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Pressman, Ian and Singmaster, David. The jealous husbands and the missionaries and cannibals. Math. Gaz. 73 (1989), no. 464, 73--81. (Reviewer: E. Keith Lloyd.) SC: 01A99 (05A99), MR: 92b:01086.
There are three river crossing problems in the Propositiones ad Acuendos, which is generally attributed to Alcuin: the problem of three jealous husbands (each of whom won't let another man be alone with his wife), the problem of the wolf, goat, and cabbage, and the problem of "the two adults and two children where the children weigh half as much as the adults." The authors discusses modifications of these problems and attempted solutions by Luca Pacioli, Tartaglia, and others. Modifications include the addition of more people, an island in the center, and a bigger boat. A more recent version is the problem of the Missionaries and the Cannibals, where the cannibals must never outnumber the missionaries. The authors give some solutions and theorems on minimality, although they leave their discovery of a 16 move solution to the four-couples-with-an-island problem as "a nice exercise for the reader". The authors don't discuss this, but problems similar to the wolf-goat-cabbage problem have appeared in a variety of cultures. Closely related topics: Alcuin, Discrete Mathematics, Luca Pacioli, and Mathematics in Recreation.