One of our WetDawg.com readers wants to know if Clive Cussler found the "ghost ship" Mary Celeste, believed to be sunk somewhere off an island in the Caribbean.

Yes, the famous author and adventurer has added another historic shipwreck to his long list of discoveries. Cussler, sailing under the banner of the National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA), found the remains of the small brigantine in shallow water, south of Gonave Island on the west coast of Haiti.

Accompanied by Canadians Alan Gardner and John Davis, Cussler searched for more than a week before discovering the skeletal remains of the Mary Celeste. Part of the lower hull, including chains, copper sheathing and ballast stones were half buried in the coral reef and ridges of sand. Cussler says the ship appeared to have cut a swath in the coral before going aground. Most of the wood from the upper deck and hull was salvaged by natives who live in shanties along the shore. Timbers, ballast stones and artifacts salvaged from the site were sent to Nova Scotia to see if they fit the profile of those found on small brigantines in the late 1800s. Cussler's research reveals this area as the one where the ship's owners chose to run the vessel aground in an attempt to collect its insurance. The swindlers were caught and prosecuted, but the ship was too damaged to salvage.

To this day, the ghost ship Mary Celeste remains a strange, unsolved maritime mystery. On December 4, 1872, the captain and crew of the British brigantine Dei Gratia sighted a derelict ship drifting aimlessly in the Atlantic between the Azores and the coast of Portugal. The Mary Celeste, her lifeboat gone and cargo intact, was an abandoned ghost ship that offered no solutions to the fate of the 10 people who had been aboard when the brig left New York on November 7. Neither the lifeboat nor any survivors or clues were ever found.

The Dei Gratia towed the derelict to Gibraltar, where an official inquiry by a Vice-Admiral Court was unable to solve the mystery and declared the vessel abandoned. The ship was eventually put up for auction. Its new owners, after heavily insuring the brig, sank it off Haiti, where Cussler discovered it more than 125 years later. The Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company--the only surviving company to underwrite a portion of the insurance on the Mary Celeste at the time of her sailing--has a model of the ship in its New York office.

For a 16-page booklet all about this legend of the sea, send a SASE and $2 to Ellsworth Boyd, 1120 Bernoudy Rd., White Hall, MD 21161.

Editor's Note: Ellsworth Boyd has been writing about shipwrecks for more than 20 years. He wrote many columns for Skin Diver Magazine, which went out of publication last December after being published for 51 years. Ellsworth has hundreds of Skin Diver Magazines (now collectors' items) for sale at reasonable prices. They begin in the 1950s and go through the 1980s. For a list, with prices, send him an email.