S1 E9. SEA PART VI – The Cospatrick

Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast

The emigrant ship Cospatrick is headed to Auckland when it catches ablaze at sea, resulting in a tragic loss of lives that makes it one of the worst disasters in New Zealand’s history. But for the few survivors who escape by lifeboat, the horror isn’t over yet…

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

• Clark, C.R. (2006). Women and Children Last: The Burning of the Emigrant Ship Cospatrick. Dunedin: University of Otago Press.
• Cowdell, P. (2010). ‘Cannibal ballads: not just a question of taste…”. Folk Music Journal, 9(5), pp. 723-747. Available at: www.jstor.org/stable/25654209.
• Illustrated London News. (1875). ‘Burning of the Emigrant-Ship Cospatrick at Sea’. Illustrated London News, 2 January. Available at: http://www.theshipslist.com/accounts/cospatrick.shtml
• Liverpool Mercury. (1874). ‘An emigrant ship burned, supposed Loss of 450 lives, terrible privations of the survivors’. Liverpool Mercury, 29 December. Available at: http://www.old-merseytimes.co.uk/cospatrick.html
• Liverpool Mercury. (1874). ‘The burning of an emigrant ship, further particulars, the Second Mate’s statement’. Liverpool Mercury, 30 December. Available at: http://www.old-merseytimes.co.uk/cospatrick.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
• Vietze, A. and S. Erickson. (2012). Boon Island: A True Story of Mutiny, Shipwreck, and Cannibalism. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press.
• Wilson, J. (2005). ‘Fire on the Cospatrick’ in Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Wellington: Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Available at: https://teara.govt.nz/en/artwork/2563/fire-on-the-cospatrick

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 Nine, where we’ll be looking at the emigrant ship the Cospatrick.

[Intro music continues]

A: Carmella are you ready to hear about the burning of the Cospatrick?

C: I am very ready to hear about that!

A: Excellent! But we’re actually going to start with a song this time.

C: Ooooh! I love a good musical number!

A: Because. Well, we’re not the only people who have been fascinated by cannibalism, survival, and all things that happen at sea! And some of them have been even less respectful than us.

C: What?

A: I know, I know. To set the scene: it’s 1874, we’re all dressed up, we’ve gone down to the music hall, probably had a few gins. It’s the great 19th Century knees up – we’re having a whale of a time – on stage being performed, your favourite hit and mine: it’s ‘Fearful Loss of Life at Sea!’ Exclamation Mark.

C: I’m really enjoying this role play scenario.

[Alix laughs.]

C: Let me… Wait. I need to get into my character. What are my motivations in this scene?

A: You’ve had some gin.

C: I’m ready to party, okay.

A: You’re ready to party. I’m sorry to break it to you, I’m not going to sing Charles Fox’s masterpiece.

C: Awww.

A: But, I will give you the last verse: “From rescued men who have returned / Fearful tidings we have learn’d / Of dreadful sufferings they went through / Of horrid things compelled to do / They had no food, they had no drink / At what they done perhaps you’ll shrink; / God only know what it must be / In an open boat ten days at sea.”

C: Wow, that’s some William McGonagall-esque crawling towards a rhyme.

A: Isn’t it just? So you know, everyone’s favourite Music Hall banger.

C: Maybe it sounds better when it’s sung? I don’t know.

A: I… Perhaps, perhaps. Now that most certainly sounds like our kind of story doesn’t it?

C: Absolutely.

A: Well, here we go: the sinking of the Cospatrick in 1847 [Error: Alix meant to say 1874!]. Now, any survival cannibalism aficionados, or anyone who has done a bit of background reading – we’re not putting out homework but the sources are out there – you might have come across the work the seminal work ‘Cannibalism at Common Law’, and the Cospatrick is one of the cases that it references, especially to do with the Cospatrick’s reputation and the entertainment and interest garnered from horror on a massive scale. However, the Cospatrick wasn’t the only vessel to burn at sea, resulting in cannibalism, in the 1870s. Not even the only ship in 1874.

C: Oh wow.

A: It’s not a good year to be a flammable ship. I mean. Most ships are flammable at this time.

C: They are made of wood.

