Women and Children First

When we stand on the edge of the sea today we may still experience the same anxiety and awe as did our earliest ancestors. From the Biblical Flood to modern day tsunamis we sense the unseen hand delivering a divine retribution. Each tragedy at sea may be another toll paid for our presumption in riding on the ocean's back.

The circumstances of the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic, 100 years ago yesterday, have become the prism through which we now view all maritime disasters. Could they have been avoided ? Did those involved behave well ? The themes of its tale are powerful: the hubris of the 'unsinkable' liner, the greed of those responsible for the underprovision of lifeboats, the courage shown in the face of hopeless circumstances, and the wickedness of a class system that still functioned to the very end. If you were poor you were much more likely to die that night. 

You were also much more likely to die if you were a man: 74% of the women on the Titanic were saved but only 20% of the men. Those that did were initially branded as cowards.

The 'Women and Children First' principle is famously associated with that night but had been part of a public understanding of morality ever since the reporting of the chivalrous behaviour of the men on the wrecked troopship H.M.S. Birkenhead off Cape Town in 1852. On that occasion the captain had ordered the wives and children, around twenty in total, to take the only small lifeboat available. Only about a quarter of the men on board survived the disaster including none of the senior officers.

A few years before the loss of the Titanic, on Thanksgiving Day November 26th 1908, another White Star liner, the
Georgic, was involved in a sinking close to the coast of the United States. On that day in heavy fog off Sandy Hook lightship the freighter ran into the S.S. Finance, ripping a hole in the steamer's side and causing her to sink in under fifteen minutes.

The Georgic, travelling from Liverpool, was the largest freighter of her day, her cargo on this occasion including four elephants bound for the Hippodrome in New York.  The Finance was heading for Colón in Panama, providing a vital link to the Canal Project. Fortunately she was only lightly laden on this outward journey, carrying just eighty-five passengers.

The prow of the freighter penetrated the side of the steamer by nearly ten feet "like a knife into cheese", as it was described in the New York Times afterward, causing an almost immediate heavy list to starboard.  Three passengers and one of the ship's assistant engineers were drowned.  So overcome with terror was one fourteen year-old girl, Irene Campbell, that the wireless operator and two other men were unable to prise her from the rail of the vessel, "neither reason nor force could break her hold", and hers was one of the lives lost.

Captain Mowbray appeared on the deck as his vessel was sinking. In the face of the rush from below he drew his revolver and shouted "Now, men, there is going to be no crowding, and the women and children are going to take the boats first."  Moral protocol was all very well but armed response worked even better.

After seeing the passengers into the boats, the skipper returned to the bridge, refusing offers of help. Fortunately this stayed just above water (see photo above with salvage vessel alongside), and he was taken off later by boat. Both ships were eventually found to have been at fault for not stopping when the other sounded her foghorns, the Finance also culpable for having been on the wrong side of the Main Ship Channel.

In our June auction we include an envelope from this incident (above), now part of the 'Oatcroft' collection of Crash & Wreck Mail, sent from the Transvaal and addressed to the British Consul in Panama. Fewer than twenty surviving items have been recorded from the 768 bags of mail that the Finance was carrying.

The Georgic was barely damaged by the collision and was able to play a full part in the rescue of the survivors, many of whom had jumped into the water in their panic.

One wonders what might have happened had the roles been reversed, had the Georgic been holed and rapidly sinking. Would the adequacy of the Georgic's emergency procedures been proven ? Might the directors of the White Star Line have learnt some valuable lessons ?

And how do you get an elephant into a lifeboat ?  

JG