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The Great Crossword Panic of 1944

 

This posting will chronicle one of those little, forgotten stories of the Second World War. It is one of the greatest examples that I can think of, where the old saying that ‘Truth is stranger than Fiction’, was never more true in the history of the world.

What Happened?

It is Mid-1944. The Second World War is reaching the beginning of the end. In just weeks, the Allies will make their great push towards France, blasting through Hitler’s famous line of defenses known as the “Atlantic Wall”. Spearheading the way is their mighty invasion force and their grand battle-plans, collectively known as “Operation Overlord”.

Joseph Stalin had been begging the Western allies to open up a Western front on the German war for years now, as the Red Army was being decimated by the rapidly advancing Germans. Although the Soviets had held off the Germans and forced them back from the city of Stalingrad in 1943, the Russians could not hope to take on the full force of the German war-machine on their own. To aid them, the Western powers had to divide and conquer the Germans, by splitting their forces. To do this, they had to force them to fight on two fronts at once: The Eastern Front, against the Russians, and the Western Front, against the British, American, French, Commonwealth and various free forces and resistance-groups in Europe.

Hence the necessity for Operation Overlord and all that it entailed.

The invasion was of course, a closely guarded secret. People who didn’t need to know about it were kept strictly in the dark. People who were working on it were never told what it was. And the people who knew what was going on were never allowed to tell anybody anything about it. As they say: “Loose lips sink ships”.

So…onto the Panic of 1944.

Across and Down

So closely guarded were all the aspects of the Invasion of Normandy, that it was inconceivable that anyone apart from the king, the prime minister and top military officials would know anything more about it than what the king, the prime minister and top military officials were want to tell them.

So, imagine their horror when the following chain of events took place…

May, 1944. Counter-espionage agents working for the British Security Service (more commonly known as ‘MI-5′, not, please, to be confused with the British Secret Intelligence Service…’MI-6’) could get incredibly bored on the job. Sometimes there just wasn’t anything to do around the office! So…what do you do when there’s nothing else to do? You read the newspaper.

By chance, some of the MI-5 chaps decided to have a shot at a few crosswords. After all, it was important to keep their minds sharp, and what better way than to test themselves with a few puzzles from the local papers? The papers which they had close to hand were those of the Daily Telegraph, a prominent London newspaper. Picking out the crosswords page, they started to solve the clues…

To their great alarm, the agents found that the answers to many of the clues were the codenames given to vital D-Day operations! Names such as…

‘Utah’ (Landing beach).

‘Juno’ (Landing beach).

‘Gold’ (Landing beach).

‘Sword’ (Landing beach).

‘Utah’ (Landing beach)

‘Omaha’ (Landing beach)…appeared in Daily Telegraph, 22nd May, 1944.

‘Overlord’ (Codename for the Invasion)…appeared in Daily Telegraph, 27th May, 1944.

‘Mulberry’ (Floating harbour)…appeared in Daily Telegraph, 30th May, 1944.

‘Neptune’ (Naval support for the invasion)…appeared in Daily Telegraph, 1st June, 1944.

Unsurprisingly, these results set off alarm-bells throughout MI-5! It now seemed that a German spy was using the newspaper crosswords to send vital information back to his masters in Berlin! Or possibly to other enemy agents working in Britain! If the enemy put two-and-two together, they could piece together the entire invasion-plan!

The Crossword Culprit

Acting swiftly, but most importantly, discreetly, MI-5 agents launched an investigation. The Daily Telegraph accepted crosswords sent into it by its readers. The agents tracked down the contributor who had sent in all the crosswords with the offending answers, and traced him to the quiet (just under 10,000 inhabitants as of 2012) town of Leatherhead, in Surrey.

The man they were seeking turned out to be Leonard Dawe. Dawe was a schoolmaster. In his spare time, he kept his mind active by writing up crossword puzzles and sending them to the Daily Telegraph as a way to earn a bit of extra money. He was interrogated relentlessly by the agents who captured him, and when they asked him why he chose those particular answers for his crosswords, he indignantly asked why he shouldn’t! There wasn’t a law against words…was there?

Well alright then…The agents then asked him who had supplied him with those words! Dawe had no idea what was going on, but told the truth anyway…his students from the local schoolhouse had suggested them!

As to where they heard them from, if they did at all…that’s anybody’s guess!

Dawe was found not guilty of any charges that the agents could try to pin on him and lived out the rest of the war. He died in January, 1963 at the age of seventy-three.

An amazing case of truth really being stranger than fiction…

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Warmth and Comfort – Keeping Warm Throughout History

 

In these days of central-heating, electric blankets, household insulation and increased stores of bodyfat, keeping warm and toasty at night is more of a privilege, a treat, an extra, added bonus, rather than an absolute necessity. But how did people snuggle up and keep warm at night, after the sun went down, before we had all these wondrous things such as insulated, centrally-heated homes, electrically-warmed blankets and fat, rustling wheat-bags infused with lavender?

This is a History of Household Warmth and Comfort.

Here in Australia, where the land is upside down, the weather is backwards, dogs miaow, cats bark, fish fly through the air and pigeons are not found at a depth below the natural penetration of sunlight through seawater, it is winter.

…Yes, we have winter here.

And it’s this nippy weather that has inspired this toastiest of all toasty subjects. So, how was it done?

Tapestries

No, don’t laugh. Really. Tapestries. Those pretty things that hang on the walls. What, you thought they were just there for decoration?

In the days before central heating, people hung tapestries on the walls of their rooms. Enormous, embroidered sheets of fabric, lavishly and beautifully and brightly decorated.  The fact that they were patterned and pictured to within an inch of their lives was a bonus. A delicate and decorative addition. But tapestries were not just hanging on the walls for the sake of art and beauty.

What people tend to forget is that, in winter-time, especially in the countries which experienced exceptionally heavy snowfalls, the interior of a house or building was often not much warmer than the temperature outside! The point of tapestries was to trap heat inside a room and act like a crude form of insulation. Where-ever possible, tapestries were hung to keep warm air in, and cold air out.

Curtains

Curtains did more than just keep out unwanted light. They have important insulating properties, keeping in warm air, and keeping out cold air, much like the tapestries that covered the walls. Curtains also stopped any unwelcome breezes or drafts from blowing in between the cracks and openings in early windows, from between the frames, or from between the shutters…don’t forget, please, that in medieval times…glass was a luxury!

Canopy Beds

You’ve probably seen these things in historic houses, museums, or in the ‘Harry Potter’ films. Large beds with canopies and curtains on all four sides. Again, they served the same purpose as the tapestries on the walls and the curtains in front of the windows. They kept in warm air, blocked drafts, and kept out cold air.

But all this passive warmth and heating doesn’t really do much, if you don’t already have  a source of heat which requires controlling. What were some of the ways in which our ancestors kept warm on cold winter nights? What did they use and how did they do it?

Bedwarmers

A bedwarmer is kinda like a big saucepan or frying-pan. You fill the pan of the bedwarmer with burning charcoal or ashes from the fireplace in the bedroom, close the lid, and then, holding the pan with the long handle, you slide it under the covers, between the blankets and the mattress, and there you left it, until it warmed up the bed. A bedwarmer looks like this:

The handle is so very long so that the bedwarmer can easily be slid to any part of even the largest bed. It’s also a precaution against burns.

Hot-Water Bottles/Water-bedwarmers

While coal-filled and ash-filled bedwarmers were very popular, there was always the potential risk of fire. A safer and more portable option was the hot-water bedwarmer or hot-water bottle.

A classic for centuries, the hot-water bottle is a simple and effective way to keep warm at night. Before more modern rubber bottles were invented, most people used sturdy copper bottles instead.

Copper is rustproof and an easy conductor of heat, and so was the natural metal for manufacturing hot-water bottles. Copper was used for any vessel where heating was involved, such as pots, pans, kettles…and of course…hot-water bottles.

Copper hot-water bottles came in a variety of sizes and shapes. Most took the shape of pillows or cushions, having circular, oval or cylindrical profiles. These were easy to hold and compact in size.

There were numerous benefits to a hot-water bottle over a bedwarmer. To begin with, you could take the hot-water bottle to bed with you, and keep it with you all night. They were smaller and more compact, and they were safer and easier to use.

Now you may have seen just such a bottle at a flea-market, or in antiques shop. They’re small, round, circular or oval-shaped objects with threaded caps at the top, in the middle, sometimes with a small metal handle on top.

