Women and Children, Well, Whenever

'Women and children first' is a myth, shipwreck study shows

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was based on the premise that crew members and male passengers stood the greatest chance of survival in a free-for-all ship evacuation, owing to greater strength and knowledge of the vessel. If men chose to sacrifice themselves for the sake of women and children, however, their survival rates should suffer accordingly.

They did not.

In examining 18 shipping disasters dating to the 1850s, the economists found little evidence that men were inclined to surrender their survival advantage. Overall, the survival rate was 61% for crew members, 44% for captains, 37% for male passengers, 27% for women and 15% for children.

Each man, woman and child for him/herself, and the devil take the hindmost!

This study also suggests that women are more than ready to abandon their children to survive as well, a not so pleasant fact not commented on in the write up, with women almost twice as likely to survive as children (almost all of whom must have had mothers aboard).

However, there were some exceptions:

The Titanic stood out in that an unusual percentage of women escaped death — a result of the ship's officers making their safety a priority.

"On the Titanic, the survival rate of women was more than three times higher than the survival rate of men," wrote study authors Mikael Elinder ofSweden'sUppsala University and Oscar Erixson of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics in Stockholm.

The other aberration was the British troopship Birkenhead, which sank off the coast of South Africa in 1852 and gave rise to the concept of "women and children first."

The vessel was carrying hundreds of British military personnel and their families when it struck a rock and began to sink in shark-infested waters. The ship lacked sufficient lifeboats, so commanders ordered that they be filled with women and children. The men were ordered to stand on deck and not attempt to swim for the lifeboats as the ship sank.

So strong leadership by a captain can, in fact change the behavior of the crew and passengers. That's good to know.