Man lost at sea for a year sued for $1M over claims he ate his shipmate

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Oh everyone who ends up in a lifeboat ends up eating another castaway. I think it’s part of The Law Of The Sea.

His fellow sailors would be disappointed in him if he didn’t.

I know I would. One hour in, about dinner time.

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I’d blame it on the Bengal tiger that was also in the life raft.

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Related?

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If [quote=“gregmcph, post:2, topic:70899, full:true”]Oh everyone who ends up in a lifeboat ends up eating another castaway. I think it’s part of The Law Of The Sea.[/quote]

If Mr. Alvarenga ate his shipmate, does that mean he ate Mexican food?

I don’t entirely understand the level of revulsion for cannibalism in a survival situation. For murder, yes. But if I happen to be dead and my protein is all you need to survive then feel free to chow down. I don’t need it any more …

(Just in case someone scanning didn’t notice the words “survival situation”, I’m in no way suggesting this should be normal behaviour!)

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Define “normal behaviour!”

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Was the eaten guy’s name Timothy?

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c: Mr aeon, you ate your fellow passengers?
a: Yes, it was a survival situation.
c: Your flight was only stuck on the tarmac for 1 hour…

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a: But it was RyanAir.

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That Custom of the Sea was overruled by Regina v. Dudley and Stephens. No joke.

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The very first thing I do when I walk into a group of people is figure out who I’ll eat first if the shit goes down. You can’t hesitate in those situations. You gotta have a plan.

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That was murder, not eating someone already dead.

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Presumably you’re aware of this?

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 - Wikipedia[quote=“heckblazer, post:13, topic:70899”]


Regina v. Dudley and Stephens.
[/quote]

I didn’t realize Yann Martel got his tiger’s name from a real case…

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http://www.zazzle.com/god+was+my+copilot+gifts

or, “been there, done that, got a t-shirt”.

I guess I’m not understanding the plaintiffs’ theory of damages here. They don’t seem to be alleging that Alvarenga murdered Cordoba. Cordoba’s body would be gone whether Alvarenga ate it or dumped it overboard or left it to rot out on the deck, so it’s not as if he deprived them of a corpse to bury. So what damages could they be claiming?

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Surely the allegation that he ate his shipmate is unprovable, slanderous, and unnecessary - but on the other hand it does seem reasonable that he should seek to compensate his shipmate’s family in some way. Th two of them shared an ordeal, until his shipmate’s death, and the notion that they should to some degree share the eventual rewards from that ordeal isn’t outlandish. Beyond that, the shipmate who died did so because of Alvarenga: Alvarenga hired him onto the boat, and as such it was presumably Alvarenga’s responsibility as the skipper not to get him dead - in particular, to make sure the boat carried adequate equipment with which to summon assistance, and perhaps also better resources to assist in survival while adrift.

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I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d rather eat Johnson

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