Based on a true story

I found these links referring to the incident:

From wikistikipeedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Waves_Away

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brown_(ship)

And the links from the latter:

http://law.jrank.org/pages/2482/Alexander-Holmes-Trial-1842.html

And I found this from the actual trial:

http://wings.buffalo.edu/law/bclc/web/holmes.htm

"...But this case should be tried in a long-boat, sunk down to its very gunwale with 41 half naked, starved, and shivering wretches,--the boat leaking from below, filling from above, a hundred leagues from land, at midnight, surrounded by ice, unmanageable from its load, and subject to certain destruction from the change of the most changeful of the elements, the winds and the waves. To these superadd the horrours of famine and the recklessness of despair, madness, and all the prospects, past utterance, of this unutterable condition. Fairly to sit in judgment on the prisoner, we should, then, be actually translated to his situation. It was a conjuncture which no fancy can image. Terrour had assumed the throne of reason, and passion had become judgment. Are the United States to come here, now, a year after the events, when it is impossible to estimate the elements which combined to make the risk, or to say to what extent the jeopardy was imminent? Are they, with square, rule and compass, deliberately to measure this boat, in this room, to weigh these passengers, call in philosophers, discuss specific gravities, calculate by the tables of a life insurance company the chances of life, and because they, these judges find that, by their calculation, this unfortunate boat's crew might have had the thousandth part of one poor chance of escape, to condemn this prisoner to chains and a dungeon, for what he did in the terrour and darkness of that dark and terrible night. Such a mode of testing men's acts and motives is monstrous."