Book description
On 5 July 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from Southampton bound
for Sydney. Halfway through their projected one hundred and twenty 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 an appalling condition. The ordeal that
they endured and the trial which 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.
This is the true story of the voyage and the subsequent court case
which outlawed for ever a practice followed since men first put to the
ocean in boats: the custom of the sea.
Neil Hanson is the author of many acclaimed works of narrative
history. He lives in Yorkshire with his family.
