How Hungry Do You Have To Be To Eat Someone?

Richard Parker Found Out…The Hard Way

On May 19, 1884, a crew of four set sail on an an English cruiser called the Mignonette. The men were hired by a wealthy lawyer to transport the vessel from Southampton, England to Sydney, Australia, a mission that many other crews declined. Unfortunately, the Mignonette never made it to Sydney. Neither did the crew, though the sailors were rescued by another ship. There was only one problem. When the rescue boat pulled up, the lifeboat was short by one man: Richard Parker.

The Mignonette

The Mignonette was a 52-foot (16 m) cruiser that was built in 1867. It was a leisure boat that was intended to sail inshore. She was not to be used for long voyages and lacked the structure and capacity to make significant trips across the ocean.

When John Henry Want, an Australian lawyer, purchased the Mignonette in England in1883, he found himself in a bit of a bind. How was he going to get the darned thing home? The only way was to sail it, but he wasn’t going to do it himself. He needed a crew that was willing to make the 15,000 mile (24,000 km) voyage, but had a very difficult time staffing the mission. In fact, it would take him nearly a year to find the men that would accept this call to adventure.

The Crew

On May 19, 1884, the Mignonette left Southampton carrying four men: Tom Dudley (Captain), Edwin Stephens, Edmund Brooks, and Richard Parker, a 17-year-old cabin boy. All of the men were experienced at sea with the exception of Parker.

Halfway Point

It look the crew nearly two months to get the Mignonette to the halfway point, about 1,600 miles (2,600 km) northwest of the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. This was no easy task considering the numerous threats the sea poses even to the most sturdy of ships. But the crew’s luck was about to run out.

It was July 5^th when the Mignonette came up against a strong wind. Rather than fight the gale, Captain Dudley ordered the crew to “heave to”, a maneuver that slows the boat’s forward progress and positions the helm and sails so that the boat does not have to be steered. He wanted the crew to get a good night’s rest and ordered Parker to go below deck and prepare some tea. Just as the men got the Mignonette into position, a large wave crashed into the yacht, taking the lee bulwark (the extension of the ship’s side above the level of the deck) with it. The ill-fated ship was about to sink.

The Lifeboat

Captain Dudley ordered the immediate evacuation of the Mignonette and had the crew lower the 13-foot (4 m) lifeboat into the water. They had no time to provision the small vessel, save for some navigational equipment and two tins of turnips that Parker was able to grab while he was below deck. Within five minutes, the Mignonette was completely submerged and the only thing keeping the four seamen alive was a shoddily crafted 0.25 inch (6 mm) thick wooden dinghy.

Though Captain Dudley managed to keep the lifeboat stable against the waves and the wind, there were other life-and-death elements of the sea that challenged the crew.

A Fight For Survival

With scarcely any food and zero drinking water, the crew needed to find land, and fast. They estimated that they were 700 miles (1,100 km) from Saint Helena or Tristan da Cunha. They could not risk distributing any food yet, though the seamen soon found themselves at risk of becoming a meal themselves.

The very first night they were adrift, the lifeboat was attacked by a shark. The crew used their oars to beat at it until the shark decided the meal wasn’t worth the hassle and swam away.

On July 7^th, the captain opened the first can of turnips and divided it into four equal parts. The men would not eat anything else for two days. On July 9^th, Brooks and Stephens managed to grab a sea-turtle and bring it onto the boat. The turtle provided much needed sustenance and was consumed in its entirety, including its blood and bones. When combined with the second tin of turnips, the four seamen managed to stretch their rations until July 17^th. Unable to catch any rain-water, all four men began drinking their own urine.

Parker Makes a Fatal Mistake

On July 20^th, after two weeks being stranded at sea, Richard Parker became desperate. Though his more experienced companions forbade him to do it, he drank seawater and became ill almost immediately.

By now, the four men were starved, dehydrated, and running out of options. Over the past week they had discussed the possibility of having to resort to cannibalism, though Brooks was adamantly against it. Originally Dudley suggested they could draw lots to choose who would sacrifice themselves to sustain the others, but with Parker becoming sicker by the minute, it was only a matter of time before he died on his own anyway. And wouldn’t it be better to kill him before his blood became undrinkable?