A: Famously. Our other ships are the Arracan, whose surviving crew in three boats managed to survive for 19 days, but only two days after the last food was eaten, lots were cast in the third boat. The cabin boy Horner was ‘randomly selected’. The second mate in control of this third boat defended Horner’s life and eventually a seaman called Layford, possibly due to drinking of salt water, or just a broken spirit, asked to be killed. The attack on him failed, but blood was drawn which was then drunk. In the end, the crew of the Arracan’s third boat were all rescued and Webster, the second mate who had defended Horner, actually received a medal for saving everyone’s lives. Sort of more by accident than design, because there was an attempted murder. Well, mercy killing. But, he got a medal.

C: “Well done, you failed to kill anyone”

A: Pretty much. Well, cannibalism at sea is so common that ‘well done, well done, you didn’t manage it.’

C: Did they still drink the blood though?

A: Yes.

C: So cannibalism did happen-

A: Oh cannibal-

C: At sea, it was just that no one died because of that cannibalism. Which is really a very ethical form of cannibalism.

A: It’s very impressive. It’s one of our few examples where there’s cannibalism but no death.

C: Yeah, non-lethal survival cannibalism.

A: Congratulations the crew of the Arracan. The second ship which sets the tone of why it was a bad idea to go to sea in a flammable ship in 1874 is the Euxine, which has the fun fact of being the first case of British shipwreck survivors being charged with murder following rescue, following the custom of the sea.

C: Okay.

A: Note I say ‘charged with’, not ‘had their sentence completed’.

C: So they get away with it in the end?

A: They do. After a fire, the Euxine was abandoned and again the crews took to the boats. In this instance however, they had some supply of food. But as with many of these circumstances at sea, tempers flared and, as is especially prevalent, it was common for men who believed they were going to die to want to take out the supplies of food, or even the boat itself, while attempting to take their own lives. So, the boat is capsized, which destroys all of the remaining food. This was when the question of survival cannibalism was first raised, 30 days after the Euxine first set light.

C: Well they really lasted out.

A: They do surprisingly well.

C: I was gonna say, reminds me of the Medusa but-

A: Three days.

C: Maybe. Yeah. That’s ten times as many days, guys. In case you can’t do maths.

A: This is going to be a meme for the rest of the series, just ‘Three Days!’ Now, one of the men, Müller – like the yogurt, even with the two dots above the U – apparently “offered his body to serve as food for the others and entreated the others to kill and devour him”. They didn’t.

C: Okay!

A: Instead they drew lots. “On the morning of the fourth day after capsizing I heard Bill Schutt say that we should draw lots [to decide] who should perish to keep the others alive. This was done after some time. The things for a lottery were made of sticks cut from boards. We agreed that it should be decided after three drawings.” That sounds quite fair.

C: Best of three. Okay.

A: Best of three. Here is where things become a little… coincidental. Because Francis Gioffus – who was Italian, with limited English and was unpopular – drew the short straw. He drew the short straw three times.

C: The chances of that are quite low.

A: They’re actually one in 216.

C: Yeah. That low.

A: …I’m not saying that it was rigged, but.

C: It looks rigged.

A: It looks rigged. It wasn’t a clean death – the blade was dull. Now, blood was caught and drunk, and here we’re getting on for the gory bit. The liver and the heart were cut out, and mixed with blood and sea water before being eaten. The body was then cut into pieces at the joints. The trunk and limbs were stowed away. The head and hands were thrown overboard.

C: As you do.

A: And then a rescue ship came into view.

C: Oh that’s… Highly embarrassing.

A: Even more embarrassing ‘cause they can’t tidy up. Attempts were made to dispense of the evidence, but there was a blood-spattered boat and a piece of human liver. Which kind of gave away to their rescuers exactly what had happened. What continued to give it away, that in the official Register of Accounts of Wages and Effects of Deceased Seamen, Francis Giofffus’s cause of death was recorded as “killed by boat’s crew for food”.

C: Yeah, that’ll give it away.

A: It’s honest. Now-

C: It’s not tactful.

