Custom of the sea

[1][2] 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.

[4]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".

[5] 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.

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 ... (such as slaves, young boys, and passengers)" to serve as food for the other survivors.

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.

[11] 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 (1641).

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.

After provisions had run out, the sailors decided to kill the one "negro youth" on board (probably an enslaved person) rather than drawing lots, as one of them freely reported afterwards.

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."

[17] In the late nineteenth century, a British resident magistrate met a captain named Anson whose crew "had run short of provisions" while "bring[ing] a yacht from England to Australia".

[18] Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), has a minor character, Richard Parker, whom the shipwreck's survivors cannibalise.

Gilbert wrote a song, "The Yarn of the Nancy Bell", in which the last survivor of shipwreck sings that he is the entire crew after drawing lots and eating his other shipmates.

The stories of Richard Parker (real and fictional) inspired the name of the tiger in Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi, in which cannibalism is discussed concerning a shipwreck.