Of course, if this was filled with boiling water, the metal would heat up so fast that the bottle would be impossible to hold without burning your hands. One of the first things the owner of a copper hot-water bottle did was to make a bottle-cosy.

A cosy or a bag, a pouch, if you will, was an absolute necessity to effective use of a hot-water bottle, and most of them were made at home, using available fabric and sewing-equipement. The fabric used for the bag had to be just right. If it was too thin, the heat would penetrate through it too fast, leading to burns. If it was too thick, then no heat would penetrate it, making it virtually useless.

Once the bag was made, the bottle was placed inside it, and the bag was closed with a simple drawstring. The bag, with the hot-water bottle inside, could now be safely carried to bed, with minimal danger of burns.

This ancient technology is surprisingly effective. These old bottles have no seams. So there’s no danger of anything splitting, ripping or tearing open. There’s no fear of punctures. The caps screw on tightly and securely and there’s no worries to be had about leaks.

This is my hot-water bottle which I regularly take to bed with me on cold winter nights:

It has a diameter of about 24 inches, and a height of about 4 inches. Its capacity is 1.75L (about three and a half pints) of water. How long does this water last?

I’ve had it remain warm to the touch for nearly 24 hours, wrapped up in bed. But effective warmth is about 9-12 hours, long enough for a good night’s sleep. After that time, the temperature of the water drops markedly, to a point where it’s not really useful for keeping your bed warm…But the water is warm enough to pour into the shaving-mug or scuttle in your bathroom, if you’re a guy and like traditional wet-shaving. And yes, that is what happens to the leftover water in my hot-water bottle. It ends up as shaving-water!

Dressing-Gowns

I don’t know many people who wear dressing-gowns. I think some people believe they’ve got some sort of feminine air about them, possibly. Whatever the cause, I don’t think people wear them very often anymore. And the dressing-gown has been a tradition in Europe, and other parts of the world where cold climates are to be found, for centuries. It’s that extra, snuggly layer of warmth that we all want to have.

Dressing-gowns were more common back in Victorian times, when clothing etiquette was much stricter than it is today. Dressing-gowns were worn at night, over pyjamas, or a nightshirt for extra warmth in houses without insulation and central heating, or were worn during the daytime over your everyday clothes, if you were half-dressed and had unexpected visitors.

Victorian manners and social etiquette meant that you NEVER entertained guests dressed in your shirt and trousers! If their unexpected arrival caught you in such a state, the options were to finish dressing, or to throw on your dressing-gown to cover up your incomplete state, and then greet your guests. Keeping the gown on was acceptable, or you could excuse yourself and complete dressing before returning to the reception-room. At no time was it acceptable to remove the gown if dressing was incomplete. Greeting or entertaining close friends and family dressed in your dressing-gown (usually over day-clothes or evening-wear) in a more casual and relaxed home-environment was acceptable.

If you’re looking for a comfortable way to keep warm this year, during the colder months, perhaps it’s time you started looking to history for a few ideas? They don’t use electricity and they’ll keep you just as warm as anything made today.

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Singer Attachment No. 160990 – Automatic Zigzagger

 

I never thought I’d get my hands on one of these, but wonders never cease. This is a Singer Automatic Zigzagger which I purchased today:

As sewing-machine technology improved significantly in the postwar years of the mid-1950s, with the the end of rationing (which in the United Kingdom, lasted twice as long as the war itself!), countries like America and the United Kingdom could start producing better and more advanced consumer-goods than ever. One of the new improvements was sewing-machines that could produce decorative zig-zag, slanting stitches, something unheard of before the war, with all prewar machines being ‘straight-stitchers’, performing a standard, straight lockstitch.

These newer, postwar machines worked by having the needlebar jerk back and forth, from left to right as the machine stitched from front to back. The side-to-side motion of the needle and the front-to-back motion of the machine allowed various types of decorative zigzag-stitches to be created. The machines were popular, but still very expensive. And Singer still had thousands of old-fashioned straight-stitch machines leftover from before the War. How to sell these older, increasingly out-of-date but still reliable machines to a public hungry for the newest postwar technology, not some dated, 1920s piece of junk?

Enter the automatic zigzagger.

A wide variety of zigzaggers, just like a wide variety of buttonholers, were produced by Singer, to be sold all over the world. This particular model, the 160990 (which also came in a 160991 variation), was manufactured for the European and British market (and by extension, the British Commonwealth) in Switzerland. It’s fitting that a country long-famed for its expertise in chocolates and watches, should manufacture an attachment of this quality. It’s exposed, it’s bare, it’s naked, it looks half-complete and you’re probably wondering where the rest of it is…but it is all there.

The beauty of this is that it’s very simple. The parts move freely and smoothly and won’t jam or seize up when the machine is in operation. It has a loose-ish feel to it, but that’s important when anything tighter would cause operational problems.

This zigzagger comes with its original cream box:

And it’s original manual:

It also comes with a dog-plate and all the necessary bits and pieces that go along with it. But most importantly, it comes with these:

These steel discs, roughly the size of a penny, are the cams that you insert into the zigzagger before commencing stitching. The cam you insert will determine the type of stitching that the zigzagger will produce. As the zigzagger operates, its arm will move over the ridges on the cams. The length and depth of each ridge determines the length and size of the stitch, and therefore, the pattern left behind by the zigzagger as it moves across the cloth.

They came in sets of five and ten cams (there’s eight there, so this would be a ten-cam set. Two of them are missing) as well as the zigzagger itself having a default cam set into it to produce a standard back-and-forth zigzag stitch.

Zigzaggers like these, with their cams, were simply fastened onto the machine via the presser-foot bar, in-place of the standard presser-foot. The arm or fork on the right of the zigzagger (in the photo above) went over and under the needle-clamp, moving up and down with the needle as the machine operated. These worked with all old-fashioned Singer straight-stitch machines and were very popular. For a couple of dollars more, you’d purchased a hardware upgrade to your machine and it could now compete with those newfangled “slantomatic” Singers that were just coming off the production-line.

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Lubricating your Sewing Machine – More Accessories!

 

In my ongoing quest to find bits and pieces to complete the restoration of my grandmother’s Singer 99k knee-lever sewing-machine, I have two kinds of lubricant, with which to tantilise you.

When you ambled into your friendly local Singer Sewing Center and left with your brand-spanking-new sewing machine, it would’ve come complete with all manner of wizzlewozzles and doohickies, doodads and thingdoodles.

Today, few vintage machines have these bits and pieces still with them. They’ve been used up, lost, thrown out, broken or just forgotten about, and you can’t just go back down to your local Singer shop to buy them anymore. So instead, you have to seek them out all individually and separately. It’s frustrating because you don’t always know what to look for. But sometimes, you get lucky.

Using the BRK motor-manual which I bought last week (see other posts in this category) as a guide for what to look for, I headed out into the world of the local flea-market. While there, in the pre-dawn chill of a Melbourne winter, with only my torchlight to guide me, I chanced upon this:

Holy mackrel! It’s a Singer oil-can!

After anywhere from 40-90 years, there’s obviously no OIL left in the can. But I bought it anyway, for a couple of dollars, for the sake of completeness. Why did I buy it?

Because, even though it’s as dry as the Sahara Desert, it is, nonetheless, the original style of oil-can that went with my machine when it was brand-new.

This is a a standard Singer bentwood case:

On the inside of that case, on the back left-hand side (if the ‘SINGER’ logo is facing you), is a little bent wire bracket, screwed into the paneling.

If you’ve got a Singer machine with a bentwood case and ever wondered what that bracket was there for…well…take a look at the picture of the oil-can up above. Keep it well in your mind, and then scroll down…

Yup! That little bent metal bracket is to hold the oil-can! See how nicely it sits in there and how HAPPY it is to finally be back home? You can tell it’s smiling. You can just tell.

When oiling your vintage Singer sewing machine, be sure that you oil all the moving parts which are MECHANICAL. That means NO OIL should go into the electric BRK machine-motor at the back/side of the machine. If you do that, horrible things will happen. It will heat up, start smoking and will probably catch fire and blow up, because the oil’s gone all through the motor, interfered with the electronics (such as they are on these old machines) and started an irreversible chain of catastrophic events.

Oil the pistons, shafts, cranks, levers, wheels, hooks…anything that’s mechanical. But do NOT apply sewing-machine oil to the motor. Or you’ll live to regret it.

But hold on. I told you I had TWO types of lubricant!…What’s the other one?

