On 5th December 1872, Captain David Reed Morehouse sighted the Mary Celeste, an American half-brig carrying 1,700 barrels of commercial alcohol, apparently calling for help. The fluttering he took to be a distress signal was a ripped, tattered sail; the wheel was unmanned; the master, Captain Briggs, his wife, their two-year-old daughter and the entire crew had disappeared.Frederick Solly Flood, Attorney General of Gibraltar, can see only one possible cause -- mutiny and murder. In a tense courtroom, he is determined to prove a dreadful crime has been committed; turning a civil inquiry into a criminal prosecution and allowing stains on the deck -- which he knows to be rust -- to be passed off as blood. Two compelling narratives are interwoven: as Flood forces the evidence and badgers the witnesses, the voyage itself is brought vividly back to life. But there remains one simple, known fact. Its repercussions have been overlooked by history, but they at last point to the true fate of those aboard the Mary Celeste....