A couple people have asked to read my paper, so here it is!

I’m warning you now, it’s really really rough. Please remember that it was written between midnight and 5.30am without a whole lot of prior research. I swear I’m a better historian than this :P

The central question in the academic discussion of cannibalism is why. What could possibly drive a person to consume another person? There are three primary responses to this question: religion, illness, and necessity. The consumption of human flesh for religious purposes can take the form of ritual cannibalism, in which a person eats another as part of a sacrifice or ceremony, or non-ritual, in which someone generally consumes the flesh of the dead to gain some of their abilities or traits. Cannibalism is not specifically listed as a mental illness in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V, but is often a product of or accompanies a variety of mental illnesses. Cannibalism due to illness is also strongly connected the murder of the victim to be cannibalized beforehand.

Cannibalism as necessity, however, is what this research is focused on. Under what circumstances do people find it necessary to cannibalise; why do people ultimately make that choice; and what does the law have to say about it if they are discovered? One of the most common narratives of necessity cannibalism is the shipwreck. There are numerous documented cases of cannibalism during or after a shipwreck: when people are stranded on inhabitable islands, on lifeboats or rafts, or lose their way at sea and run out of rations. Especially in conditions where one is prone to death from dehydration or starvation, it is logical that desperate people would eat the dead. This research will look at those cases of necrocannibalism, or the consumption of those who are already dead, and homicidal cannibalism, or when people murder someone specifically for food. In case of a shipwreck, it was sometimes necessary for survival for people to participate in either or both of these kinds of cannibalism. An in-depth study of the circumstances of this necessity and the ethics surrounding it is crucial to completely understand why people choose to participate in cannibalism and what the repercussions can be for that choice.

One of the earliest accounts of cannibalism at sea is that of the Nottingham Galley. She was travelling in mid-1710 from London to Boston with a cargo of cheese and butter and a 14-person crew. She hit a nasty gale and her passengers were stranded on a rock about 12 miles from their destination; three men attempted to make it to shore, never to be heard from again. The carpenter of the crew died in late September and out of desperation the captain gave the order to eat him. The ten remaining survivors were rescued on January 4th, 1711. There were no legal repercussions for their cannibalism, and the captain later went on to become the British consul in Flanders.[1]

The case of the Peggy was not that simple. She was travelling from the Azores to New York with wine and brandy in October of 1765 when she ran into a massive storm. The eight crewmen, captain, and one slave were left stranded in the boat and eventually consumed all the rations, along with pidgeons, the ship’s cat, barnacles from the side of the ship, leather, tobacco, and anything else remotely edible. Miraculously, they were all still alive as of January 13, but entirely out of food. They were forced to draw lots to determine who would be eaten. The slave “lost” the draw and was subsequently shot, cooked, pickled, and eaten, with his head, hands, and feet thrown overboard.[2] The crew exhausted his body rather quickly, and on January 29, they cast lots again and chose a new man, who grudgingly accepted his fate. They reported that afterwards he went mad, but they were rescued and taken to Dartmouth before he could be eaten. Only the captain and three members of the crew survived, including the would-be victim. When they arrived on shore, there was no criticism or surprise at their cannibalism.[3]

The Dolphin is another example of a person of lower social standing losing the lot draw. The eight-person crew of the Dolphin was adrift between the Canary Islands and New York for 165 days in 1759. They were without “real” food for 116 of them, instead resorting to eating the ship’s dog, cat, leather, lamp oil, fabrics, and any other edible thing. When all of this ran out, they mutually and reluctantly decided to cast lots to determine who would be eaten, and the only Spaniard on board “lost.” They eventually ate all of him, except the head, which was thrown overboard. When they ran out of human meat, they were prepared to draw lots again when the captain remembered he had a pair of leather-lined trousers; he removed and rationed the leather, which the remaining crew survived on for twenty days until their rescue.[4] The Tyger was a French ship that was grounded in 1766 and has a slightly different cannibal narrative. The captain, his wife and son, and their slave were left stranded on an island with no food and the slave was unceremoniously murdered and smoked for food. There were no lots drawn and he had no input; the Frenchman considered the act necessary to save his family.[5]

There were no legal repercussions for the crew of the Dolphin nor the family on the Tyger, but even in these first few examples, there is a pattern of hierarchy. The captain and the first mate were rarely killed for food; after them, the cook was saved, followed by key crewmen. Slaves, foreigners, and young, family-less men were the most likely to go first, or to lose “fair” draws, or to be the victim of no draw at all. The fairness and ethics of these lot drawings or lack thereof would come more under scrutiny as more shipwrecks were reported and certain empires began to dominate the seas, and therefore maritime laws.

