Captain's Dinner: A Shipwreck, An Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial that Changed Legal History
Nov 2025 · Simon and Schuster
Ebook
400
Pages
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Eligible
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infoThis book will become available on November 18, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
Four men in a lifeboat. Two weeks without food. One impossible choice that would reshape the boundaries between survival and murder.
On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny lifeboat. As days turned to weeks, they faced an unthinkable choice: starve to death or resort to cannibalism.
Their decision to sacrifice the youngest – 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker – ignited a firestorm of controversy upon their rescue. Instead of being hailed as heroes and survivors, Dudley and his crew found themselves at the center of a landmark murder trial that would transform law and ethics forever.
In Captain's Dinner, acclaimed legal historian and New York Times bestselling author Adam Cohen masterfully reconstructs both the harrowing weeks at sea and the sensational trial that followed. Through this Victorian tragedy, Cohen reveals an enduring conflict between humanity's most primal instincts and its highest moral principles, forcing readers to ask themselves: how far would they go to stay alive?
Perfect for readers of David Grann’s The Wager and Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, this haunting true story has become the classic real-life illustration of one of philosophy's greatest moral dilemmas, captivating audiences from ethics classrooms to Hollywood and inspiring countless explorations in film, television, and popular culture of humanity's most challenging question: When does survival justify murder?
On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny lifeboat. As days turned to weeks, they faced an unthinkable choice: starve to death or resort to cannibalism.
Their decision to sacrifice the youngest – 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker – ignited a firestorm of controversy upon their rescue. Instead of being hailed as heroes and survivors, Dudley and his crew found themselves at the center of a landmark murder trial that would transform law and ethics forever.
In Captain's Dinner, acclaimed legal historian and New York Times bestselling author Adam Cohen masterfully reconstructs both the harrowing weeks at sea and the sensational trial that followed. Through this Victorian tragedy, Cohen reveals an enduring conflict between humanity's most primal instincts and its highest moral principles, forcing readers to ask themselves: how far would they go to stay alive?
Perfect for readers of David Grann’s The Wager and Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea, this haunting true story has become the classic real-life illustration of one of philosophy's greatest moral dilemmas, captivating audiences from ethics classrooms to Hollywood and inspiring countless explorations in film, television, and popular culture of humanity's most challenging question: When does survival justify murder?
About the author
Adam Cohen, who served as a member of the New York Times editorial board and as a senior writer for Time, is the author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, which was longlisted for the National Book Award. He is also the author of Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America, and Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was president of volume 100 of the Harvard Law Review.
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