The Custom of the Sea

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1:09In 1853, a man named Thomas Dudley was born into a family of sailors in a village in England. Eventually, he became a well-known sea captain. But by the time he was 30, steamships were taking more and more of the sailing business, and Thomas Dudley was looking for work. He was sailing at a time when sailing was actually in decline. They call it the dying age of sail. Author Adam Cohen. So he was actually part of a dying way of life, the sailing life, and it was hard for him, particularly as a family man with children to support, to really make a living being a captain. Then, Dudley heard about a rich Australian who had bought a yacht in England and needed to get it back home.

1:58But it was much smaller than the boats you would usually take on such a long trip across open seas. The man was looking for a captain willing to sail the yacht back. Thomas Dudley had mostly sailed just around England, but he applied and got the job. The yacht was called the Minionette, and it came with a 13-foot wooden lifeboat. Thomas Dudley had about a month to get ready for the trip. So he has to hire a crew, first of all, and then he has to figure out the route. And then he had to supply the ship with the food and drink that would be necessary for the trip. He was really the master, as they called it.

2:43And captains back then were known as master, which was actually short for master of God. There was this idea that they had this kind of like king-like quality on the ship. And he was really in charge of everything. Dudley had a hard time finding a crew. He only needed a few men, but the people he talked to about the job told him it was too dangerous. Eventually, he convinced a pair of brothers to join. But just a few days later, the brothers quit. Dudley quickly hired someone else to replace them. But then that sailor quit too. So he hired three different people who all backed out. First of all, because they were worried that this was a very dangerous voyage in such a small ship.

3:29And also in a couple of cases, specifically because their wives told them they did not want them going. So there was a lot of fear around whether this was a wise voyage to take. Then Dudley heard from a man named Edmund Brooks. Brooks worked in the shipyard where the Minionette was kept. He knew about the crew that had backed out, but he wanted to go to Australia. There were supposed to be more jobs there with better pay. So he accepted a position for just over five pounds a month. Dudley offered eight pounds a month to another man named Edwin Stevens. Stevens only considered the job because he'd been a navigator on a big steamship.

4:12But then the steamship crashed into some rocks and sank. No one died, but he was fired, and it ruined his reputation. So that made him eager to take this on when many others weren't. There was just one position left to fill. Cabin boy. Someone to do the cleaning and cooking, and whatever else needed doing. Dudley spread word of the job, and it reached a young sailor in a neighboring town named Richard Parker. Parker knew right away that he wanted it. He's excited because he too is interested in seeing Australia and also really in starting a bigger life. He's 17 years old. He had had a kind of rocky childhood.

4:56He's an orphan. And he was excited about, as he said to people, becoming a man. So when he hears about this, he excitedly tells his foster parents, I've heard about this opportunity to sail to Australia, and I'm going to do it. Richard Parker had been taken in by another sailor and his wife. the Matthews, after his parents died when he was around 12. He'd been hired as a sailor before, but never for such a long trip. His foster parents spent days trying to talk him out of applying for the job on the mignonette. But Parker still went to meet with Captain Thomas Dudley. He really does offer himself up to Parker as a father figure, and both that he would take care of him, but also that Parker had not had much schooling, and Dudley was going to bring books along to actually teach Parker how to read and write.

5:51And Parker talked about that when he was telling his foster parents about why he wanted to go. He was saying that he was really excited to be going with Dudley. Richard Parker didn't know how to write his own name, so he signed his contract with a mark. His foster parents bought him new clothes for the trip. Dudley decided that the Minionette would take a slow but less risky route to Australia. They would sail along the western coast of Africa instead of catching stronger trade winds across the Atlantic, which would come with bigger storms or could lead them into icebergs. In May of 1884, the Minionette set sail, with Dudley, Stevens, Brooks, and Parker on board.

6:40And how does it go for the first few days of the sail? You know, it goes wonderfully. And it was, you know, high tide, beautiful weather when they set off from England. They pass these islands as they go out of the English Channel. The crew is getting along great. No storms. And really all the way to the equator, which was quite a long way, they had a wonderful sail. And they began to think really, oh, you know, our friends and family who said, you know, you can't go in a yacht. It's too small. It's dangerous and all that. We're so wrong. This has been a wonderful voyage. And it was up until the equator.

7:24So one thing is, when you pass the equator, by sailing tradition, you're supposed to do these little ceremonies, marking the passing, and there are some very elaborate ones, which are dressing up the sailors who have never crossed the equator before. Sometimes sailors would dress up as King Neptune, the god of the sea, with other crew members playing his wife and his assistant, Davy Jones. Anyone who hadn't crossed the equator before might also get dipped into the ocean. They called it a sailor's baptism. And that's thought to be an attempt to appease the gods, you know, and keep them happy. And they didn't do that on the Minionette.

