"In 1884, a yacht named the Mignonette set sail from Britain, headed to Australia but sank in a storm off the coast of Africa. The crew of four clambered into a dinghy with barely any supplies, and after three weeks adrift, Captain Thomas Dudley reached a fateful decision. Instead of everybody starving to death, they would kill the 17-year-old cabin boy, Richard Parker, who was the sickest of the remaining crew."
"When I was a first-year law student, my law school roommate and I gave a Halloween party with the theme of come as your favorite case or legal doctrine. And my law school roommate, who, I should say, is now a federal judge, came as Captain Dudley. And he went to the supermarket. He got some chicken parts, spattered them with ketchup and wore them around his neck."
In 1884 the yacht Mignonette sank off the coast of Africa en route to Australia. Four crew members escaped in a dinghy with minimal supplies and endured three weeks adrift. Captain Thomas Dudley ordered the killing of the 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker, the sickest crewman, and the survivors consumed his body to avoid starvation. Rescuers later found the men and they faced a murder trial in Britain. The trial examined whether necessity could justify killing and cannibalism and had a lasting effect on English criminal law and debates over survival ethics.
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