For centuries, sailors faced with horrific shipwreck scenarios followed an unwritten maritime tradition known as the Custom of the Sea. When stranded without food or water, survivors would draw lots to select one person to be sacrificed and eaten so that the others might survive. This gruesome practice was widely understood among mariners as a necessity of survival.
However, in 1884, the English legal case Regina v. Dudley and Stephens shattered this centuries-old custom and established a legal precedent that still stands today. The case arose after the yacht Mignonette sank in a storm in the South Atlantic, leaving four crew members adrift in a small lifeboat.
After 18 days without adequate food or water, Captain Tom Dudley and Edwin Stephens proposed drawing lots, but ultimately decided to kill the weakest member, a 17-year-old cabin boy named Richard Parker who had fallen unconscious after drinking seawater. Dudley and Stephens killed Parker, and the three survivors fed on his body until rescued four days later. Upon returning to England, Dudley and Stephens openly confessed, fully expecting immunity under the traditional necessity defense.
Instead, public authorities decided to test the legal boundary. The case reached the High Court of Justice, where Lord Chief Justice Coleridge delivered a landmark ruling. The court rejected necessity as a legal defense for murder, holding that no person has the right to declare another's life less valuable than their own to save themselves.
The judges feared that allowing necessity as a defense would create a dangerous legal loophole for self-interested killings. Dudley and Stephens were sentenced to death, though Queen Victoria commuted their sentences to six months in prison. The ruling effectively abolished the Custom of the Sea.