The space inside first steamship to cross the Atlantic was taken up entirely with fuel, machinery and quarters for the crew. The engines were inefficient and stokers were required to work 24 hours/day to keep the ship moving. Had she run out of fuel or had a mechanical breakdown she would have been helpless, adrift and at the mercy of the weather, especially the wind.
Joseph Conrad, in his novel Falk, tells the story of a steam ship that broke its drive shaft in the Southern Ocean, a calamity that was simply unrepairable at sea. The ship was adrift and the crew began to starve. The main protagonist (Falk) positions himself with a pistol close to the water supply and shoots and eats his fellow mariners as, driven mad by thirst, they try to fight him for water. He then eats them to survive until he was, very luckily for him, rescued. Conrad was fascinated by Falk whom he met as a steam tug captain in Asia because he would never eat meat – only fish!