You might remember this manual from a previous posting:

Having read the warning, you’re sitting at your desk wondering “What the hell is this ‘motor-lubricant’ stuff?”

The motor-lubricant, which is the only thing that should be used to lubricate the BRK Singer sewing-machine motor, is a thickish, pasty substance. Originally, it came in this tube, which I purchased today for a paltry $1.00:

The tube is, structurally, in excellent condition, without cracks or leaks, and it’s almost completely full of its original supply of paste! This is the lubricant which you should use to lubricate your Singer BRK machine-motor.

If you can’t find any of these neat little tubes of paste, then nick down to your local sewing-machine shop (if you have one) or hardware store (if you don’t), and ask for good-quality motor lubricant. It should be like a soft, gel-like paste which can sit inside the motor and keep things nice and smooth, but without dribbling and leaking everywhere like oil would.

Once you have it, take it home and apply it sparingly, to the oiling holes either side of your Singer BRK machine-motor. The oiling-holes are these little metallic holes at either end of the motor:

See it? It’s that tiny little steel-lined hole, above the big, fat, black plastic screw-head. That’s why the nozzle on the paste-tube is so small, because it has to fit into that miniscule little opening.

Still hunting for more bits and pieces…

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Grandmother’s Dressmaking Shears!

 

Why Granny! What big knives you have… 

Wonders never cease.

I believed that these had been lost when my grandmother moved to the nursing-home. But I found them under a whole pile of junk in a drawer at home. Right at the back. Probably why I never found them before, on previous sweeps around the house.

This fearsome-looking digit detachment-device…also known as HUGE GODDAMN SCISSORS!…is my grandmother’s original pair of dressmaker’s shears!

I remember these from when I was a little boy, and when gran used to scold me for snapping them around with innocent childish glee.

These cold steel hedge-trimmers were what my grandmother used to cut the cloth from which she used to make clothing back in the 50s. They’re professional dressmaking shears, not scissors…shears. And now they’re all mine, with which to flirt with the possibility of horrendous injury on a daily basis!

The shears, as far as I can tell, are about 60 years old. They’re made by the J. Wiss & Sons company of Newark, New Jersey, U.S.A., a respected German-American toolmaking firm of over 100-years experience and manufacture of bladed instruments. They’re the No. 28 bent-handle shears, meaning that they’re dressmaking shears, with an 8-1/8th inch overall length, and with a cutting-length of 3-7/8th inches. The bent handles at the end (which are deliberately bent upwards) are so that you can cut fabric while it’s lying on the table, without the bottom handle getting in the way.

Near as I can figure, these shears date to ca. 1950. I have found variations of the No. 28 shears in Wiss catalogues dating as far back as 1915, and as recent as right now, on a website selling J. Wiss products, but only the shears from the 1950s exactly match the ones I have on my desk right now. They’re stamped with the words:

“STEEL FORGED”
NO. 28″

inside an anvil-shape, on one side of the pivot, and…

WISS
Newark, N.J.
U.S.A.

…on the other, and WISS – INLAID, on the same side, along the blade.

They come with nice, black, Japanned handles, and the entire thing is made of steel. The shears are made of two parts (handle and blade – left, handle and blade – right), plus a screw and rivet at the pivot-point. There’s no plastic anywhere. That means that there’s nothing here which can snap off or warp or bend or crack and break. Solid, dependable and sharp.

These are not the biggest dressmaker’s shears you can buy, and nor are they the smallest. Wiss & Sons sell shears in sizes anywhere from 6.5 inches, all the way up to monsters which are a foot long! These are kind of like middle-of-the-road shears.

I had them professionally sharpened, and now, they’re back to being functional shears once more. Originally, the pivot was very stiff and squeaky. I tried to remedy this with oil, but it didn’t do anything to help the situation. In the end, I found that the best solution was to soak the scissors in an ultrasonic bath full of hot water. The heat and the sonic vibrations loosened up all the rust and gunk and dust and oil inside the pivot-point, and now the shears swing and slice cleanly, smoothly, sharply and most importantly, silently…apart from a quality-reassuring ‘schink!’ with each closure of the blades…

I cleaned the shears and have since added them to my growing pile of stuff that I need to restore my grandmother’s 1950 Singer 99k. Here’s a photo I took showing (most) of the stuff I gathered so far:

Looking for a pair of top-quality dressmaking shears like granny’s? Here’s a website with information on the company which made the ones I have: Joseph Wiss & Sons website.

J. Wiss & Sons officially lasted from 1848-1976. But the J. Wiss & Sons. brand is still used today, and you can still buy their marvellous, gigantic, all-steel dressmaker’s and tailor’s shears today.  

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How to Service your Vintage Sewing Machine

 

Since posting my first sewing-machine piece here on my blog, I’ve received a comment asking for tips and tricks on how to service, clean and oil these machines. I figured I’d write up a posting here, to answer that question in greater detail.

Disclaimer etc: I am not a qualified, certified, expert, professional, master machine-repairman by any stretch of fact, fiction or the most rabid and erratic of imaginations. This is merely a small side-hobby of mine; but everything written hereafter, has been done so with the backing of research and experience gained from practice. I have serviced vintage and antique sewing-machines as a hobby, and have restored some for friends and family.

The information pertaining to sewing-machines as mentioned in this posting is strictly for older machines which are mechanically driven, and not those which are generally, post-1960s, which tend to be operated more via electronics and computerised systems instead of cranks, levers, cams and pistons.

How Does a Sewing Machine Work?

I figured I’d do a bit about this first, since it might bear importance later on.

Be they 100 years old, 150 years old, 50 years old, or brand new, all sewing-machines operate in the same basic manner.

Having prepared the machine for sewing, the following actions occur:

1. The needle descends and pierces the fabric. It retracts. As the needle rises up, it leaves a small loop of thread on the underside of the fabric.

2. The transverse shuttle/vibrating shuttle/rotating hook/oscilating hook (dependent on machine’s age and design) swings around. The nose of the shuttle or the swinging hook, catches the loop of thread left by the upper needle.

3. The loop of thread passes over and around the shuttle or the hook, which pulls the bottom thread through the loop as it goes along.

4. At the top of the machine, the thread take-up lever jerks upwards. This pulls the stitch tight and closes the loop.

5. The feed-dogs perform a four-motion movement. Up, back, down, forwards. This pushes the fabric up against the presser-foot, and shoves it back, out of the machine.

After those five steps, the whole process repeats again. Sometimes as slow as hand-sewing, or, as fast as you can run the machine.

Alright…let’s get to what you’ll need to do.

*SPECIAL NOTE: The instructions in this posting are on how to clean, oil and operate your machine. NOT on how to repair them or fix broken parts. By following the instructions in this tutorial, you understand that your machine is in WORKING ORDER, but requires cleaning and general maintenance*

Tools and Equipment 

This pertains specifically to old Singer sewing machines, but most of these things you can use to service any antique or vintage sewing-machine.

You will need…

Needle-nosed Tweezers

I cannot stress this enough. If you don’t have a pair of these…forget it.

You must have a pair. There is absolutely NO other way to get into the TINY little recesses of the machine to dig out the dust, lint, fluff, dead insects, broken needle-tips and other crap that builds up in a sewing-machine over the course of decades.

Forget about the Dyson or the Hoover or the Miele. They can suck like a tornado, they will not remove the bits of grime that are glued and stuck onto the machine, or which are hiding in tiny, inaccessible places. Without needle-nosed pliers, it’s almost pointless to start.

Tissues or Bog-Roll

Tissues or toilet paper to clean, wipe, polish, stop oil from dripping, etc. Don’t just take one or two sheets. Keep a box of the things next to you while you do this.

Cotton Buds

I think the Yanks call these things ‘Q-tips’. Everywhere else in the world, they’re called cotton-buds. Those little plastic shafts with fluffy cotton balls on the end, about two inches long.

You need these to clean, wipe or polish areas of the machine which a tissue or other polishing-cloth won’t reach.

A Powerful Torch

Personally, my eyesight is not good. But this would apply to anyone. You need a bright, powerful (preferably small) torch (‘flashlight’ to the Yanks) while you work. This is so that you can shine extra light into the really dark, tiny, tucked-away places of the machine where conventional lights won’t be able to reach.

A Miniature Screwdriver

Cute little thing, isn’t it? This little Singer screwdriver (or one like it) would’ve come with most vintage Singers when they left the factory, or your local shop. This is my screwdriver

Some sewing-machines come with these little wotsits already supplied. Very handy. I know for a fact that Singer machines were sold with their own personal screwdrivers. If you have one, good. If you don’t, toddle off to find the very smallest screwdriver you can find. A flat-head screwdriver, by the way. Ideally, the size should be 3mm wide.

