Cannibals and Carnage E-Book

Graham Faiella

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Thrilling Tales of the Sea
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 340

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

In the nineteenth century true stories of cannibal tribes massacring white traders (and vice versa) and missionaries fed the morbid appetites of Europeans, North Americans and colonials. Accounts of cannibalism committed by seafarers on their dead shipmates quickened the pulses of landfolk even more, and pricked their moral disquiet. Acts of desperate men committing unspeakable atrocities. The warring frenzy of cannibal headhunters and their gruesome feasting. Such was the stuff of real-life 'sixpenny romances', rich in human butchery and garnished with treachery and terror. The more atrocious the at rocities, the more exotic the locations; the more sensational the narratives, the greater was the thrall of these thrilling tales of the sea.

Leseprobe

First published 2019

The History Press

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© Graham Faiella, 2019

The right of Graham Faiella to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9347 0

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

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CONTENTS

Preface

‘The Custom of the Sea’

Carnage

Part I Cannibals

1 ‘The Custom of the Sea’

The Mignonette: A Landmark Case

The Turley: Mate Driven to Drink the Blood and Eat the Flesh of a Comrade

The Sallie M. Steelman: A Blighted Voyage

The Maria: Appalling Tale of Shipwreck, Hunger and Death

Adrift on the Grand Banks: Cannibalism by Scotchmen

The Drot Affair: ‘A Gruesome Story’

The Angola: ‘Madness and Murder – Forty-Two Days on a Raft’

2 Amongst Savages

The Wulaia Bay Massacre

Fiji: The Killing of Rev. Thomas Baker

The Meva Massacre

The Peri

Fiji Cannibal Feasts, by an Eyewitness

New Guinea: The Franz Massacre and Cannibal Feast

The New Hebrides: The Big Nambas Tribe of North Malekula – ‘A Ferocious Race’

Part II Carnage

1 ‘Carnival of Murder on the High Seas’

The Herbert Fuller Axe Murders

The Saladin

The Olive Pecker Mutiny and Murders

The Anna Murders on the High Seas

2 Massacres in the South Seas

The New Hebrides

The Solomon Islands

Massacre at the Florida Islands – The Lavinia

The Sandfly Atrocity

The Brutal Murder of Capt. Schwartz

The Murder of Capt. Guy on Rubiana

3 The South Seas Labour Trade

Attack on the Young Dick at Malaita

The Murders on the Blackbirding Brig Carl

The Dancing Wave Massacre

More Murder in the Labour Traffic – The Hopeful

PREFACE

Cannibalism and massacres by ‘savages’ in the nineteenth century provided a particularly salacious diet of news for the degustation of a growing number of newspaper readers. White traders and missionaries were beginning to come into regular contact with the indigenous peoples of, in particular, the Pacific Islands, as well as in Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America. Some of those tribes perpetrated aggression by the necessity for survival, cannibalism by cultural disposition, and murder by design, often for revenge.

The ‘Feejees’ (Fiji Islands), Solomon Islands, and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), as well as the archipelagos to the south-east of New Guinea in the western Pacific, were notorious for massacres and cannibalism from attacks on traders, settlers, Christian evangelists, and labour recruitment vessels (blackbirders). Newspapers sauced up such gruesome incidents with relish, and equally florid language, to stimulate the imagination of readers’ appetites.

‘The Custom of the Sea’

Primitive cannibals and ‘savages’ were virtually story-book characters in far-away lands, distantly removed from the everyday lives of Europeans and North Americans. Cannibalism at sea by Europeans and North Americans constituted a more kindred connection, more personal to people’s revulsion of it, but with a morbid interest in it. It is hard enough to fathom the depths of desperation reached by castaways who tore into and ate the flesh of raw fish or birds (the raw liver of a turtle was highly prized, as was the liquid extracted from fish eyes), much less cutting chunks of flesh from the arms or legs (or both) of a dead comrade, to eat raw.

In 1884 the yacht Mignonette sank in stormy weather in the South Atlantic while she was being sailed from England to Australia by a crew of three men and a boy. After nineteen days adrift in the yacht’s dingy, Thomas Dudley, the Mignonette’s captain, took the decision to kill the boy, Richard Parker, so that the other three, by now on the point of starvation, might cannibalise his body to survive.

