Cast adrift in a tiny boat on a vast and desolate ocean, faced with almost certain death, what would you do to survive? This is the agonizing question that lies at the heart of the gripping true drama of The Custom of the Sea. On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from Southampton, England, bound for Sydney, Australia. Halfway through the 12,000-mile voyage, Captain Tom Dudley and his three-member crew were best by a monstrous storm off the coast of West Africa. After four terrifying days battling towering waves and hurricane-force gales, the Mignonette was sunk by a massive forty-foot freak” wave. Captain Dudley and his crew were cast adrift a thousand miles from the nearest land in a leaky thirteen-foot dinghy with only two small tins of turnips for food