The chivalrous code "women and children first" is a myth that has been nourished by the Titanic disaster," say economists Elinder and Erixson of Uppsala University, Sweden, in a paper titled "Every man for himself!"
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Being a woman was an advantage on only two ships: on the Birkenhead in 1852 and on the Titanic in 1912.
It was the sinking of the troopship HMS Birkenhead off the coast of South Africa in 1852 that inspired the tradition of "women and children first."
The soldiers' commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Seton, ordered his men to help get the women and children on board the three lifeboats as the Birkenhead began sinking in shark-infested waters off Cape Town, South Africa. A survivor reports that, Lieutenant-Colonel Seton, drew his sword to keep the way free for the women and children (Addison and Matthews, 1906). All 13 children and 7 women onboard were saved. Not a single woman or child was lost.
So the ‘women and children first’ protocol came into existence based upon the iron discipline of one chivalrous British Colonel, and the lives of only twenty women and children.
About 20 minutes after striking the rock, the Birkenhead had disappeared from he surface. At this time, the soldiers had been given the order to abandon the ship. Of the some seven hundred people on board the doomed ship, 40 survived by climbed the rigging, 76 escaped in lifeboats, 9 escaped in the gig and 68 had reached the shore swimming by swimming the two miles or floating on debris.
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When the luxury liner Titanic sank in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912, the captain E.J. Smith admonished the men to "Be British," letting women and children leave first. In the best romantic tradition, he did go down with his ship. 1,496 of the 2,208 people aboard died as the 46,000-ton vessel plunged to a depth of 12,400 feet.
"Women had a quite remarkable survival advantage over men in this disaster; 73.3 percent compared to 20.7 percent. First class passengers had a survival rate of 62 percent, second class 41.8 percent and third class 25.4 percent. Children had a higher survival rate than adults," wrote Elinder and Erixson.
The Titanic stands out in that an unusually high percentage of women escaped death — a direct result of the ship's officers making their safety a priority.
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Continuing their investigation, Elinder and Erixson found that women had a lower chance of survival in 11 out of 18 shipwrecks. Women fared worse also in recent times; during the sinking of the Russian river cruise MV Bulgaria in 2011, for example, they had a survival rate of 26.9 percent, opposed to 60.3 percent of men.
Migrants and pilgrims of low socio-economic status who traveled by ship were very often not given the dignity of being divided into men and women. They were simply regarded as mobs, crowds or 'cargo.' You very rarely had women and children of this class and racial background being given precedence in shipwrecks.
These are the survival rates from the eighteen disasters used for the analysis:
Crew 62 %, Captain 43%, Male passenger 38%, female passenger 28%, child 16%.
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From the above statistics it can be seen that the crew and the captain had the best odds of survival on average - a rule confirmed by the recent Costa Concordia disaster.
"Only seven out of 16 captains went down with their ship," said Elinder
What really seems to matter is the behavior of the captain, who has the power to enforce behavior. "His policy, rather than the moral sentiments of men, determines if women are given preferential treatment in shipwrecks. This suggests an important role for leaders in disasters," the researchers wrote.
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Women would have been better off if they had avoided British ships. In contrast with the notion of British men being more gallant than men of other nationalities, women fared worse in shipwrecks involving Union Jack ships.
"Based on our analysis, it becomes evident that the sinking of the Titanic was exceptional in many ways and that what happened on the Titanic seems to have spurred misconceptions about human behavior in disasters," Elinder and Erixson concluded.
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Ships used for the analysis:
HMS Birkenhead 1852 Grounding Indian Ocean British
SS Arctic 1854 Collision North Atlantic US
SS Golden Gate 1862 Fire Pacific Ocean, US
SS Northfleet 1873 Collision English Channel British
RMS Atlantic 1873 Grounding North Atlantic British
SS Princess Alice 1878 Collision River Thames British
SS Norge 1904 Grounding North Atlantic Danish
RMS Titanic 1912 Collision North Atlantic British
RMS Empress of Ireland 1914 Collision St Lawrence River British
RMS Lusitania 1915 Torpedoed North Atlantic British
SS Principessa Mafalda 1927 Technical Atlantic Ocean Italian
SS Vestris 1928 Weather Atlantic Ocean British
SS Morro Castle 1934 Fire Atlantic Ocean US
MV Princess Victoria 1953 Weather North Channel British
SS Admiral Nakhimov 1986 Collision Black Sea Russian
MS Estonia 1994 Technical Baltic Sea Estonian
MS Princess of the Stars 2008 Weather Philippine Sea Philippine
MV Bulgaria 2011 Weather Volga Russian
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