S1 E5. SEA PART II – The Custom of the Sea

Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast

Eating your crew-mates after a shipwreck used to be so common that it was known as the ‘custom of the sea’. This episode, Alix offers up a buffet of maritime disasters that ended in cannibalism.

CREDITS

Written, hosted and produced by Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis.

Theme music by Daniel Wackett. Find him on Twitter @ds_wack and Soundcloud as Daniel Wackett.

Logo by Riley. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @tallestfriend.

Casting Lots is part of the Morbid Audio Podcast Network. Network sting by Mikaela Moody. Find her on Bandcamp as mikaelamoody1.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Blick, J.P. (1988). ‘The cannibalism issue: structuralist and materialist interpretations and other concerns’, Lambda Alpha Journal of Man, 18, pp. 8-29. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10057/1805
• Grahame, K. (2010). The Wind in the Willows. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Harvard University. (2009). Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? Episode 01 “THE MORAL SIDE OF MURDER”. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY
• Kemmy, J. (1981). ‘The Death of a Cabin Boy’, The Old Limerick Journal, 9(4), p. 3. Available at: http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/death%20of%20a%20cabin-boy.pdf
• Murphy, C. (2014). ‘Theatre: The terrible and true story of the ship’s captain who ate his crew’, Irish Independent, 2 November. Available at: https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/theatre-arts/theatre-the-terrible-and-true-story-of-the-ships-captain-who-ate-his-crew-30696766.html
• Rhodes, T.S. (2014). ‘Cannibalism at sea’, The Pirate Empire, 13 January. Available at: http://thepirateempire.blogspot.com/2014/01/cannibalism-at-sea.html

TRANSCRIPT

Alix: Have you ever been really, really hungry?

Carmella: You’re listening to Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast.

A: I’m Alix.

C: I’m Carmella.

A: And now let’s tuck into the gruesome history of this ultimate taboo…

[Intro Music – Daniel Wackett]

A: Welcome to Episode Five, a three-parter covering the stories of the Nottingham Galley, the Francis Spaight and the sloop, the Peggy.

[Intro music continues]

A: We’re going to start this story time with a quote. Just to really set the scene, ok? “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” Yeah, I don’t think cannibalism is what was being referred to in Wind in the Willows but I just wanted to start with that quote. Because we are definitely messing around in boats and this podcast is now a literature review.

C: Yay!

A: To be honest, the reason I’m going through that is because I’ve been reading anthropological studies from 1980. So this is where the literature review comes in, and to be honest, if I’ve had to read the “structural and materialist interpretations and other concerns’ of ‘the cannibalism issue’”, you, and you our lovely audience, also have to hear about it.

C: Thank you for sharing Alix.

A: You’re very welco- It was written in that really sort of olde font that looks like it was done by a typewriter. And I don’t quite understand how I’ve found the digitalised version of it. But I did. This review states that in order to look at cannibalism, a more rounded approach has to be taken, because apparently even academics sort of dramatise things and don’t actually look at the facts. Well I mean that’s not exactly what it says, I’m paraphrasing.

C: Are we included in that? We’ve been over-dramatising and not giving a rounded approach?

A: We’re not anthropological students in 1980.

C: Good point.

A: The study starts by saying that “Cannibalism as a topic of interest, both general” – that’s us! – “and anthropological, has seen a revival of concern in the last seven years or so.” Not quite sure why seven years is so specific?

C: The 70s?

A: 1981, apparently – that is when the resurgence of cannibalism studies starts. But that goes to show we’re not weird.

C: No, it was people in the 80s who were weird,

A: They started it. Back to the very dry article. There are different typologies of cannibalism such as ritual, warfare, and dietary but the one that’s relevant to us is survival cannibalism. The eating of human flesh or human parts by humans under adverse, stressful conditions as a last resort to survive. I do like ‘stressful conditions’. Have you been on the tube?

C: [Laughs.] I mean it is adverse and stressful.

A: So it goes on to further break down four situations: famine, obligatory or emergency ration, shipwreck, siege and war. (Siege and war is one together so it is four.) In the stories we’ve covered and are going to cover, there is quite a lot of crossover between these criteria, and that’s gonna stay the same as we, erm, mess around on boats today. Because today we are looking at the Nottingham Galley, the Peggy and the Francis Spaight.

C: Yay! Please tell me more about these boats.

A: I’ve made you listen all the way through the literature review, now you get the story. Also gonna point out: not boats.

C: Ships.

A: Thank you.