A: It’s not tactful, that’s true. Now, Henry Ellis, the Singapore Shipping Attendant is the man who took the depositions of the crew, and he was involved in putting the Euxine case forward for the defence. He moved the depositions on to the relevant people. He was aware of “cases of drawing lots among shipwrecked persons as to whom should die for the rest”, and he “had never heard of men punished for doing so.” The charges against the survivors were ultimately dropped. That was the context that the Cospatrick was sailing in. Now, for a bit of technical boat fun

C: [Nervous laughter.] Please, I can’t wait.

A: I know technically the Cospatrick is a ship, not a boat. Roughly, the difference is does it have decks? If it has decks, it’s a ship. Fun maritime fact.

C: Okay. That solves the question.

A: The Cospatrick was a two-decked, three-masted sailing teak ship. She was built in 1856, and when she set sail in 1874, she had 479 people aboard. She had six lifeboats. This was the minimum permissible for a ship of her tonnage.

C: It sounds like the law hasn’t developed that much since the Medusa in terms of how many lifeboats per person.

A: Now I do have – in my rather wonderful book Women and Children Last – I do have listed, and I’ll put it in the show notes, we do know about the official legislation about lifeboats. But basically it comes to, it’s not about the number of people on board, it’s about the tonnage of the ship.

C: Interesting way to calculate it.

A: Isn’t it just? It’s also worth mentioning that the Cospatrick was an emigrant ship, which means that of those 479 on board, the breakdown of those on board is generally given as there were 429 emigrants. 178 men, 125 women, 58 boys, 53 girls, and 16 infants under twelve months. There were 8 deaths of infants, one still birth, and one live birth during the voyage. I’m not gonna lie here, I’m not 100% sure that these numbers add up. I went through a variety of newspapers. It always came up with 429 emigrants. The actual breakdown from thereon in is approximate, because no matter which source I read and added them up, something went wrong. Don’t understand quite what.

C: That’s frequently my experience with maths.

A: There were also four paying passengers – because emigrants were not paying for their passage, they were instead moving to New Zealand in an emigrant programme. So you have four fee-paying passengers, and 43 members of the crew. Her captain was a man called Alexander Elmslie. And this is quite a description from Women and Children Last by Charles R Clark: Alexander Elmslie had “a substantial beard which doubtless enhanced [his] impression of seamanly competence.”

C: [Imitating Hot Fuzz:] “A great big bushy beard.”

A: Great big bushy beard.

[Carmella laughs.]

A: I mean, that’s how you pick a captain. Whoever’s got the biggest beard.

C: Yeah, that’s how you know that they’re qualified.

A: That is the seamanly competence. Now, we’ve covered this a little previously in other episodes, but fire at sea – not a good thing.

C: Fire; bad. Fire at sea: even badder.

A: Yes.

C: To put it in simple terms for anyone who hasn’t understood the complexities of our podcast so far.

A: Fire on ship. Oops.

C: [Laughs.] Yeah.

A: To the extent that there were strictly enforced rules regarding fire safety aboard ship. These were enforced from the 1864 Queen’s Order in Council, which said that smoking and naked flames were forbidden below decks and emigrants were to deliver up their matches on pain of punishment. Which makes sense.

C: That’s sensible.

A: Tell you what there wasn’t. Fire drills.

C: Don’t start talking about fire drills.

A: I can only imagine doing a fire evacuation on a ship. It’s also worth noting: the lifeboats, all six of them, had had crucial equipment removed so they could be repainted.

C: Well you gotta have pretty paint on your lifeboats, Alix.

A: I know, it’s very important.

C: It helps with morale when you’re abandoning ship, if it looks nice.

A: It’s got pretty- It’s got little flowers on.

C: Yeah!

A: Little mural.

C: Aww

A: I’m sure it’ll be fine. The Cospatrick sails from Gravesend on the 11th of September 1874. On the evening of the 17th of November, the second mate Henry McDonald hands over the watch to first mate Charles Romaine. He allegedly says that all’s well. He then has a cheeky pipe and falls asleep. Quite how he gets away with having a smoke, I don’t know. But it’s not him who causes the fire. I will say that. Henry McDonald wakes up to the shouts of fire. [In a muffled voice:] “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

C: “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

A: “Fire!!” He then proceeds to run around the ship completely naked, bumping into the Captain and various other people who are involving themselves in the sudden and rather dramatic need to put the fire out and rescue the ship.

