The tale of the Nottingham Galley suggests other episodes in which living men of a ship’s crew were chosen by lot to be sacrificed as food for the others. As dramatic as any of them was the fate of the American sloop Peggy, which became waterlogged while homeward bound to New York from the Azores. Food and water gone, there were wine and brandy in the cargo, unluckily, and the sailors got drunk and stayed so much of the time. On Christmas day a sail was sighted, and the ship bore down to speak the drifting hulk of the Peggy. For some reason this other vessel, after promising to send bread and beef aboard or to take the people off if they so preferred, filled away and resumed her course. Captain Harrison of the Peggy had taken to his bed with rheumatism, but he crawled on deck to watch the faithless ship abandon him while his crew cursed like madmen and shouted their appeals for help.
For sixteen days the people of the Peggy lived on candles, whale-oil, and barnacles scraped from the ship’s side. Then the crew, led by the mate, invaded Captain Harrison’s cabin and told him they could hold out no longer. They had eaten the leather packing of the pump, they had chewed the leather buttons off their jackets, and liquor would not keep them alive. It was now their intention to cast lots for a victim, and the captain was asked to supervise the business. He refused to have anything to do with it, which excited a hubbub of anger, and the mate announced that nobody would be exempted. The captain was to stand his chance with the rest. They tramped out of the cabin, remained a little while in the steerage, and returned to say that the lots had been drawn, and a negro slave who was in the cargo had received the fatal number.
Captain Harrison, bed-ridden as he was, had the courage to tell the men that he suspected them of dealing unfairly with the poor negro, and that he had not been allowed a chance for his life. While they were wrangling, the slave came running into the cabin to beg the captain’s protection; but he was dragged out and shot and turned over to the cook and the big copper pots in the galley. For nine days this sufficed to keep the crew alive, while Captain Harrison steadfastly refused to touch the food they offered him. Then the mate and the men trooped into the cabin again and roughly demanded that the skipper take charge of the lottery.
This time he consented in order to be certain of fair play. Painfully raising himself upon his elbow, he tore up strips of paper and wrote numbers on them. In grim silence the six men who were left alive closed their fingers upon the slips of paper, and a seaman named David Flat groaned as he discovered that his was the ticket of death. Otherwise there was no noise in the cabin.
The shock which this produced was so great that the whole crew remained motionless for a considerable time; and so they might have continued much longer had not the victim, who appeared perfectly resigned to his fate, expressed himself in these words:
“Dear friends and messmates, all I have to beg of you is to dispatch me as soon as you did the negro, and to put me to as little torture as possible.”
David Flat then turned to another seaman, James Doud, who had put the bullet into the slave and said:
“It is my wish that you should shoot me.”
Doud was much affected, but consented to attend to the obsequies of unfortunate David Flat, who was the most popular man in the forecastle. The victim then requested a brief respite in which he might prepare his soul to meet its Maker. This was very readily granted, and meanwhile the cook kindled a fire and got the water hot. Friendship was stronger than hunger, however, and there was so much reluctance to execute the sentence that it was determined to grant David Flat a respite until eleven o’clock of the following morning,
trusting that Divine Goodness would in the interval open some other source of relief. At the same time they solicited the captain to read prayers, a task which, collecting the utmost effort of his strength, he was just able to perform.