Page "Cannibalism" Paragraph 47

This period of time was also rife with instances of explorers and seafarers resorting to cannibalism for survival.

The survivors of the sinking of the French ship Méduse in 1816 resorted to cannibalism after four days adrift on a raft and their plight was made famous by Théodore Géricault's painting Raft of the Medusa.

After the sinking of the Essex of Nantucket by a whale, on November 20, 1820, ( an important source event for Herman Melville's Moby-Dick ) the survivors, in three small boats, resorted, by common consent, to cannibalism in order for some to survive.

Sir John Franklin's lost polar expedition is another example of cannibalism out of desperation.

On land, the Donner Party found itself stranded by snow in a high mountain pass in California without adequate supplies during the Mexican-American War, leading to several instances of cannibalism.

Another notorious cannibal was mountain man Boone Helm, who was known as " The Kentucky Cannibal " for eating several of his fellow travelers, from 1850 until his eventual hanging in 1864.