Results: In the Heart of the Sea: Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

I have just finished reading the novel In the Heart of the Sea, a true story about a group of Nantucket whalers in 1820 whose ship is rammed by a large whale and sinks. They are forced to endure over 90 days in 3 separate small boats adrift in the ocean with very little food and water. Have you heard of this novel?

In this novel the sailors become weak and malnourished and in their 3 boats some of them die. After the first few die, the remainder decide in order to live they will eat the remains of the deceased. Would you ever do something like this to survive?

Near the end of their aimless drifting, completely out of food, they decide to draw "lots" and the loser is shot and eaten. The person shot was the captain's 17yr old nephew. Did you know this was common practice in those times?

In this book there is reference to a modern tragedy, an airplane crash in the Andes in the 1970's, where the survivors feasted on the frozen corpses of the crash victims. What do you think of this?

I just became aware that this book, In the Heart of the Sea is to be made into a movie for release December 2015 and it is directed by Ron Howard. Do you think it will be successful?