C: It seems like nudity while ships are on fire is a common theme between this and the Luxborough.

A: I think we may have a contender for a second ‘Bills and Boon.’

C: Yeah, the sequel. Even steamier than before.

A: [Laughs.] Rugged Scotsman Henry McDonald.

C: Oh yes, the highlander. So, again, if you want to send in fanart, fanfiction, come up with a title for this story.

A: Our second Bills and Boon novel. Ah, ‘Boon’, even the Island as well!

C: Yeah!

A: Oh, this ties in so nicely together.

C: Send in your ideas folks. So, tell me more about the rugged naked Scotsman.

A: So this rugged naked Scotsman is just running around. A fire had broken out in the fore-scuttle, and the fore-scuttle provides access to some of the most flammable parts of the ship. The entire ship is flammable (we’ve covered this, she’s made of wood), but there’s an incorrect assumption that teak doesn’t burn. It does. Teak very much burns. But the fire was able to access pitch, tar, turpentine, varnish, paraffin, linseed oil, coal, and nearly 6,000 gallons of spirits.

C: That is a cocktail and a half.

A: Cocktail go boom. I know it sort of sounds like I’m blaming the fire here, which isn’t overly fair. That’s what happens. The Cospatrick is very on fire. I just have a side-note here that, at some point, McDonald remembers to get dressed.

C: Aww… Why am I doing this to this poor man?

A: [Laughs.] There are hundreds of people in need of saving and, due to the ferocity of the fire, two of the six lifeboats have caught aflame.

C: It happens surprisingly often.

A: You’d want lifeboats to really not… Be able to be on fire.

C: Yup.

A: Ironic really. Like have you seen- I’ve definitely seen photos of fire extinguishes on fire. There are attempts to save the ship. She’s steered into the wind to try and prevent the flames taking further hold, and efforts are made by the sailors and the emigrants using hoses, fire buckets, mess-tins, anything and everything to try and save themselves, their loved ones and the ship. This is completely futile. Captain Elmslie focuses his attention on putting out the flames rather than lowering the boats – the logic here being it took maybe a dozen men 20 minutes to ready one boat. Those were minutes and men that he didn’t think he had.

C: I mean, it’s clearly taking a long time to lower the boats, but at the same time I think he’s being very optimistic to think he can put out a very on fire ship.

A: Yes. What he’s refusing to do is acknowledge that the emigrants are helping, so he’s only counting his crew of 43.

C: Right.

A: As his competent men. It is worth noting that he does go down with the ship. Even with his seamanly beard he’s not doing an overly competent job.

C: I mean-

A: He does go down with the ship.

C: Isn’t that what a captain’s meant to do?

A: Yes but, not always.

C: Not if you can get away.

A: Not if you can get away.

C: Yeah, the Medusa. What, the guy who just fucks off.

[Alix laughs.]

C: Yeah I don’t think that he’s gonna be, like, some representation of what a captain should be.

A: Yeah. I mean, that is true. The custom of the sea also dictates that the captain goes down. For some reason that one was less popular than ‘we eat people to survive’.

Now, got a lovely quote – it’s not lovely – from the London Illustrated News from January 1875, as to what came next. This is very Victorian language: “The excitement on board now became terrible, and the passengers rushed to the quarter boats, which were on the davits hanging over the side, and crowded into them. It is estimated that eighty people, most of them women, thus got into the starboard boat, and remained there till the davits bent down over the side and the boat’s stern slipped into the sea. Then it capsized, and all its occupants were immediately drowned alongside the vessel. Just afterwards the fore, main, and mizzen masts” – asides: the three masts of the three-mast ship – “all fell over the side in quick succession, killing many of the emigrants and adding to the terror of the rest. But the worst had not yet come; for suddenly the stern of the vessel blew out with a loud report under the poop deck, and completed the destruction of the ship.”

C: It’s not particularly emotional as an account is it?

A: No, it’s quite ‘this happened then this happened then this happened’.

C: ‘By the way, all these people died; let’s continue to talk about the masts.’