8:03And maybe they regretted that later because it was really right after crossing the equator that they began to hit bad weather. Captain Dudley and Richard Parker were on watch when it started to storm. The wind was so strong and the waves were so rough that Dudley decided to lower the sail and wait things out. Brooks and Stevens covered the cabin window to prevent flooding. At this point, the captain tells Richard Parker to go down below and get the makings of tea, and they were going to have a sort of proper British tea in the middle of the ocean and a little bit of old-fashioned British civility in the midst of the chaos of the open sea.

8:47But when Parker came up from the cabin, he heard Stevens shout, Look out. The big wave comes, and it sort of comes out of nowhere, and it is huge. It actually goes up to the top of the mast and strikes the boat, and everyone grabs onto something, to the boom or to whatever ropes that they can hold onto. And the wave washes over the boat. Everyone does manage to hold on. But as soon as it subsides, they can see that it has crashed in one side of the boat. And almost immediately they know that the damage to the boat is irreversible and it's going to sink. They started to get the lifeboat ready. And Dudley rushed into the cabin to get cans of meat and containers of fresh water.

9:37And the thing is, they can't throw that right into the lifeboat because the lifeboat is really very thin. It's like a quarter of an inch of wood. So they throw that, he throws that into the water, and it floats next to the lifeboat. Brooke, Stevens, and Parker were already in the lifeboat and started grabbing whatever they could from the water. But a lot of it was carried away. Dudley made it off the mignonette just before it sank. And when they finally get away and the four men are in this tiny lifeboat, they realize they have no water and they just have two tins, which the captain thought were meat, but when they look at it more closely, it turns out that they are turnips.

10:22The four men also realized that there was a hole in the lifeboat and it was filling with water. They were able to plug the hole, which helped, but didn't completely stop the leaking. And then they felt something bump up against the bottom of the boat. It was a shark. It hit the boat again, harder, this time almost capsizing it. The men hit the shark with an oar to try to get it to go away. They also are praying, because these actually were very religious men, so they're praying that God will make the shark go away, and the shark does go away. But that was a very chilling moment for them and made them realize that there were so many different dangers lurking for them as they floated in the ocean in this tiny little lifeboat.

11:10And, you know, when you're sort of cast adrift without food and water, you might think, oh, I'm going to starve to death, but really it's much more likely that you'll die of thirst. People can last a very long time without food and not very long without water. People can live just a few days without water. The men had a little from the canned turnips, but that wouldn't last. They knew not to drink seawater. They knew that as tempting as it was when your mouth is parched, it's so tempting to reach into the water that's right there, but they also knew that if they did that, it would kill them. So they were very strongly trying not to do that.

11:51The men waited two days before they opened their first can of turnips. Then on the fifth day, they saw something. They notice something in the distance, and they get closer to it, and it is a pretty large sea turtle. And they get up close to this turtle, they get it into the boat, they kill it, and it had enough meat for them to eat good turtle meat for days. But more importantly, it had liquid. And it's not a widely known fact, but turtle blood is actually one of the best things you can drink if you're in these men's situation. Fish blood actually has too much salt and too many other contaminants to be a good thing to drink.

12:35But turtle blood is good drinking. The men drank as much of the blood as they could and tried to save more for later. But some seawater washed in and they lost the rest. They spent the next few days scanning the ocean for more turtles, but they didn't see anything. Tell me about the custom of the sea. Yeah, so there was a long tradition of when there was a shipwreck. And, you know, back in the age of sail, shipwrecks were common. There were many, many shipwrecks. And when there were shipwrecks, people did not have radios. They couldn't, you know, wire for help. And a tradition developed among sailors that when there wasn't enough food or liquid to keep people alive, you could actually kill someone and eat them.

13:30And the actual custom of the sea was the drawing of lots. So lots would be drawn and whoever drew the short straw would be killed and eaten. So this was an established part of the sailing life. It was even well known to people who weren't sailors. In the early 1800s, the English poet Lord Byron wrote about a shipwreck in one of his most popular poems, Don Juan. Quote, they spoke of lots for flesh and blood, and who should die to be his fellow's food. In the 1830s, Edgar Allan Poe published his only novel, which also had a scene where sailors drew lots. So, quote, one of us should die to preserve the existence of the others.

