Except in Lord of Flies the kids did it for sport, in Abandon Ship the situation was setup such that they really would have all died in that crowded liferaft, about 5 or so were already in the water just hanging on the sides. It was survival.
That made it impossible to row far, that plus a shortage of water.
It is setup so you know they are unlikely to survive
This plot was the opposite of talk radio world were every problem has a simple clean moral solution that never get tried for some reason (those GOPe just ruin everything HAHA) .
Check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Bogart
I did NOT know Humphrey Bogart had been in WORLD WAR I... in the Navy...
Always liked his movies. “Casablanca”, “The Roaring Twenties” and “Treasure of the Sierra Madres” some of my all time favorite movies.
“..the situation was setup such that they really would have all died in that crowded liferaft, about 5 or so were already in the water just hanging on the sides. It was survival...”
Do you remember the scene in “Titanic” where the lady in one of the lifeboats was castigating at the crew to go back and pick up survivors in the water, and the officer told her they’d be swamped if they went into the pack of floating people - and he’d throw her overboard if she didn’t shut up...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCMfjbNn-_8
Similar mentality... choosing who lives and who dies, in the Titanic case, by simply doing nothing, as opposed to actively chucking people out of the boat.
And in reality, I can see it. You have to wonder how many times something like that DID actually happen.
Lord of the Flies freaked me out when I was a kid. We read it as an assignment in freshman year in HS.