A: They like a good mast.

C: Those Victorians.

A: Those Victorians, you know what they’re like with their mizzen masts. Only one lifeboat successfully made it to water. This was the port lifeboat. The lifeboat that second mate Henry McDonald would find himself in – at least temporarily. More than 350 people were left on the burning Cospatrick.

C: That’s very Titanic.

A: Oooh yeah. This is a very newspaper heavy episode I’m afraid, but in the Liverpool Mercury from December of 1874, they might say it best with raising the query that, having just said it’s not very emotional, listen to this: “It is a matter of doubt who suffered most, those who perished by fire, those who were alongside the burning ship, or those who died from thirst and starvation in the boats.” And that is boats, plural. Because-

C: Oh?

A: There was a second lifeboat.

C: Where?!

A: It was the starboard lifeboat, which had capsized, had been righted by some survivors – majority crew – and the lifeboats managed to meet. The starboard lifeboat requested an officer, and this was filled by Henry McDonald, who transferred himself and three sailors to the starboard boat, now with 30 people. The first mate Romaine commanded the port boat of 32 people.

Food and water were the main problems, of course. Ironically, Alfred Dutton (the ship’s butcher) had placed half a sheep’s carcass on the boat, but this had been thrown overboard during the evacuation of the Cospatrick. On the 21st of November, the port boat was lost. It was believed to be swamped during a swell at night. And on the next day, the deaths started on McDonald’s boat, with men going overboard, drowning, falling into lethargy, becoming deranged from the consumption of sea water. To begin with, the bodies were disposed of by unofficial burial at sea. I always find this ironic. There was something else to do with bodies – not even cannibalism. In 1811, the Polly was demasted. Her crew drifted on her for 191 days.

C: Wow!

A: They survived, not through cannibalism, but by using the bodies of their fellows as fish-bait. They hunted sharks, sustained themselves until their rescue via fishing.

C: You do think, you’re on the sea. There’s probably quite a few fish in there.

A: That is how the phrase goes.

[Both laugh.]

C: “There’s at least one or two fish in the sea.”

A: Now this doesn’t seem to have actually crossed the mind of the Cospatrick survivors. What did cross the mind was cannibalism. Two of the bodies were cut open, and the livers were sliced into and served out. The quartermaster Thomas Lewis was most likely the man who bore the knife. He stated that it was a time when “a man would eat anything”. Accounts would never officially report that lots were ever cast, but one of the survivors would later state that “whenever a vein was opened” he would drink – which sort of implies that some of the lifeboat’s occupants had been intentionally bled to death, rather than consumed after natural causes.

C: Yup, because as we’ve discussed before, it’s got to be quite fresh for the blood to be running to a drinkable level.

A: And that phrase “whenever a vein was opened”.

C: Yeah, it sounds very intentional.

A: Yeah. As the Illustrated London News rather mildly puts it, “It is horrible to learn that, before the survivors were relieved, they were obliged to suck the blood and eat the livers of several of their dead companions.”

C: “Suck the blood.” It just sounds so… [Bad Transylvanian accent]: “I vant to suck your blood! Mwahaha.

A: Hah! Hah! Hah!

C: Count Dracula-y.

[Alix Laughs]

C: That’s- I had to clarify I meant Count Dracula in case you thought I was doing a stupid voice.

A: By the tenth day in open water, there were only five men left alive.

C: Out of?

A: 479.

C: They are actually doing a lot worse than the Medusa.

A: They are. This was now the 27th of November. But there was some faint hope, as the day before they had sighted a ship. While she hadn’t signalled to them, her presence at least let the survivors know they were within the shipping lane. And the tenth day would be their salvation, they were picked up by the British Sceptre. The British Sceptre witnessed the used corpse in the boat and was well aware of how survival had taken place. Even after their rescue, the ordeal wasn’t over. Jeremiah Leuchan (the last of the emigrants), and Able Seamen Robert Hamilton, both died aboard the British Sceptre. The three survivors of the 479 were Henry McDonald, Edward Cotter, and Thomas Lewis.

C: Henry McDonald survives!

A: Henry McDonald survives.

C: Oh phew, I- I was so invested.