This was the so-called ‘custom of the sea’: the cannibalisation of those killed by other shipmates, or who died of hunger, exposure or exhaustion, to sustain the life of the surviving castaways. In 1876, on the waterlogged, wrecked timber ship Maria in the mid-Atlantic, the starving crew members kept their collective conscience clean before falling upon their dead shipmates to feed on them to survive: ‘The cannibals from necessity did not murder their companions, but waited with patience until they died.’ (Otago Witness, 26 May 1877)

Apart from the legal niceties of whether the defence of killing another person for the necessity of survival was justifiable (the benchmark Mignonette legal case subsequently concluded that it was not), the public fascination with the cannibalisation of civilised people like themselves, but in dreadful circumstances of life-threatening peril, was a piquant sauce for the journalistic banquet of such reports.

Carnage

No less fascinating a subject was murder, often of a multiple quantity, on ships at sea. The killing of the captain, his wife and the second mate of the barquentine Herbert Fuller, in the early hours of 14 July 1896, generated the headline ‘A Carnival Of Murder On The High Seas’ in The Halifax Herald newspaper of Nova Scotia on 22 July 1896. Readers of the Herald and other newspapers were subsequently served up a menu of minutiae about the murders, the victims and the alleged perpetrators, illustrations of the blood-spattered murder sites, expansive coverage of the ensuing trial, and details of other high seas carnage in the past reminiscent of the Fuller drama. The combination of mutiny with murder only enhanced the savoury attraction and sanguinary reporting of such incidents.

As The Sydney Morning Herald put it, about a massacre on board the South Seas trading schooner Marion Renny in February 1871, the story was ‘exciting and horrible enough for the plot of a sixpenny romance’.

The allure of such terrible tales of the sea was that they were the ‘sixpenny romances’ of their day. They thrilled. They happened to ordinary people in exotic places under tragic circumstances – dramas narrated by survivors of the horrors. They were real stories of high adventure, tinted (and tainted) by gruesome detail and sometimes sequelled by the forensic drama of court cases that recounted and examined their actions and consequences.

Those narratives, to this day, bristle with their resonance of peril.

Part I

CANNIBALS

Atlantic Ocean (North and South).

1

‘THE CUSTOM OF THE SEA’

Castaways from vessels that sank at sea often ran out of food and fresh water within a matter of days … if, that is, they had saved any provisions at all. Sometimes they caught fish or sea birds, which they ate raw, and even turtles, which they despatched to scavenge on the innards. They might catch rainwater, though this was often tainted by salt encrusted on their catching devices (such as sails or their own clothing) and undrinkable.

Unquenchable thirst and unsatisfied hunger sometimes drove men mad. Or to such desperation that they contemplated the ultimate recourse: the cannibalisation of fellow castaways in order to survive – the so-called ‘custom of the sea’. Occasionally they killed another castaway outright – and sometimes more than one – to feed upon his flesh and drink his blood. More often they cut pieces of flesh from a shipmate, or shipmates, who had already died. Either way, their justification, to themselves at least, was of necessity in order to survive.

The Mignonette: A Landmark Case

A notorious case of the ‘custom of the sea’ concerned the yacht Mignonette, in 1884. The Mignonette sank in a storm in the South Atlantic. The crew of three men and a 17-year-old boy (not 19, as noted in reports) were cast adrift in a dinghy. A few weeks later, with the four on the verge of starvation, the young lad, Parker, was killed. His flesh and blood were eaten and drunk by the others. A few days later the survivors were picked up by a passing ship. During the voyage to Falmouth the men wrote their accounts of the Mignonette’s voyage, including the killing and cannibalisation of the boy Parker. None of them expected to be held criminally liable for the boy’s death; to them it was a matter of sacrificing one person, Parker, for the rest to live. The British public, indeed, was largely sympathetic to their plight.

However, the ‘custom of the sea’ was just that, a custom, the law of the high seas jungle. It was not an act legally sanctioned by necessity. The Mignonette’s captain, Thomas Dudley, and mate, Edwin Stephens, were arrested and prosecuted for murder on the high seas. The eventual court case against the two men concluded that murder, even in the most extreme circumstances, was not justified by the perpetrators’ necessity to stay alive:

The Loss of the Yacht Mignonette

The German brigantine Montezuma landed at Falmouth on September 6 three men named Thomas Dudley, aged 32; Edwin Stevens, 37; and Edward Brooks, 37, who voluntarily revealed to the Collector of Customs one of the most terrible stories of suffering endured at sea on record.

