Benjamin Spooner Briggs (April 24, 1835 – probably November 1872) was an experienced United States seaman and master mariner. He is famous today for being the Captain of the merchant ship Mary Celeste when she was discovered unmanned and drifting in the Atlantic Ocean near the Straits of Gibraltar, on December 4, 1872. The lifeboat was missing, yet the Mary Celeste herself was still under sail and there were signs of a sudden and unexplained abandonment.