*SPECIAL NOTE: For owners of Singer sewing machines with bentwood cases. If you don’t have the key for your case and the machine is locked inside, you can use a 3mm flat-head screwdriver as a makeshift key. It does not damage the lock and will serve the purpose admirably*

The screwdriver will be essential for…well…undoing screws and removing plates.

General-Purpose Oil

Get yourself a can of general lubricating oil. Something that’s used on things like hinges and suchlike.

THIS IS NOT TO BE USED TO LUBRICATE THE MACHINE.

The purpose of this oil is to lubricate the case-lock which holds the machine-case onto the machine-base. And this is just about the only thing that it should be used for.

Sewing Machine Oil

You will also need a bottle or can of sewing-machine oil. Ideally, you want sewing-machine SPECIFIC oil. But if you can’t, a high-grade, thin, runny machine-oil, suitable for sewing-machines, will suffice. Just don’t use 3-in-1 oil. It may say that it’s for sewing-machines, but I have it on good authority that this stuff is not the best thing to use. Personally, I use SuperLube machine-oil, which was the one recommended to me by my local repairman. You can buy this oil from your local hardware shop or your local sewing-shop in little 125ml bottles.

Eyedropper or Syringe

This is to distribute the oil around the machine. If you have a spray-can of machine-oil, of the type described above, then you can use the little plastic tube that comes with the can instead, but if the oil comes in a little glass or plastic bottle, then you’ll want something like an eyedropper or a syringe.

Some of the places that you need to apply oil to in a sewing-machine are quite inaccessible to a big, bulky bottle. This is where a local-application tube, or an eyedropper can come in handy.

A Bowl or Plate

Something that you don’t use anymore. This is to house any screws, nuts, feet, plates etc, that you remove from the machine during the course of your restoration. These things are TINY and they will roll away from you, given the chance. And if your machine is 50, 70, 90, 120 years old, chances are, if you lose a particular piece, you won’t be able to just go out and buy a new one.

Metal-Polishing Paste

You’ll also want a tube of metal-polishing paste. You can get this stuff from hardware stores and car-maintenance shops and suchlike. Personally, I use a German-made product called Simichrome, it does the job on most metals with ease (except brass, I think), and the results will look stunning.

Machine-Manual

If possible, you should get a hold of your sewing-machine’s manual. Now I realise that if you’re reading this, your machine is probably one that you picked up at an antiques shop, a flea-market, or which you inherited from granny (that’s how I got mine!) and that half the crap that should have come with it, is missing (just like with me!).

Don’t worry. You can buy (or sometimes if you search really hard, download for free) facsimiles of original sewing-machine manuals.

Having the manual is a big help for obvious reasons. It shows you how the machine goes together, how to oil it, what all the parts are, and most importantly, how to use it!

Right…Got all those things? Let’s get started.

Cleaning the Machine

I’m going to assume that the machine you have is a really old one. By that, I mean at least 60 years old. No later than about 1955-1960 (after that, the technology kinda changes a fair bit and this sort of information isn’t as pertinent to more modern machines). Most likely, it looks something like this:

My Singer 128 Vibrating Shuttle machine

This little sweetheart is a Singer 128 model, and is representative of the kinds of machines seen around the turn of the last century. For those not very good with dates, that’s ca. 1890-1910. Possibly, you might have a slightly later model, such as a Singer 99-series model, from ca. 1920-1960. They look like this:

My grandmother’s Singer 99k

Or perhaps you’ve got one of those big, old foot-driven treadle-machines, which look like this?

Singer 66 treadle machine that I snapped at an antiques shop

Regardless of what machine you have, if it looks like those (or is very similar to those) and is of advanced age, this tutorial should cover all the necessary directions for getting it running again.

The first process of cleaning is de-linting or de-fluffing the machine.

These old machines have a LOT of places where dust, broken needles, fluff, lint, loose thread, bread-crumbs, loose diamonds and other bits and pieces can fall in and hibernate. They jam up the machine and make it difficult to run (or make it run not at all!). It is essential to remove as much of this stuff as possible before moving onto the next step.

When cleaning the machine, you want to start with ONE area at a time. Broadly speaking, a sewing-machine is divided into four basic areas:

1. Needlebar Assembly

The needle-bar is the area of the machine at the head of the arm (the bit that you pass the fabric under). This is comprised of the…

– Faceplate.
– Needle-bar.
– Presser-foot bar.
– Foot-lever.
– Takeup-lever.

 2. Bobbin Area

The bobbin area is directly beneath the needle-bar and presser-foot. It is comprised of the…

– Bobbin
– Bobbin-case
– Oscilating hook/rotating hook/shuttle.
– Feed-dogs.
– Slide-plate/s.
– Needle-plate.

3. The Undercarriage

The underside of the machine is where all the secondary cranks and pistons hide out. This is accessed by unscrewing any securing-bolts or nuts, and lifting the whole machine UP and BACK on a pair of hinges. This is where you would traditionally store things like spare needles, manuals, bobbins, scissors, etc. Small fiddly things that you might need. You need to clean in here to ensure that the bobbin-case and the oscilating hook (or other stitch-making apparatus) works properly.

4. Handwheel Assembly

The handwheel assembly and clutch-wheel is the part of the machine right at the back, on your right. This is comprised of…

– The handwheel (big wheel).
– the clutch-wheel (small wheel inside the big wheel. Also called a stop-motion wheel).
– Bobbin-winder
– Drive-belt (if your machine is electrically powered, or a mechanical treadle-machine).
– Hand-crank (if your machine is manually-powered).

Now that I’ve labelled those areas, pick one, and start the de-linting or de-fluffing process. This involves disassembling the area to as far a level as you’re comfortable with/capable of, and poking around with your tweezers (the all-important needle-nosed tweezers I mentioned earlier!) to remove any and all fluff, dust, hair, lint and thread that you might find.

Take your time with this. These old machines gather dust and crud like the Amish gather weaving-looms.

Work through each part of the machine, area by area, systematically. After delinting/defluffing, you want to take your tissues and wipe the area as clean as you can. You might also like to squirt a TEENSY bit of polishing-paste to clean a particular area and give it more of a sparkle. This does a lot more than make it look nice – it helps the machine to run better.

A Word of Caution

 In old Singer sewing-machines (and, I believe, in other makes and models), there is often a piece of RED FELT hiding inside the bobbin-well. LEAVE IT ALONE!!!

It is NOT lint. It is NOT junk. It is part of the machine’s design. Do NOT remove it. It is important. Exactly why it is important, I will explain later.

This is the red felt. I’ve included these photographs at the request of a reader, who wanted to see its exact placement within the machine: 

If the machine looks a bit weird, its because I unscrewed and removed the needle-plate underneath the presser-foot to take these photographs.

In these photos, you can also see the bobbin (round spool), bobbin-case (thing that the round spool is housed in), bobbin-release button (round button with crosshatching on top) and the feed-dogs (the raised bits with little corrugations on top).

After thoroughly de-linting and wiping down every part of the machine where lint is want to hide (take your time with this, trust me, there’s a LOT of places!), then you move onto the fun part.

Oiling your Machine

Right. You’ve pulled the whole thing apart. You’ve de-linted the machine, you’ve wiped it down, you’ve polished it nice and clean. Now you need to oil it.

Do NOT skimp on this step. Trust me, it’s important. Don’t ever worry about putting in too much oil. Better that the machine should drown in happiness, rather than break it’s back from overwork.

Now that you have thoroughly cleaned the ENTIRE machine, you need to oil it.

Take out your bottle of high-grade machine-oil, made for, or suitable for use in sewing-machines.

If you have a can of the stuff with a local-application tube, even better. If not, then also take out of its place of secretion, your eyedropper or syringe.

What you want to do now is to oil your machine. This is not hard to do. And to be honest, it’s kinda fun. It may take a while, but don’t give up hope. Just keep squirting and testing, squirting and testing.

Oiling a sewing machine is easy. Just follow the golden rule: Oil anything that moves. And oil it more than less.

Now, your machine might run jerkily and stiffly, or, as was in my case, it literally would NOT run AT ALL, and that’s with considerable effort put into trying to rotate the handwheel.

In either case, the procedure is the same.

