Again and again, in desperate times throughout history, people have turned to desperate measures and committed what many societies consider to be the worst of all human sins — cannibalism. Members of the Donner Party infamously resorted to cannibalism to survive when they became stranded in the Sierra Nevadas in the 1840s, as did survivors of the Andes Flight Disaster in 1972. At sea, castaway sailors often followed a long-held tradition known as the "custom of the sea," an implicit agreement that, if they were stranded, sailors would draw lots to pick who would be killed — and eaten. But the story of cannibalism involving a 19th-century ship called the Mignonette is a bit different. 

https://allthatsinteresting.com/history-uncovered/mignonette

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