Richard Parker (shipwrecked)

Richard Parker is the name of several people in real life and fiction who became shipwrecked and subsequently were 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. The survivors resorted to cannibalism, with seaman Richard Parker being the victim.

• In 1884, the yacht Mignonette sank. Four people survived, drifted in a life boat, and finally killed one of them, the cabin boy Richard Parker, for food. This led to the R v Dudley and Stephens criminal case.

(Another Richard Parker was involved in the SPITHEAD and Nore mutinies in 1797 and subesequently hanged, but not eaten.)

Writer Yann Martel in his 2002 novel The Life of Pi picked up on these occurrences, surmising "So many Richard Parkers had to mean something", and included a shipwrecked tiger by the name of "Richard Parker" in the book.