Women and
children first
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Women and children first"
(or to a lesser extent, the Birkenhead Drill[1][2])
is a historical code of conduct whereby the lives of women and children were to be saved
first in a life-threatening situation (typically abandoning ship, when survival
resources such as lifeboats were limited).
While the phrase first appeared in
the 1860 novel Harrington: A Story of True Love, by William Douglas
O'Connor,[3][4]
the first documented application of "women and children first"
occurred during the 1852 evacuation of the Royal Navy
troopship HMS Birkenhead. It is, however, most famously associated with the sinking
of RMS Titanic in 1912. As a code of conduct,
"women and children first" has no basis in maritime law,
and according to University of Greenwich disaster evacuation expert Professor Ed Galea, in modern-day evacuations people
will usually "help the most vulnerable to leave the scene first. It's not
necessarily women, but is likely to be the injured, elderly and young
children."[5]
Furthermore, the results of a 2012 Uppsala University study suggest that the application of "women and
children first" may have, in practice, been the exception rather than the
rule.[6]
History
During the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, ships typically did not carry enough lifeboats to save all
the passengers and crew in the event of disaster.
The first-known appearance of the
phrase “women and children first” occurred in the sentimental 1860 novel Harrington: A Story of True Love, during the
recounting of the death of the father (Captain Harrington) of the eponymous
character (John Harrington). Captain Harrington’s fictional death illustrates
not only the concept of “women and children first” but also that of "the captain goes down with his ship".
In 1870, answering a question at the
House of Commons of the United Kingdom about the sinking of the paddle steamer
Normandy,
George Shaw-Lefevre
said that[7]
"in the opinion of the Board of Trade,
it will not be possible to compel the passenger steamers running between
England and France to have boats sufficient for the very numerous passengers
they often carry. They would encumber the decks, and rather add to the danger
than detract from it"
By the turn of the 20th century,
larger ships meant more people could travel, but safety rules regarding
lifeboats remained out of date: for example, British
legislation concerning the number of lifeboats was based on the tonnage of a
vessel and only encompassed vessels of "10,000 gross tons
and over". The result was that a sinking usually involved a moral dilemma
for passengers and crew as to whose lives should be saved with the limited available lifeboats.
The practice of women and children
first arose from the chivalrous actions of soldiers during the sinking of the Royal Navy
troopship HMS Birkenhead in 1852 after it struck rocks. The captain promptly ordered
the wives and children aboard (20 in all) to enter one of the small boats
available while the men aboard were set to trying to save the ship. When the
ship did break up, the colonel countermanded the captain's order to make for
the boats as he thought they would be swamped - the troops obeyed. Only about
25% of the men survived the wreck and none of the senior officers did. The
sinking was memorialized in newspapers and paintings of the time, and in poems
such as Rudyard Kipling's 1893 "Soldier an' Sailor Too". Samuel Smiles,
in his 1859 book Self-Help, described the principle being applied during Siege of Lucknow.[8][page needed]
The phrase was popularised by its
usage on the RMS Titanic.[9][page needed] The Second Officer suggested to Captain Smith, "Hadn't
we better get the women and children into the boats, sir?", to which the
captain responded: "women and children in and lower away".[10]
The First and Second officers interpreted the evacuation order differently; one
took it to mean women and children first, while the other took it to
mean women and children only. Thus one of the officers lowered lifeboats
with empty seats if there were no women and children waiting to board, while
the other allowed a limited number of men to board if all the nearby women and
children had embarked.[11]
As a consequence, 74% of the women and 52% of the children on board were saved,
but only 20% of the men.[12]
Some officers on the Titanic misinterpreted the order from Captain
Smith, and tried to prevent men from
boarding the lifeboats.[13][14]
It was intended that women and children would board first, with any remaining
free spaces for men. Because so few men were saved on the Titanic, those
who did survive, like White Star
official J. Bruce Ismay, were initially branded as cowards.[15][page needed]
There is no legal basis for the
protocol of women and children first in international maritime law
— according to International Maritime Organization regulations, ships have 30 minutes to load all passengers
into lifeboats and maneuver the boats away.[5]
History has furthermore shown that application of the protocol has been the
exception rather than the rule. An Uppsala University study published in April 2012 analyzed maritime disasters
covering a period of one and a half centuries, from 1852 to 2011, finding that
of the eighteen disasters studied, in eleven cases the "women and children
first" order was not given (in five it was given, and two cases were unknown).[6]
The same study found that crew members have a relative survival advantage over
passengers. The cases of RMS Titanic and HMS Birkenhead may
therefore not be representative of maritime conduct in general.
The Uppsala study also found that
general survival rates have been in favor of adult males rather than women or
children. Cultural, social and physiological factors may have played their
parts in this discrepancy. During the 1859 sinking of the Royal Charter, the women were still dressing below decks when they should
have been mustering with the men on the deck to abandon ship. Also, the
restrictive, multi-layered clothing prescribed by Victorian fashion limited women's ability to swim in the heavy surf.[16]
A more recent application of
"women and children first" occurred in March 2011, when a floating restaurant in Covington, Kentucky tore from its moorings, stranding 83 people on the Ohio River.
Women were rescued first.[17]
Wider
implications
Some writers have argued that the
idea of men always putting women first in emergencies has been linked to concepts of essential gender differences that can be then used to justify denying women political
equality.[18]
Lucy Delap of Cambridge University writes that the British ruling class
used the idea of male chivalry at sea to justify denying women the right to vote,
contending that since men always behaved with chivalry by putting the interests
(and lives) of women first, women didn't need to vote.[19][20]
Masculists have characterized the idea as female privilege and male
disposability[21]
while feminists
have characterised it as benevolent sexism.[22]
The entire wiki link on the subject can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_children_first
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