Ghost Ship Sleuth - Mary Celeste Mystery Tour

Halloween weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 29, 30 and 31, 2021!

Maritime Museum of San Diego embraces the profound and puzzling mystery behind the 282-ton brigantine Mary Celeste, famed as the ghost ship abandoned in 1872 — leaving researchers and maritime history buffs unable to solve how the vessel’s captain and crew went missing, with no signs of fire, explosion or other incidents. Theories as to why the ship was abandoned range from crew mutiny, to conspiracy, to alien abduction, natural disaster or an alcohol explosion.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Victorian author and acclaimed creator of fiction’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, was called in to solve the mystery and was unable to – the only mystery he never solved.

For this new Maritime Museum of San Diego experience, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (played by one of the Museum’s award-winning Living History education staff) will return to the Mary Celeste to greet young visitors, guide them around the schooner Californian, a tall ship looking very similar to the Mary Celeste, to examine the evidence, and for help in solving the mystery that stymied him a century and a half ago.

Visits to the Ghost ship Halloween-weekend experience are free and included with general admission ticket purchase.