A shocking true tale of shipwreck, murder and the last taboo. On 5 July 1884 the yacht 'Mignonette' set sail from Southampton bound for Sydney. Halfway through their projected 120-day voyage, Captain Tom Dudley and his crew of three men were beset by a monstrous storm off the coast of Africa. After four days of battling towering waves and hurricane gales, their yacht was finally crushed by a ferocious forty-foot wave.
The survivors were cast adrift a thousand miles from the nearest landfall in an open thirteen-foot dinghy, without provisions, water or shelter from the scorching sun. When, after twenty-four days, they were finally rescued by a passing yacht, the 'Moctezuma', only three men were left and they were in appalling condition. The ordeal they endured and the trial that followed their eventual return to England held the whole nation - from the lowliest ship's deckhand to Queen Victoria herself - spellbound during the following winter.
From yellowing newspaper files, personal letters and diaries, and first-person accounts of the principals, Neil Hanson has pieced together the extraordinary tale of Captain Tom Dudley, the 'Mignonette' and her crew. Their routine voyage culminated in unimaginable hardship and horror, during which the survivors of the storm had to make some impossible decisions. This is the true story of the voyage and the subsequent court case that outlawed for ever a practice followed since men first put to the ocean in boats: the custom of the sea.