These three men, together with a lad named Richard Parker, 19 [sic – 17] years old, belonging to Southampton, were engaged to take out the yacht Mignonette to Sydney for Mr. J. H. Want. The yacht was yawl-rigged, 52 feet in length, 12 feet beam, and 52 tons burden. She belonged in the previous year to the Welsh and New Thames yacht clubs.

The Voyage

The yacht left Southampton on May 18 last [1884], Dudley being in command, Stevens mate, Brooks able seaman, and Parker as boy. They arrived at Madeira on June 1. The line [equator] was crossed on June 17, and, from this date trouble commenced. Dirty weather began on the 18th, lasting until June 30, when it blew a gale, which departed suddenly, for on July 2 they were becalmed. By the 3rd they were once again before the storm. In the afternoon they had to reef the mainsail and squaresail, and the captain made up his mind to heave-to and wait for better weather.

At about 4 o’clock he had the squaresail in. Stevens, the mate, was then steering. Captain Dudley heard Stevens cry ‘look out,’ and looking under the boom saw a great sea coming on to him. He clung to the boom until the sea swept past. Turning round, he saw that all the bulwarks aft were gone. Stevens cried out, ‘My God, her side is knocked in,’ and such was really the case, for looking over he saw her buttends open. Captain Dudley realised in an instant that the yacht must founder speedily, and it was therefore their first object to get the boat out.

Adrift

The punt or dingy, which was 13 feet long, and made of mahogany, was with great difficulty got out. Dudley told Parker to pass up a beaker of fresh water, which the boy did, pitching it overboard, in the hope of picking it up again. The captain tore the binnacle compass from the deck, and got it into the boat. Stevens, Brooks, and Parker having taken their places in the boat, Dudley dropped them astern. Recollecting that there was no food in the boat, the captain rushed into the cabin, which was full of water. Seizing a chronometer and sextant, he threw them on deck. Those in the boat were then shouting out to him, ‘The yacht is sinking.’ He grasped some things that were supposed to be tins of preserved meat, and rushing on deck tumbled over into the boat, all but two tins slipping from his grasp.

They just managed to row the little punt a length astern when the yacht went down, only about five minutes having elapsed from the time she was struck until she finally disappeared. They searched for the beaker of water, but it could not be found, though its stand was found floating about. With those and the binnacle and bottom boards they constructed a sea anchor. Their fragile boat was taking water faster than they could bale it out. They found the leak, filled it up, and managed to bale her out with the billy and the halves of the chronometer box.

Provisions

The two tins proved to contain only preserved turnips, 1lb. each. They had not a drop of water, night was coming on fast, and the sea was raging about them. To add to their terror a shark came alongside at about midnight, knocked against the boat, but fortunately did no damage, and went away soon.

In a miserable plight they existed for four days on one tin of turnips. On the fourth day they succeeded in catching a turtle, which was floating on the water. They then finished the second tin of turnips and killed the turtle. Their thirst was fearful. They drank some of the turtle’s blood, saving the remainder in the chronometer case, but it was spoilt by the salt water. Once or twice it rained a little, and they tried to catch some rain water in their oilskins. With their oilskin coats spread over their arms they waited with burning throats and stomachs, praying to the Almighty for water in their extremity, but these endeavours were defeated by the sea water getting mixed with the fresh.

Fifteen terrible days passed away without any incident to relieve the monotony. On the 15th day they set to work to make a sail out of their shirts, with an oar for the mast. On the 18th day, after having had no food of any kind for seven days, and no water for five days, and their condition having become awful, they began to discuss the advisability of casting lots as to who should be killed as food for the others.

The Killing

By this time the boy Parker was in the last stage of exhaustion. The captain and mate, who are both married men with families, discussed the advisability of killing Parker, who was evidently the nearest to death of the four; as they considered that his loss would be the least felt, inasmuch as he had no wife and family depending upon him. They communicated their views to Brooks, but he declined to be a party to such an act. The captain and the mate then decided to kill Parker. Before doing so, Dudley offered up a prayer that they might be forgiven for what they were about to do.

