
[Mike]: Thanks for listening to Learn English with Podcasts. See you in the next episode.
zh:感谢收听 Learn English with Podcasts。下期见。
