The Illustrated Police News , 15th November 1884 Imagine this. It is 1884 and your name is Edwin Stephens. You are an experienced seaman, with a wife and children. You join the small crew of a yacht called Mignonette , which the captain, Tom Dudley, is transporting from Southampton to Sydney on behalf of a wealthy Australian lawyer. Alongside yourself and Captain Dudley, the crew consists of another seaman, Edmund Brooks, and an orphaned cabin boy named Richard Parker. On 19th May, you set off. Everything goes splendidly until the weather turns in the middle of June. The weather eases off at the beginning of July, but then by the 3rd, as you approach the Cape of Good Hope, a storm kicks up. The storm gets worse and worse until eventually, on the 5th, Mignonette is overwhelmed and terribly damaged and you cry out "My God, her side is knocked in!" With only a few moments notice, the four of you pile into a 13 feet long lifeboat, made of quarter-inch-thick boards. The Captain gr...