Cannibalism And Custom Of Sea

In the days of sailing ships, sailors openly acknowledged a grim survival practice that they called the custom of the sea. When shipwrecked castaways faced starvation without any other food, they often drew lots to determine which one would die so that the others could survive, and then they killed and ate the selected individual. Courts and communities sometimes excused this cannibalism as an act of dire necessity, and castaways could admit what they had done without always facing punishment.

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