Scorched, starving and close to death, it seemed there was little hope for Gregorio Maria Marizan and his fellow castaways after two weeks drifting helplessly at sea with nothing but rain and salt water to keep them alive.

They had watched 27 of their companions die and as they hauled their withered bodies overboard one by one, the survivors knew that drastic measures were needed if they were not to be next.

So when yet another man collapsed lifeless in the boat, they ate him.

“We cut from his leg and chest. We cut little pieces and swallowed them like pills,” Mr Marizan recalled from his hospital bed after being rescued by the US Coast Guard.

“It’s like beef, almost the same. At the skin there is like half an inch of yellow fat, then the fibres . . . We had to eat him to save our lives,” he said.

For Mr Marizan, a divorcé trying to raise three children aged 7, 6 and 4 on a meagre fisherman’s salary while caring for his sick and ageing father, the 160-mile voyage to the US territory of Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic was meant to be the start of a new life. He would be able to work there for better money, he thought, and send cash home to care for his family.

“It’s because of the critical condition we live in. My brother has two kids, I have three. I would go out to sea sometimes up to a month, month and a half and catch nothing,” he lamented. After meeting a boat captain who boasted of making illegal runs to Puerto Rico in a 30ft wooden vessel, Mr Marizan, 31, and his two brothers signed up for seats on a “three-for-the-price-of-one” basis. Others on board had paid as much as $1,800 (£1,125) each – more than a year’s salary. Another had mortgaged his home.

The crossing should have taken only a couple of days. But the engines broke down after a day and a half; the captain was either thrown overboard during a fight or swam off – the survivors said they could not be sure which – and churning seas carried them hundreds of miles off course.

One by one, starting on the sixth day, 27 passengers succumbed to sunstroke, hunger and dehydration, including Mr Marizan’s brother Emmanuel, 30. The survivors would leave a respectful 20-minute pause before heaving the corpses into the sea for the sharks to eat.

When a 28th man died, Mr Marizan realised that cannibalism was his only chance. He took out his fishing knife in desperation, sliced flesh from the body and handed it round.

“Imagine 15 days without food, without water; they were all yelling at me to do something,” he said from a hospital in Providenciales, in the Turks and Caicos Islands. “We hadn’t brought food because it was supposed to be a quick trip.” A US Coast Guard helicopter spotted the stricken boat 50 miles off Great Inagua, in the Bahamas. A rescue swimmer was lowered into the water and the five survivors were winched to safety. One later died in hospital.

“To my knowledge, it’s the first time we have heard of anything like this,” a US Coast Guard spokesman said.

Mr Marizan, whose other brother Saulo, 27, was also rescued alive, said: “It was a miracle of God. I was just praying that one or two of us would survive to tell our story.”

Sacrifice and survival

— The word cannibalism stems from the name of a West Indian tribe. The Caribs, first documented by Christopher Columbus, were alleged to eat human flesh, although this proved to be untrue

— The Aztecs are believed to have practised cannibalism as part of the mass religious sacrifice of war captives

— The UN accused rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003 of cannibalising their enemies and forcing the families of victims to eat their organs

— Members of the Uruguayan rugby team ate their dead teammates to survive after their plane crashed in the Andes in 1972

— Albert Fish, known as America’s Bogeyman, assaulted, murdered and ate a number of children in the 1920s

— Armin Meiwes was jailed for eight and a half years in 2003 in Germany for eating the penis of a man who replied to an advert for someone who wanted to be killed and butchered

Source: Times archives

Times Recommends

• Rio Tinto four held as China prepares case
• Diplomats must keep heads down and trousers up
• When in Rome should one make like Berlusconi?