After the Mignonette sank in the South Atlantic in 1884, its starving survivors ultimately resorted to the "custom of the sea."
In desperate times throughout history, people have turned to desperate measures and committed what many societies consider to be the worst of all human sins: cannibalism.
Members of the Donner Party infamously resorted to cannibalism to survive when they became stranded in the Sierra Nevadas in the 1840s, as did survivors of the Andes Flight Disaster in 1972. In the event of shipwreck, castaway sailors often followed a long-held tradition known as the “custom of the sea,” an implicit agreement that, if they were stranded, sailors would draw lots to pick who would be killed — and eaten.
But the story of cannibalism related to a ship called the Mignonette is a bit different.
A 52-foot yacht, the Mignonette had been purchased by an Australian lawyer named Jack Want in 1883. Want, who hoped to impress his English-born friends, hired a small but experienced crew of four men to sail his ship from Southampton, England, to Sydney.
But the ship, which Want bought used, was not made for long journeys. And though it was refitted for the trek from England to Australia, things for its crew soon went terribly, terribly wrong.
Tom Dudley, captain of the Mignonette.
The crew decided to take the long way to Sydney in order to steer clear of high winds in the Mediterranean. Avoiding the Suez Canal, they instead set a course that would take them through the South Atlantic. But roughly two weeks into its journey, the Mignonette encountered a storm just north of the Cape of Good Hope. Despite the best efforts of the crew, the yacht sank, leaving its four men stranded on a lifeboat hundreds of miles from the nearest land masses, the islands of Saint Helena and Tristan da Cunha.
Hopelessly adrift, the sailors tried to survive. But the only food that they’d managed to rescue from their sinking vessel was two tins of turnips. To make matters worse, the lack of rain meant that the crew had to resort to drinking their own urine. As things grew increasingly desperate, the men began to quietly consider resorting to the custom of the sea and drawing lots to pick a man to kill and eat so that the others could survive.
However, the captain and the first mate would make a very different decision instead — one that ensured their survival, but resulted in a scandalous trial when they got back to England.
Learn more about the music used in our podcast. History Uncovered is part of the Airwave Media network. Learn more about your ad choices by visiting megaphone.fm/adchoices.