Parker was lying in the bottom of the boat in an almost insensible state, with his face on his arm. It was then arranged that Dudley should stab him, and that Stevens should hold him if he struggled. Brooks went to the bow of the boat, turning away his head to shut out the fearful scene with his hands. The captain said to Parker, ‘Now, Dick, your hour has come.’ Parker feebly replied ‘What! me, sir? Oh, don’t!’

Dudley then ran a penknife into Parker’s jugular vein, and he died in a few seconds. They caught the flowing blood in tins and divided it amongst them, Brooks being unable to resist taking his share. They then stripped the boy and for five days subsisted on his body before they were sighted by the captain of the Montezuma.

Rescue

On the twenty-fourth day the joyous sight of a sail greeted Brooks’s eyes while they were eating their horrible food. They all fervently prayed that the passing ship might see them, and tried with what feeble strength remained them to pull towards it. Their joy was unbounded when they discovered that they were seen, and in about an hour-and-a-half after they first sighted the sail they were alongside the German barque Montezuma. They were in such a state of prostration when they got alongside the ship they required to be assisted on board.

Captain Simmonsen, of the barque Montezuma, states that on the morning of the day they discovered the boat on looking across the horizon he thought he saw a small speck. He looked at it through his glasses, and saw that it was something floating on the water, although at the distance he could not distinguish it as a boat. As they neared it, however, they were astonished to find that it was a small punt with human beings in it. They presented a most frightful spectacle, looking like living skeletons. On getting them on board they explained to him the history of the mangled corpse, which was even then lying in the boat.

Captain Dudley remained firm in his resolve to retain the corpse of the boy as long as possible, and in case they should fall in with a vessel to make a clean breast of the circumstances. When Dudley had explained matters to Simmonsen the putrefied and mangled remains of the victim were consigned to the deep, and the punt was taken on board the Montezuma. Captain Simmonsen treated the forlorn ones with every kindness, giving them food and clean raiment. They were on board the Montezuma for 38 days.

Dudley attributes the foundering of the Mignonette to her being rather old for such a voyage. She proved a good seaboat, and had she been new he considered that she would have weathered the storm.

On being landed at Falmouth the survivors were taken to the Sailors’ Home and afterwards to the Customs Office, where they made their depositions. On the afternoon of September 8 they were apprehended on a warrant signed by the Mayor of Falmouth, and taken to the borough prison on a charge of murder. Their apprehension took them by surprise, as they had made arrangements for leaving Falmouth for their homes that night. The small penknife with which the act was committed is in the possession of the Falmouth police. (The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 1884)

Edwin Stevens’ own account of the voyage concluded:

We had thus been in the boat from July 5, at 5 p.m., until July 29, at 1 a.m., nearly 24 days, having drifted and sailed a distance of 900 miles, viz., from latitude 27’10S [sic –27°10’S] longitude 9’50W [sic –9°50’W], to latitude 24’20 S [sic –24°20’S] longitude 28’25W [sic –28°25’W], our position when picked up.

While the men were in the dinghy Captain Dudley penned a note to his wife:

… written on the back of the certificate of the chronometer, which was saved from the Mignonette by Captain Dudley, [and] is in his possession. It is written in pencil, and is much defaced by the effect of the salt water. Captain Dudley wrote it while they were in the punt, in the hope that, should they succumb, it might be afterwards found:

‘July 6, 1884. To my dear wife Dudley, Myrtle-road, Sutton, in Surrey, Mignonette foundered yesterday. Weather knocked side in. We had five minutes to get in boat, without food or water; 9th, picked up turtle. July 21. We have been here 17 days; have no food. We are all four living, hoping to get passing ship. If not, we must soon die. Mr. Thompson will put everything right if you go to him, and I am sorry, dear, I ever started on such a trip, but I was doing it for our best. Thought so at the time. You know, dear, I should so like to be spared. You would find I should lead a Christian life for the remainder of my days.