Take your oil and drip it into, and onto any place in the machine where something moves, or something rubs up against something else. The key spots to oil are the key spots where I mentioned earlier, you need to clean. The four main parts of the machine. The needle-bar area, the bobbin-area, the handwheel-area and the underside.

How long does all this take? I can’t tell you. It’s dependent on the machine. With my first machine, which didn’t move at all before it was oiled, it took nearly an hour (about 45-50 minutes). Yours might take longer, or shorter than that.

Don’t worry about getting oil all over the place. These machines are designed to put up with that. More oil is better than not enough. So squirt or drip it all over the machine in places where it needs to go.

Your machine may have a series of holes all over it. Such as along the top of the arm, around the handwheel-area, at the top of the needle-bar area, and so-forth. These are OILING HOLES. Yay! You can pour as much oil down there as you can fit. The oil will seep into places such as pistons, rods, shafts and cams, and get them to wake up and start moving.

A word, though. Be sure that you clean these holes BEFORE you pour oil down them. You don’t want a dead blowfly inside your machine-head oiling hole to be sucked down into the guts of your great-grandmother’s Singer, to be mashed up into bug-goo.

While you oil the machine, periodically operate it. Pump the treadle, press the foot-pedal, push the knee-lever or turn the crank-handle. This will encourage the machine to move, and this, in turn, will spread the oil further around the machine. Keep oiling, pausing, operating, oiling, pausing, operating, over and over and over.

Oh, and remember that red felt I mentioned earlier? The stuff that hides in the bobbin-area?

Drench it in oil.

It’s there to act as a sponge. Squirt a whole eyedropper of oil onto it. This will keep it moist and happy, and will stop the shuttle or the oscilating/rotating hook from scratching against the metal near the felt, and prevent wear, tear and possible damage.

When have you put on enough oil?

You’ll have put on enough oil when the machine runs freely. You should be able to put your foot down, you should be able to press the knee-bar, you should be able to treadle like an Olympic cyclist, you should be able to crank at the fastest possible speed, and the machine offers no resistance at all.

At the same time, the machine should be a lot quieter. It won’t rattle, squeak, jerk, groan or shake the entire table when it runs. If it does, then it needs more oil.

“I’m done…Now what?”

Okay. You’ve finished the entire project! Now wasn’t that fun?

Once the machine is running and you’re hankering to become the next Savile Row master-tailor, you need to keep your machine in good condition.

Basically, this means keeping the dust off it, changing any broken needles, finding accessories, spare parts and other doodads for it, and keeping it oiled.

These old machines drink oil. And it’s important to keep them hydrated. After any significant project (say you just finished making a whole new set of slip-covers for the pillows and cushions of that big, three-seater couch and two armchairs in the living-room), you should oil the machine all over again. Not much, maybe 2-3 drops in each place. When you’ve done that, run the machine at-speed for about 2-3 minutes, to work the oil in, and then put it away.

Given regular maintenance, a vintage or antique sewing-machine will run for another 100 years. These machines were incredibly tough and they were designed to sew together anything short of sheet-metal. They will EASILY chomp through canvas, leather, denim, or even multiple layers of paper (my record is 56 pages, or 28 sheets of paper…I used the machine to sew together it’s own instruction manual!). Being made of steel and wood, there’s almost nothing on these machines that will ever wear out, apart from tires, protective rubber feet, belts and needles. These can generally be easily replaced, either with reproduction parts, original parts, or from materials jerry-rigged for the purpose (I have seen people who re-belted their old treadle or electromechanical machines using nylon rope, to great effect, I might add).

Dos and Don’ts with Old Machines

DO – Take your time with cleaning and oiling it. Nothing was ever gained by trying to rush something, when restoring a vintage or antique *anything*

DO – Use the proper equipment, materials and tools. You won’t get anywhere if you don’t have the right stuff to do it with.

DO – make sure that you cover EVERY part of the machine when you service it.

DO – check for things such as broken and/or bent needles (if such, then remove them), worn belts or tires, missing plates, bobbins etc. Finding reproduction or original parts for your machine will depend on make, model and of course, age. Singer being the most popular brand, it will be easier to find parts for a Singer machine than almost any other).

DO NOT – run the machine with the presser-foot down, and no fabric between the foot and the teeth of the feed-dogs. This will cause the teeth to scrape against the bottom of the presser-foot, and cause unnecessary wear and damage.

DO NOT – force the machine to operate when it won’t do so. Just keep oiling it.

DO NOT – operate an electrically-powered machine UNLESS you are either damn sure that the electrics are intact, or unless you’ve just had the electrics checked by a certified sewing-machine repairman, or qualified electrician. Don’t forget, these machines are about 75% metal. You don’t want to zap yourself making a quilt.

To the person who inspired this posting (I’m going to assume you know who you are), I hope this answers everything you needed to know about restoring your Singer sewing-machine. If it doesn’t, you’re welcome to post a comment or a question and I’ll do my level best to answer it.

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Lots of Little Singer Pieces!

 

No, I didn’t drop my grandmother’s sewing machine down the staircase, resulting in a carnage of wood, metal, rubber and broken tiles. What I did manage to do, was to get my hands on the first group of several attachments which I’m chasing after for my restoration project involving my grandmother’s 1950 Singer 99k sewing machine.

I already have the buttonholer, and now, I managed to get some more extra bits and pieces for it.

A poke around the flea-market today dredged up the following treasures from the sludge of the drudge:

Yes, some of it is hidden by the sticker in the middle (which was original to the booklet), but it reads in its entirety:

“INSTRUCTIONS 
for using and adjusting
Singer BRK electric motors
with knee-control for
family sewing-machines

The Singer Manufacturing Co”

The bit in italics is the part that’s covered by the warning-sticker.

Along with the cutesy little booklet, which is the one which my Singer would’ve come with when it was brand-new, I bought this:

It’s a box of Singer sewing-machine attachments…or some of them. I haven’t managed to find ALL the pieces I need yet, but good things come to those who wait. Inside the box, we have:

I know what about 3/4 of the objects inside that box are. Others, not so sure. For example, we have inside the box, a…

Seam Guide

The seam-guide, held in-place by it’s accompanying nut (which simply screws into the appropriate hole in the machine-base), is used to guide two pieces of fabric under the presser-foot during sewing and to make sure that the size of the seam is consistent throughout the piece. This is an older seam-guide and sewing-machine, so it doesn’t come with measurement-markings. If you wanted that, you’d need to use your measuring-tape as well.

Hemmer Foot

The hemmer-foot is used to create a hem along the edge of raw fabric (to prevent fraying). You feed the fabric through the machine and through the hemmer. As the fabric passes through, the curved bit at the top flips the fabric over to create a neat, even fold which is then stitched into a nice, crisp hem.

Adjustable Hemmer

This is an adjustable hemmer. It’s much like the one above…it does the same thing, it makes hems. But this one has a slide and gauge on it that allows you to make hems of different widths, according to your taste. Anywhere from a full inch, all the way down to 1/16 inch.

Binder Foot

The binder or binding foot does…just what it says it does. It binds. It’s handy for stuff like attaching lace, ribbons and other decorative things to the edges of clothing.

Screwdriver

Isn’t this cute!? It’s a teensy-weensy-widdle-bitty screwdriver! And, it’s a Singer-brand screwdriver, too! It’s probably got a head of 2mm or something. Exactly WHAT one would use this for on a sewing machine…I’ve no idea…but it sure is cute. None of the screws on the Singer are this tiny, but I suppose I’ll hold onto it for the sake of completeness. And I can let the mice borrow it when they need it.

Finally, there are two mystery-feet inside the box. I haven’t figured out what they do or what they are.

They hold SIMANCO part-numbers 86177, and 85954. I’ve tried looking them up, but I can’t find any lists of serial-numbers that correspond.

If anyone knows, tell me!

In the meantime, my quest to complete the Singer continues.

In an unrelated note, I found an antique handcrank sewing-machine at the flea-market today. I had no intention of buying it, for a number of reasons (completenes, quality, manufacture, the list goes on), but I reckoned it looked kinda cool. So I took a couple of photos of it:

It came with it’s original coffin-style case and was dated to ca. 1900, made in Germany. Other than that…the seller had no idea.

Hand-crank machines such as this one were very common. Big companies like Singer were still making them, well into the 1940s and 50s when electronic machines had already taken over. I suppose they had an advantage during the War, when electrical supply was unreliable at best…

I’m still on the hunt for a Singer oil-can and more and more feet and fiddly bits. Here’s a group-shot of everything I’ve found so far:

The red box contains the buttonholer. The green box contains the feet and attachments. The manual balancing on top is how to install and/or remove the machine-motor that’s hidden around the back of the machine. The machine itself is a 1950 Singer 99k knee-lever machine.

