Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Ship of ghouls: The Mignonette, cannibalism, and the law's perfect storm


Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is.—Ernest Hemingway, “The Old Man and the Sea”

Truth is stranger than fiction. It’s also a far better teacher. For this reason, a law student’s textbooks are filled with real cases. As we read the decisions in these landmark cases, the often dry points of law spring to life. Then, and for the rest of our lives, we never forget the law, because we never forget the people. The parties to the case become our most effective professors.

One such landmark case is Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, 14 QBD 273 DC (1884), which illustrates the crime of murder and the typically futile defense of necessity.

Embark on this ill-fated voyage, and you’ll never forget a single detail.

The Mignonette
John Henry Want had a problem. The wealthy Australian lawyer longed to fit into Sydney’s yachting society, but the more experienced yachtsmen scoffed at him. Nobody scoffed at English-built yachts, however, which were considered far superior to those made in Australia. In an attempt to win their respect, Want bought the Mignonette, an elderly 52-footer made in Southampton.

The Mignonette was too small to be seaworthy for a 15,000-mile voyage on the high seas, but there was no other practical way to transport it to Sydney. Want had the yacht retrofitted as best he could and hired a crew that consisted of Captain Tom Dudley, two experienced crew members, Edwin Stephens and Edmund Brooks, and to serve as cabin boy, 17-year-old orphan Richard Parker, who had never been to sea.

You can tell already that things aren’t going to end well for Parker.

Shipwreck
The Mignonette set sail from Southampton on May 19, 1884, and the voyage went smoothly for several weeks. To avoid high winds in the Mediterranean, Captain Dudley avoided the Suez Canal and instead opted for the long South Atlantic route.

On July 5, the yacht hit a storm in the vast South Atlantic between the islands of St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha, and the Mignonette sank quickly. The four men scrambled into the lifeboat and survived on the open seas for more than three weeks, drinking their own urine and eating a turtle they managed to catch and drag aboard.

Once the castaways exhausted the turtle meat and two tins of turnips they had salvaged from the sinking ship, they found themselves acutely dehydrated and starving to death. They began to discuss their meager options and came to this ghastly conclusion: They would resort to the Custom of the Sea.

Custom of the Sea
The Custom of the Sea is an ever-evolving set of unwritten traditions and practices that the crews of ships observe while sailing the high seas. This is distinguished from maritime law and the law of admiralty, which are codified and cohesive. The Custom of the Sea is an ancient edict to which sailors resorted when matters were grim with no rescue in sight. Stated another way, it is “desperate times call for desperate measures.”

One such desperate measure is the act of survival cannibalism in which starving sailors would draw lots to see which sailor would die so that the others might live.

Survival cannibalism is rare, of course, but we can all name a handful (sorry) of examples of it: the Donner Party, the Uruguayan rugby team featured in “Alive,” the Packer Expedition, and the Essex.

And, of course, the Mignonette.

As death drew close, the men on the lifeboat hung their heads and prepared to draw lots.

Nor any drop to drink
Before the men could draw lots, however, cabin boy Parker gave in to temptation and drank seawater, weakening him further and rendering him delirious. Mercifully, he lapsed into a coma and hovered near death.

The choice had made itself.

On July 23 or 24, Dudley and Stephens signaled to each other that Parker would be sacrificed. They decided that they would not allow him to die naturally because they reasoned that his blood would be nutritious only if it were fresh. Captain Dudley said a prayer and pushed his pen knife into Parker’s jugular vein while Stephens stood by to hold the boy down.

Later, Dudley and Stephens would claim that Brooks assented to this plan. Brooks maintained that he did not. It is undisputed that Brooks declined to participate in the killing itself.

All three men descended on Parker’s body and fed on his still warm blood, heart, liver, and other organs and flesh “like mad wolfs,” they would later recall.

Their grisly plan worked. On July 29, the passing ship Moctezuma spotted the men, and the three survivors were pulled from the bloodied lifeboat, the bottom of which was now littered with Parker’s body parts. As the Moctezuma crew members pulled the survivors aboard, Parker’s bloody viscera was visible under the cannibals’ fingernails.

Arrest and trial
The Moctezuma returned the men to England, where they went immediately to the customs house to report the incident. Captain Dudley and Stephens gave statements, which were required under the Merchant Shipping Acts in the event of a shipping loss.

Brooks had not participated in the killing, but Dudley and Stephens readily admitted the deed, perhaps believing that they were protected under the Custom of the Seas. Instead, they were arrested and charged with murder, which carried the penalty of death.

The shocking tale of the Mignonette hit the papers, and the trial was a sensation. While cannibalism is taboo and repugnant to a civilized society, public opinion strongly favored the defendants. Denizens of Victorian England agreed that if they were faced with such a decision, they too would make the same appalling choice. What else could one do?

There was another choice, however. The three men could have chosen to die alongside Parker should no rescue come.

The necessity defense
When someone is charged with murder, the accused sometimes offers an affirmative defense.

An affirmative defense says, “Yes, I did it, but I shouldn’t be held responsible because….” This is distinguished from a negating defense, which says, “No, I didn’t do it,” disproving all or part of the prosecutor’s case.

Self-defense is the prime example of an affirmative defense. The defendant says, “Yes, I committed the crime, but I should not be held responsible because I feared death or grave injury. I did it, but I had no other reasonable choice. Kill or be killed.”

This sounds similar to the plight of the Mignonette survivors: Yes, they killed Parker; they had no other choice. If they didn’t kill him, they too would die. Further, Parker would soon die anyway, so Dudley and Stephens merely hastened his death.

Self-defense doesn’t apply here, however, because Parker posed no threat to the other three men.

Instead, Dudley and Stephens attempted a “defense of necessity,” arguing that circumstances forced them to kill Parker and that they would have died but for their murderous act.

Conviction
After a long, blundering trial full of irregularities, this defense failed, which means that the English common law rejected the idea of necessity as an affirmative defense for the crime of murder. Because our law derives from the English common law, criminal law in the United States also does not recognize necessity as a defense for murder.

In fact, the necessity defense is difficult to invoke even as a defense to lesser crimes. The defense must prove these six(!) elements: 1) The threat was imminent and specific, 2) The necessity to act was immediate, 3) There was no practical alternative, 4) The defendant didn’t contribute to the threat, 5) The defendant acted out of necessity at all times, and 6) The harm caused wasn’t greater than the harm prevented. See State v. Cole, 403 S.E. 2d 117 (1991).

In Victorian England, the penalty for murder was death, and Dudley and Stephens found themselves facing the gallows. Due to the impossibility of their situation, however, the court was sympathetic and recommended clemency. The death sentences were commuted to six months in prison, after which Dudley and Stephens were freed.

Aftermath
Surprisingly, Captain Dudley embarked on another voyage to Australia, where he prospered as a boat outfitter and ship accessories dealer until he died of bubonic plague in 1900. Stephens descended into alcoholism and died in 1914. Brooks, who wasn’t charged with a crime and testified against his former shipmates, attempted to make a living as a live exhibit in freak shows. He died in 1919.

The events haunted the men for the rest of their lives.

Someone has placed a commemorative stone for Richard Parker in the churchyard of the Jesus Chapel on Peartree Green in Southampton near Parker’s childhood home in the village of Itchen Ferry.

Oddly, the real-life facts of this case are eerily similar to the fictional account in Edgar Allan Poe’s 1838 novel “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket,” which predated the Mignonette case by nearly 50 years. In Poe’s novel, the survivors of a shipwreck kill and eat a fellow crew member in order to survive after they’ve polished off the turtle they caught.

The name of Poe’s cannibalized sailor: Richard Parker.

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