C: Drag Wind in the Willows then, it’s not me who got it wrong.

A: In 1710 the Nottingham Galley set sail out of Boston for London. She’s got a crew of fourteen – relatively small ship – and a hold full of butter and cheese.

C: Oh, to be on that boat.

A: If the cannibalism didn’t happen it sounds like my ideal ship!

C: You’ve got a hold full of butter, what time of year is this?

A: It’s December.

C: Ok, I was gonna- Like, how long will butter last? Won’t it go rancid? But in December maybe it’s cold enough.

A: It’s- Well, the hold is under the water. Cause of how ships work.

C: Yeah, okay, okay. Continue.

A: It’s not a hoverboat. The Nottingham Galley runs aground on the 11th of December on what is termed ‘a rock’. Actually an island. So, the ship is all but completely destroyed, but remarkably the entire crew make their way onto Boon Island.

C: Not the cheese!

A: Don’t worry. There’s going to be a little bit of cheese.

C: Oh, phew.

A: So Boon Island, off the Maine coast. Maine as in the place in America.

C: Maine with an E.

A: Maine with an E. The Nottingham Galley case is interesting, because it’s notorious but not for the reasons you might expect. Controversial, but not really because of the cannibalism: more due to the fact that before her destruction there’d been attempted fraud; the captain of the Nottingham Galley threatened to turn her over to the French.

C: [Gasps.] Sacre bleu!

A: I’m so glad you did that, I was like, ‘is Carmella gonna…?’ I put a little exclamation mark in brackets. Yes. Carmella knew her role. Then he sought to deliberately wreck the ship for insurance purposes, and this was only stopped because his crew mutinied against him.

C: Wow.

A: Yeah. It’s a dramatic ship. The first mate and two of the crew did file a deposition regarding this back in England. So, drama.

C: Yeah. It’s really heating up in the cheese ship.

A: But there are, perhaps, more important things that are happening on Boon Island. There’s very little shelter; the ship has been destroyed but they have made a makeshift tent out of sailcloth. There’s very little food and supplies. They have some seaweed, some mussels, a bit of salty cheese – shout out for cheese – and a seagull.

C: Actually sounds like it’d create quite a nice sort of chowder.

A: I’ve got the problem.

C: Ah?

A: They can’t light a fire.

C: Oh that is disappointing.

A: And they only have the seagull because first mate Christoper Langman – who is also the person who was like, “yeah the Captain tried to sell the ship to the French and then wreck it and then we did a mutiny, yay?” – was able to kill it. There’s not a lot of action being taken. So, they’re hungry. They’re cold. They’ve got very little shelter. And they’re suffering from frostbite, because things aren’t bad enough. Two men die from their injuries – the cook and the carpenter – and a further two men drown because they make a raft and attempt to sail to mainland Maine (eyyy?) and don’t.

C: Presumably they fail because they don’t have a carpenter anymore to help them with the raft?

A: I think they fail because they drown.

[Both laugh.]

C: I won’t argue with that.

A: The raft plays a part in our story later.

C: Yes.

A: So it’s quite well made.

C: So if you’re a fan of rafts, though, there’s another story coming up so…

A: Eeyyy. It took three weeks for ‘action to be taken’. I don’t know if you can hear the inverted commas there, but that is obviously a euphemistic term for cannibalism. Captain Dean ordered the dismemberment of the fourth death. Which was the ship’s carpenter. The ship’s carpenter was “a heavy plethoric man, forty-seven years of age, and of dull disposition.” Which I think is a bit unnecessarily harsh given the circumstances.

C: “This man was a fool, so we’re gonna eat him.”

A: “This man was fat and old and boring.” I’m like, guys!

C: Like, at least pretend you liked him.

A: Having actually reread my script, it’s very possible that the carpenter did help build the raft ‘cause he’s the fourth man to die.

C: Okay. So he can’t even build a raft.

A: He can build a raft! The raft will come up later!

C: Okay.

A: Captain Dean gives the order. The men find it so difficult to do that they beg the Captain to dismember the body for them. And as Dean said later, “Their incessant prayer and entreaties at last prevailed and by night I had performed my labour.” As is becoming tradition with survival cannibalism, the head, hands and feet were cut off – to separate the body from being recognisably something that had not only just been alive, but also just been a person. The rest of the body was skinned and cut into strips. Three of the ten survivors couldn’t actually bring themselves to eat on the first day, but they did on the second. Apparently if you wrap human flesh in seaweed, it makes it more palatable.

