Overview

Ghost ship inspired Sherlock Holmes creator: When the brigantine Mary Celeste was first found abandoned and drifting helplessly in the Azores, just off the coast of Portugal in December 1872, speculative news of the crew being abducted or murdered by aliens, huge sea monsters, or pirates, no doubt inspired an inquisitive young Scottish schoolboy, Arthur Conan Doyle, to eventually write his own fictional tale. Then aged just 13, and setting his mind to a medical career, it would be another 12-years before he finally put pen to paper whilst working as a surgeon on a whaling ship bound for an Arctic adventure. His story about the incident, entitled: J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement, was first published anonymously in the Cornhill magazine in January 1884 and created a worldwide sensation, promoting news about the bizarre abandonment. Fiction however, soon became interpreted as fact, with newspapers and journals worldwide promoting his tale and creating an unstoppable roller coaster of intrigue about this mysterious ghost ship, and what was thought to have really happened. In later years, it has been compared to Orson Welles, when in October 1938, his dramatic reading of a 62-minute radio play in New York based on HG Wells science fiction novel - The War of the Worlds - suddenly created a mass panic with many thousands of listeners believing every word. Although Conan Doyle changed the names of crew members, and some other varied details, including altering the 'Mary Celeste' to the 'Marie Celeste, ' he still retained the name of the rescue ship Dei Gratia, and introduced many fairly similar facts that helped persuade a rather gullible audience. If he had not written his own fictional account, readers though would have been completely unaware of several other similar abandonments and ghost ships, which occurred around the same period, and captivated audiences, all eager for more news about these extraordinary events. And just a year later after publishing his story, the real Mary Celeste finally ended her career in dramatic style, after she was deliberately wrecked on a coral reef off Haiti by a skipper, who had become embroiled in a fraudulent conspiracy. So perhaps it was a fresh inquiry and a revelation of other previous dramatic events that put Conan Doyle back in the spotlight, but whatever the reason, his story was again accepted as genuine with even Admiralty officials forced to review their original findings. The real incident would have been worthy of investigation by his notable Sherlock Holmes character, a fictional detective, introduced just three years later. This book examines the whole incident, before, during and after, and compares fact with fiction to analyse the brilliant workings of Conan Doyle, who used many of his experiences to later develop some memorable characters

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9781544836164

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Don Hale has spent over 40-years working as a journalist, investigative reporter, and editor of various regional newspapers. He has written several best sellers about true events and is probably best remembered for his work as a human rights campaigner. He spent eight years working to help investigate and subsequently quash the murder conviction of Stephen Downing, jailed in 1973, for the alleged murder of Wendy Sewell in Bakewell cemetery, Derbyshire. Downing was released in 2001 after spending more than 27-years in jail for a crime he did not commit. The story became international news as the worst ever miscarriage of justice case in British history, and he eventually received a record amount of compensation. The journey was later made into a popular two-part BBC television drama starring Stephen Tompkinson in the lead role supported by an all-star cast. Don also worked to help free and overturn the convictions of three other wrongly convicted persons and helped to change British and European law over parole reviews, and fought to introduce a new independent system to examine all alleged miscarriage cases. His other famous cases include: Graham Huckerby, and ex-policeman, then working as a security guard, who had unwittingly been caught up in a bullion robbery: Barry George, the man wrongly convicted of the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando: And in his final case, he helped overturn the controversial rape conviction of footballer Ched Evans. His work has also been featured on the ITV Judge Rinder programme: www.donhale.co.uk

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