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Drifting over the Deep: The Mystery of the Mary Celeste

 

The Mary Celeste is one of the most famous ships in all history. It’s up there with the Titanic, the Lusitania, the Normandie and the Andrea Doria. It’s claim to fame was the disappearance of all its passengers and crew during a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1872.

How, and why the crew and passengers deserted the ship, never to be seen again, has been a mystery for over a century, and to this date, nobody knows the real reason, although there have been several theories, some more plausible than others. But what really happened onboard the ship?

The story of the Mary Celeste is so famous that there are dozens of conflicting accounts about what is real, and what isn’t. So…what is real, and what isn’t?

What Was the Mary Celeste?

The Mary Celeste was a sailing ship. To be precise, she was a square-rigged brigantine, a medium-sized ocean-going ship with two masts. She plied the oceans of the world as a cargo-vessel, transporting goods across the Atlantic Ocean.

She was built in the early 1860s before and during the American Civil War, and was originally a Canadian ship named the Amazon. She ran aground in 1867, off the coast of Nova Scotia. She was floated, repaired, and then sold to the United States. The ship was restored, rebuilt and modified, and in 1872, it became a merchant-ship transporting cargo across the Atlantic…the Mary Celeste.

The Last Voyage

On the 3rd of November, 1872, the Mary Celeste’s new captain, Benjamin Spooner Briggs, wrote a letter which he addressed to his mother. In it, he wrote, in part:

“My Dear Mother:

It’s been a long time since I have written you a letter and I should like to give you a real interesting one but I hardly know what to say except that I am well and the rest of us ditto, It is such a long time since I composed other than business epistles.

It seems to me to have been a great while since I left home, but it is only over two weeks but in that time my mind has been filled with business cares and I am again launched away into the busy whirl of business life from which I have so long been laid aside. For a few days it was tedious, perplexing, and very tiresome but now I have got fairly settled down to it and it sets lightly and seems to run more smoothly and my appetite keeps good and I hope I shan’t lose any flesh. It seems real homelike since Sarah and Sophia got here, and we enjoy our little quarters…”

“Sarah” and “Sophia” are Sarah and Sophia Briggs, the captain’s wife, and two-year-old daughter, who accompanied him on the voyage.

“…We seem to have a very good mate and steward and I hope I shall have a pleasant voyage. We both have missed Arthur and I believe we should have sent for him if I could have thought of a good place to stow him away. Sophia calls for him occasionally and wants to see him in the Album which by the way is a favorite book of hers.

She knows your picture in both albums and points and says Gamma Bis, She seems real smart, has gotten over her bad cold she had when she came and has a first rate appetite for hash and bread and butter. I think the voyage will do her lots of good. We enjoy our melodeon and have some good sings. I was in hopes that Oli might get in before I left but I’m afraid not now.

We finished loading last night and shall leave on Tuesday morning if we don’t get off tomorrow night, the Lord willing. Our vessel is in beautiful trim and I hope we shal have a fine passage but I have never been in her before and cant say how she’ll sail. Shall want to write us in about 20 days to Genoa, care of Am. Consul and about 20 days after to Messina care of Am. Consul who will forward it to us if we don’t go there…

…Hoping to be with you in the spring with much love

I am Yours affectionately
Benj”

“Arthur” is Arthur Briggs, the captain’s other child, his seven-year-old son (who at the time, was living with his grandmother, the captain’s mother, the ‘Gamma Bis’ mentioned in the letter).

At this time, the ship was docked in New York Harbor.

On the evening of the 4th of November, 1872, Captain Briggs and his wife, Sarah, have dinner with Captain David Reed Morehouse, and Mrs. Morehouse. The two captains have been friends for years, and coincidentally, are both sailing across the Atlantic to Europe, but on different ships, a few days apart.

It is the 5th of November, 1872. The Mary Celeste takes on its cargo for the voyage: 1,704 barrels of highly flammable industrial-grade alcohol. It is to be transported to Italy where it will be used in the manufacture of wine. It also finishes its provisioning for the crossing. It carries enough food for ten people for six months at sea. The ship is seaworthy and ready to go.

On the 5th of November, 1872, the Mary Celeste says farewell to civilisation. It weighs anchor, sets its sails and leaves Staten Island, New York, for the Atlantic Ocean.

On board are six sailors, all of them experienced. All of them level-headed, reasonable men, English-speaking and religious. Providing their meals is the ship’s cook. Their commanding officer is the captain, Benjamin Briggs, who has had several years experience at sea. Joining him on his voyage across the sea to Italy is his wife, Sarah Briggs. With her, she brings their two-year-old daughter, Sophia. Sarah is not afraid, and is not worried about the safety of her daughter. She is an experienced sailor, and is confident that this will just be another of several voyages that she has made with her husband’s company. She’s already been on at least four voyages with her husband before, and is a hardy woman, used to life at sea. Her husband has been a maritime captain for the past ten years. What could possibly go wrong?

The Mary Celeste leaves the safety of the New England shore and sets out into the Atlantic. It charts a course East-by-South, which would take it into the mid-Atlantic, and then straight across, past the Rock of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean Sea.

For three weeks, the voyage is uneventful. The weather was unremarkable and there were no storms or especially strong winds. Onboard the Mary Celeste, everything is calm and normal. The crew man the ship, and Mrs. Briggs tends to her husband and daughter. On the 25th of November, Captain Briggs notes in his logbook that they have sighted the island of Santa Maria (“Saint Mary”), part of the collection of islands known as the Azores…and then…

Nothing.

As far as the world is concerned, the crew and passengers of the Mary Celeste abandoned their ship on, or shortly after that date, for reasons unknown. For the next nine days, the ship wandered the ocean, in a vaguely eastern course. With no-one at the helm to guide the ship, it started a northward tack that it never pulled away from, and just kept sailing…

Onboard the ship, in detail, were… 

The Captain. Benjamin Briggs. An experienced sailor of several years experience. He is 37 years old.

Sarah Elizabeth Briggs. The captain’s wife. She is 31 years old. They have been happily married for ten years and have two children. A boy, Arthur, aged seven (then living with his grandmother, the captain’s mother back in Massachusetts, U.S.A.), and a girl…

Sophia Matilda Briggs. The captain’s youngest child, and daughter. She is two years old. She is being brought with her mother on this voyage across the Atlantic.

Albert Richardson. First Mate. Twenty-eight years of age, and a capable and trustworthy seaman.

Andrew Gilling. Second Mate. A Danish man of 25.

Ship’s Cook and Captain’s Steward: Edward William Head. 23 years old. Not part of the deck-crew, his job is to provide good, wholesome food for the captain, his family, and for the crew of six, strong young men whose job it is to sail the ship safely across the Atlantic Ocean. The remaining crew are four German sailors:

Volkert Lorenson (29), Boy Lorenson (23), Arian Martens (35), and Gottlieb Godenschall (23).

Discovery of the Ship

As if by fate, the ship that stumbled across the Mary Celeste was the cargo-ship Dei Gratia, loaded with petroleum and bound for Europe. It had left New York on the 15th of November, sailing East-by-North. It too, had had a rather unremarkable, and ordinary voyage. It was on a southerly tack that the ship’s helmsman, John Johnson, noticed something out of the ordinary.

Let’s be honest. Standing in front of a ship’s wheel for hours and hours and hours on end…is…boring.

So what would you do?

You’d find ways to distract yourself from your boredom.

For a helmsman at sea, the best way to distract yourself was to go sightseeing.

Johnson, probably bored with standing at the ship’s wheel for ages, popped out his telescope and had a peek around the ship. Eventually, his peekings glanced in a southerly direction, off the starboard side of the ship. It was at this point that he noticed a ship several miles away. Even at that distance, he could guess that something was wrong. It was not so much ‘sailing’ as it was just ‘floating’. It sloshed around and only seemed to be making a show of keeping to some sort of course. It wasn’t sailing, it was yawing. ‘Yawing’ is when a ship’s bow swings from side to side as it moves forwards. No ship with someone in control of it would ever do that, since the bow would always be pointed straight ahead. Johnson knew at once that something was up, and called Second Mate, John Wright to have a look.

Wright agreed that the ship was acting weird, and together, they alerted the captain.

