The True-Life Victorian Ancestor of Cannibal Rat Ghost Ship

The BBC’s series on bizarre news events from the Victorian era has outdone itself with this story about a British sailing rig called the Margaret that set sail from the west coast of Africa with “400 cockatoos and parrots, 12 snakes, some monkeys, a gorilla, an orangutan and two crocodiles,” and soon turned into “singular mix of Noah’s ark and the mutiny on the Bounty.”

First to die were the birds, starved when the ship’s swarming rats scoffed all the corn that had been provided as feed. […] As the ship was tossed about on wind-whipped waves, the snakes and crocodiles broke free of their crates and invaded the crew’s quarters, forcing the sailors to seek shelter in the cabin for days on end.

“These reptiles, along with the rats, kept up a continual warfare until the surviving crocodile killed the last snake,” said the paper, “and completed the chain of vengeance by being killed by some of the cargo shifting and falling on it”.

And then the monkeys got loose, and then the gorilla, who had to be fought off by the ship’s cook and a sailor with a hatchet! The Margaret docked, eventually, with only the “gorilla, three monkeys and four parrots” left. [BBC]