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Podcast Transcript
On May 19, 1884, a small yacht containing four men set sail from England to Australia.
On July 5th, the ship was hit by a massive wave and capsized.
The crew escaped the shipwreck on a lifeboat, but was left in a horrible situation. They were hundreds of miles from land, with no fresh water, and a single pound of turnips for food.
Three weeks later, on July 25, food was out, and the men were still adrift, and the sailors made the decision to kill and eat one of their own.
Learn more about the sinking of the Mignonette and the legal ethics of cannibalism on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Before getting into the ethics of cannibalism and English law, and I know that phrase sounds kind of weird, I first need to describe the circumstances surrounding the sinking of the Mignonette and the details of this particular case.
The Mignonette was a yacht built in 1883 in England.
The boat was designed for leisure activities and was built for coastal voyages rather than open-sea sailing.
That same year, the ship was purchased by an Australian lawyer named Jack Want.
Obviously, the boat being in Britain would not work, so he planned to have the boat sailed to Australia.
After waiting a year to assemble a crew that could take the ship to Australia, the boat was finally ready to set sail, departing from Southampton for Sydney on May 19, 1884.
The ship had a crew of four: Captain Tom Dudley, Edwin Stephens, Edmund Brooks, and Richard Parker.
At seventeen, Parker was the youngest of the crew and was hired as the Cabin Boy.
On July 5th, the ship was sailing northwest of the Cape of Good Hope, near the southernmost tip of Africa. It was a smooth night, and so Captain Dudley opted to slow the ship down to allow the crew to sleep.
As soon as the ship slowed and the crew went below deck, a massive wave hit the ship, washing away part of the ship’s deck.
Realizing the ship was unsalvageable, Dudley ordered the crew to their one lifeboat.
The Mignonette sank just five minutes after being struck.
The crew made it out with vital navigational instruments and two tins holding one pound of turnips.
The crew was stuck in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 700 miles away from the nearest land, and to make matters worse, that first night, they were actively fighting sharks.
It took the crew two days to start eating the turnips, consuming one can among the four of them over the next two days.
On July 9th, they were able to drag a turtle aboard the lifeboat, keeping them fed, along with the second tin of turnips, until roughly July 15th or 17th.
As the crew had no water and were unable to drink the blood of the turtle due to it being contaminated with seawater, they were forced to drink their own urine for survival.
Bear Grylls would have been proud.
On July 20th, Parker, the young Cabin Boy, fell ill from drinking seawater.
The first suggestions of cannibalism were discussed on either the 16th or 17th of July.
They discussed drawing lots to determine who would be eaten to keep the others alive, but Brooks refused to participate.
The discussion became more intense on the 21st, but no actions were taken.
On the 23rd or 24th, it is suspected that Parker had fallen into a coma, and Captain Dudley again raised the idea of cannibalism.
That night, Dudley reminded Stephens that he had a wife and family back at home.
The following morning, the two had a plan and opted to kill the young cabin boy Richard Parker..
Parker, in a coma, had not yet died, and therefore would provide blood to drink.
It is unclear whether Brooks was approving of this choice or not, yet Dudley claims he had accepted their next action.
Dudley said a prayer over Parker’s body as Stephens held the boy’s legs down. Dudley then pushed his blade into the boy’s neck, killing him.
It is believed that Dudley and Brooks consumed the most, whereas Stephens ate very little comparatively, and Dudley later described themselves as “mad wolves.”
The crew was rescued just four days after turning to cannibalism on July 29th, 1884.
A German ship named the Montezuma picked the men up and brought them back to England.
Upon returning, the men were subjected to the Merchant Shipping Acts, which required them to make statements about their travels following losses at sea.
The men were honest in describing the events that happened believing that the “Custom of the Sea” would protect them from any punishment for their actions.
Here, I need to explain what the “Custom of the Sea” is. It differs from Maritime Law in that it is unofficial and simply the tradition of sailors.
The Custom of the Sea specifically deals with the question of cannibalism and can essentially be summarized as follows: if there is not enough food for survivors of a maritime disaster, like a shipwreck, then survivors of that disaster can eat the corpses.
Furthermore, it is also agreed that if no bodies are available, drawing lots can be used to decide who will make the sacrifice for food.
Therefore, as long as the drawing lots was fair, it was a widely accepted method for survival among sailors and the general public.
This was something that was never written down, spoken in hushed tones among sailors, and was almost never something anyone had to worry about.
When Dudley was describing the killing of Parker, he was overheard by a police officer named James Laverty.
Laverty then went to question Dudley himself and took the knife used to kill Parker into custody.
The men were then detained as Laverty received a warrant to arrest the three survivors for murder.
A few days later, the case was passed to the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt. He opted to prosecute the case, if for no other reason than to have an actual case on the books that could act as precedent in future cases, because in past cases, it never went to trial, or the trial didn’t take place in England.
The initial public reaction supported the defendants. Even the brother Richard Parker, the boy who was killed, sided with the three survivors.
This caused the case to be suspended to a later time and place, and the three sailors were granted bail until their new trial date, scheduled for September 18th.
Harcourt was disgusted by the public’s support of the sailors and was determined to get a conviction.
This, however, was a difficult proposition.
To get a conviction, you need evidence.
The only people present to witness the crime had the right to remain silent because they were the ones on trial. Therefore, if they chose to remain silent during the trial, there would be very little evidence to support a conviction.
Additionally, to convict all three, he would need all three to confess to the murder and cannibalism.
This is because a confession would only be admissible against the person making the confession and would not be admissible against any of the other sailors.
To circumvent this, it was recommended that Edmund Brooks be released so that he could serve as a witness and, therefore, be called by the prosecution to testify.