The captain ordered the ship turned southwards so that it would meet up with the phantom vessel. When they were within shouting distance, the captain took out his telescope to have another look. He recognised the ship at once as the Mary Celeste.

How could he do that? Not just by the name painted on the bow, but because he’d actually seen the ship at anchor in New York! The captain was David R. Morehouse, the man who had dined with Captain Briggs on the night before the Mary Celeste’s departure.

To say that Capt. Morehouse was surprised was to put it lightly. The Mary Celeste had a ten day head-start on its voyage! It should already be docked at the Italian city of Genoa by now! …Instead, it was floating around like a tin cup in the middle of the ocean…

As they drew even closer, they noticed nobody in the rigging…on deck…and nobody manning the ship’s wheel. By now seriously perplexed, Captain Morehouse ordered First Mate, Oliver Deveau overboard. Deveau lowered one of the Dei Gratia’s lifeboats and rowed across to the Mary Celeste. He made his boat fast against the side of the ship and climbed aboard.

He called out for the captain, his wife, and the crew…but nobody answered. With the Dei Gratia sailing alongside, Deveau began making an examination of the ship.

First, you have to understand that the Mary Celeste is not an isolated incident. Ships were found abandoned in the middle of the ocean on a regular basis. Deveau’s examination of the ship was to determine whether or not it was seaworthy enough to sail it back to land. If he could, then he and the rest of the Dei Gratia’s crew would get salvage-money! By law, any persons who found an abandoned ship at sea in usable condition, and returned it to land, was entitled to salvage-payment. Salvage-payment being a paid out as a cut of the ship’s insurance-claim.

But as Deveau explored the ship, he found more and more things curiously wrong. He, and other subsequent investigators noted that…

– The ship’s one lifeboat was missing, its davits empty.
– Two of the ship’s three hatch-covers were open to the sea.
– The hatch to the hold was sealed and shut.
– The ship’s cargo, highly flammable alcohol, was tied down and secure and undamaged.
– Nine of the 1,704 barrels had sprung leaks. Alcohol had dribbled out of them.
– Two of the ship’s three emergency water-pumps were out-of-action.
– The ship’s papers, apart from the logbook, were missing.
– The ship’s chronometer (sea-clock used for navigation) was also missing.
– The ship’s sextant (another navigational-aid) was also missing.
– The ship’s stove in the galley (kitchen) had been shifted from its foundations.
– There was a 3ft-depth of water in the ship’s bilge.
– Most, if not all, of the crew and passengers’ personal possessions had been left behind.
– The glass shield over the ship’s compass was smashed to pieces.
– The ship flew no distress-flags of any kind.
– The ship carried no alcohol at all (Capt. Briggs was a teetotaler), except for its cargo.
– The ship’s provisions of water, food and essential supplies were undamaged.
– A single length of rope trailed off the ship into the water.

Captain Morehouse did not understand at all. He knew Captain Briggs well. He had been his personal friend for years. They’d eaten dinner together just a few weeks before! He knew Briggs to be a steadfast, intelligent man of sound mind. Religious and a teetotaler. And yet, he, his wife, his child and all of their crew had left the ship, gotten into the lifeboat and just gone!

Why?

The ship was in no danger of sinking. The ship had not had a fire onboard. The ship’s cargo was not in any immediate danger. There was six months’ worth of food, fresh water and other provisions stored safely away below deck. It was all unspoiled and perfectly good for eating. What would make a seasoned seaman, an experienced set of crew and a hardy and trusting wife leave a perfectly good ship and trust their lives to a small, wooden, six-oared lifeboat?

Neither Captain Morehouse, nor any of his crew could figure out why.

After a thorough examination of the ship, First Mate Oliver Deveau determined that…apart from the water sloshing around in the bottom of the ship, which could easily be pumped out…the vessel was in no immediate danger of sinking, fire, breaking up, or any other potential emergency.

Captain Morehouse decided to claim salvage rights on the ship. He ordered a skeleton crew aboard the Mary Celeste, and escorted the mystery ship to the Mediterranean Sea.

On the 13th of December, 1872, the Mary Celeste and the Dei Gratia arrived at Gibraltar. At once, an inquiry was held into the condition of the ship, its cargo, its insurance, and of course…the mystery surrounding its lack of crew and passengers.

The Admiralty Court in Gibraltar questioned, examined, cross-examined and interrogated every witness they could find. This included Captain Morehouse, his officers, and James Winchester, principal owner of the ship (of which the late Capt. Briggs was a partner).

Hundreds of questions were asked about the captain, the crew, the crew of the salvaging vessel, the type and condition of the cargo, conditions onboard the ship, and what might possibly have caused an experienced captain, his family and crew, to abandon a perfectly sound vessel.

Theories of the Mary Celeste

There are as many theories about what happened to the passengers and crew of the Mary Celeste as there are hairs on your head (or grains of sand on the beach, if you happen to be bald).

I won’t list them all here, but they ranged from the possible, the plausible, to the outright ludicrous. Everything from krakens (giant, squid-like sea-monsters), to the Bermuda Triangle, to the Black Death and pirates.

What REALLY happened will of course, never be known. All we can surmise is what we can gleam from the evidence. But what were some of the theories that were put forward, both at the time, and later on?

Piracy

An obvious theory. Pirates attacked the ship. They kidnapped and/or killed everyone onboard, and then sailed off.

But why did they take the ship’s chronometer? It was a valuable scientific instrument. Maybe they hoped to sell it. But why the sextant? Surely they had their own. And what about all the charts, maps and documents?

On top of this, there was no violence seen onboard. No blood, no gunshots, no damage to the ship other than what might be caused by the sea. Under the captain’s bed, his sword remained sheathed and unused. Surely if the ship was attacked, he would’ve used it to defend his family and men?

Any valuables that the ship might have held were untouched. Jewellery, men’s personal effects such as their pipes, clothing, pocketwatches, rings, money…were all left as they were. In the captain’s cabin, Mrs. Brigg’s sewing-machine, in the 1870s, a valuable piece of household equipment, sat untouched. A dress that she was making for her daughter was still laid on it, the thread unbroken.

Sea Monsters!

Another popular one. This theory supposes that a giant squid, octopus, kraken or other equally horrific and ugly sea-creature attacked the ship and snatched off all its crew and passengers, which it then either drowned or ate.

Fascinating…but unfounded. If it was a sea-monster…why was the ship’s lifeboat missing? Why was the ship’s master timekeeper, it’s chronometer, gone? Why was half the captain’s paperwork missing from his desk? And the sextant? A sea-monster would have no need for such things.

Mutiny and Drunkeness

Perhaps the crew mutinied against the captain and his family, killing them, dumping them overboard and then sailing off in the lifeboat?

But then why didn’t they take clothes? And food? Money?

On top of that, the captain was sailing with his wife and young child. He wouldn’t have just Shanghaiied a bunch of men, chucked them onboard ship and sailed off across the ocean. Indeed, the crew were carefully chosen for their temperaments, skills and experience. Furthermore, Capt. Briggs was a teetotaler. There was not a drop of alcohol aboard his ship, apart from the barrels in the hold. And the alcohol there was of an industrial quality, quite unfit for regular consumption. Although it’s not mentioned anywhere what it was, it’s likely that it was methanol, a highly concentrated alcohol that would’ve been toxic to humans.

The Bermuda Triangle!

Absolute rot.

The Bermuda Triangle is located off the south coast of North America, several hundreds, thousands of miles, from the course and position of the Mary Celeste.

Seaquake!

One of the more plausible theories, although not one given very much serious consideration back in the 1870s, was that of a seaquake.

A seaquake is like an earthquake. Except…it…happens at sea. This theory supposed that the ship sailed over a seismically active area of the sea. Without warning, the tectonic plates shifted. The resulting abrasion sent off shockwaves through the water, which threw the ship around. Fearing for their lives, the passengers and crew dropped everything, boarded the lifeboat and sailed off!

The Azores, the last recorded sighting of land in the ship’s log on the 25th of November, is a seismically unstable part of the ocean. The Azores themselves were formed of volcanos and earthquakes. Such a jolt might explain why the ship’s stove, a solid iron structure bound to weigh several dozen pounds, was thrown off its mountings.

But ships are designed to cope with stuff like this. And even if the ship had sprung a leak, it had three pumps to drive the water out! Abandoning ship was done only as an absolute last resort. A captain such as Briggs would have to have had a truly stupendous reason for abandoning ship. And his vessel being rocked around  a bit by the waves was not deemed sufficiently life-threatening to allow this to happen.

