For those of you with a strong stomach or a bit of a morbid curiosity, here are some wikipedia links on cannibalism in the nineteenth century. There was quite a lot of cases of cannibalism in the nineteenth century, mostly by shipwrecked sailors.
The Boyd Massacre
The Boyd massacre took place in 1809, when local Maori killed 66 people at Whangaroa, a northern New Zealand harbour, as revenge for the crew of the ship The Boyd whipping the son of a chief who refused to work.
Read more
The Cospatrick
The Cospatrick was a sailing ship that was the victim of one of the worst shipping disasters to a merchant ship during the 19th century. The ship caught fire south of the Cape of Good Hope on 17 November 1874 while on a voyage from Gravesend, England to Auckland, New Zealand. Only 3 of 472 persons on board at the time ultimately survived.
Read more
Dalles des Morts
Dalles des Morts, also known as Death Rapids in English, was a famously bad stretch of the Columbia River upstream from Revelstoke, British Columbia, Canada, now submerged beneath the waters of the Lake Revelstoke Reservoir.
Read more
The Donner Party
The Donner Party was a group of California-bound American settlers caught up in the “westering fever” of the 1840s. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–1847, some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism.
Read more
The whaleship Essex
The whaleship Essex left Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1819 on a voyage in the whaling grounds of the South Pacific to hunt sperm whales. On November 20, 1820, the Essex was struck two times by a sperm whale. The ship sank 2,000 miles (3,700 km) west of the western coast of South America. The twenty sailors set out in three small whaleboats, with wholly inadequate supplies of food and water, and landed on uninhabited Henderson Island.
Read more
The Medusa
The Medusa (original French name: La Méduse) was a French frigate that gained notoriety when it struck the Bank of Arguin off the coast of Senegal in 1816, resulting in the catastrophic evacuation of its company, and one of the most infamous shipwrecks of the Age of Sail.
Read more
Hi! My name is Geerte, I'm a researcher of Nineteenth century history from the Netherlands. This blog is where I write about my favourite subject. Feel free to browse around! 
the Victorian era 
Thanks for this — I think, ha, ha. Really, I do appreciate that you put these stories together.
I’ve read Philbrick’s book “In the Heart of the Sea” and have recommended it to many people. I’m fascinated by the people who went to sea for months, even years at a time, especially since I don’t even like being in a boat at all. I feel trapped and I can imagine how really trapped a person feels when the boat is sinking. Also being lost in the mountains in the winter is a frightening thought.
Have you read “Guns, Germs and Steel,” which talks a lot about the Maori? I put something about that on my book club’s blog, http://www.blatherblog.wordpress.com
I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard about it. (I skimmed a release about it and thought ‘wait- Neil Diamond’s writing now?’ ;D) I’ll put it on my to-read-list, it does sound very interesting.
Hello! Thanks, as always, for your posts… I couldn’t help but chime in about the “Méduse” considering I’m a 19th-Century French something-or-other (I don’t yet consider myself “scholar” worthy!). Just wanted to point out that there’s a very important French Romantic painting by Géricault in 1819 called “Le Radeau de la Méduse” (“The Raft of the Medusa”). You can find an image of it here:
http://lettres.ac-rouen.fr/louvre/balzac/images/divers/gerico12.html
A bientôt!
Pauvre Plume, thank you for the addition! I had seen the painting but I had never associated it with the shipwreck, for some reason! It makes the beautiful painting seem quite a bit more creepy, doesn’t it?
Merci beaucoup! :)