There can have been few, if any, other instances where a man accused of murder was able to plead his innocence in The Times.
Stephens also received several letters, including one, congratulating him on,
Your remarkable and providential escape from a watery grave. The great privations you and your noble companions have undergone and the great skill with which you handled your frail craft under such exceptional circumstances and under a tropical sun, have placed you at the first rank of England’s heroes.
Other individuals, some rich and powerful men associated with yachting, petitioned the home secretary. The owner of one of Tom’s former yachts, Iain MacNab, wrote to Harcourt:
Sir, May I venture to approach you with a brief appeal on behalf of one of the three unfortunate men in that terrible tale of the sea which is thrilling the whole land?
Tom Dudley was at one time Captain of my yacht and while in my service I conceived the highest regard for him in every way. He was skilful and brave in his calling, upright, truthful and honest as a man and kind to a degree to all under his command. He was generous too, and gave freely of his small store to his less fortunate friends. In all the relations of life his conduct was such as commanded respect; he was emphatically an honest man. All this is within my personal knowledge.
It passes my understanding to conceive the horror of the extremity that could induce so good and brave a man to do wrong. I am sure of this, that whatever view the law may take of the act, Dudley could not have thought it unjustifiable. Neither selfishness nor cruelty had any part in his character.
I apologize for intruding on your valuable time by placing these facts before you. But human life and happiness are at stake and I feel it my duty to state what I knew of poor Dudley, for whose sad position I feel deeply, and I think I am sure of your forgiveness when I crave your kind intervention on his behalf.
The letter was noted and filed, but Harcourt had no intention of being swayed into making any ‘kind intervention’ on Tom’s behalf. He remained determined that the full weight of the law should fall on the Mignonette case.
Not all legal opinion agreed with him, however, and the correspondence columns of The Times and the Telegraph carried a series of letters from barristers and solicitors arguing the procedural merits and demerits of prosecuting the men. ‘A Barrister’ wrote:
To judge these men from a severely legal standpoint for what they have done would be most unjust. After nearly twenty days of such fearful privations they can hardly be accounted responsible creatures. The longing for the dying boy’s blood was a phrensy, induced by physical and mental suffering. No doubt the youth would have shortly perished from want of stamina and from the draughts of sea water which he had imbibed.
The rough arguments with which the Captain and Stephens justified the action of killing to themselves because they were married men with families and the boy had nobody dependent upon him for support, are good arguments as far as they go.
It must also be remembered that it was on their own confession that they stand indicted; they did not conceal the offence that they had committed although it would probably have been perfectly easy to do so.
The Falmouth Magistrates were perfectly right in ordering their arrest on the charge of murder. Every taking of a human life is presumed to be murder. It would be for the accused themselves to disprove their guilt or to adduce such extenuating circumstances as will ensure their escaping with slight punishment.
What is interesting to notice in this case is that we have here got beyond the boundaries of law. We have touched the lowest strata of practical ethics and have come to a question of primary morality which everybody will answer according to his own moral feeling. To dogmatize is absurd.
Another correspondent to The Times drew attention to the eerie parallels between the case and a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1837. ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket’ told the tale of four shipwrecked men who having earlier killed and eaten a turtle, killed one of their number, the cabin boy named Richard Parker, and drank his blood and ate his flesh:
Our chief sufferings were now those of hunger and thirst, and, when we looked forward to the means of relief in this respect, our hearts sunk within us, and we were induced to regret that we had escaped the less dreadful perils of the sea. We endeavoured, however, to encourage ourselves with the hope of being speedily picked up by some vessel, and encouraged each other to bear with fortitude the evils that might happen…
I immediately saw by the countenance of Parker that I was safe and that it was he who had been doomed to suffer… I must not dwell upon the fearful repast which immediately ensued. Such things may be imagined, but words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality. Let it suffice to say that, having in some measure appeased the raging thirst which consumed us by the blood of the victim, and having by common consent taken off the hands, feet, and head, throwing them together with the entrails into the sea, we devoured the rest of the body, piecemeal.
Chapter 16
The following Thursday, 18 September 1884, the three defendants returned to Falmouth to surrender to their bail at the magistrates’ court. Stephens and Brooks had travelled back from Southampton on the Wednesday evening and spent the night at the Sailors’ Home.
Tom arrived early on Thursday morning on the mail express from London to Truro, and took the train along the rattling, single-track line around the curve of the hills down into Falmouth. He disembarked at the station, but no hansom cabs were waiting for business at that early hour and he had to make his slow, painful way across town on foot.
He still needed daily treatment for the wounds to his buttocks he had suffered on the day after they were rescued, and Stephens also remained in a frail physical and mental state. Tom also noted with concern that Brooks, the only one strong enough to climb on to the ship when they were rescued, now seemed the weakest of the three. He sat quiet and listless as they ate their breakfast, avoiding Tom’s eye and barely joining the conversation.
‘Cheer up, Brooks,’ Tom said. ‘We’ll see our homes again tonight and all this business will be behind us.’
Brooks gave a weak smile, then looked away.
When they had finished their breakfast, Captain Jose sent a boy for a cab to take the three of them up the hill to the Guildhall. It was almost an hour before the hearing was due to begin, but another huge crowd was already blocking the street, and the doors of the court were under siege from people desperate even for standing room in the small space allotted to the public.
A shout went up as they alighted and the crowd pressed even more closely around them as they fought their way through to the magistrates’ entrance. Hands trembling, Tom rested against the wall of the courtroom as the other two waited on a bench.
The magistrates entered the court just as the clock struck eleven and the three men took their places in the dock. When all was in readiness, the clerk to the justices signalled to the police to open the courtroom doors. There was another mêlée as people fought for a space, and many were locked out when the doors were forced shut again.
The small table in front of the dock was almost equally crowded with lawyers. Mr Tilly’s ruddy face was topped by a bird’s nest of dishevelled hair. Facing him across the table was the tall, patrician figure of William Otto Julius Danckwerts, QC. A barrister at the Inner Temple, a junior Treasury counsel and a specialist in wreck inquiries, he appeared for the prosecution with Mr G. Appleby-Jenkins, a solicitor who was also the town clerk of Penryn.