‘I am very, very sorry that our poor little friend Parker did not come back with us,’ he said, ‘but we should none of us have returned if we had not done what we did. As to offending myself, if there is a trial I have got no money. Everything I had was lost in the Mignonette and our wages were stopped from the moment she went down.’
Among the onlookers as Brooks was speaking was a woman holding a ragged bundle of possessions. Two children clung to her skirts. When the reporters and the crowd had heard enough from him, Brooks took her to one side, exchanged increasingly heated words with her then handed her a handful of coins. When his friends hailed a hansom cab to take them to the County Tavern at Northam, she and her children were left standing alone at the side of the road. They cut a forlorn picture as they turned and plodded away.
The following day Daniel Parker also arrived back in Southampton. He had returned to Torquay to rejoin his yacht, only to find that the Marguerite had already left for the Channel Islands. That evening a reporter from the Southampton Times tracked him down at his home in Itchen Ferry. Daniel’s comments to him reflected the ambivalence of the local people. They had known and liked Richard, but as a seafaring community, they also understood the custom of the sea.
‘As regards the feeling among the fishermen here,’ Daniel said, ‘I may say that, of course, we don’t know who is best and who is worst but all I have spoken to seem to think that the Captain ought “to get into it” but they say that Brooks and Stephens refused to draw lots.
‘I know it may be argued that three lives are better than one, but the lad was an orphan and we seemed to think that advantage was taken of him. As to whether any punishment should be awarded, we say there should be a little in case others might go to sea, get into trouble and be killed because people might say nothing was done in this case.’
The same reporter also won the confidence of Richard’s adoptive mother, Mrs Matthews. ‘Dick was a fine young fellow for his age; he would have been eighteen next February. I had charge of him over three years and always found him a very good lad. He was always a rough and ready boy and was not afraid to go to sea, although he had never been right away from home before.
‘On the nineteenth of May, the day they left England, he got up very early and was downstairs by five o’clock in the morning. I and my husband came down to see he was all right and as he said goodbye he kissed us both and hung upon both our necks for several minutes. He seemed then sorry that he was going to leave us and this was the first time that he had shown any sort of regret for the resolve that he had taken. That was the last I saw of him as I did not see the Mignonette leave the river though she was towed down the Itchen the same afternoon.
‘I had one letter from Dick from Madeira. It was written by himself. I heard nothing more about him until Sunday morning last when I was told the ship was lost. When I heard of his dreadful death I could not believe it; it was a hard death indeed for him to die. It has almost broken my heart because he was as dear to me and to my husband as if he were our own son.
‘I don’t think there is any really strong feeling in the Ferry against these poor unfortunate men and all I have to say about it is that I really don’t think they should have killed him. I can seem to see him now looking up to Captain Dudley and saying, “What — me, sir?”’
The editorial in the Southampton Times reflected the prevailing view among its readers.
While many of the briny fraternity complain that an equality of chance was not given to the four exhausted survivors by the casting of lots, others regard with more charity the unparalleled extremity to which they were driven and contend that it would have been equally a crime to have sacrificed one of the other three, when it was evident that the boy could not have survived.
Faced with such generous views from those closest to the victim, the treatment of the case by some sections of the metropolitan press was also beginning to soften.
There was even a sympathetic editorial in the Standard, in stark contrast to its earlier outright condemnation.
It is hardly possible for those enjoying the comforts of a life on shore to form a just opinion as to the state to which men must have come before they adopted this terrible alternative. It is, we believe, the first time that the law has taken cognisance of one of these awful tragedies at sea and the interest in the trial especially among seafaring men cannot fail to be very great.
The Daily Telegraph was even more understanding of the men’s position.
For humanity’s sake, we must regret that such confessions as have fallen from these rescued men ever came to the light of day. It would be better perhaps that it had never been told at all. Repulsive as the last resource of this boat’s crew appears, it is but just to remember that it was arrived at only through and after an anguish of suffering which would dethrone reason and reduce manhood to a raving craving for food and drink, utterly beyond the limits and wholly unimaginable to any save the victims.
During the rest of their lives the shadow of this awful memory must of necessity darken their days and often trouble their nightly slumber. But it is for their fellows to be compassionate rather than condemn them and to hear this piteous story of the sea with the assurance that, despite their unspeakable grief, even the friends of the poor lost sailor lad will pronounce no other judgement against them than one of sorrowful silence.
Public sympathy for the three men was heightened still further by the publication of Tom’s moving last letter to Philippa, written while in the dinghy. John Burton was responsible for that, beginning to collect on his quid pro quo with Tom, Brooks and Stephens by hawking copies of the creased, folded and waterstained letter to the newspapers.
The letter and the interviews with the survivors and Richard’s relatives served only to fuel an already insatiable public appetite for news of the Mignonette case. It had been reported worldwide and continued to dominate the British press, even relegating to second place the daily bulletins on the progress of Sir Garnet Wolseley’s expedition up the Nile to relieve the besieged General Gordon at Khartoum.
Reporters continued to pursue Tom, Brooks and Stephens, and interviewed everyone with even the most tangential connection to the men. A flood of correspondence from members of the public — the vast majority supportive of the men’s actions — filled the letters columns of the papers and many others wrote directly to the three men, whose addresses had been published in the press.
A ship’s captain from Perth wrote to Tom:
I feel I must give vent to my feelings by sending a letter. How glad your dear wife must have been to get you back safe and how deep must be your gratitude to Him who has so signally blessed and delivered you. I have to assure you of the sympathy of our entire ship’s company, as we all feel sure you acted for the best in all things.
I have not the slightest conception of what you have undergone in your late dreadful trial but I do feel grateful that your lives have been spared. May God bless you yet further and may He instruct the hearts before whom you will stand next week. You have all our prayers.
There were too many letters for Tom to respond individually and he instead replied through the correspondence columns:
May I express my thanks for numerous favours of sympathy to myself and companions for our past unparalleled sufferings and privations on the ocean and our present torture under the ban of the law, being charged with an act which certainly was not accompanied by either premeditation or malice in the true sense of the words as my conscience can confirm.