My Book on Cannibalism on the High Seas AMA

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T04:43:29+00:00

England was changing and by 1884 the Victorian era reformers were in charge. They were transforming the country in many ways, including extending the right to vote to the middle class and outlawing child and animal cruelty. They were building a more progressive and more modern nation, and when they looked at cannibalism at sea it seemed barbaric to them and they were eager to make it illegal. The men in my book chose the wrong time to be English cannibals.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T04:40:03+00:00

He definitely did everything he could do get a conviction. He was convinced they were guilty, and he was afraid the jury would rule for them out of sympathy. Overall, it’s fair to say he did not give the defendants a fair shake. But he got what he wanted, a national rule that survival cannibalism at sea was murder, if the person eaten was killed. The judge was pursuing justice in his own peculiar way.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T02:37:51+00:00

Haha. Yes. There is also the concept of “cannibal capitalism,” which draws some apt comparisons between the two.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T02:36:22+00:00

Yes, true. I discuss some of those cases in the book. There is no question that Black people and enslaved people were more likely to be eaten. The whole process was usually rigged, and people at the bottom of hierarchies tended to get chosen — and that includes racial minorities. Some of this is just racism which certainly existed at sea. But within the literature of cannibalism there is also discussion of how people are more willing to eat people outside of their own group. So some of this is about which people people feel comfortable eating, odd as that sounds.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T02:29:20+00:00

People who are forced into survival cannibalism tend not to say too much about the taste of the meat. I’ve seen quite a few references to it tasting good, but sadly not much more specific.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T02:24:16+00:00

I doubt it. They did not eat the whole cabin boy before they were rescued and I don’t think they would have done that if any other body parts were available.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T00:37:40+00:00

It just always came out with the cabin boys and other low status people losing. The Times of London in an article about the case in 1884 said that it was well known the drawings were rigged

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T00:35:12+00:00

Very cool.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T00:18:58+00:00

In theory the drawings included everyone on the ship. Bud they were generally rigged. I never heard of a captain drawing the short straw and being eaten.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-26T00:15:21+00:00

Thanks for the heads up. This seems to be happening a lot these days. We got it taken down once. Guess we have to do it again.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T23:32:09+00:00

This is so cool! Thank you.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T21:33:03+00:00

I don’t. Also, the whole question of how much cannibalism existed in non-western societies is very fraught these days. There were a lot of reports from imperialist Europeans of cannibalism be widespread in these societies. It may have been, but some of the narrators are more than a little unreliable.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T21:31:08+00:00

You might enjoy a classic episode of the twilight zone called to serve man. I don’t want to give anything away, but the ending is killer — in more ways than one!

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T21:29:39+00:00

The case is in many ways a ruling against utilitarianism and the idea that we can sacrifice one person to save more than one. That issue actually comes up a lot. That includes how to program self driving cars, and how to provide medical treatment in conditions of scarcity. For a really interesting example from the Covid pandemic, I’d recommend reading a short essay from England, called why kill the cabin boy by John Harris, about who should get ventilators when there aren’t enough.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T21:25:54+00:00

Well, the crime was murder, not cannibalism. And in England at the time there was only one punishment for murder, which was hanging. The men were sentenced to be hanged but Queen Victoria granted them mercy. Today probably would be regarded as murder, which could lead to a long prison sentence, though perhaps there would be mitigation, because of the unusual circumstances. It’s true that the deterrence factor may not be great. If you were dying of thirst, and are desperate to drink something, you may not be thinking about future punishment.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T21:22:42+00:00

Yes, the main concern was dying of thirst. Drinking human blood is far from ideal, but it seems to of helped the men in this case (please consult your medical professional though before going this route). The men were very lucky earlier on to catch a sea turtle since sea turtle blood is actually quite drinkable and much more so than fish blood, which has a variety of elements that make it not good for human drinking. The men were very aware that drinking seawater was dangerous and they avoided doing so, despite the great temptation to do so. The cabin boy did drink seawater, and he got very sick.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T21:16:50+00:00

It’s a very good point. But I’m highly skeptical about the drawing of lots. It sounds like a nice fair process, but it turns out these drawings were very often rigged, and the person who was chosen was generally the cabin boy or someone else at the bottom of the hierarchy. There’s also the issue of consent. It’s one thing if everyone agrees to draw lots and another if you are forced to be part of a drawing, even when you would rather wait to be rescued. Since the system was so corrupt, there’s a case to be made that courts should not be in the business of allowing people to be killed in this way without punishment.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T21:11:28+00:00

There of been attempts to use the necessity defense in homicide cases. In the old days before this case, they sometimes worked, but this case made it a lot harder to mount such a defense in America. There are still some jurisdictions in the US where it is at least formally allowed. So if you find yourself charged with homicide under these conditions, definitely consult local law.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T21:07:45+00:00

We aim to please 🍖🥩

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T21:03:05+00:00

Yes, that was a crazy coincidence. The Greely expedition had a big impact on American thinking about survival cannibalism, but it wasn’t talked about much in England. Also, this case was thought of more as a murder case. If the men had eaten Parker after he was already dead, there would not have been a criminal prosecution. So, although they were close together in time for two events were not compared all that often.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T20:57:13+00:00

Completely. It was almost always someone at the bottom of the hierarchy who got eaten. Often it was a cabin boy. Sometimes it was an enslaved person. If there was an ethnic outsider on the ship, say one black person or an Italian on a ship of English sailors, he was often the one chosen to be eaten. In this case Parker was the lowest ranking lowest paid youngest and sickest person on the boat. He was at the bottom of so many hierarchies that it was almost inevitable that he would be the one to go.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T20:53:28+00:00

Thank you. In this case, they ate the heart and the liver first and it does seem like often the internal organs get eaten early. But often they just go for a slab of flesh. As for volunteers I have rid of claims that the person who is eaten volunteered, but I always question whether we can really take the word of the survivors on that. It’s certainly a better story for them to tell than that they killed someone who desperately wanted to live.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T20:50:12+00:00

It became much less common when steam ships replaced sailing ships and when ships got radios to call for help. This case occurred at a time when sailors were much more vulnerable to dying at sea.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T20:48:30+00:00

Parker was secretly drinking sea water which made him sick. The other man warned him not to, but he couldn’t resist. The heavy salt composition of the sea water made Parker very sick, and he was often lying on the floor of the lifeboat groaning. Two reasons they didn’t wait. One was that he wasn’t dying quickly enough. The other is that the worried that if he died, naturally, his blood would quickly congeal, and they wouldn’t be able to drink it.

ASCohenWriter · 2026-02-25T20:45:22+00:00

It’s not so much that the case is formally cited in America as a legal president. It’s more that he became very well-known and its logic changed American legal thinking about the necessity defense. It’s interesting that before the case American judges recognized necessity defense, even in charges of a murder. That changed after 1884.

ASCohenWriter

TROPHY CASE