Cannibals : Shocking True Tales of the Last Taboo on Land and at Sea

by Edited by Joseph S. Cummins

• ISBN13: 9781592284535
• ISBN10: 1592284531
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2005-01-01
• Publisher: The Lyons Press

Summary

Twenty collected true accounts of humans eating humans.

Author Biography

JOSEPH CUMMINS is the author of The Snow Train, a novel, and the editor of The Greatest Search and Rescue Stories Ever Told. He lives in New Jersey.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION	ix
PART ONE: PRIMITIVE CANNIBALISM AND HUMAN SACRIFICE	1	(42)
CANNIBALS IN THE CANYON	3	(22)
By Douglas Preston
BLOOD FOR THE GODS	25	(6)
By Reay Tannahill
CANNIBALISM AMONG THE FIJI ISLANDERS	31	(12)
By Garry Hogg
PART TWO: CANNIBALISM AND SURVIVAL ON THE HIGH SEAS	43	(44)
THE OWNERSHIP OF A PLANK	45	(12)
By Edward E. Leslie
GAMES OF CHANCE	57	(14)
By Nathaniel Philbrick
THE CUSTOM OF THE SEA	71	(16)
By Neil Hanson
PART THREE: EPIC TALES OF CANNIBALISM ON LAND	87	(70)
BOLTERS AND BUSHRANGERS	89	(10)
By Robert Hughes
CANNIBALISM	99	(12)
By Scott Cookman
THE FORLORN HOPE	111	(20)
By Peter R. Limburg
ALIVE	131	(26)
By Piers Paul Read
PART FOUR: CANNIBALISM IN WAR: "A GHASTLY HARVEST"	157	(54)
AMERICAN INDIAN CANNIBALISM	159	(6)
By William W. Osborn
JUDGE WEBB AND JAPANESE CANNIBALISM	165	(16)
By Yuki Tanaka
MANMADE FAMINES	181	(14)
By Hans Askenasy, Ph.D.
THE SLAUGHTER AT WUXUAN	195	(16)
By Zhengi Yi
PART FIVE: SERIAL CANNIBALS	211	(48)
CRUELTY AMID CHAOS	213	(12)
By Moira Martingale
DERANGED	225	(8)
By Harold Schechter
ISSEI SAGAWA	233	(10)
By Moira Martingale
JEFFREY DAHMER	243	(16)
By Moira Martingale
PART SIX: THE TASTE: HUMAN FLESH AS A DELICACY	259
THE GOURMETS	261	(4)
By HansAskenasy, Ph.D.
ONE MAN'S MEAL	265
By William B. Seabrook

Excerpts

(from the chapter Cannibalism, From Ice Blink: The Tragic Fate of Sir John Franklin's Lost Polar Expedition, p.100-1)
"One of these men, apparently a seaman suffering the last stages of starvation, scurvy, and exposure, soon died. His corpse, however, wasn't buried; it was left where it lay. One can only imagine Crozier at his ebb, his ragged greatcoat flapping in the wind, dying men collapsed all around him, the icy Passage mocking him. His eyes, like those of the men, may have gone blank with hopelessness. It had been his driving leadership, after all, that had carried them to a place from which it now seemed they could never escape. The survivors, who at every step of the awful march looked to him to sustain them, could not have helped but notice that Crozier too had reached his end. Something rather like an eclipse swept over them all. This is quite likely the moment when Crozier proposed the unthinkable. He may have asked the surviving surgeons point-blank: without food, how long could they live? The answer would have been obvious: without something to eat, sooner or later, they would all die like the seaman lying before them, like so many others they had left behind.
Faced with certain death, Crozier was forced to make a horrible and repugnant decision, the only one left him. It was certainly Crozier who made it: he was the ranking officer and among the few officers the native Inuit later reported seeing alive. He apparently chose life. ...The dead man, who had served so long and faithfully, could serve his shipmates again. With provisions exhausted, and still far from the river and with the crews broken beyond all forbearance, Crozier decided to cannibalize the dead."

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Excerpted from Cannibals: Shocking True Tales of the Last Taboo on Land and at Sea
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