Richard Parker (shipwrecked)
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For other people with this name, see Richard Parker (disambiguation).
Richard Parker is the name of several people in real life and fiction who became shipwrecked, with some of them subsequently being cannibalised by their fellow seamen:
- In Edgar Allan Poe's only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, published in 1838, Richard Parker is a mutinous sailor on the whaling ship Grampus. After the ship capsizes in a storm, he and three other survivors draw lots upon Parker's suggestion to kill one of them to sustain the others. Parker then gets cannibalized.
- In 1846, the Francis Spaight foundered at sea. Apprentice Richard Parker was among the twenty-one drowning victims of that incident, though there were no cases of cannibalism.[1][2]
- In 1884, the yacht Mignonette sank. Four people survived and drifted in a life boat before one of them, the cabin boy Richard Parker, was killed by the others for food. This led to the R v Dudley and Stephens criminal case.[3][4]
Another Richard Parker was involved in the Spithead and Nore mutinies in 1797 and subsequently hanged, but not eaten.[5]
Writer Yann Martel in his 2001 novel Life of Pi picked up on these occurrences, surmising "So many Richard Parkers had to mean something",[6] and included a shipwrecked tiger by the name of "Richard Parker" in the book.[7]
Playwright Owen Thomas wrote a play called "Richard Parker". The play was a dark comedy exploring the notion of coincidence.
[edit] References
- ^ Lindridge, James: Tales of Shipwrecks and Adventures at Sea (W.M. Clark Publishing, 1846)[1]
- ^ Note that there was a second ship by the name of Francis Spaight which sank in 1835 with cannibalism among the survivors, but the victim's name in that case was Patrick O'Brien. (See Simpson, Alfred William Brian (1994). Cannibalism and the Common Law: A Victorian Yachting Tragedy. Hambledon Pr. ISBN 1852852003., p.128ff.) The 1835 incident was fictionalized by Jack London in a short story.[2]
- ^ Hanson, Neil. (1999). The Custom of the Sea: The Story that Changed British Law. Doubleday. ISBN 9780385601153.
- ^ Kaufman, Whitley. (22-MAR-08). "Torture and the "distributive justice" theory of self-defense: an assessment.(Essay)". Ethics & International Affairs. [3]
- ^ The Floating Republic - Dobree and Manwaring (1935) ISBN 0-09-173154-2
- ^ About the origin of the name in Life of Pi
- ^ In Arthur Gordon Pym it is the main character, not Richard Parker, who owns a dog called "Tiger".
