Cannibalism at sea
Cannibalism at sea was occasionally practiced in extreme cases of disaster, when there was not enough food for the survivors. Traditionally such cannibalism among shipwrecked survivors was considered acceptable as a last resort, provided that corpses were eaten or that lots were drawn to decide who would be killed and eaten so that the others might survive.
Traditional rules for survival cannibalism among sailors
This specific custom, also known as "the delicate question" or "the proper tradition of the sea", specified that in case of disaster, when there was not enough food for the survivors, corpses could be eaten. If "there were no bodies available for consumption, lots were drawn to determine who would be sacrificed to provide food for the others". As long as the lottery was fair, giving everyone an equal risk of dying to become food for others, this was considered "entirely legal" and justified by the circumstances. "On the whole, sailors and the general public knew and accepted protocol of cannibalism to survive ship disasters."The historian A. W. Brian Simpson observed:
Referring to William Arens' widely-read book The Man-Eating Myth, he added that, since "maritime survival cannibalism, preceded by the drawing of lots and killing, was a socially accepted practice among seamen until the end of the days of sail... it is... not an exception but a counterexample" to Arens' thesis "that cannibalism, as a socially accepted practice, is a myth".
The only cases when cannibalism in maritime disasters sometimes led to legal prosecution was "when the lotteries were fixed or absent altogether", in violation of the accepted custom. Such violations were nevertheless common enough. Captains and other crew members were often unwilling to put their own lives at risk, as the rules of the custom demanded, instead choosing to sacrifice those they considered "more expendable... " to serve as food for the other survivors.
End of the cannibal custom
The case of R v Dudley and Stephens is an English case that developed a crucial ruling on necessity in modern common law, at the same time ending the custom of lot drawing and cannibalism. Accused were two crew members of an English yacht, the Mignonette, who in 1884 were shipwrecked in a storm some 1,600 miles from the Cape of Good Hope. After a few weeks adrift in a lifeboat, 17-year-old Richard Parker fell unconscious due to a combination of hunger and drinking seawater. Two of the three others on the boat decided to kill and eat him. They were picked up four days later. The case held that necessity was not a defense for a charge of murder, and the two defendants were convicted, though their death sentence was commuted to six months' imprisonment.In this case, the rules of the traditional custom had not been adhered to since no lots had been drawn. However, the judges made it clear that they did not consider necessity a possible justification for murder regardless of the circumstances; they did not consider killing anyone acceptable, even if this was the sole way to ensure the survival of the others, instead declaring that the right course of action, under the circumstances, would have been for everybody to starve to death.
After this judgment, there were no more cases of openly admitted cannibal killings on board British or American ships. This does not necessarily mean that they no longer occurred — but the sailors had undoubtedly learned that more discretion was now required since the custom had effectively been declared unlawful in the Mignonette case. In the 1890s, there were two more highly suspect cases of maritime hunger cannibalism, but the survivors asserted that the eaten had died a natural death. Nobody seemed strongly inclined to try to prove otherwise, and no juridical proceedings followed.
In other countries, the defense of necessity to prevent starvation in the case of shipwrecks proved somewhat more durable. In the 1890s, two such incidents occurred on Norwegian vessels. In one case, sailors drew lots to select a victim, while in the other case, two sailors were stabbed to death and eaten because the other sailors considered them close to death anyway. In both cases, the authorities investigated but decided not to press charges, considering the acts as justified by necessity.
Historical examples of lot drawing before survival cannibalism
Saint Christopher case
Sometime between 1629 and 1640, seven Englishmen in the Caribbean embarked on an overnight voyage from Saint Christopher Island but were blown out to sea and lost for 17 days. During this time, starving, they cast lots to see who would sacrifice his life for the others. The lot fell to the man who had suggested the scheme, and he consented to his subsequent killing. His body sustained the rest until they made their way to Saint Martin. They were returned to Saint Christopher, where they were put on trial for homicide. The local English judge supposedly pardoned them, declaring that the crime was washed away' by 'inevitable necessity.The case cannot be found in the island's legal records, which start only in 1644 but was described, supposedly based on eyewitness accounts, by the Dutch surgeon Nicolaes Tulp in his Observationes Medicae. Simpson considers his account credible, noting that he likely received information from the Dutch authorities in Saint Martin, who had decided to send the sailors back to Saint Christopher for trial.
