SHIPWRECK DIARIES

The ship staggered under a thunderous shock
that shook us asunder, as if she had struck and crashed on a rock; for the huge sea smote every soul from the decks of The Falcon but one; all of them, all but the man that was lash'd to the helm had gone."[11. 106-9"]

Tennyson - The Wreck

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Merry gentlemen of the sea...




We were schooner-rigged and rakish, with a long and lissome hull,
And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull;
We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore,
And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore.

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship,
We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip;
It's a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored,
But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard.
Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains,
And the paint-work all was spatter dashed with other peoples brains,

She was boarded, she was looted, she was scuttled till she sank.
And the pale survivors left us by the medium of the plank.
O! then it was (while standing by the taffrail on the poop)
We could hear the drowning folk lament the absent chicken coop;
Then, having washed the blood away, we'd little else to do
Than to dance a quiet hornpipe as the old salts taught us to.

O! the fiddle on the fo'c'sle, and the slapping naked soles,
And the genial "Down the middle, Jake, and curtsey when she rolls!"
With the silver seas around us and the pale moon overhead,
And the look-out not a-looking and his pipe-bowl glowing red.
Ah! the pig-tailed, quidding pirates and the pretty pranks we played,
All have since been put a stop to by the naughty Board of Trade;
The schooners and the merry crews are laid away to rest,
A little south the sunset in the islands of the Blest.

A Ballad of John Silver, by John Masefield

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Another Gallery of Shipwrecks

























SWD IV - Of Law and Literature & Distasteful Dinners

In SWD II refrence was made to a case of criminal prosecution due to murder and canibalism in the context of shipwreck, as the first case in which "state of necesity" was argued as defence.

Though the information gap pained me, leaving too much to memory’s tendency to “reconstruct” facts according to fancy, I have been too lazy to do the necessary legal research.

However, as is often the case, literature came to the rescue in the form of Rudyard Kipling’s The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes. Mr. Jukes, a pretty disagreeable Engineer serving in India, in dire straits of his own (heartily deserved, as far as I’m concerned) likens his situation to that of the sailors of the Mignonette.

“A new shipwreck” thought I, and looking it up found a similar case to the aforementioned. Rather too similar to be ignored, I’m afraid.

Here goes one of many accounts available on the internet (I chose this one for succinctness and the legal quote). A more extensive and entertaining version - “Eating Research Assistants is Wrong”- can be perused at:

http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/OTHERS/CSMS/OCHAL/mign.htm#Who%20am%20I?#Who%20am%20I?

The Mignonette Survivors from 1884.

Driven by hunger to become cannibals, this was a case which became a key precedent on the issue of necessity. Can an individual or individuals kill to ensure survival? Dudley and Stephens, two survivors of a wrecked yacht, killed a dying companion in order to preserve their own lives. In law, they were guilty of murder - but was there any justification for such a ghastly act? The Mignonette was a yawl-rigged yacht which sailed from Tollesbury in Essex. Despite being found guilty and receiving the mandatory sentence of death, the Queen commuted the penalty to six months' imprisonment without hard labour.

Law students have to study the Mignonette case when covering issues and defences of criminal responsibility.

R v Dudley and Stephens reported in 1884 is described as concerning three men, X1, X2 and W and a boy, Y escaping from shipwreck in an open boat. After eighteen days without food Y was killed by X1, with the agreement of X2 and eaten by X1, X2, and W. Four days later they were rescued. X1 and X2 were indicted and convicted for the murder of Y. In defence, they raised the probability that, without having eaten Y, they would have died of starvation.

The defence failed. Chief Justice Coleridge ruled:

'The temptation to the act which existed here was not what the law has ever called necessity. Nor is this to be regretted. Though law and morality are not the same,...yet the absolute divorce of law from morality would be of fatal consequence; and such divorce would follow if the temptation to murder in this case were to be held by law an absolute defence of it. It is not so.' "

Credit due to: www.throughthenight.co.uk