12. Survivors of the Luxborough Galley resorted to cannibalism to stay alive
The Luxborough was a vessel which ran on the Triangle Trade route, carrying goods, slaves, rum and molasses between England, the American colonies, and Africa in 1727. On her final voyage a disastrous fire, started when a lighted candle used for checking the source of a leak ignited a barrel of rum, led to the loss of the ship and 22 men and boys escaped in a small boat. They had no navigational aids, little food and water, and when they were rescued by a fishing vessel two weeks later their number had been reduced to twelve. Several more died after being rescued despite the attentions of the fishermen. One survivor went to Boston, and it was the Gazette of that city which first described the loss of the ship and the survival of some of the crew.
The account reported that though the sensation of hunger was “not so urgent” the survivors quickly decided to “adopt the horrible expedient of eating part of the bodies of our dead companions, and drinking their blood”. They failed in their several attempts to catch fish swimming around the drifting boat, using parts of the dead bodies as their bait. The report stated they tried several parts of the bodies as food, “but could relish only the hearts, of which we ate three”. They developed a procedure of quickly cutting the throat of the recently deceased to drain as much blood as possible, which was then shared among the survivors. Nearly all of the survivors lived to “a very great age” according to John Nichols, editor of Gentleman’s Magazine, who interviewed some of them decades later.