It's one of the oldest known professions and carries well-known risks.
But now a 'dire question' used by sailors following a horrific scenario leading to death has been uncovered.
It's not always going to be the most popular topic of conversation at the dinner table, but most sailors will be well aware there are risks when it comes to working at sea.
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In ideal circumstances, with plenty of fresh drinking water, an average human can last around a month without food, reports the Mirror.
And when adrift on the open sea with desperation kicking in, as a last resort sailors have been forced to ask a question that will guarantee someone will die.
It was also a situation that befell the crew of the Nantucket whaler The Essex.
They had already experienced a difficult voyage before the ship was attacked and sunk by a vengeful sperm whale on November 20, 1820.
The 20 survivors set out in three small rowing boats, aware that there wasn't enough food and water to keep them all alive until they reached land, reported the Daily Star.
After two weeks their food and fresh water was gone, and the desperate sailors had resorted to rinsing their mouths with seawater and drinking their own urine.
Two of the sailors died and were buried at sea and after the death of a third, Isaac Cole, his desperate shipmates decided to eat his body, YouTuber Mr Ballen explained in a video about the gruelling voyage.
Contemporary reports say that "they ate his liver and kidneys but struggled to eat the sinewy flesh".
But soon, even the bodies of those sailors were not enough to sustain the survivors.
So they performed a challenge to determine who would sacrifice themselves - a chilling maritime custom that has since been referred to as the "delicate question".
A blank page of The Essex's log book was torn out and divided into strips. One was made a little shorter than the others and they were all placed into a hat.
The unlucky sailor was 18-year-old Owen Coffin, a cousin of The Essex's captain, George Pollard.
In an account later written by one of the revivers, Pollard reportedly volunteered to take his young cousin's place, but Coffin replied: "No, I like my lot as well as any other."
Another lottery took place, this time to select the executioner. Charles Ramsdell, a close friend of Coffin's, drew the short straw and shot his shipmate.
A week later another one of the sailors, Barzillai Ray, also died, and the survivors spent the rest of their time adrift gnawing on Coffin's and Ray's bones.
By the time the last of the eight survivors were rescued on April 5, 1821, the corpses of seven of the sailors had been eaten by their shipmates .
"The delicate question" is more rarely asked in the modern era, with GPS and modern communications equipment meaning that it's much rarer for shipwrecked sailors to wait weeks for rescue.
The last reported case of shipwrecked sailors being forced to eat their comrades was after the wreck of the SS Dumaru.
The ship was struck by lightning on October 16, 1918 - detonating her cargo of explosives and leaving most of her crew adrift in lifeboats for three weeks. Many of them resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.
But similar tragedies still happen, passengers of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which came down in the Andes mountains in 1972, had no choice but to resort to cannibalism during their 72-day jungle ordeal.
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