A: It’s also worth pointing out: they are crew. None of the emigrants survive.

C: I don’t know what a contract looks like when you’re signing a ship’s contract, but I assume that part of it is probably ‘try and keep the crew alive’-

A: I mean the crew probably think so!

C: ‘Try and keep the passengers alive.’

A: On Christmas Day, a telegram was received by Lloyds regarding the fate of the Cospatrick: “The Cospatrick from London to Auckland with passengers, took fire at sea, and was totally destroyed on the 7th November in latitude 67 [Note: Alix meant to say 37] South, longitude 12 East. The second mate and two of the crew saved, passengers and remainder of crew supposed to be drowned.”

C: ‘Supposed’ to be?

A: Well, no one checked.

C: Yeah! That’s fair. I can’t argue with that.

A: This was a very subtle way of handling the narrative, although other telegrams such as that sent from the British Consul in Madeira to the New Zealand Agent General in London talks of “the most horrible expedient of the shipwrecked men.” Only a few days later, the Liverpool Mercury on the 29th of December, was publicly reporting of the “terrible privations of the survivors” and how they had “subsisted on the flesh and blood of others who had died while on the boat.” We’re not alone in being horrified and fascinated by this – people have been doing it for centuries, it’s fine.

C: I think that’s what’s become clear throughout this podcast is that- Well, just the fact that we have sources to read from proves that we’re not weird; other people are just as weird and have also written about this.

A: And also all of you people are listening to us out there.

C: Yeah, you’re weird! Leave me alone.

A: The three survivors were asked about what had transpired as well. And it doesn’t really tie in with our expectations of Victorian sensibility, but when Edward Cotter was asked about the ‘flavour’ of the unnatural food.

C: Mmmhmm?

A: Well to be honest, it’s incredibly natural isn’t it?

C: Organic, free range.

A: Well not very free range, they were a bit stuck!

C: Aah, yeah. I’m sorry I only eat free range human.

A: Edward Cotter was reported in the Weekly Express as saying that it tasted like “cream milk”.

C: Oh, now that’s a new one.

A: Yeah, that’s not normally how it goes.

C: Normally people say pork. Cream milk? As in full fat milk?

A: Full fat milk.

C: Hmm… I don’t know what to do with that information.

A: Yeah, there’s not much was can do to contradict him really.

C: No.

A: Well… There’s one thing we can do.

C: I guess I’ll just file that information away.

A: So, for the people who’ve been asking what human flesh tastes like. We have pork and we have milk.

C: Maybe, a sort of creamy pork dish? Like carbonara.

A: Carbonara! I mean it’s a possibility.

C: We don’t know, it could be.

A: It could be.

C: I guess maybe it differs depending on which part of the body you’re eating?

A: I mean they were having blood and liver.

C: Maybe liver tastes creamy and-

A: Possibly? It could also have just been a tongue-in-cheek comment about being asked ‘what does human flesh taste like?’

C: Yeah, that’s more likely, I’ll go with that.

A: The Board of Trade Inquiry were called and the blame for the fire was placed in the hands of a sailor or emigrant who allegedly entered the hold, accidently set fire to some straw or other flammable material, and the fire took hold. Conclusions were drawn with regards to the availability of lifeboats and the awareness of safety aboard ship. It would be another 31 years before mandatory lifeboat drills took place on British ships.

C: Well.

A: And there’s no cannibalism involved, but there is another, far more famous story involving lifeboats which takes place less than 40 years after the loss of the Cospatrick.

C: My question is why is that the story that we’ve remembered and immortalised through Leo and Kate? I mean, the one with the cannibalism please.

A: Cannibalism and naked rugged Scotsmen.

C: Yeah, so much better!

A: Henry McDonald. People don’t really learn, do they?

[Outro Music – Daniel Wackett]

C: Thank you for joining us on today’s episode on the Cospatrick. If you do have any, uh… Erotic stories or fanart you’d like to send in for our Bills and Boon line of novels, please do!

A: We’re now going to be leaving the oceans and making our way to the ice. We’re venturing north to solve a centuries-old mystery in our episode on the Franklin expedition. Join us next time.

[Outro music continues]

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]