There is no evidence that this happened to the men of the Mignonette but since this is a book about the custom of the sea as well as the specific case of the Mignonette, and it was such a regular and often recorded feature of the hardships of others in a similar plight, I felt it was not inappropriate to include it.
With this important caveat, all events are true or, when re-created, are based on contemporary accounts and the similar experiences of other shipwrecked sailors.
Acknowledgements
This is not an academic treatise and the text has not been burdened with footnotes. The primary and secondary sources I have drawn on in researching this book are detailed in the bibliography, but no one can write about the Mignonette without acknowledging a considerable debt to Professor A. W. B. Simpson and his splendid book on the legal aspects of the case of Regina versus Dudley and Stephens: Cannibalism and the Common Law.
The disproportionate glow of achievement I felt when unearthing a document or reference that Professor Simpson had not already discovered and annotated is its own tribute to the thoroughness of his meticulous research. I am also grateful to him for permission to quote from his interview with a distant relative of Richard Parker, Ivor Bedford, from whom comes the story of Ned Brooks crying out in the night, and from his interview with Vernon Cole. Frank Robb’s Handling Small Boats in Heavy Weather is an invaluable guide to avoiding and surviving shipwreck, and the accounts of many survivors are contained in E. C. B. and Kenneth Lee’s excellent Safety and Survival at Sea. David Thornton’s Plough & Sail is an affectionate remembrance of the Tollesbury area in the nineteenth century, and George Peters’s The Plimsoll Line is a lucid account of Samuel Plimsoll’s lifelong campaigns on behalf of seamen.
Stan Hugill’s Sailortown vividly re-creates the murky dockside world of Victorian seamen. Those interested in delving further into freak shows and ‘museums’ should consult Robert Bogdan’s splendid Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. The Victorian prison system is explored in Anthony Babington’s The English Bastille: A History of Newgate Gaol and Prison Conditions in Britain 1188–1902, and John Camp’s Holloway Prison.
My personal thanks go to Mark Lucas and Sally Hughes at Lucas Alexander Whitley, and to Patrick Janson-Smith, Marianne Velmans, Bill Scott-Kerr, Sheila Lee, Henry Steadman, Michelle Kane and the rest of the team at Transworld. Their professionalism and enthusiasm make it a pleasure to work with them.
My thanks also to Pete Metcalf for information on the law and court procedures in the nineteenth century, Robin Poulier for his advice on the physiological effects of drinking sea-water and urine, Ian Platts and Gavin Craig for helping this landlubber to understand something of yachts and sailing, Simon Wilkinson for finding a photographer at the far end of the country at five minutes notice and Jo, Julie, Belle and Bridget at Just A Sec for transcribing my inaudible tapes into a workable typescript.
I am also grateful to Kathy Wallace and Alex Hooper at the Falmouth Art Gallery, the staff of the Falmouth Public Library, Captain George Hogg, Roger Stephens and the staff of the Falmouth Maritime Museum, Mr Peter Gilson, Honorary Librarian at the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, the Woodrolfe Shipyard at Tollesbury, the Curator of the Brightlingsea Museum, Helen Langley of the Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, and the staffs of the British Library at St Pancras, the British Library Newspaper Section at Colindale, the Public Record Office at Kew, the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, Ilkley Library, Bradford Reference Library, Leeds Reference Library and the innumerable other institutions and individuals who have given willingly of their time and knowledge in dealing with my endless queries.
Bibliography
Bristol Gazette; Bristol Mercury; Colchester Chronicle; Colchester Mercury and Essex Express; Commercial Shipping & General Advertiser; Cornubian; Daily Recorder; Daily Telegraph; Devon Evening Express; Essex Standard; Exeter & Plymouth Gazette; Falmouth News Slip; Falmouth Packet; Falmouth & Penryn Weekly Times; Field; Fun; Graphic; Hunt’s Yacht List; Hunt’s Yachting Magazine; Illustrated London News; Illustrated Police News; Limerick Star & Evening Post; Limerick Times; Liverpool Weekly Post; Mariner’s Mirror; Morning Post; National Review; New York Herald; New York Times; Pall Mall Gazette; Penny Illustrated Newspaper; Philadelphia Public Ledger; Pictorial News; Pictorial World; Plymouth Weekly Mercury; Police Guardian; Punch; Royal Cornwall Gazette; Saturday Review; Singapore Daily Times; Southampton Observer & Winchester News; Southampton Times & Hampshire Express; Southern Echo; Spectator; Standard; Straits Observer; Sutton Herald; Sydney Gazette; Sydney Mail; Sydney Morning Herald; Sydney Daily Telegraph; The Times; Weekly Mercury; West Briton; Western Weekly News.
Federal Cases, United States v Holmes, Case No. 15,383
Regina v Dudley & Stephens, (1884) Queens Bench Division 273, (1885) 560, 1
Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Causes of Shipwrecks 1826
Report from the Select Committee on Shipwrecks of Timber Ships 1839
First and Second Reports from the Select Committee on Shipwrecks 1843
Preliminary Report from the Royal Commission on Unseaworthy Ships 1873
Final Report of the Royal Commission on Unseaworthy Ships 1874
Report of the Outbreak of Plague at Sydney, 1900, by the Medical Officer of Health
Public Record Office, Kew: ASSI 21/71; BT 99/90; BT 108/14; BT 109/204; BT 122; CO 273/76, 80; CUST 31/244; CUST 67/11; DPP 4/17; FO 27/634; HO 34/35; HO 34/52; HO 144/141 A36934; IND 6687/2; KB 6/6 (2); MT 9/101/M257/75; MT 9/112/M13696/75; MT 9/257/M9658 85; RG 9/1091; RG 10/1675; RG 10/1196; RG 10/1778; RG 11/1217; RG 11/1206
Bodleian Library, Oxford: The Harcourt Papers, MS Harcourt Dep. and MS Harcourt Dep. Adds.
Adams, W.H.D., Great Shipwrecks: A Record of Perils and Disasters at Sea, 1544-1877, London, 1877
Alexander, Michael, Mrs Fraser on the Fatal Shore, Michael Joseph, London,1971
Arens, W., The Man Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy, Oxford University Press, New York, 1979
Ashley, F.W., My Sixty Years of Law, John Lane, London, 1936
Babington, Anthony, The English Bastille: A History of Newgate Gaol and Prison Conditions in Britain 1188-1902, Macdonald, London, 1971
Baker, Sherston, The Judgement in the Mignonette Case, National Review 4, 1884-5
Barker, James P, The Log of a Limejuicer, Pitman, London, 1934
Bennet, George, Journal of the Voyages & Travels by the Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq, compiled by James Montgomery, vol. 2, London, 1831