Odd this day
It is the delightful 140th anniversary of a charming nautical tale involving three shipwrecked sailors in a small boat selecting the fourth — a sick, weak 17-year-old — to kill and eat. (Yes, today’s OTD comes with a content warning: bit nasty.)
Tom Dudley, Ned Brooke, Edwin Stephens and Richard Parker (1867-84) had set out from Southampton on 19 May to deliver a yacht, Mignonette, to Australia. All were experienced sailors from coastal communities, although cabin boy Parker had so far only “sailed extensively on inshore waters”. This was his first time at sea.
On the stretch of the journey from Madeira to Cape Town, unfortunately, “the weather had turned foul”.
…… On the afternoon of 5 July a gigantic rogue wave rose from nowhere and crashed into the side of the yacht stoving in the hull.
Tom Dudley gave the order to abandon ship. The others managed to get the lifeboat over the side while he gathered provisions. This, unfortunately, meant grabbing two cans of what he believed was meat, because that was all he had time for. They had no fresh water — and, when they discovered that the tins each contained 1 lb. of preserved turnip, no meat either. Conditions were less than ideal.
They managed to eke out the turnips for a few days, and caught a little rainwater to drink — but not enough. In the words of History Extra, there was another source of drinking fluids, but it was… problematic:
They therefore resorted to drinking their own urine, although this too was a diminishing resource as their bodies became increasingly dehydrated.
Roughly five days in, they had some luck, and caught a turtle. Then they had a two-week run of no luck at all. Cabin boy Parker broke the first rule of the sea and started drinking seawater because he couldn’t stand the thirst any longer. History Extra again:
It is now known that small quantities of sea water can help to sustain life in survival situations, but in that period it was widely believed to be fatal. Parker also drank far in excess of modern recommendations and he was soon violently unwell
Yes, sadly it wasn’t long before he was lying in the bottom of the boat, delirious, and severely weakened by diarrhoea.
Dudley looked the facts in the face and said they would have to draw lots to see which one of them should die so the others could eat. Ned Brooks, apparently, said they should live or die together, but by the time three weeks had elapsed, desperate measures were in order.
Under orders from Dudley, Edwin Stephens held Parker’s legs in case he struggled, and Dudley put a knife in the boy’s neck. They caught his blood in a chronometer case and drank it. Then they ate his heart and liver, and cut off some strips of flesh to save for later. The rest went over the side.
Five days later, a passing ship found them, and they were saved. When they got back to England, Dudley did his duty and reported Parker’s death. He and Stephens went on trial for murder. Dudley had used the phrase “custom of the sea” when they were out on it, apparently, but — perhaps feeling that folklore wouldn’t wash in court — their defence was self-defence. Mr A Collins, QC, acting for the prisoners, cited:
the instance of two shipwrecked persons clinging to the same plank and one of them thrusting the other from it, finding that it will not support both, and says that this homicide is excusable through unavoidable necessity and upon the great universal principle of self-preservation, which prompts every man to save his own life in preference to that of another where one of them must inevitably perish.
…which suggests he could represent Rose DeWitt Bukater in the case of That Kate Winslet character in Titanic vs. The Internet, but I digress. The judge, summing up, rejected this argument (as does the internet, to be fair), and the jury found them guilty. They were sentenced to death, but six months later the sentences were commuted to the time they had already served, and they went free. It probably helped that Parker’s family are said to have forgiven them, and that most people felt they’d suffered enough.
What’s odd about the story — apart from the story — is that there’s a Richard Parker in modern literature: the tiger in Life of Pi is given that name, but he doesn’t only get it from this true-life tale. In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, there is a mutineer called Richard Parker who clings with some shipmates to an upturned hull, and suggests they draw straws to see who will be eaten. It turns out to be him — and there’s a dog in that book (briefly) which is called Tiger.
This is not art imitating life, though. Poe’s novel was published in July 1838 — 46 years before the wreck of the Mignonette. Not only that: another ship sank in 1846, and another Richard Parker died. As Yann Martel has said:
So many Richard Parkers had to mean something.
Not that Martel was the only person to get inspiration from the story. Obviously, people were selling news-sheets and ballads when the Mignonette trial was on, including one which embellishes the story (unnecessarily, surely) with the idea that
By ravenous sharks the boat was pursued
Contemporary poetry in local newspapers may be egregious, and (as we can see here) nothing new, but few of its perpetrators, thankfully, have cause to employ such phrases as:
The captain went to him as he laid on his side,
‘Dick, your time’s come,’ to him he cried
…and you’d have to go a fair distance to beat the bathos of
It may seem strange to me and to you,
But we cannot tell what hunger will do.
…or at least, if you’ll forgive me a(nother) self-indulgent digression, you’d have to visit the works of William Topaz McGonagall:
Anyway, next time I hope we’ll be discussing something more palatable, but until then…