C: Like sushi.

A: Sushi.

C: Hmm.

A: Well it- Couldn’t cook it. No fire.

C: Tasty.

A: On the 4th of January, the survivors of the Nottingham Galley are rescued. And do you know why they’re rescued?

C: Cheese? I don’t-

A: The cheese? The raft!

C: Oh!

A: They’re rescued because the raft was found and a search party was sent out to find who had made a raft.

C: Ah, well see, there we go he was a good carpenter after all.

A: I don’t know why I’m being so defensive over this raft. There was no attempt to disguise what had been done. “It was no sin, since God was pleased to take him (the carpenter) out of the world and that we had not laid violent hands on him.” And to be honest, the main story of the Nottingham Galley focused on the depositions and the mutiny and the legal side of things. The cannibalism simply also happened. Although it’s worth noting, after the disaster, local fishermen started leaving barrels of provisions on Boon Island. Just in case.

C: Aww, that’s nice.

A: It is. Our next story, however, the Peggy, is less palatable. The Peggy has a crew of nine sailors and one Black slave. She’s sailing in the Atlantic in 1765, with a hold full of wine and brandy, and she’s de-masted during a storm. Which means, she is a sitting duck and can do nothing.

C: A duck or a turtle?

A: Duck or a turtle? We’ll have to release these in order now otherwise that joke won’t make any sense. And it’s a good one.

C: Inside jokes, you’ve got to listen to all the episodes to really get it.

A: So for a month they are drifting in the Atlantic and they eat their way through the limited supplies of the ship. The ship’s cat, sorry-

C: Aww.

A: Was “divided into nine pieces”.

C: Awww.

A: Pet pigeons were eaten, as were candles, leather buttons, and the leather bilge pump.

C: I guess at least there, they’re being resourceful. They’re trying everything.

A: Yeah. Possibly the bitterest irony about the Peggy is that they actually came really close to being rescued – a potential rescue vessel sailed in their direction. But because there’d been so little food but so much alcohol, the crew was wasted. And the captain of this rescue ship tales one look at the Peggy’s crew of raving drunks, and rather than risk his own men he sailed away.

C: [Laughs.] Oh. Oh no! That’s not funny.

A: Yeah.

C: I guess, it’s a party boat for a bit? For a short while.

A: For a short while. They’re just- To be fair, house parties. Someone has definitely eaten a candle.

C: I thought you were gonna say someone has definitely eaten a cat!

A: [Laughs.] Aaaah, I was gonna go with a candle. The captain of the Peggy is Captain Harrison and, depending on your sources – I mean, he’s pretty pivotal, and he also reports his own account – but he’s either very on board with the events that happen, or is firmly against them. Now, I’m erring on the side that he was against them, mostly because the fact he just hid in his cabin with a pistol doesn’t put him in very good light.

C: Mmm.

A: And if you were sorta gonna be like, “I’m the hero”, you probably wouldn’t be telling people that you’d also just been depressed and hidden in a corner while all of this was going on.

C: He’s no William Boys.

A: He’s no William Boys – another reference.

A: Captain Harrison is informed by his first mate that lots are going to be cast to see who will sacrifice himself.

C: Name drop.

A: Captain Harrison is not on board with this plan, but then is told that it happened anyway. And, surprising no-one, the short straw was drawn by the Black slave. Who, of course, we don’t know his name.

C: Hmmmmmmm? Suspicious.

A: Yeah. This casting system was so obviously rigged it doesn’t even seem worth putting an alternative theory there. Captain Harrison says that he tried to save the life of the slave, but it isn’t successful. He’s cooked and eaten, and pickled. However, during the preparation of the body, one of the sailors “jumped the line”, tore away the liver, and ate it raw.

C: Jesus!

A: After three days, this sailor was reported as having gone mad, and rather than utilising his body for food he was thrown overboard.

C: Right, so I’m definitely seeing there’s some different levels there.

A: Yes and no. It wasn’t deemed safe to eat the body of someone who was (quote-unquote) ‘deranged’; this does come through a lot of maritime custom of the sea sources, that men were fearful if they ate a mad person, they would share his fate. So that doesn’t appear to be racially motivated.

C: Some solid science there huh?

A: Exactly. You know.

C: I guess, Mad Cow Disease?

A: Yeah. Don’t get Mad Cow Disease folks. Handy tip.

C: Yes.