14:16And how many days is it before Dudley first suggests drawing lots? I believe it was about 16. It's a little unclear. But when he begins to see that they're not seeing land, they're not seeing other ships, they're not seeing any more turtles, he says, you know, we need to do this. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

14:49Thomas Dudley first proposed drawing lots to Edwin Stevens and Edmund Brooks. They're both opposed. They say they do not want to do it. You know, let's wait a few more days. We may yet be saved by a passing ship or sea land. And it's also not entirely clear how much their biggest consideration was. if they agree to this, you know, there might be a one in four chance that they would be the one to be killed and eaten. But they do both say no. Why doesn't he ask Richard Parker, the cabin boy? Yeah, you know, the cabin boy just was not really regarded as a full member of the crew. And, you know, wasn't an adult really.

15:30By all rights, he should have asked Parker, because Because if lots were drawn, Parker would have to draw a lot. But I think in this almost paternal relationship he had towards the cabin boy, he regarded him as a child. And maybe this wasn't the sort of question that you ask a child. Around this time, the men decided to try to build a sail for the lifeboat. They used an oar as a mast and their own shirts as the sail. It worked. They were able to steer west, where they thought it might be more likely to see another boat. How desperate have things gotten on the boat? I mean, I think it's fair to say we cannot even imagine.

16:12I mean, they have not eaten or drunk in days. Their mouths are literally just drying up. And there were some references to how when they talked, it was almost like animals communicating. They just really couldn't talk. Their tongues were turning black. Their legs were also in terrible shape, and, you know, they're scrunched up and they can't move around. And then the sun is beating down on them, so there's that, and they don't really have anything to protect themselves against that. So I think both physically and mentally, they're in a very dire state. And then Richard Parker told them he'd been hiding something.

16:50He tells them that secretly late at night while they've been sleeping, he's been drinking seawater. And he said he just couldn't help himself. They had told him that it was a very dangerous thing to do, but he just needed to drink water and he drank seawater. He was starting to feel sick. Dudley talked to Stevens and Brooks again about drawing lots. He keeps on hoping someone will change their mind, and also maybe just thought, with the passing of each day, maybe people will realize, you know, the situation's getting dire and dire, and the hope of being saved is seeming more remote. And they're not agreeing.

17:30They're not agreeing. Adam Cohen says that at a certain point, Brooks even told Dudley that he would never agree to drawing lots, no matter how desperate things got. He said he would rather die than kill someone else. One morning, around 3 a.m., while Parker was laying down and Brooks was steering the boat, Captain Dudley leaned over to talk to Stevens so only he could hear. He asks him how many, you know, children he has, and, you know, they each are married and have children. and he points out that Parker's really, you know, quite sick and also doesn't have any family waiting for him and suggests that they dispense with the drawing of lots and just kill the cabin boy.

18:21We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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19:15Now it's a sauce shovel. Taco Bell's jalapeno citrus salsa. Get it with any item on the Cantina Chicken Menu while it's here. The participating U.S. Taco Bell locations for a limited time only. While supplies last, contact store for availability. After Captain Thomas Dudley suggested to Edwin Stevens that they kill Richard Parker, Stevens tried to put it off. He says, you know, let's wait until the morning and see how things look, because, you know, it was this odd circumstance where it was possible at any moment they could see a ship that would rescue them, at any moment they could see land. So he hesitated.

19:52Dudley agreed to wait until daylight, when they'd be able to see if a ship was coming. But then the sun came out, and they didn't see anything. Stevens told Dudley that they could go ahead with the plan. Dudley knows that he's going to have to be the one to do it, because Brooks is not doing it at all, and Stevens was somewhat reluctant. He knew he'd have to be the one to actually do the deed, and he asked Stevens to stand by near Parker and be ready to hold his feet if he struggled. Richard Parker had been at the bottom of the lifeboat, in and out of sleep. Sometimes he woke up talking about how there was a ship coming to save them.

20:31Brooks, who didn't know anything about the plan, had been awake steering the boat that night. Dudley told him to move to the front to get some sleep. Brooks tries to go to sleep, but before he does, Stevens does, look at him and look at Parker in a way that Brooks understands that this is what's about to happen. So Brooks covers his head. He doesn't want to even, you know, see any or hear any of it. Dudley then moves towards the cabin boy and takes out his knife, says a prayer to God to forgive them for what they're about to do. And the cabin boy is very much alert enough to see what is going on and says his last words to Dudley, What, me, sir?

21:19And right after he says that, Dudley takes his knife and slits the cabin boy's throat. And what happens after he dies? Well, you know, the thing they were most focused on was the blood. So they take the receptacles they have, which are a baler and a tin, and they collect the blood. And they immediately begin drinking it. Eventually, Brooks asked for some too, and they gave him a can. Then, the three men ate Richard Parker's heart and liver. Brooks later said, I can say that we partook of it with quite as much relish as ordinary food, but that still they became, quote, different men. The next day it rained, so much that the men could collect extra water.

