Welcome to Captain's Dinner
An immersive world around the landmark case that transformed law and ethics forever.
Ahoy there!
Quick question: What would you do if you found yourself and three colleagues stranded for two weeks on a tiny lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with no fresh water to drink and only a few cans of tinned turnips? You’d get real hungry, real fast. But then what? What would you do to survive—and how would society judge you for it?
This isn't just a hypothetical—it's exactly what happened to the crew of the yacht Mignonette in 1884, the true story at the heart of Adam Cohen's book, Captain's Dinner.
If you’re interested in excavating these kinds of questions and confronting your deepest moral limits, then you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to The Captain’s Dinner Official Substack—your companion to the landmark case that illustrates one of philosophy’s most enduring moral dilemmas: When does survival justify murder?
On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny lifeboat. As days turned to weeks, they faced an unthinkable choice: starve to death or resort to cannibalism. Their decision to sacrifice the youngest among them (17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker) ignited a firestorm of controversy upon their rescue. Instead of being hailed as survivors, Dudley and his crew found themselves at the center of a landmark murder trial that would transform law and ethics forever.
Here at The Captain’s Dinner Official Substack, we’re creating an immersive world around the Mignonette case that’s equal parts historical deep dive and cultural conversation starter.
We’ve serving up three distinct but interconnected content streams:
Behind the Book: Adam Cohen takes you inside his research process, from discovering the case at a Halloween party to interviewing leading philosophers about its lasting impact on ethics and law.
Cultural Conversations: We’re exploring how the Mignonette’s moral dilemma echoes through contemporary culture—from cannibalism in pop culture to the trolley problem in philosophy classrooms, featuring conversations with experts, authors, and thinkers.
The Story Itself: We’ve serialized Captain’s Dinner in four parts, giving you the complete harrowing true story. (New readers can start with Part One and catch up anytime!)
Each edition of The Captain’s Dinner Official Substack delivers a fresh course: from the complete narrative of survival and justice to unearthed Victorian court transcripts, from interviews with entertainment luminaries on fictional cannibalism to survival experts’ tips on not becoming someone’s lunch, we’re building a community where the serious meets the darkly fascinating. Come for the landmark case, but stay to satisfy your darkest curiosities about survival, justice, and what human desperation truly tastes like.
And here’s the best part: When you upgrade to a paid subscription, you’ll receive a copy of Captain’s Dinner delivered right to your door, plus exclusive access to all our premium content!
Behind the scenes, there are two of us rigging the sails of this ‘Stack: author Adam Cohen and me, editor Adrienne Westenfeld.
About your captain: Adam Cohen, who served as a member of the New York Times editorial board and as a senior writer for Time, is the author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, which was longlisted for the National Book Award. He is also the author of Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America, and Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he was president of volume 100 of the Harvard Law Review.
About me, your first mate: I’m Adrienne Westenfeld, a writer and editor with a decade of experience at the intersection of glossy magazines and book publishing. You may know me from my time as the Books and Fiction Editor at Esquire, where I oversaw books coverage, founded Esquire Book Club, and commissioned original fiction. I now run my own editorial services firm, Adrienne Westenfeld Editorial, where I work with authors and publishers on editorial projects.
Together, we’ve created something unprecedented: the first official Substack companion to a major book release, featuring exclusive content from the author, expert interviews with leading philosophers and historians, and the complete story that changed legal history.
We’re thrilled to have you aboard, and we can’t wait to show you all that’s in store. Sign up now so you don’t miss a single thing.
Anchors aweigh!
Until next time,
Adrienne