A: Harrison continues to make himself sound good and he then reports a conversation with his first mate, regarding the fact that the death of the slave “had done them no service as they were as greedy and as emaciated as ever… the answer which they gave to this was that they were now hungry and must have something to eat.” So, another round of lots were drawn. In the case of the Peggy, these aren’t lots as in splinters of wood of different lengths, these are lots as in-

C: Pebbles?

A: Inked paper.

C: Oh, okay.

A: Yeah, they’re- They’re spicing things up. In our second round of lots, there is no obvious victim, so it does appear that these lots were cast fairly. We know this because the thing with casting lots is when it’s an actual random lottery, is sometimes the most popular sailor on the ship is the person who draws that inked piece of paper – and that’s what happened to David Flatt. Allegedly the “the shock of the decision was great and the preparations for the execution dreadful.” Flatt requested that his sentence be acted upon immediately.

C: Right?

A: So they gave him a twelve hour reprieve, and during that time the threat of what was to come led to Flatt losing his hearing and then his mind.

C: I mean that- That will happen to you.

A: During those twelve hours is when the crew of the Peggy is rescued. Flatt, however, will never recover, even back in England – as Harrison said, the “unhappy Flatt still continued out of his senses.”

C: So how long were they at sea in total?

A: I don’t have the specific dates because I am a professional and didn’t write them down, but it is from October to January. So they are at sea for a long time.

C: Okay, okay. So, a death toll of two isn’t actually that bad.

A: No, they do alright… They don’t do alright. It’s not good. Finally, the Francis Spaight – it’s a good name. Which, on the 3rd of December, 1836, was ‘broached to’ off the coast of Canada. When I wrote the script I wrote “off the coast of cannibalism”.

C:[Laughs.] Yes, that famous coast.

A: One track mind.

C: Now, erm: ‘Broached to’?

A: Which basically means, following a storm she was nearly toppled – her sails may have even ended up in the water and she was only righted when Captain Gorman cut her rigging loose. So the way a ship should be; a ship upside-down is obviously not doing very well at all-

[Carmella laughs.]

A: Ship sideways.

C: Okay, so it’s 50 percent towards doing badly.

A: Yeah. Like, it’s not doing great, and the weight of the sail – it makes it difficult to come back, but if you cut all your rigging off you sort of swing back the right way like a Weeble. They wobble but they don’t fall down. How many people are gonna understand that reference? Give us a shout out in the comments if you remember Weebles!

C: Please co-

[Alix laughs.]

C: Yeah we’re becoming, It’s- it’s a extensive history podcast, we really cover all the bases of Weeble history here.

A: So, she righted herself, but she’d lost three of her 18 crew in the storm. No food or water because all of their provisions had either been lost or fouled by the sea water. There were a few bottles of wine and the rain-water that could be collected in handkerchiefs. But not enough to survive.

C: Collected in handke- The handkerchiefs are wet, rather than they’ve made like a bowl out of handkerchiefs somehow?

A: No, like your fog being caught in the sails.

C: Okay, so they’re just sort of squishing wet handkerchiefs into their mouths. Yup.

A: Yep.

C: Cool.

A: Yeah, you know. They’ve got to do something for fun. There’s not a lot going on.

C: Yeah.

A: After sixteen days, Captain Gorman proposed that lots should be drawn. But only between the four cabin boys who had survived, maintaining that “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 on them”.

C: Oh, that’s, that’s quite harsh. Like, “Your friends won’t care if you get eaten!”

A: I mean, let’s take utilitarianism to its logical extreme shall we? Patrick O’Brien was fifteen years old. He was blindfolded by the crew and told to give the names of his fellow cabin boys. Lots would them be drawn for each given name. When he gave the name of “on myself” – this is when the death lot was drawn. Which, again is… Convenient. I mean, I’m not saying the casting of lots was rigged, but, let’s consider the possibly.

C: He’s the one that was selected to be blindfolded and such.

A: Yeah. Okay, slightly gory coming up. Allegedly O’Brien went to his death bravely. The cook who had been ordered to kill him at first refused, but then attempted after his life was threatened. And failed. Then O’Brien attempted to slit his own wrists. This also failed – allegedly the “blood refused to flow” – and then he had his throat cut.

C: Oh that is- That’s nasty.

A: The blood was collected for the crew to drink, and the corpse was dismembered and eaten. Most likely the head was put overboard, but we know from later accounts that this wasn’t the case with all of the, erm, ‘extremities’.

C: Ah.

