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In the First Heretic, the first Possessed Chaos Space Marines awake aboard a ship with all the crew dead and pretty much all food and water depleted after a daemonic attack. As they make their way back to Lorgar, they have to resort to cannibalism to keep themselves alive. Half of them end up dead.

But why is this the case?

First of all, the ship should have a stasis or a hibernation chamber. There is no mention of this facility on Orfeo’s Lament, but it is standard for large spaceships travelling vast distances to have chambers like that where the crew wouldn't have to worry about aging, boredom, or running out of supplies, as they travel millions of light-years. Argel Tal and his brother can just lock themselves in there until they arrive in real space.

More importantly, Space Marines can go into hibernation. They can shut down their bodies and survive for a very long time. Some survive for centuries in suspended animation, so it's unbelievable that the Possessed Marines have no choice but to eat each other while travelling without food and water for only less than a year.

Some Word Bearers would still need to remain awake to pilot the ship, and they would have to resort to cannibalism eventually, but the casualties would be much lower than losing half the company.

Of course, Chaos might be the explanation. Argel Tal might be lying about resorting to cannibalism to survive, whereas, in reality, he and his men lose control of the daemons within and go frenzy on each other. Argel Tal doesn't want to be smacked on the spot by Lorgar for being a degenerate psychopathic murderer. But this would still require hints and explanations, something the novel doesn't do.

Because it's a test of their faith. That's the whole point of that journey.

I don't think we've seen stasis/hibernation chambers as a regular thing in 40k, for a start.

Second, I would imagine that having a raving daemon inside of you might affect a Space Marine's ability to go into their suspended animation state.

Yeah.

Stasis things do exist in 40K, but they’re pretty rare.

Ship Crews tend toward Generational. Sure, the ship goes from A to B ferrying cargo and passengers (whether military or civilian, sometimes even both), but the crew remain aboard ship, generation after generation. They spaceborne villages.

The crew are needed for day to day duties and constant maintenance, because the ships are staggeringly vast. So they’ll have a bunk, maybe even a cabin (though I’d imagine it’s more dormitory for the lower ranks), but no requirement for stasis, hyper sleep etc. Warp Travel may not be instantaneous, but it’s still fast, with most journies, assuming no accidents or warp nonsense, taking days/weeks.

Isn’t stasis from DAOT? That would limit its ability to be used substantially

Stasis chambers for crew are absolutely not standard on 40k vessels and the sus-an membrane's hibernation would've left them even more defenseless than they already were. Plus given their mental states, I would not say they were in the right frame of mind to try to hibernate.

Didn't they also have to pilot the ship through a horrific warp storm? I don't think it would have been safe to let it go on autopilot and Imperial ships don't have a lot of automated systems. Perhaps it needed all of them to run the ship.

Not to mention when you’re daemonically possessed? Going into a coma, medically induced or not, is a bad idea, as you’re essentially surrendering full control to the daemon.

Only when you’re conscious do you have any measure of control, and that’s through sheer willpower.

Ref Possessed Warp ‘Ead Weirboyz, and the daemon’s inability to gain any modicum of control.

Just to reiterate, the mission that Argel Tal and those that would go onto to become the first Gal Vorbak were given was to go into the Eye of Terror, turn off the Gellar Field and prove that the God's and Daemons were real.

They were chosen by Lorgar to be the harbingers of the new faith, it's first true converts.

All Lorgar had until then was the words of Kor Phaeron and Erebus, and words weren't enough.

Lorgar needed proof, and that's what he got.