The following two instances of shipwreck cannibalism are perhaps the most famous—the first inspired a beautiful painting, and the second was almost certainly inspiration for Moby Dick. In 1816, the Medusa set sail from France to Senegal when the captain lost the course and the ship was trapped in the reefs and shoals that expand from the coast of Africa. The ship became stuck in sand in 16 feet of water, and because the shore was only forty miles away, the passengers decided to abandon ship. There were five lifeboats and plenty of provisions, but due to the captain’s continued incapability, panic ensued and most everyone except the captain, his officers, and a few soldiers ended up on a massive raft. The five boats were originally supposed to pull the raft behind them, but the lines were quickly cut, and the 150 passengers of the raft were left stranded with nothing but wine-soaked biscuits to eat. By day two of being stuck on the raft, twenty people had died, and after a drunken mutiny on day three, there were sixty-seven alive by day four. At this point, the survivors were out of what meagre food they had and decided to start cutting and drying pieces of meat from the dead. After yet another mutiny, there were thirty people left on day five and half of them were wounded or extremely ill (including the only surviving woman).[6] It was decided that the sick and weak needed to be thrown overboard to leave more rations for the healthy. A doctor selected thirteen passengers for this, and when they were finally rescued on day 17, there were only fifteen people left on the raft.[7] Six of the people who made it to shore had also perished. The French government eventually investigated and found that their reasons for cannibalism were completely justifiable and no one was charged with any kind of crime.[8]

The Essex was a whaler that was stranded in the Pacific Ocean, partway between Hawai’i and the Galapagos Islands, after a whale rammed into the ship and incapacitated it in 1820. On November 22, the crew lowered the whaleboats and abandoned the ship; they took whatever provisions they could, but did not bring any navigation equipment. On December 20, they landed on Henderson Island, an uninhabitable island that they quickly depleted of any supplies. Three men elected to stay behind on that island, and on December 27, the rest of the crew set sail. One member died on January 10, and on January 12, one of the boats got separated from the other two.[9] According to the captain’s report, on January 23, a black man on his boat died and was subsequently eaten, and the situation repeated itself on January 25 in the other boat. By January 27, they had completely consumed both of those bodies and decided to draw lots. As often happened, a young crewman in the captain’s boat lost the lot, and was shot and eaten. The remaining two members of the crew were rescued on February 23. In the boat that was separated, one man died on February 8 and was eaten; his body lasted for six or seven days, and the remaining people in that boat were rescued on February 18. In this case, no one was prosecuted because members of both parties swore that there were fair lots drawn and all the deaths were entirely natural.[10] The story of the Essex is considered to be the inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.[11]

The Mignonette is one of the most significant accounts of maritime cannibalism, and is a good summation of the ones that came before it. In May 1884, the Mignonette left Falmouth, England, for Australia with its four-man crew and no cargo. The Mignonette was a yacht, a ship built mostly for cruising, fishing, and as a show of status.[12] The boat was not necessarily intended for cross-globe travel, but was nonetheless bound for Australia. The Mignonette had crossed the equator by mid June, but on July 5, the ship was overtaken by heavy seas and sank. A small poorly damaged but still functional dinghy was lowered into the water; most of the food supplies were lost, but the captain was able to snag the navigation equipment off the ship. They then made course for the nearest land: South America, over 2000 miles away. The four men were out of provisions by July 16, and on July 20 the youngest of the crew began drinking seawater, which made him extremely ill and delirious.[13] Four days later, the boy was more or less comatose on the bottom of the boat. The captain, figuring the boy was near death and realising that he and the other crew members all had wives and children, decided, with the other members’ approval, that he should kill the boy for food and his blood to drink.[14] The meat lasted until they were rescued on July 19, and the captain did nothing to hide what he had done and fully admitted to the murder in court. One of the crewmembers opted to act as a witness against the other two, but the captain and the first mate were convicted and, after a royal pardon, sentenced to only six months in prison; their certificates to be captain and first mate were even restored.[15] But this trial begs a closer look at the ideas that still govern modern opinions on survival cannibalism: the laws of necessity, of the “natural-ness” of cannibalism, and fairness in choosing a victim.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the British found themselves in control of all the seas; they had the ultimate naval empire, and were therefore in control of maritime law. In 1854, 30 years before the wreck of the Mignonette, they passed the Merchant Shipping Act. Among other things, this law made murders committed on rafts or lifeboats in the open sea subject to legislation by the crown.[16] When the crew of the Mignonette was discovered to have cannibalised, the law had a difficult decision to make. It became a discussion of natural versus common law. Did a man have the right to kill another to save himself? Was the instinct for self-preservation enough to justify and necessitate the murder of a fellow crewmember? The case set before the English court was not to decide whether cannibalism was legal or not, nor was it to decide if the men were guilty of murder. They had to decide on “a stipulation of natural law that is employed to uphold the authority of the civil judge… the fact that they failed to draw lots to decide on the victim.”[17] The issue was the ethics of the logic through which they decided to participate in cannibalism; they were deciding on a person’s “primitive equality, the right to self-preservation, the right to execute natural law, and the transfer of these rights on the basis of mutual consent.”[18] Was the murder of the boy ethical? The court had to decide if all the men of the Mignonette, including the boy, had a say in his death, and if the captain and two crew members were justified in killing him to save themselves. Ultimately, the British government said no to all of these questions: homicidal cannibalism was declared illegal on the basis that it could almost never be a fair, ethical, or mutual decision.

Shipwreck cannibalism offers a unique perspective on survival ethics. For many in the 19th century it was not a question of murder or of the concept eating another human being—which, with the large number of records of shipwreck cannibalism available, was not a foreign idea in the maritime world—but on how the victim was chosen. It was ethical to follow the traditional seaman hierarchy, but it was not to murder someone without drawing a “fair” lot. But was doing it that way following natural law? The debate then turns to a discussion of self-preservation versus the preservation of others, the ethics of killing someone else to save onself. These are concepts the modern world still deals with when looking at cases of survival cannibalism. People are still searching for the lines between self-preservation, desperation and necessity, and murder.