Ultimately, Dudley and Stephens came to an agreement. They would wait one more day for rescue before making any rash decisions.

Sunrise, Sunset, No Rescue

After another full day at sea with no hope of being found, Dudley and Stephens looked at each other and knew what they needed to do. Stephens sat on Parker’s legs to keep him still in the event he woke up while Dudley murmured a prayer and plunged his penknife into the cabin boy’s throat, effectively ending his life.

All three men drank Parker’s blood and fed on his body. Dudley is quoted to have said

“I can assure you I shall never forget the sight of my two unfortunate companions over that ghastly meal. We all was like mad wolfs who should get the most, and for men—fathers of children—to commit such a deed, we could not have our right reason.”

Captain Dudley

On July 29^th, the wretched crew saw something on the horizon that sparked hope for the first time in nearly a month. It was the sail of another boat.

The Montezuma

The sail belonged to a German sailing barque named the Montezuma, which came upon the men and brought them aboard. On September 6^th, the remaining crew of the Mignonette were dropped off in England where they gave their statements to the customs house under the Merchant Shipping Acts. This was required in order to document shipping losses.

In addition to their declarations, all three men provided true and honest statements about how they survived. They thought that their actions would be justified and that they would be protected by the customs of the sea. But they were wrong.

The customs officer confiscated Dudley’s penknife as evidence and, much to their surprise, they were all detained. The harbor police obtained warrants for their arrests on charges for the murder of Richard Parker.

The Case

Still confident that this would all be dismissed, Captain Dudley appeared before the magistrates on September 8^th, but to no avail. Since this was a murder charge, the magistrates had to wait for the opinions of the Treasury Solicitor which would take some time. The men were denied bail and returned to their jail cells for another 3 days.

When the men appeared in front of the magistrates again on September 11th, they learned that the Attorney General was going to prosecute, even though the public supported the defendants. Even Richard Parker’s own brother, also a seaman, came to the court and shook the hands of the men who literally killed and ate his sibling.

As the newspapers ran and distributed the story, it became more and more clear that the public wanted the men exonerated. This only served to repulse the Attorney General, emboldening him to stick to obtaining a conviction for Dudley and Stephens. Since there was no evidence against Brook’s participation in the murder, he was discharged so that he could be called as a witness at the trial.

Trial

The trial began on November 3^rd and on December 9^th, the court delivered it’s verdict. Both men were found guilty of murder. Dudley and Stephens were sentenced to death with a recommendation for mercy. That’s right, Queen Victoria herself would have to weigh in on the matter in order to exercise the mercy clause. Conferring with the Home Secretary Harcourt, on December 12^th, the queen made a decision to have both men’s sentences altered to 6 months imprisonment, though this was mainly to appease the public.

In the end, Dudley and Stephens were released on May 20^th, 1885 as free men.

A Strange Coincidence?

If the story of the Mignonette sounds familiar to you it might be because you studied the work of Edgar Allan Poe. A master of the macabre, one of Poe’s first published works was a novel called “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”. In the book, the crew of a ship named Grampus find themselves stranded in an inoperable boat with no food or water. After several days, the crew manage to catch a sea-turtle and use it to sustain themselves.

As the story continues, it soon becomes clear that in order to survive, one of them will need to be sacrificed in order to feed the others. The crew decide to draw straws to determine who will die. The man that draws the short straw is stabbed to death and the remaining seamen eat him to stay alive. On the very edge of death, the remaining men are rescued.

Downright Creepy

The similarities between Poe’s fiction and the reality of the Mignonette are intriguing. Some of you are thinking that Poe was inspired by the true events and wrote a story about it, but you would be wrong. This work was published in 1838, 46 years before the Mignonette ever left England. If this didn’t give you goosebumps, this next fact should do it. The name of Poe’s fictional character who draws the short straw was Richard Parker.

Related Articles: From California Dreams to Cannibalism: A Survival Story

References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30093/edgar-allan-poes-eerie-richard-parker-coincidence