‘If ever this note reaches your hands you know the last of your Tom and loving husband. I am sorry things are gone against us thus far, but I hope to meet you and all our dear children in heaven. Dear, do love them, for my sake. Dear, bless them and you all. I love you all dearly, you know; but it is God’s will if I am to part from you; but have hopes of being saved. We were about 1,300 miles from Cape Town when the affair happened. Good-bye, and God bless you all, and may He provide for you all. Your loving husband, Tom Dudley.’ (The Shipping Gazette and Lloyd’s List, 13 September 1884)

Dudley and Stephens were put on trial at Exeter, Devon, early in 1885. Judge Baron Huddleston outlined the principles of the case. In doing so he suggested that many people undoubtedly felt ‘the deepest compassion’ for the accused men in the circumstances that compelled them to commit murder (which indeed many people did). The law, however, was the law, though ‘the peculiar circumstances of this melancholy case’ would suggest, he said, that an appeal to the Crown for clemency, if the men were found guilty, would not only be justified but likely upheld.

The result of the trial of Dudley and Stephens was that ‘the prisoners were sentenced to death, and respited during her Majesty’s pleasure, but subsequently committed to gaol for six months’. (Grey River Argus [New Zealand], 8 January 1885)

Within six months both men were released from gaol.

The legal proceedings of the Mignonette case were convoluted, controversial and complex. They ultimately concluded with a landmark decision in English criminal law that necessity was not a justifiable defence of murder, including the killing of someone – the boy Richard Parker in this case – in order, necessarily, to assure the survival of others.

The Turley: Mate Driven to Drink the Blood and Eat the Flesh of a Comrade

Later in 1884, the same year that the Mignonette sank, a small pilot boat, the Turley, cruised off the Delaware Capes on the American Eastern Seabord, to put a pilot on board the steamship Philadelphia. One of the two pilots in the Turley’s skiff, which was used to ferry pilots out to vessels, Jacob Marshall, and a cook, Thomas Bunting, were left on the Philadelphia. The other men started rowing back to the Turley. The weather on that freezing November day blew up. The skiff never made it back to the Turley.

The crew of the yacht Mignonette in an open boat at sea. From sketches by Mr Stephens, mate of the Mignonette. (The Graphic, 20 September 1884)

The other pilot in the skiff, Marshall Bertrand, recounted what happened before they were rescued a few days later by the three-masted schooner Emma F. Angell, and brought to land at Lewes, Delaware:

Driven to Cannibalism – A Horrible Story of Suffering at Sea – Pilot Bertrand Tells How His Mate Was Driven to Drink the Blood and Eat the Flesh of a Comrade

‘Early on Saturday morning we left the Pilot Boat Turley in a skiff 18 feet long by 5 or 6 feet wide. There was on board the boat, Pilot Jacob Marshall, Cook Thomas Bunting, Alfred Swanson, Andreas Hansen, and myself. When we left the Turley we were off Five Fathom Bank Lightship, 25 miles east of the Capes, and were rowing for one of the American Line steamers – I think the Pennsylvania [sic –Philadelphia], which lay a quarter of a mile from the Turley. We put Pilot Marshall and the cook on board the steamer, and then started, at 4:15, to row back to the Turley.

‘It was a dark morning, with a high sea on, and a regular north-west gale blowing. We had three oars and a small paddle, the latter for steering, and we all three pulled together, but we couldn’t row to windward, and soon saw we couldn’t make the Turley. They kept flashing the light from the Turley for us, but we drifted astern of her, and the wind and sea were so loud that there was no use of trying to signal her by shouting. When I saw that we could not make the Turley I tried for the Five Fathom lightships, but the wind carried us to leeward, and I had to give that up. Then I tried for the eastern lightships, bearing north-north-east of the southern ships, but the gale drifted us to leeward, and we went further out to sea.

‘When day broke we could see the Turley cruising about for us, but the white caps ran so high she couldn’t see our little boat between the high seas. The wind cut us, and every particle of spray that struck the boat froze where it fell. I wasn’t scared, and didn’t give up hope, but I seemed to have twice the strength I ever had before. I pulled on one side of the boat against both of the sailor men, and pulled her head around. We had had nothing to eat since supper on Sunday night, and both Swanson and Hanson were famished and frightened. There was not a drop of fresh water or a scrap of bread in the boat. The thole pins [rowlocks/oarlocks] broke early in the morning, and we had to split up our steering paddle to make new ones.