Fume Explosion

The theory given the most credence by the evidence, apart from the possible seaquake one, is that of an alcoholic explosion.

This theory supposed the following:

Faulty barrels stored within the ship’s hold sprang a leak. When the ship was discovered, nine barrels of the 1,704 were found to be leaking or empty.

The alcohol within the barrels, no-longer contained, spread out across the floor of the hold, which was tightly sealed to prevent damage from water. Fumes from the alcohol seeped throughout the ship. This possibly caused a panic. Capt. Briggs was not used to transporting such dangerous substances such as alcohol…in fact, this was the first time he’d done so!

To prevent a potential explosion, from the alcohol-fumes coming in contact with a spark or naked flame, or possibly, because of a naked flame igniting the fumes, fear of, or the result of an explosion blew off two of the hatch-covers.

Fearing for their lives and the safety of the ship, the captain, crew and the captain’s family lowered the ship’s lifeboat into the water. There might be a fire onboard caused by the deadly alcohol fumes. The captain took with him what he judged to be the most important documents, along with the ship’s marine-clock. In the panic, he forgot the logbook.

The boat was secured to the side of the ship with a rope. Once the fumes had dissipated and the danger had passed, the decision would be made to pull on the line and draw the boat back to the ship and resume their journey.

During the wait, the rope securing the boat to the ship snapped or came undone, possibly due to a change in the wind, or a storm. The ship, being under sail, would be moving too fast for the occupants of the boat to catch up with it using the lifeboat’s oars. The passengers and crew of the Mary Celeste would’ve drifted rapidly out of sight of the ship, and would’ve either been wrecked near the Azores, drowned in the Atlantic, or died of starvation and dehydration in the packed lifeboat.

This engraving of the Mary Celeste, made according to witness testimonies, shows how the ship’s sails were set when the vessel was found adrift. In their haste to abandon ship, for fear of a fume-explosion, not all the sails were trimmed. This left the ship with enough surface-area to pick up significant amounts of speed if the strength of the wind increased, causing the single lifeline that held the lifeboat to the ship to snap under the strain, setting the ship’s passengers and crew adrift in the open ocean.

The Inquiry into the Mary Celeste

Shortly after the two ships, the salvager and the salvaged, reached Gibraltar, an inquiry into the Mary Celeste disaster was held at the Admiralty Court by the British Royal Navy. Witnesses, experts, sailors, friends, business-partners and acquaintances were all questioned and interrogated. It was a slow, frustrating process.

Not least of all because of a man who’s name was Flood.

Frederick Solly-Flood, to be precise.

Frederick Solly-Flood was the Attorney-General of Gibraltar at the time.

During the inquiry, the judge listened acutely to everything that was told, and praised the crew of the Dei Gratia for their attention to detail, their bravery and skill in rescuing the ship (if not it’s crew and passengers), and bringing it safely back to land.

Frederick Flood, however, had his own agenda.

Flood was hell-bent on proving that the passengers and crew of the Mary Celeste had all met with some horrible, violent, bloody end. It was he who first suggested the theory of a drunken mutiny. He even rowed out to the ship to find evidence!

He found the broken, leaking barrels, the alcohol, the captain’s sword and cut-marks along the railings. He proposed the theory that the crew got at the alcohol, drank themselves blind, murdered the captain, his wife, his daughter, his first mate, chucked them all overboard, then got into the lifeboat and rowed…away…from a perfectly good ship…

…Yeah it kinda…fell to pieces in court.

Indeed, not a single piece of ‘evidence’ that Flood submitted was found to be what it was! The barrels were empty because they were leaking (they’d been built of red oak, a porous wood which would’ve explained the empty barrels). The damage to the railings? Ropes rubbing across the wood.

The blood on the captain’s sword?

It wasn’t blood. It wasn’t even the captain’s sword…that sword was stored under his bed! The sword that Flood found was an old, rusty knife lying on the deck. Scientists examined the blade and determined that the red substance on it was nothing but rust and old paint. It was probably used to lever open paint-cans and stir coagulated paint around!

Flood dreamed up even more insane theories. He suggested that Capt. Briggs had drawn Capt. Morehouse into an insurance fraud of some sort and that they were both in this together. Perhaps Briggs tricked his family and crew off the ship, hid somewhere on an island, while Morehouse found the abandoned ship, towed it away, took all the money, and then when the storms had died down, gave half of it to Briggs?

The idea was so preposterous that it was considered insulting and was denied by Capt. Morehouse and his officers.

Yet another madcap idea Flood proposed to the court was that it had been the crew of the Dei Gratia themselves, who had dispatched the crew of the Mary Celeste, along with the three members of the Briggs family…another theory that fell on deaf ears!

But the damage was done!

Crime-fever swept around the world! The idea that a madman had killed the entire ship’s company and then stole away in the ship’s one boat, captured the imagination of thousands, millions of people!

The alcohol-fumes explosion theory, which was put forward at the inquiry by none other than the Mary Celeste’s owner and principal shareholder, James Winchester, was disregarded as fanciful rot! Flood’s ruthless questioning, cross-questioning and wild accusations had painted a red mark over the memory of the Mary Celeste.

After the Inquiry

In the end, Capt. Morehouse did get…some…of the salvage-money that he hoped to receive from returning his late friend’s ship safely to land, but he never got all of it. In total, he received about 1,700 pounds sterling. As for the Mary Celeste? She was deemed to be a cursed ship. She passed from owner to owner to owner, before finally being burned and wrecked on the coast of Haiti in 1885…this time, in a real insurance fraud!

The Mary Celeste was not an isolated incident. Back then, before the days of the internet, cellphones and wireless radio, ships regularly went missing out at sea for various reasons, and were never seen from again, or were found, abandoned. But what made this ship so famous?

In a word, the mystery. WHY did the crew, the captain and his family flee the vessel in such haste, entrusting their lives to a tiny lifeboat? What happened to them? Where did they end up? How did they die? Why did they do what they did, if the ship was in no danger?

The stories of the ship that leaked out of Gibraltar and which were telegraphed around the world as fast as cables could send them, and which were splashed across the newspapers of the day, made the ship famous. And not least of all because of a story that appeared in a literary magazine of the age.

In 1884, a short story appeared in the Cornhill Magazine.

The Cornhill was not some soppy farthing-rag that tittery housewives bought and which grandmothers used to line bird-cages with. It was a famous and well-respected literary journal. Some of the biggest names in 19th century literature started off writing to this magazine. Names like…Charlotte Bronte…Thomas Hardy…George Eliot!…Alfred Lord Tennyson!

In 1884, a short story appeared in the Cornhill Magazine. It was unsigned and submitted anonymously to the magazine, but was published nonetheless. It was given the rather flashy title of “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement“, supposedly, a true story about a ship found abandoned at sea. The ship was called the “Marie Celeste“, and it had been found floating around in the middle of the ocean with nobody onboard. Hot food was still on the table in the galley. Tea was still steaming in the teacups. The lifeboat was lashed to the deckhouse roof. A bottle of machine-oil was left balancing on a sewing-machine in the captain’s cabin. But there was nobody there!

Sound familiar?

The story was supposed to be a fictional account of something that never really happened. It was inspired by, but was not written about, the mystery of the Mary Celeste. How do we know this? Because the story’s author was a rather famous person, you know…

At the time of writing it and submitting it to the Cornhill Magazine, the author was a struggling Scottish physician. A general practitioner of the medical sciences, who had no patients, little money, a lot of time and who was incredibly, incredibly bored.

If you’d gone to the doctor’s surgery, the plaque you might’ve seen nailed on the front door probably read something like this:

“Dr. A. C. Doyle. Consultant Physician”

It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the inventor of the famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, who wrote that story! Perhaps foreshadowing his great success as a mystery writer, Doyle’s ghost-ship story was so incredible that people thought it was real! It wasn’t, of course, but it was that story which captured the world’s imagination, and which kept the mystery of the Mary Celeste alive to this day.

Whatever happened to Capt. Briggs, his crew, the ship’s cook, Mrs. Briggs, and little Sophia Briggs?

Nobody will ever know.

What caused them to abandon a perfectly good ship and risk their lives in an open rowboat in the middle of the ocean?

Nobody will ever know.

There has been all kinds of conjecture about the fate of the Mary Celeste’s passengers and crew, but just like the colour of the Queen’s underpants, it’s something that we’ll never know.