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In 1884 four men sailed to Australia in a small yacht, Mignionette. It sank in the South Atlantic, stranding its crew in a small ship’s boat with no water and two cans of turnips for food. After weeks without food, the captain, Thomas Dudley, and the mate, Edwin Stephens, killed the 17-year-old cabin boy, Richard Parker. Afterwards the three remaining survivors consumed Parker.
Captain's Dinner: A Shipwreck, An Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History, by Adam Cohen, relates what happened. It tells the story behind Regina v. Dudley and Stephens, a landmark legal decision that resonates today. Cohen examines the voyage, the subsequent wreck, the survivors' return to England, the public reaction, the subsequent trial, and its ultimate aftermath.
When finally rescued, the survivors, Dudley, Stephens, and a third crewman who had not participated in the murder, the able seaman Edward Brooks, claimed necessity. Expecting to be greeted as heroes when they returned to England, they were tried for murder instead.
Cohen shows why they expected to be hailed instead of arrested. Cannibalism in shipwreck situations was a “custom of the sea,” with the victim traditionally chosen by lot. (Interestingly, as Cohen shows, the “random” lot always fell to the weakest, the least liked, or most foreign among those aboard.) As late as the 1830s, crews forced to this necessity were usually popularly acclaimed upon return. There were no direct legal precedents. The few existing ones—all outside of English jurisprudence—indicated killing another for survival was acceptable.
Times had changed in England by the 1880s. Victorian reform was the trend of the day, based on the belief that Englishmen were morally superior. Englishmen killing another for a cannibalistic meal challenged that superiority. The Crown prosecuted because they wanted to establish firmly and forever the utilitarian argument that necessity did not justify taking a human life.
The trial was sensational. The public was firmly on the side of Dudley and Stephens. (Brooks was not prosecuted, but was instead a prosecution witness. Cannibalism was not a crime in England, but murder was.) No one, including the prosecutors, wanted the pair hanged, but they wanted the precedent set.
Captain's Dinner is an absorbing and fascinating book. It looks at the clash between Christian morality and the social Darwinism and utilitarianism simultaneously in vogue in Victorian England. It explores the implications of the legal precedents set by this case, which echo to the present.
“Captain's Dinner: A Shipwreck, An Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History,” by Adam Cohen, Authors Equity, November 2025, 384 pages, $32.00 (Hardcover), $16.99 (E-book), $22.00 (Audiobook)
This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.
Discussion (4)
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I'm in the library holds queue for this one. Thanks for the review - now I'm even more looking forward to reading it!
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Now in my Audible queue. This is not a book I would have added to my queue on the basis of the title and subtitle alone.
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Why didn't the defendants claim that they dined on Parker only after he died from exposure or some other natural cause given that the charge was murder? If they had drawn lots or the victim had volunteered wouldn't it have followed some precedents?
Cannibalism always puts me in mind of the bar scene in The Big Bus (1976), a flick so absurd it was kinda great and a personal favorite.
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Largely because they thought they would be hailed as heroes because they survived. That is what happened to earlier shipwreck survivors as late as the 1830s. They did not realize they were incriminating themselves, and there was no Miranda Warning in Britain.
The British government want to nail down the principle that "necessity" was an inadequate reason for taking a human life, so they went after the case hard. Also, as I mentioned in the review, the random lot always fell on the individual unable to defend himself and least liked by the other survivors.