‘When I gave up the second lightship it was daylight, and as near as I could make out from my watch we had been rowing five hours, and all the time losing ground. Later I lost the new paddle that I had fixed to steer with, and then I broke an oar. The wind and sea were still high, and our boat was in danger of swamping.

‘About 8 o’clock on Tuesday afternoon,’ Bertrand continued, ‘when we were 35 miles off Cape Henlopen [near Lewes, Delaware], and still drifting out, we made out a square-rigged vessel running out and bound across our bows. She hove right down on us and we hailed her. The Captain and crew were on deck and looking at us. I stood up in the bow as she passed us and shouted, “Captain, in the name of God throw us some bread or give me a line.” I held the painter in my hand ready to throw it and jump when it was made fast to the bark, but the Captain just waved his hand and took no further notice of us.

‘I said: “By---, I hope you’ll sink before sunset …”, and if there’s anything in cursing he will have had bad luck. I’d have shot him if I had had a gun. When the bark passed us we had been 36 hours without food or water. Swanson went crazy.’

Here Bertrand went back in his narrative to recall an important incident. ‘Swanson and Hansen,’ said he, ‘were scared nearly to death all the time, and before Swanson drank some sea water I found him sharpening his knife on an oar. I asked him what he was doing that for. He said he meant to kill me and drink my blood. When it was dark, both men got out their knives to kill. After a while, when Swanson was quiet, I went forward pretending to look at the painter, and slipped his knife away from him. I also took Hansen’s knife from his pocket.

‘Late that night we sighted the ship Kingsfork, which I recognised out of the Capes, and we tried to row for her, but when we got within two miles of her, the night shut down dark. Swanson was raving of his mother and sisters in Sweden and still drinking sea water. I drank no sea water, but only moistened my lips with it, and now and then chewed the sticks of some matches I had in my pocket. I had a toothbrush with me and I dipped this in the salt water and brushed my teeth, taking care to spit out the water. In this way I kept my mouth moist, so that my tongue did not swell or my lips crack. I would think of pure, fresh water and have an awful longing for it, and then I would drive it from my mind, but it always came back.’

Cannibalisation of the Dead

‘About 2:30 o’clock on Tuesday morning Swanson, who was lying in the bottom of the boat, said he was frozen. He spoke once more of his people in Sweden, then groaned several times and died. Hansen woke up soon afterward and cut him open to drink the blood and liquids from his body, but there was nothing to drink and then he cut off about three pounds of flesh from Swanson’s thigh. He ate a part of it and offered me a piece, but my stomach revolted against it, and my piece was lying in the bottom of the boat when we were picked up.’

At this point Bertrand’s memory again failed. At first he said Swanson died on Monday morning, while Hansen, who seems to recollect the facts better, says that the death occurred on Tuesday, and that the body was not cut open until Wednesday morning. ‘After Hansen had eaten the flesh,’ Bertrand resumed, ‘it seemed to ease him and he went to sleep. I took his head between my legs and beat his face to keep it from freezing as it was blue with cold. We drove before the wind and sea, I don’t know how long, God only knows. I had lost count of the days.

‘Hansen went to sleep again and I beat him to keep him from freezing. I didn’t lose hope, for I thought we would come out all right. I let the boat go all night. It rained that night and I caught half a cupful of rainwater by holding up the ends of my oilskin. I gave it to Hansen and he drank it greedily.’

Rescue

‘Wednesday morning dawned clear, but it was still blowing hard. An hour later I made out a three-masted schooner coming by the wind. We were then 100 miles from the Cape, and about 35 miles from Absecom. I took my mast down, tied my oilskin to it by the sleeves, and waved it with all my might. The schooner came half a mile to windward, but didn’t see us until it got past. The wind had then moderated. I wet my hand with the sea water, rubbed my lips, and gave the hardest yell I ever gave in my life. They heard me and the Captain put his helm hard up. He ran to leeward, and when he got within hailing distance, I heaved the corpse of Swanson overboard.’

At this moment Bertrand hesitated for the first time and did not speak freely. ‘Why did you throw the body overboard?’ he was asked. ‘I didn’t want the Captain to see it,’ he replied. ‘The boat was all bloody. I had kept Swanson’s body up to that time because I meant to eat it that night if it was necessary, and I saw it was fast coming to that.’

