Cannibalism on Trial: How a shipwreck in the 1800s changed legal history
For centuries, sailors who survived shipwrecks but faced starvation after running out of food and water had a tradition known as “the custom of the sea.” It was permissible, the custom went, to kill and eat one of their own after drawing lots.
In 1884, four British sailors had to make this difficult decision as they drifted in a lifeboat for more than two weeks after their ship sank in a storm. Suffering from parching thirst and dizzying hunger, they had no other options. Instead of drawing lots, however, the captain decided it was morally acceptable to sacrifice a weak and sick cabin boy who already appeared close to death.
After being rescued several days later, Captain Thomas Dudley and the two remaining crew members freely shared their story of survival with authorities, believing they would soon go home. Much to their surprise, they were jailed and charged with murdering the cabin boy, Richard Parker, 17. The case, Regina v. Dudley & Stephens, led to a landmark decision on whether necessity to survive can justify murder.
Journalist and lawyer Adam Cohen revisits this compelling and thought-provoking tale in his new book, Captain’s Dinner: A Shipwreck, an Act of Cannibalism and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History.
“It really puts you in that lifeboat with those four men where they have run out of food and have run out of water, and there’s a question: Would you think about killing one of your fellow crew members? Would you stick a knife in his neck and drink his blood in order to survive?” Cohen says in an interview with the ABA Journal.
Cohen first heard about the case at a Halloween party that he and his roommate hosted while at Harvard Law School. Guests were encouraged to dress as their favorite legal case, and his roommate, clutching raw chicken legs spattered with ketchup, came as “the cannibal captain.”
“It made a big impression, and years later when I was looking for a book topic, I decided to do it,” says Cohen, who has written five other books, most recently Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America. “It turned out to be a fascinating case, which I came to believe is actually a really important early human rights case.”
Adam Cohen. (Photo courtesy of Author’s Equity)Disaster at sea
The book chronicles the voyage of the Mignonette, a yacht that Dudley was hired to sail from England to Australia. It sank during a storm in the Atlantic, and the crew had little time to get provisions into the lifeboat. They shared two tins of turnips, drank rainwater captured in their clothing and ate a small sea turtle. But it was not nearly enough. After more than a week with no food, Dudley stabbed Parker in the neck as he lay sick in the boat from drinking seawater. Though one of the crew members, Edmund Brooks, objected to the murder, he joined in drinking the blood and feasting on the corpse. Dudley, Brooks and Edwin Stephens were rescued by a German ship about 1,000 miles from Rio de Janeiro.
When they debarked at Falmouth, England, officials interrogated the men, who admitted to the killing without fear of repercussions. According to Cohen, no Englishman had ever been prosecuted for “survival cannibalism.”
“They’re going from not thinking they’ll be arrested at all, thinking they just have a good story to tell, to being arrested and suddenly fighting, literally, for their lives because if they get convicted, they need to worry about getting hanged,” Cohen says.
Cohen says the men were prosecuted at a time when Victorian influence began to shift how people viewed the poor and less fortunate. Prosecutors argued the young victim deserved better than to be killed to save the others, and that the custom of the sea was outdated.
“People’s attitudes were changing enough that there was a different feeling about it,” Cohen says.
Yet many people, especially sailors, supported Dudley and his crew for doing what others had done in similar circumstances. Supporters raised money for their defense, visited them at the jail and attended the trial. Brooks, who did not take part in the killing, was not charged and became a prosecution witness.
The necessity defense
Dudley said it was necessary to kill Parker “to sustain the existence of those remaining,” according to Cohen. “The defense, in general, is the idea that you may be able to get out of conviction of a crime if you can show that the crime you committed was done to avoid some greater harm,” Cohen says.
At the time, English law had just one degree of murder, which carried a mandatory death penalty. If convicted, the condemned could seek mercy from the queen. Because the men admitted to killing Parker, they had no options other than the necessity defense, and their conviction seemed likely. Given the popular support, their best hope was mercy from the queen.
While there was no legal precedent in England addressing the necessity defense, there was the case of the William Brown, an American cargo ship that hit an iceberg off Newfoundland in 1841. As the ship sank, passengers and crew got into two lifeboats, but one was overloaded and began sinking. Crew members decided it necessary to toss people overboard to keep the lifeboat from going under and killing everyone.
William Brown crew member Alexander Holmes, the only one arrested, was charged with manslaughter. Holmes was convicted, but a sympathetic judge sentenced him to just six months in jail and fined him $20.
The case against Dudley and Stephens had a similar outcome. They were found guilty, marking the first time in history that someone was convicted of survival cannibalism. The court determined that murder cannot be justified to save others, but it recommended mercy for the defendants. The men, whose popular support remained strong, escaped the death penalty and were sentenced to just six months in prison.
Cohen says he enjoyed working on the book despite its gruesome nature. His research took him to England and to archives where he drew from original documents.
“The archives research was amazing—to actually be holding the account that Captain Dudley wrote in his own handwriting on his way back from being rescued,” he says. “I also drove around a bit. I drove down to Falmouth, which is where they landed, and I got to see the custom house where they were brought in and questioned.”
While Cohen believed the murder was wrong, he came to understand the desperation that led to it.
“I began with the strong feeling that it was wrong to kill this poor 17-year-old lad who wanted to live and every morning he woke up with the hope that that would be the day that they were rescued,” Cohen says. “I really strongly felt that he was entitled to live his life without anyone coming along and saying that, ‘We’ve calculated that it would be more efficient to kill you, and then more people could live.’ So that was my opinion, and that remains how I feel today.”
But Cohen appreciates the difficult circumstances in which they made their decision.
“I will say reading about the details of what the men went through and trying to put myself in their place with this incredible hunger—and, even worse, thirst—I understand.”
Writing about cannibalism, Cohen says, can make for awkward conversations during social gatherings.
“The funny thing is that I end up mainly talking about this with friends at dinner,” Cohen says. “So people are always like, ‘Should we really be talking about this?’ I’ve had many conversations with people about about cannibalism while we’re literally eating, and it makes it a little more exciting.”
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