A: Account differ as to whether two or three sailors following O’Brien were also put to death, and whether there lots were cast for them or not. Of those known to have been consumed after O’Brien, one was another boy and another was an adult sailor. Allegedly, two of the sailors who were put to death and consumed had lost their senses, and we know that this differs with the traditional menu of survival cannibalism where it says that you don’t eat those who have gone mad either due to circumstance or sea water. So whether things were just desperate on the Francis Spaight, or if, you know, they just decided to defy convention, we don’t know. After 20 days at sea, the eleven survivors of the Francis Spaight were rescued by the Ageerenia. I mean, do you want to give that a go?

C: Agy- Ageronia? It’s a ship.

A: A G E O N I R A. Why do all of these ships have names like this? The crew of the Francis Spaight managed to attract the attention of passing vessels by… You ready for this? Waving the dismembered hands and feet of O’Brien and the other victims to “indicate their plight.”

C: Oooh, so that’s how we know they didn’t get rid of the hands and feet, huh?

A: Yeah… Hi.

C: Oooooh.

A: For all of our listeners listening, we’re just waving… It’s said that Gorman was eating the liver and brains of a cabin-boy when he was rescued.

C: That sounds sensationalist.

A: It does rather. What isn’t sensationalist, but is one of those ‘oh my god really’ moments, is back in Ireland the captain and the crew were tried and acquitted for murder, but the Francis Spaight herself was righted, remasted and continued to operate in the emigrant trade.

C: Oh dear.

A: Who’d want to sail on that ship?

C: You’re saying that like if they offered the-

A: I mean yeah.

C: Francis Spaight touring experience we wouldn’t be the first to sign up?

A: Well, probably not the experience.

C: Cannibalism cruise! We’ll go to all the key spots. Is this a business venture?

A: This is a business venture, I think.

C: Yeah.

A: We get a ferry. We go out to sea. We go into international waters. And we just tell people over the tannoy what the custom of the sea is, and then be like, “The kitchens are closed”.

[Carmella laughs]

[Outro Music – Daniel Wackett]

C: Thank you for joining us for today’s episode where we’ve been having fun on boats.

A: Technically, they’re still ships.

C: Boats.

A: Next time we are going to be making our way onto not a boat, or a ship, but a raft. Looking at the almost unbelievable true story of the famous painting of the Medusa.

[Outro music continues]

C: What qualities would you look for in a potential victim?

A: We’re not going to say “victim”.

C: In a potential dinner?

A: There we go. Well, ideally, you don’t want someone who’s starving, because they’re just not as tasty.

C: Hmm.

A: I mean you have this with Uruguay, with the fact that once the bodies of the people who died in the crash were uncovered, they died in the plane crash rather than slowly of starvation, so they were nice and plump and fresh.

C: Hmm. Well you want someone with a good amount of muscle on them as well.

A: You want muscle rather than fat.

C: Although fat-

A: But fat is useful.

C: Muscle’s tastier but fat’s useful.

A: Yeah. To be fair, even when you’re pretty darn desperate, bone marrow’s very handy.

C: Hmm. I think really, what, what you really want is like a seal. To be honest.

A: What you want is a nice burger.

C: [Laughs.] Oh yeah, I guess if we’re gonna choose.

A: If we’re gonna have to pick… You want someone hale and hearty, not too sinewy, not too dead.

C: Hmm.

A: I mean, dead. But not like-

C: Recently dead.

A: Recently dead.

C: Hmm.

A: And, yeah, ideally you wanna be somewhere nice and cool. Where it’s not gonna go off. Like a walk-in freezer.

C: Right so, we go to the freezer section.

A: Yeah, this sounds, definitely, like we’re normal.

C: Yep, we’re not weird at all.

A: Everyone does it.

C: At sea.

A: At sea.

[Pause]

A: Casting Lots Podcast can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr as @CastingLotsPod, and on Facebook as Casting Lots Podcast.

C: If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, don’t forget to subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please rate, review and share to bring more people to the table.

A: Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast, is researched, written and recorded by Alix and Carmella, with post-production and editing also by Carmella and Alix. Art and logo design by Riley – @Tallestfriend on Twitter and Instagram – with audio and music by Daniel Wackett – Daniel Wackett on SoundCloud and @ds_wack on Twitter. Casting Lots is part of the Morbid Audio Podcast Network – search #MorbidAudio on Twitter – and the network’s music is provided by Mikaela Moody – mikaelamoody1 on Bandcamp.

[Morbid Audio Sting – Mikaela Moody]