On this point Hansen says much the same thing. ‘The body was so badly cut up,’ he said, ‘that we didn’t want any one to see it.’

‘The schooner bore down on us,’ Bertrand continued, ‘and threw us a rope. Hansen was too weak to take it, so I did, and as the schooner’s ladder was down I got aboard without help. Hansen was hauled in over the side. The schooner was the Emma F. Angell, Capt. George Tripp, and a guardian angel she proved to us. They treated us as kindly as could be. Hansen went mad for water that night, but I only moistened my lips when they offered me a glassful. At night Hansen broke into the washroom and drank from the washbasin.’

Hansen, who is a Dane, is not yet 17 years of age. He is a shambling, round-shouldered fellow, with a good, dull face, and evidently just such a mind as it indicates. His story agrees in the main with Bertrand’s, save that he rather weakly asserts that Bertrand ate some of the dead man’s flesh – in fact, asked for it. Whether this reticence hides a tale of thirst and hunger, crazed men in a desperate fight for life, each against the other, probably no one will ever know, and how far the cannibalism of the survivors extended will perhaps continue as great a mystery. Bertrand’s honest face and sincere manner precludes the idea of any serious wrongdoing on his part, and Hansen evidently bowed to him as the master mind. (The New York Times, 29 November 1884)

The Sallie M. Steelman: A Blighted Voyage

The American schooner Sallie M. Steelman, 394 tons, was on a short voyage from Charleston, South Carolina, to Baltimore, Maryland, when she was assailed by a winter storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The vessel was rendered a floating wreck. The virtual derelict and her crew drifted for more than a month on the wild and frigid winter seas of the North Atlantic.

All the provisions were long since finished, the sufferings of the crew ‘terrible beyond description’, when one of the crew, George Seaman, ‘driven mad by starvation’ attacked another man, Walter Sampson, who shot and killed Seaman, apparently in self-defence. The rest of the crew proceeded to eat parts of the dead man, in order to survive. The morning after their cannibalisation of sailor Seaman, the castaways were rescued by the schooner Speedwell, just east of the island of Bermuda, and brought to New York:

Cannibalism at Sea – How the Crew of the Schooner Sallie M. Steelman Kept from Starvation – Butchering, Cooking, and Eating a Negro Sailor Who Was Shot While Insane

There are few tales of hardship and suffering at sea more terrible in their details than the story of the almost incredible experiences of the crew of the Sallie M. Steelman, whose rescue was briefly described in yesterday’s Times. The story of the exhaustion of provisions, of the shooting of the maniac colored sailor and his subsequent butchery to furnish food for the famished crew, is fully corroborated by several of the seamen, who were brought to this City late yesterday afternoon by the Speedwell, which anchored at Pier No. 28 East River.

The entire crew of the wrecked vessel were the Captain, S.G. Higby; the mate, James L. Somers; the steward, Sylvester R. Herbert; David Barrett, a white seaman, and three colored seamen – George Hicks, Walter Sampson, and the butcher George Seaman. Sampson, Barrett, Hicks, and Herbert only were found on board the Speedwell upon her arrival at this pier, the Captain and the mate having left early in the morning for their homes in New Jersey. The seamen, while they answered inquiries put to them, seemed to do so unwillingly, and continually inquired if any punishment was liable to be inflicted upon them for their act of cannibalism.

After their provisions gave out, their sufferings were terrible beyond description, but it seems that the butchered sailor, Seaman, who was reported to have been driven mad by starvation, was subject to fits of insanity, and according to the story of his fellow seaman, Hicks, who had shipped with him on other vessels, had acted violently on other occasions than that narrated below.

Deprivation brought on a renewed attack of insanity during the week in which the vessel was tossed about unprovisioned, after being over a month at sea, and as day after day passed without the famished men being able to obtain anything but coffee to appease their pangs of hunger, he became at times raving, and would jump from his bunk at night and tramp through the vessel, talking incoherently, and acting so strangely that his fellows feared to go near him.

The Assault

On Jan. 30, after being out for 43 days, Seaman sprang from his bunk early in the morning, and ran up on deck where he again talked wildly, and threatened to shoot the Captain. The latter having gradually got out of his way, Seaman returned to the forecastle, where he yelled to Sampson, who was asleep in his bunk, to come up on deck.

