In July 1884, the English yacht Mignonette sank during a storm, leaving four crew members—Tom Dudley, Edwin Stephens, Edmund Brooks, and 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker—stranded on a 13-foot lifeboat in the South Atlantic. With negligible rations and no fresh water, they survived for over two weeks on a small turtle and caught rainwater. By the twentieth day, Parker fell severely ill after drinking seawater.
Dudley and Stephens proposed sacrificing Parker to save the rest, arguing that he was already dying and had no family, unlike the older men. Brooks dissented, but on day 20, Dudley and Stephens killed Parker with a penknife and consumed his flesh and blood. Four days later, the survivors were rescued by a passing German vessel and returned to England.
Expecting protection under the custom of the sea, they openly admitted to their actions. However, the British legal system sought to establish a definitive moral and legal boundary. In the landmark case R v Dudley and Stephens, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge ruled that necessity is not a valid defense for murder, declaring that no person has the right to decide whose life is less valuable.
Dudley and Stephens were sentenced to death, though public sympathy led Queen Victoria to commute their sentence to six months' imprisonment. This landmark decision firmly established that human life cannot be sacrificed for self-preservation in legal jurisprudence.