THE memorial in
Itchen's Peartree
churchyard only
hints at the terrible
facts behind
the death of a 17-yearold
orphan 123 years
ago.
"Sacred to the memory of
Richard Parker," it says, "aged
17, who died at sea July 25th 1884
after 19 days dreadful suffering
in an open boat in the tropics
having been wrecked in the
yacht Mignonette."
The gravestone tactfully fails
to mention the gruesome manner
of the cabin boy's death,
which caused a "sensation" in
Victorian Britain when the
story was broken in the Daily
Echo (then the Hampshire
Advertiser) on August 31, 1884.
The 19-ton Mignonette was a
racing yacht that had been
bought by Australian politician
Jack Want for £400.
He hired 32-year-old Tom
Dudley to skipper it to Sydney,
along with mate Edwin
Stephens, 37, crew Ned Brooks,
27, and Parker, a teenage lad who
grew up in the working class
Itchen Ferry Village.
Forty-seven days into the voyage
the 52ft yacht met heavy
weather in the South Atlantic.
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Pounded by monstrous waves,
she sank in a matter of minutes
and the captain launched a 13ft
survival dinghy.
Parker was sent below to fetch
a beaker of fresh water and a
few tins of what he thought was
canned meat. Thrown overboard
in the expectation it would float,
the beaker sank like a stone and
all but two of the tins were
dropped in the boy's haste to
abandon ship.
Richard Parker's grave at Peartree Church
Having filled "like an open
bucket" the Mignonette sank
without a trace within five minutes.
Her crew of four managed
to board the lifeboat, hoisted an
oar in lieu of a mast and
attached shirts to act as a sail.
Sixteen hundred miles from
land, with no drinking water
and just two tins of what turned
out to be not meat at all, but
turnips, the castaways battled
sunburn, malnutrition and
dehydration.
They survived for more than
two weeks on flesh from a small
turtle pulled from the ocean,
rainwater caught in a cape and their own urine when
Dudley proposed drawing
lots to decide which of them
should die to save the others,
but the men were repelled at
the suggestion.
On the 21st day, a weak and
delirious Parker leant over
the side to drink tins of seawater
in a desperate attempt
to quench his thirst. As he
lay desperately ill in the bow
of the boat, Dudley persuaded
Stephens that the boy
should now be sacrificed as
he would soon die anyway.
"Now, Dick, my boy, your
time has come," said Dudley
approaching Parker with a
penknife. "What me, sir? Oh
don't!" gasped the cabin boy,
but his protest was cut short
as the knife pierced his jugular
vein.
“I offered up a prayer most fervently that God might forgive us for such an act. It was my decision to take the boy’s life but it was justified by an overriding necessity. As a result I have lost only one member of my crew in circumstances in which all would otherwise have perished.”
Captain Tom Dudley
As his lifeblood drained
away, his companions caught
it in a bailer and drank it.
They then opened a deep slit
in the boy's belly and
removed the warm organs to
cut up and eat. Liver first,
then heart. Ravenously they
ate, squabbling over the
boy's flesh.
After they had finished
feasting they washed off his
body, strips of flesh were
hacked off and left to dry out
and the boy's head was
chopped off and thrown
overboard. It took three
hours to complete the grisly
task. The larger bones were
thrown overboard, inviting
sharks to circle in a feeding
frenzy.
Three days later the
remaining crew were picked
up by a passing German barque,
the Montezuma, en
route to Hamburg. Taking
onboard the survivors, the
German captain saw human
remains still in the dinghy
and said little.
But when the survivors
reached Falmouth they
made no secret of what they
had done. Dudley and
Stephens were promptly
charged with murder on the
high seas, with Brooks as a
witness for the prosecution.
"I offered up a prayer most
fervently that God might forgive
us for such an act,"
Dudley said at the High
Court trial.
"It was my decision to take
the boy's life but it was justified
by an overriding necessity.
As a result I have lost
only one member of my
crew in circumstances in
which all would otherwise
have perished."
They were found guilty of
murder and sentenced to
death, but with a recommendation
to mercy. Three weeks
later they were reprieved
and released from jail after
six months.
It's said Stephens went
mad and Brooks never recovered
from their living nightmare.
Dudley became a
ship's chandler in Australia,
where he was known as
"Cannibal Tom", and
became the first person
Down Under to die from the
bubonic plague.
The legend surrounding
Parker's grisly demise didn't
end at his death as the trial
of his crewmates unveiled a
spooky coincidence.
It emerged that Dudley had
been reading a novel written
almost 50 years prior to the
shipwreck. It was called The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym of Nantucket and
described how three shipwrecked
mariners ate a fellow
crew member. His name
was Richard Parker.
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