Description
The first edition of Mary Celeste: The Odyssey of an Abandoned Ship by Charles Edey Fay, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, who encouraged the publication of this book.
Octavo, xx, [8], 70pp, [map]. Blue cloth, title stamped in gilt. No additional printings noted. Faint offsetting to endpapers, internally clean. Complete with engraved frontispiece plate, 10 additional photographic plates, and a fold-out map of the route of the Mary Celeste.
Includes a facsimile letter from President Roosevelt, dated 1940, encouraging the author to publish this work. This work was not issued with a dust jacket.
This copy is signed by the author on the title page. Includes a TLS from Grace Tully, Private Secretary to President Roosevelt, dated 1942, on White House stationery, thanking the recipient for this letter. This copy is signed on the front free endpaper by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only known copy signed by him.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lifelong, scholarly interest in naval history. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1913-1920), he immersed himself in fleet operations, ship design, and naval administration, touring bases, and advocating for naval preparedness. He collected naval art, prints, and ship models, wrote on naval subjects, and amassed a library focused on sea power, strategy, and classic maritime campaigns. He took special interest in the mystery of the “Mary Celeste,” an American brigantine which was found adrift and unmanned in the Atlantic on 4 December 1872. Departing New York on 7 November 1872, bound for Genoa with a cargo of denatured alcohol, she was discovered in seaworthy condition by the Dei Gratia about 600 nautical miles west of Portugal, fully rigged, lightly damaged, well-provisioned, and with the lifeboat missing. The crew of ten – including Captain Benjamin Spooner Briggs, his wife, their young daughter, and seven sailors – was never found, and no conclusive explanation emerged despite inquiries in Gibraltar and persistent speculation.
