*THREAD*
"Women and children first"

Despite chivalry on board the
#Titanic , men fare better than women in nearly all other maritime disasters

And it wasn't even on board the Titanic that these words were uttered for the first time either

On 25th February 1852, HMS Birkenhead, a British troop ship was transporting soldiers destined to fight along South Africa's coast.

There were 643 passengers & crew aboard. Most of them from Scotland, including 25 women & 31 children, who were the family of the soldiers.

In the early hours of the morning, HMS Birkenhead struck a hidden reef off Danger Point.

A gash was sliced along the iron hull. Water quickly flooded the lower decks and instantly drownes dozens of soldiers sleeping in their hammocks.

Panic and chaos ensued.
Captain Robert Salmond ordered that the Birkenhead be reversed off the reef.

This made the tear in the hull much worse and more water flooded in

As the soldiers began to work the pumps, others moved their wives and children out of the way and into the lifeboats.

As the lifeboats left the ship, the Captain realised that the ship was lost and commanded all survivors to abandon ship and save themselves.

A lieutenant called Seton overruled this and ordered that the soldiers and crew stand fast.

He knew that if desperate men threw themselves into the sea, they would swamp the lifeboats and kill their wives and children within them

When the ship went down within 20 minutes, more than 400 men drowned in the water or were eaten by the great white sharks.

The lifeboats survived and the legend of the "Birkenhead Drill" was born.

Prioritising women and children first in maritime disasters.

When the Titanic sank on 15th April 1912, killing 1500 passengers and crew, again the call for women and children to be saved first was given.

70%.of women and 50% of children survived as opposed to 20% of men.

This spread round the world in headlines showing the chivalry of men in their final moments.

This strengthened the widely held belief that British men in particular cling to, that in times of trouble, men sacrifice themselves for women and children.

The telling and retelling of this particular story over the years has shaped what people understand to be standard chivalrous behaviour displayed by men.

Cambridge historian Lucy Delap argues that the British ruling elite spread the notion that men put women's interests first purely as a goal to shatter the case for female suffrage.

They argued that there was absolutely no reason to give women the vote because, even when facing death, men will always put women first.

Women should be grateful for the sacrifice men make for them.

They cited Titanic as the example

The reality is that men had tried to push in front and board the lifeboats on the Titanic.

It was only due to the policy of the captain & his officers upholding this rather than the general morality of men on board that women & children were saved first.

There was no real chivalry on board the Titanic

Rather a combination of

The ship taking 3 hours to sink, giving plenty of time to line up allowing women & children first

People thought the Titanic unsinkable
They all believed they'd be rescued
The class system was adhered to

Compare this to the Lusitania torpedoed 3 years later sailing from New York.

The ship sank in 18 minutes.

Everyone knew what had happened to people on the Titanic

The young and fittest fought their way into the lifeboats & stayed there.

It was "each man for themselves"

Economists at Uppsala University went through over 100 major maritime disasters spanning 3 centuries.

They ended up with 18 shipwrecks that had data on the survival rates of passengers, including Titanic

Their findings?

Men were three times as likely to survive as women.

Crews had the highest survival rate of 61% (predominantly men)

Male (passengers) =37%

Women = 27%

Children had really poor survival prospects at only 15%

The notion that Captain & crew stayed onboard till the very end was proven to be false

The crew knew the ship layout, were prewarned of the disaster & therefore had the highest survival rates of all.

Even on the Titanic, more male crew members survived than male passengers

Finally, even though "Women & children first" is claimed to be British chivalry, in the study it was discovered that women on British ships had the lowest survival rate than on ships of other nations.

They had a 15% lower chance of survival, even taking into account the Titanic

The idea of "women & children " first is a common assumption, but an entirely false narrative based on the highly unusual circumstances of the Titanic

Women & children are significantly disadvantaged which fits in with the general pattern of survival chances in natural disasters

Men, and yes I mean men! If you have to complain about the graph or pictures, please do your own work and find who created them and complain to them.
It is so tedious when all you do is look for the tiniest error just to shit all over the entire thread.
So boring yet expected

Mikeal Elinder & Oscar Erixon produced an 82 page detailed study covering disasters spanning 3 centuries to come to the conclusion that chivalry is a myth in maritime disasters.

But Joe Blogs on Twitter with 3 followers knows better & dismisses the entire study with one tweet