Mignonette

Date: 19 May 1884 to 5 Jul 1884
Location: [unknown]

In the latter nineteenth century, it was fashionable in England and elsewhere to belong to a yachting club. A nationally known yachting centre was the village of Tollesbury in Essex. Such activities were symbols of wealth, courage and success. Many owners sailed their own ships, while others hired professional crews with captains, or “sailor masters.”

One of the many yachts in England during the 1880s was the Mignonette. She was built in 1867 in Essex by the Aldhous brothers and launched August 12, 1867. It was fifty-two feet long, twelve and one-half feet wide and seven feet, five inches deep. She had a mainmast and a small mizzenmast aft. Her rig rose some sixty feet above the deck, and she carried a small dinghy: thirteen feet long, four feet wide and twenty inches deep.

In 1883, the Mignonette was sold to a flamboyant Sydney lawyer by the name of John Henry who was a member of the Royal Sunday Yacht Squadron. “Jack” Want was a sporting man, “over six-foot in height, with a rugged jaw and flashing eyes.” He came to England in 1883 to purchase a “fast 40-ton yacht” to take back to Sydney. He bought the Mignonette and at Southampton it was repaired and outfitted for 16,000-mile journey.

Thomas Riley Dudley was hired to captain and sail the vessel. A crew of three were signed on, James Robert Haynes, Edmund (Ned) Brooks and Richard Parker, age seventeen. On May 15, 1884, Tom went with the three men to the customs house and signed the ship’s articles. Haynes was an experienced sailor with a mate’s certificate who had apparently known Dudley before signing. Ultimately, however, Haynes had a change of heart and deserted the ship the next day. To replace Haynes, Dudley signed Edwin Stephens.

On Monday, May 19, 1884, they set out from a village near Southampton. On 5 July, Mignonette was running before a gale, around 1,600 miles (2,600 km) northwest of the Cape of Good Hope when a wave struck and washed away the lee bulwark. Dudley instantly realized that the yacht was doomed and ordered the single 13-foot (4 m) lifeboat to be lowered. The lifeboat was of flimsy construction, with boards only 0.25 inches (6 mm) thick and was holed in the haste to get it away. Mignonette sank within five minutes of being struck and the crew abandoned ship for the lifeboat, managing only to salvage vital navigational instruments along with two tins of turnips and no fresh water.

The four seaman just barely managed to get into their lifeboat, a 13 foot open dinghy. Unfortunately, the emergency supply of water that they had hastily thrown overboard next to the dinghy was swept away by the waves. Only Dudley brought anything with him into the dinghy, two tins of turnips and a sextant. Sixteen hundred miles away from the closest shore their only hope was to get on the main trade route and be picked up by another ship. However parsimoniously rationed, the two tins of turnips were quickly consumed. Occasional rainfall permitted the men to collect some unsalted water in their oilskins. Parker, much sicker than the others, quickly ate his rations; the rest were able to hold out longer. On the fourth day they spotted a turtle asleep on the water, hauled it on board, and fed on it for nearly a week, even eating the bones and chewing on its leathery skin. They tried to catch some fish, but with no success. Their lips and tongues parched and blackened from thirst, they took to drinking their urine. Eventually Parker and Stephens resorted to drinking seawater, then thought to be certain poison. On the nineteenth day, feeling more dead than alive, Dudley proposed that one of them, to be chosen by lots, be killed for the rest to feed on. Brooks would not hear of it; Stephens was hesitant, and the idea was temporarily abandoned. Dudley next tried to persuade Stephens. He no longer talked about drawing lots. Parker evidently was the sickest, and he had no wife or children; it only seemed fair, Dudley reasoned, that he be the one killed. Finally, Stephens agreed. Dudley walked over to where Parker lay at the bottom of the boat, his face buried in his arms. “Richard,” he said in a trembling voice, “your hour has come.” “What? Me, sir?” mumbled the only half-conscious boy, uncomprehendingly. “Yes, my boy,” Dudley repeated and then plunged his penknife into Parker’s neck. For the next four days all three, including Brooks who had objected to the killing, fed on the young boy’s body, even drinking his blood. On the twenty-fourth day of their odyssey they were sighted by a German boat, the Montezuma, heading home from South America. Of the three men, only Brooks was able to clamber aboard; the rest had to be carried. Parker’s remains, still in the dinghy, left no doubt about what had happened and both Dudley and Stephens completed the tale as soon as they had recovered sufficiently. The German crew, however, continued to treat them with the utmost kindness. In September the 6th, 1884, the Montezuma sailed into Falmouth. The survivors were taken to the Customs House and closely questioned. It did not occur to them that they had done anything criminal. Dudley told of their adventure with something resembling gusto and even insisted on keeping the penknife with which he had killed Richard Parker as a memento. They were stunned when they were put under arrest and charged with murder. The upright Dudley immediately insisted that he was the ringleader and that Brooks was completely innocent. Brooks was indeed discharged and became the prosecution’s chief witness

“Survivors” of the Eternal Sea: A Short True Story .
Joseph J. Simeone Saint Louis University School of Law.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/327144249.pdf.