Lifeboat Scenario

I noticed that several of the other posters wrote about torture, so I will be reflecting on the lifeboat scenario.
This is a sticky situation to analyze, because not only did the decision have to be made to kill one of the crew members, but also there is an extremely strong taboo in our culture against cannibalism. As such, without looking at the specifics of the situation, both actions are putatively immoral to commit. This issue came up in class discussion; obviously the men must have been extremely hungry, which is the only reason why they even considered such a course of action. Certainly they would have internalized the values of not murdering or eating people, so we can assume they were under a different state of mind from usual. Which brings us to the question we discussed for a while in class: is it immoral for people to perform an action generally regarded as wrong to do if the perpetrators are "not themselves," which is to say, possessed by an unusual mental state? Can such people be held accountable for their actions?
However, the problematic feature of this hypothetical scenario is that these questions are not the only ones that need answered in order to determine whether the choices of the people on the lifeboat were immoral or not; even if the people were still their normal, rational selves, they still might conclude that one among them needed to die so that the others could eat them, because that would be necessary for the survival of at least a few. Now the question is: "Is is acceptable to commit an otherwise immoral action as long as one rationalizes it based on the situation?" Or, phrased differently, does the end justify the means?
These questions can be answered by Kant and Mill, albeit in entirely opposite ways. Kant would say that the person must be treated as an end in himself; the ends never justify the means in Kantian ethics. Along the same train of thought, Kant rejects consequentialist thinking; I think Kant would ask, "What if, as soon as the boat members had killed and carved up their cohort, a boat then appeared on the horizon, making their actions unnecessary?" Along such lines of thinking the action was definitely an immoral one, regardless of whether or not it proved to be necessary for their survival. Mill, however, would say that the sailors made the rational choice; if they hadn't killed and eaten the boy, they probably all would have died before getting rescued, the boy included. At the end of the day, it would be better for 3 living people to be found than 4 dead ones. Mill would argue, I think, that their decisions were not immoral at all, since they did their best to save as many as possible.
With these arguments in mind, deciding whether the actions of the sailors were immoral or not comes down to whether one follows utilitarian philosophy or Kantian ethics, which is a matter of personal preference. One looks at the consequences, and proposes using rationality to reach a decision that benefits the group, while the other ignores the consequences and focuses in on the immorality of the action itself. Zooming out to my more complicated question from earlier, whether one's state of mind affects the morality of their actions, it may be the case that utilitarian philosophy and Kantian ethics can still be applied; if a Kantian would ignore the specifics of a situation and ensuing consequences of those specifics, then he would say that even in an unusual mental state one's immoral actions remain immoral. A utilitarian might say that the person in question used rationality as best he could, and as such made as good a decision as he could in that situation, assuming the decision was made to the benefit of the group.