By doing this, it would not be a confession, but rather eyewitness testimony, and would therefore be admissible against Dudley and Stephens.
The case became known as R v Dudley and Stephens.
Before proceeding to the trial, I should provide some background on previous cases and rulings similar to R v Dudley and Stephens.
While there are cases in other countries, for the purpose of this episode, I will focus on British Law because it was the legal precedent relevant to this case.
One such case was used by the defense.
Known as the Saint Christopher Case, a group of Englishmen in the Caribbean went missing at sea for 17 days. During this, they drew lots and killed a man to feed the starving crew. They were put on trial and pardoned by the judge, as it was viewed as a necessity. The problem was that no verdict was ever recorded.
In 1874, another similar case occurred when the cargo ship Euxine was shipwrecked. The second mate, James Archer, and seven other survivors were stranded on a lifeboat.
While on the lifeboat for 22 days, two died, one of whom was killed and butchered after drawing lots.
It was decided that the men’s charges would be dropped in both the UK and Singapore, which was where the men were sent after being rescued. Again, nothing went to trial and nothing was ever put in the books.
Additionally, in the English Criminal Code, no law specifically makes it illegal to eat someone. Nor was it necessarily illegal to kill someone out of necessity. The law left cases of necessity to a case-by-case basis.
The trial of the survivors began on November 3, 1884.
The judge was Baron Huddleston. The lead prosecutor was Arthur Charles, and the lead defense attorney was Arthur Collins.
The defense fund for the accused was actually raised by the public, who were overwhelmingly on the side of the defendants.
The jury for the trial was the same members who were a part of the previous day’s trial on a murder case. In that case, they had given the defendant the death penalty.
Dudley and Stephens both pleaded not guilty to their charges.
The defense used the argument of necessity for the murder charge. He cited examples of Dudley praying over the boy’s body and the conditions on the boat to show that the defendants knew the actions they were taking were drastic, yet necessary.
However, it became clear as the trial continued that the judge had already made up his mind before the case had even begun. He ignored submissions from the defense.
He wanted a guilty verdict.
As I noted before, he wanted finally to settle what the law of necessity should be, and he believed that necessity was not a strong defense for murder.
The jury was asked to deliver a special verdict.
In English Law, a special verdict is when the jury makes factual conclusions rather than declaring guilt or innocence.
This essentially means that the jury is tasked with presenting blanket facts to the court, stating ‘Yes, X did this’ and ‘Yes, X did that,’ rather than coming to a conclusion regarding the law.
That leaves the outcome of the case in the judge’s hands.
As much of the public was on Dudley and Stephens’ side, this would help ensure the outcome Huddleston wanted.
It really wasn’t a fair trial.
The judge presented the jury with two options. Accept the special verdict or find the men guilty.
Huddleston, the previous night, wrote out a special verdict and read it to the jury, instructing them to indicate their agreement.
He took silence as acceptance. Even when the jury did try to speak up about things to add to the special verdict, he would say that it was already included.
Additionally, when the special verdict was published, he realized he had made errors within the document and simply opted to alter the record of the verdict.
Later that November, on the 25th, the Attorney General noticed an issue with the case and its lack of conviction.
The defendants were ordered to appear in London on December 4 for a trial with the Queen’s Bench Divisional Court.
During this trial, Collins, the Defense Lawyer, pointed out the altered special verdict record.
The Attorney General represented the prosecution and stated that there was no defense of necessity in the law to justify murder.
The previously mentioned Saint Christopher case wasn’t admissible because it wasn’t formally documented.
The judges sided with the Prosecution as there was no legal or moral reason for using necessity to justify murder.
It was also pointed out that the boy, Parker, had not given permission to die; he did not draw lots, he did not offer himself as a sacrifice. It was argued that Dudley and Stephens decided who lived and died, unlike in the previous situations.
Both Dudley and Stephens were technically sentenced to death, though both sentences were almost immediately changed to six months in prison, which they both served.
The case of R v Dudley and Stephens established the legal precedent that you can’t legally kill and eat someone, even in extreme survival situations.
Since the sinking of the Mignonette almost 140 years ago, there haven’t been many similar cases. Perhaps the most notable example was a 1988 incident where 110 stranded refugees from Vietnam were stuck on a ship and resorted to cannibalism.
Half of those on the ship died, although only a few were murdered to be eaten. As the event occurred in international waters, no one was ever brought to trial.
The sinking of the Mignonette served up one of the most infamous cases of survival cannibalism in maritime history; a tale that truly tested the waters of morality and law.
In the end, the tale of the Mignonette proved that even in the most dire circumstances, some decisions are just too hard to swallow.
The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.
Research and writing for this episode were provided by Olivia Ashe.
Today’s review comes from listener RachelJoshMom over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write:
I did it!
I made it into the Southern California chapter of the Completionist Club today! Thank you for keeping my mind sharp with your concise episodes about things I have wanted to learn and things I didn’t even know I could learn about.
My favorites are the extraordinary people stories like the Lykov family, DB
Cooper, Genie the Feral Child, Mad Jack Churchill, etc. Also, I am a history teacher and love all the history content you present. Thank you!
Thanks, Rachel, mom of Josh! As a new member of the SoCal completionist club. To get there all you have to do is hop on Ocean Avenue, take that all the way down past the Third Street Promenade then make a sharp left on Wilshire, but not the first Wilshire, the second one after that weird gas station with the sushi place attached.
Then you merge onto the 405 North but only during off-peak hours, like after 11 a.m. but before 2 p.m. Then you take the 405 to the 101 South, which feels wrong, but trust me. Then you’re gonna veer left, not right, left, to get on the Hollywood Freeway.
Easy.
Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you, too, can have it read on the show.