Neil Hanson - The Custom of the Sea

I trust that for humanity’s sake and for the credit of my brother seamen to whatever nationality they may belong, that steps be taken to bring these man-eaters to justice, and that from Singapore may go forth the decision that under no circumstances, however great the sufferings may be, are seamen allowed to sacrifice one of their number that others may live.

I am fully aware, after having some forty years’ experience of a sailor’s life, that during the dull night watches they are in the habit of relating such horrible stories of suffering which may have come to their ears, and by recounting them they may imperceptibly come to the conclusion that they are justified under certain emergencies in sacrificing one of their number.

The sooner they are disabused of the idea the better. I recommend prayer not cannibalism in such emergencies.

Tom refolded the clipping and passed it back, and Douglas told him the remainder of the tale of the Euxine , holding his gaze as if determined to impress on him the importance of what he said.

The paper had followed up the publication of the letter with a leader demanding a judicial inquiry to establish the law once and for all. The governor felt any trial should take place in a British court, not in a remote dependency, but the Colonial Office ordered him to proceed with an inquiry in Singapore.

Two of the survivors were persuaded to appear as witnesses for the prosecution, on the promise of a free pardon providing they gave their evidence in ‘an unexceptionable manner’. The remainder were charged with murder. The committal proceedings began before Captain Douglas on 30 January. They reflected the attorney general’s lack of enthusiasm. The Crown called only one witness, the shipping master, Captain Ellis.

He had copies of the depositions made in Batavia made by the accused men, but the originals had been sent to London and the copies were inadmissible as evidence. All that Captain Ellis could say was that the second mate of the Euxine , James Archer, had voluntarily confessed that a crewman had killed the cabin boy. It was neither a confession by Archer nor admissible as evidence of a confession by the crewman.

Captain Ellis’s own testimony was no more helpful to the Crown. During cross-examination it emerged that he had once been shipwrecked himself and cast adrift in an open boat. Asked if the men were responsible for their actions, he replied, ‘Certainly not. I feel sure they were not in a position to know right from wrong.’

He was then asked as a matter of naval history whether there were other instances of shipwrecked men drawing lots as to who should die for the rest and replied, ‘Yes, twenty or twenty-five years ago these cases were most common. I have never heard of men being punished for doing so.’

The hearing was adjourned indefinitely to enable the prosecution to collect further evidence, but the Java Packet had long since sailed without leaving more than a barely useful affidavit from the captain. The only other admissible evidence — the originals of the men’s confessions — was in London. The authorities in Singapore were also concerned that an acquittal or conviction for the minor offence of culpable homicide, where the person killed consents to his own death or takes the risk of death with his own consent, would send an undesirable message to seamen that it was acceptable to eat their fellows.

The attorney general favoured a trial in London.

The law as laid down in an English court would have more weight in all parts of the world and would probably be considered binding in all parts of the British dominions, whereas the law as laid down by the courts here would not be binding even upon the court itself, and this being the first case of its kind which has ever been proposed to be tried it is important that the principles that govern cases of this sort in future should be authoritatively upheld.

Officials at the Board of Trade in London were much less enthusiastic about a prosecution. As one noted,

I suppose we should send this to the Home Office, but no steps will be taken by that department. There is a horrible sanity about all these proceedings but the men were not, I believe, responsible for their actions. No social advantage can be derived from prosecution or punishment. To live must be sufficient punishment.

The assistant secretary at the Marine Department of the board concurred. ‘It is not likely that any jury would convict and if a Court of Law were to stamp this custom with clear authority it might be made a pretext for getting rid of troublesome people. I should be inclined to leave it alone, the details are too disgusting to take to court.’

The permanent under-secretary called it,

One of the very saddest and most disgusting incidents that I have known. The act was done under the direct pressures of necessity and it is too abhorrent to all the feelings of human nature to be repeated, except under similar circumstances. Punishment if practical or exposure are not needed and would have no effect in future cases.

The ship’s articles were annotated by a clerk, who wrote ‘Killed by the crew for food’, after the name of the boy, and the papers were sent to the Home Office as a formality. Officials there showed considerably more appetite for a prosecution, but there were considerable legal problems in trying in London a case concerning murder on the high seas, and involving men detained first in Singapore, and key witnesses who were Dutch nationals and currently at sea somewhere on the five oceans. The Home Office also shared the fear that an acquittal would send a wrong signal to seamen.

The attorney general wanted the men sent back to England on the warship HMS Adventure . In fact, they returned on a merchant ship, the Nestor . It had already sailed with the men on board when the Colonial Office, alarmed at the illegality of returning them to England, sent a cable telling the Singapore authorities not to do so.

The five survivors arrived in London, aboard the Nestor , on 9 July and were held in custody for five days while civil servants dithered over what to do. The Home Office remained very eager for a prosecution to establish a leading case defining the law. Two factors weighed against them.

The first was the lack of evidence. The witnesses were in Batavia, Singapore and, in the case of the Java Packet , on the high seas. The only admissible evidence was the depositions of the men involved which were vague and contradictory. Detaining the men without charge and shipping them half-way round the world was also plainly illegal.

Douglas paused. ‘There was also a political dimension to the case of the Euxine . You have heard of Sir Edward Bates?’

‘The ship-owner? I’ve heard of him, and nothing but bad at that. They say he overloads his ships and starves the men who crew them.’

Douglas nodded. ‘He was also a Conservative Member of Parliament. When the men of the Euxine arrived in Britain, Mr Disraeli’s government was under great pressure from “the seaman’s friend”, Samuel Plimsoll.

‘In July of that year Mr Plimsoll addressed the House of Commons. He spoke of thousands of living beings consigned to undeserved and miserable death in coffin-ships. He described the murderous tendencies of ship-owners and before he was shouted down, he pronounced himself determined to unmask the villains who sent thousands to death and destruction. He named Edward Bates as one of them, “a ship-knacker”, who owned three ships sunk the previous year with the loss of eighty-seven lives.

‘Amongst the ships Bates owned was the Euxine . It would have been a political catastrophe for the Government if the trial had gone ahead. Here was a prominent member of the Conservative Party already accused of starving the men who served on his ships. The men of the Euxine , forced to resort to cannibalism to survive, would have been seen as living proof of that.