22:13And three days after that, they saw something on the horizon. They see a ship, and they begin frantically waving, frantically waving, and they notice that the ship has seen them, because it's actually turning in their direction and moving towards them. It was a German ship traveling back to Europe from South America, and it pulled up alongside the lifeboat. The sailors said that they noticed some piece of rib and some flesh, so they knew something was going on down there, but they didn't know what it was. But the men tell their whole story. And if they thought that there might be any consequences down the road, it would have been very easy to lie, right?

22:58They could have said, oh, you know, we were on this lifeboat, the cabin boy drank salt water, died, and once he was dead, We ate his body and drank his blood. And then they would have presented themselves to the world as not having murdered anyone. That's not what they did. And we'll never know exactly why. And it could be just that they were so overcome and so excited and so weak and all that that they didn't really have time to formulate a plan and get their story straight. But it seems more likely that because the custom of the sea was so entrenched in the sailing world, in literature, in popular culture, it was just something that they were almost proud of having done.

23:42They had survived, and they were going to tell how they survived. Captain Dudley asked the German captain if they could take Richard Parker's remains back to England. He said no and ordered his crew to throw them into the ocean. It took days for Dudley, Stevens, and Brooks to be able to walk again. On their way back to England, Dudley started writing an account of what had happened to them over their 24 days at sea. He wrote about how he said a prayer before he killed Parker. But he didn't include Parker's last words. Instead, he wrote that he'd been, quote, all but lifeless. Dudley may have been a bit of a, the kind of old salt who likes to tell great stories of the sea because he wanted to actually, you know, he took back the lifeboat.

24:35They took it back with them to England on the German ship. He took back other relics. So he may have been one of these sailors who returns home with this idea, boy, do I have a story to tell you about our adventures at sea. When the men finally arrived back in England, the first thing Dudley did was send a telegram to his wife. Mignonette foundered, in boat 24 days, sufferings fearful, all well now. Then, all three of them went to the harbour's customs house to give statements about the shipwreck. Each of them told the whole story, and Dudley even reenacted the moment he killed Parker. A harbor police sergeant was watching.

25:19He seems to have a feeling that a crime may have been committed, and he actually asks Dudley for the knife, which Dudley gives him. And if it were at that point just a shipwreck investigation, there would be no need to take the knife. But Dudley gives it freely and still is not thinking that he's in any kind of legal jeopardy. The policeman takes the knife, goes to talk to the mayor, and comes back with arrest warrants. and they arrest all three of the men. They were arrested for murder. This had never happened before. Other men had survived shipwrecks by eating people, and they weren't charged with a crime when they got back.

26:00In England at the time, there was only one degree of murder, no second or third degree. And if you were found guilty, there was only one sentence, the death penalty. How does the public react to the case? So the initial reaction is enormous sympathy for the men. From the very first hearing in Falmouth, crowds show up trying to get into the courtroom, overflowing, and they are cheering for the men. They are on their side. I mean, it might be a bit much to say that they were folk heroes, but they were getting enormous sympathy as people who had done what they needed to do to survive under terrible conditions at sea.

26:45One man wrote to the mayor who had signed the men's arrest warrants and said he would be coming to Falmouth to shoot him the following week. Other supporters started fundraisers for Dudley, Stevens, and Brooks. At one point, Dudley organized for the lifeboat to be put on display so people could pay to see it, and he could use the proceeds for the case. One newspaper reported, quote, there are no marks in it of blood that can easily be seen. Another newspaper interviewed Richard Parker's family. His foster mother said his death had, quote, almost broken my heart, and I can seem to see him looking up to Captain Dudley and saying, what me, sir?

27:30The newspaper reported that his father, quote, would speak to hardly anyone. A little less than two weeks after they were arrested, Dudley, Stevens, and Brooks went back to court for a hearing, And the head of the prosecution made an announcement. He said he was dropping the murder charge against Edmund Brooks. And, you know, that is the fair and right thing to do, because he did everything he could not to involve himself in the murder, other than physically try to stop it. But also, it was a pragmatic decision, because when Brooks is not charged, he then is available to be the star witness for the Crown.

28:11So the main argument for the defense is what's called the necessity defense. And there is this concept, and it has sort of ancient roots in law going back, you know, many, many centuries. When there's a dire situation and someone has a choice of two evils, they can be forgiven for choosing the lesser of two evils, even if that is a crime. So the main strongest argument the defense had was this was a dire situation. The two possible outcomes were four men were going to die in the lifeboat or one man was going to die in the lifeboat. Dudley and Stevens took the path of one man dying in the lifeboat.