''Essex''
After a whale rammed and sank the whaling ship Essex of Nantucket on 20 November 1820, the survivors were left floating in three small whaleboats. They eventually resorted, by common consent, to cannibalism to allow some to survive. Of the seven crew members eaten, reportedly six died of starvation and exposure; one, Owen Coffin, lost a lottery, and was shot. The captain volunteered to take Coffin's place, but Coffin refused, accepting his lot stoically.The first four men who died and were eaten were all African Americans. Historian Nathaniel Philbrick as well as Vincent Woodard, the author of The Delectable Negro, doubt that this was purely incidental. They suggest that the white crew members may have deliberately killed them for food or else that they refused to share any remaining provisions as well as the "meat" of those who had already starved and been butchered, thus causing the Black men to starve first.
Doubtful cases
In the case of the Mary, which sank in 1736, and the Euxine, which shipwrecked in 1874, lots were ostensibly drawn to determine a victim for killing and cannibalism. However, in both cases there are doubts whether the lot drawing was fair, since the lot fell, conveniently from the viewpoint of the core crew, on an "obvious victim". In the case of the Mary, a passenger was singled out; in the case of the Euxine, the deadly lot fell on an Italian "boy" of about 20 years, who was both a foreigner and the youngest surviving crew member.Cases where no fair lottery was held
In other cases, it is known that somebody was killed for survival cannibalism without a fair lottery taking place. In such cases, the victim was almost always a person of low status, such as an enslaved Black person or a teenage boy.In the winter of 1765/66, the American ship Peggy drifted for months after a severe storm had destroyed all its means of navigation. Having eaten all their provisions and any remaining "tobacco, lamp oil, candles, and... leather", the crew told the captain they would hold a lottery to decide who should be slaughtered to feed the others. But among themselves, they had already decided to kill the one Black slave on board, and after a sham lottery, they "shot him through the head. One of the crew ate the victim's raw liver; some of the rest of the body was cooked, and the remainder was pickled."
At nearly the same time, in 1766, a vessel named Tiger was shipwrecked. After provisions had run out, the sailors decided to kill the one "negro youth" on board rather than drawing lots, as one of them freely reported afterwards. The dead body was then smoked to last longer.
The Irish sailing barque Francis Spaight capsized and almost sank in December 1836 near the coast of Canada. All provisions were lost or spoiled. Four of the fifteen survivors were teenage apprentices. Two weeks after the accident, the captain decided that "lots should be drawn between the four boys, as they had no families, and could not be considered so great a loss to their friends, as those who had wives and children depending upon them." The boys protested against this unfair decision, but in vain. The lot fell on fourteen-year-old Patrick O'Brien, whom the ship's cook then killed. During the next few days, the sailors survived by drinking his blood and eating his flesh.
In the late nineteenth century, a British resident magistrate met a captain named Anson whose crew "had run short of provisions" while "bring a yacht from England to Australia". Accordingly, they had killed and "eaten the cabin boy". No lot drawing is mentioned, but they had somehow escaped legal consequences, "probably upon some plea of self-preservation".
A more recent case took place in May 1988, after a motorized junk with 110 Vietnamese refugees on board, headed for Malaysia, suffered engine damage and drifted helplessly in the South China Sea. After 28 days on a vessel that had loaded provisions for only five days, the survivors started to eat the bodies of those who had died. Two passengers, a man around 30 and a 12-year-old boy, were murdered to be eaten, and two others may have been killed for the same reason. Some days later the ship was finally rescued and brought to the Philippines. Fewer than half of the persons on board had survived. Since the murders had been committed in international waters, none of the survivors had to face legal consequences despite two confessions.