ABSTRACT
As mentioned in Chapter 1, when discussing the case of the Francis Mary, sailing vessels often suffered disaster and, lacking radios, the crew was unable to signal their distress. The resulting hardships either on a disabled ship or in exposed lifeboats led to deaths, to throwing people overboard to increase the availability of provisions or to lighten the boat, and to a number of instances of cannibalism. These cases provide historical instances similar to those involved in the lifeboat fantasy dilemmas we have used in empirical studies of moral intuitions, and the patterns of choice are similar in both the real and fantasy situations. The number of cases available in the literature suggest that those who have maintained that cannibalism is a rare event when disasters occurred did not bother to look very carefully.