While Sampson was hastily dressing himself, the maniac sailor called to him again, threatening to shoot him if he did not instantly obey. Sampson began to retreat slowly toward the door, keeping his eye upon the insane man to guard against being attacked unexpectedly. When he reached the deck he saw Seaman, so he says, place his hand in his pistol pocket, and then, fearing for his life, he drew a pistol – which he had previously borrowed from the steward – and fired at Seaman, striking him on the head behind the ear.

The shot was heard through the vessel, but only one man, George Hicks, says that he saw the shot fired or heard anything of the conversation that preceded it. After being shot Seaman rushed wildly to the deck, but fell dead in his tracks when he had gone but a few steps.

Cannibalisation

The crew, it seems, let the body lie where it fell for some four hours, during which time the proposition that the dead man’s flesh be eaten was discussed. After the body had lain in a pool of blood for about four hours, Sampson, who had fired the fatal shot, was given an axe by the mate, and, approaching the corpse, severed the head from the dead man’s body. After the completion of this fearful task, the head was wrapped in canvas by Herbert and Barrett and thrown overboard.

Barrett then by means of a knife stripped off as much of the flesh from the legs and trunk as he could, and when he finally ceased the butchery, the flesh he had removed was placed in a barrel and salted down, and the mutilated carcase was wrapped, like the head, in canvas and thrown overboard. Some of the flesh was immediately afterward removed to the galley, where it was thrown into a pot and parboiled, and then fried in a pan. Most of the crew turned sick at the thought of such unnatural food, but their hunger at length prevailed over all qualms of conscience and revulsions of taste, and they partook of two meals.

Their experience of the cannibalistic repast was varied. Barrett, who butchered the corpse, and who ate about a pound and a half of the flesh, declared that it tasted as ‘good as any beef-steak he ever ate’. The necessity for partaking of such food, however, ended on the following day, when, after 45 days of almost unexampled suffering, the crew of the partially dismantled and fast sinking vessel sighted the Speedwell on New Year’s Eve, and soon they were safe on board the vessel and bound for New York.

Although nothing was broached upon the subject yesterday, there can be no doubt that the conduct of the crew in eating the colored seaman will be a subject of investigation by the United States Shipping Commission of this port. Capt. Higby was on Monday recommended to personally call the attention of the Government officials to the matter, but whether he had done so or not could not be ascertained yesterday. (The New York Times, 13 February 1878)

Although the crew of the Steelman were questioned about the incident, no further action was taken against them. Sampson’s story that he killed Seaman in self-defence, and the subsequent consumption of Seaman’s flesh, for the survival of the other crew, did not, apparently, constitute criminal acts.

The Maria: Appalling Tale of Shipwreck, Hunger and Death

In November and December of 1876 a British barque, the Maria, leaking and battered by bad weather, was rendered a derelict of horror on the high seas of the North Atlantic. The vessel’s fourteen crew succumbed one by one to starvation and death. Surviving shipmates drank the blood and ate the flesh from the corpses. But never, even in the utmost depths of their deprivation, did they actually kill any of their comrades to survive on their flesh and blood.

After a month of horror, only two men remained alive to be rescued. One of them died a few hours afterwards. An Irish seaman, the sole remnant of that floating charnel-house, was left to tell their story:

An Appalling Tale of Shipwreck, Hunger, and Death

Boston, February 21st – One of the most appalling tales of shipwreck and starvation that has ever startled and horrified the civilized world reached this city yesterday in a letter from Captain Kane, of the American schooner F.B. Macdonald, dated from Gorce, on the West Coast of Africa, on January 24th.

The British barque Maria, Captain Grayson, sailed from Darien, Ga. [Georgia], on the 21st of November last, with a cargo of timber for Belfast, Ireland. She was 590 tons burden, and was built at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1863, and was classed A2½ at Lloyds. Her crew numbered fourteen, including the captain and officers.

Shortly after leaving port, the carpenter reported a serious leak. The weather had been rough, and it is supposed that some of her cargo shifted with the rolling of the ship and damaged her frame and sheathing. Notwithstanding the efforts of the crew, the leak gained steadily on them, and the ship began to settle lower and lower in the sea. The cargo being timber, the ship did not sink, but the weight of her masts caused her to fall over on her broadside with her spars in the water.