Women and children first!

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Women and children first! “, Also Birkenhead Drill is a code of conduct according to which women and children should be rescued first in life-threatening situations, for example when a ship with a limited number of lifeboats sinks .

history

William Douglas O'Connor, who first published the phrase "Women and Children First".

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, ships often did not have enough lifeboats to accommodate all passengers and crew in an emergency .

Early reports

One of the first documented reports of the maxim women and children first comes from a passenger on the transport ship Poland on May 25, 1840. The Poland had 24 passengers and a total of 63 people were on board, including seven women and four children, as of May 16, 1840 a fire broke out. One passenger, a French trader, insisted - with general approval - that women and children be put on the lifeboat first. The entire crew and all passengers of the Poland were rescued on the third day at sea and safely brought back to New York .

In another shipwreck, the sinking of the Abercrombie Robinson in Table Bay on May 27, 1842, the same maxim was followed and the approximately 70 women and children were first brought into the lifeboats. Thanks to the authority of two troop captains and the resulting discipline, all passengers were saved. The Scottish eccentric and poet William McGonagall (regarded in the English-speaking world as "the worst poet of all time") memorialized this dramatic incident with a happy ending with his idiosyncratic work The Wreck of the Abercrombie Robinson.

Birkenhead Drill

Soldiers remain on the sinking HMS Birkenhead while women and children board a lifeboat (painting by Thomas Hemy circa 1892).

The application that led to the naming of Birkenhead Drill occurred in 1852 during the evacuation of the troop transport ship HMS Birkenhead and replaced the "Everyone for himself!" In literature, the saying appears for the first time in the novel Harrington: A Story of True Love published by William Douglas O'Connor in 1860 . In Germany, the 1865 edition of the monthly round-up viewed this American practice as “excessive consideration for the fair sex”.

RMS Titanic

Titanic castaways in a lifeboat

The rule is best known from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The second officer suggested to Captain Smith: "Shouldn't we put the women and children in the boats, sir?" To which the captain replied, "Women and children in the boats and let them off!" The officers interpreted this order differently: The second Officer Lightoller, who was in charge of the port side during the evacuation, only allowed women and children to board, which resulted in completely understaffed boats being launched into the water. First mate Murdoch on the starboard side also let men and crew members into a boat if there were no women or children around and ready to board one. As a result, 74% of women and 52% of children were saved, but only 20% of men.

Notes on the law of the sea

The rule has no equivalent in maritime law and, according to evacuation expert Ed Galea from the University of Greenwich , the most needy people are helped first, not necessarily women, but the injured, old and young children. In addition, a study by Uppsala University shows that the application of the rule in practice is more of an exception.

In many countries, however, the "premature abandonment of the ship by the ship's command" and the "leaving behind of those in need" are considered criminal offenses (e.g. Codice della Navigazione §§ 303, 1097), i. H. the captain is the last to disembark .

effect

An evaluation by Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson from Uppsala University in Sweden showed that women had not better but worse chances of survival than men in a total of 18 ship accidents in which more than 15,000 people from 30 nations were involved. Among the accidents that were evaluated, proportionally more women were rescued than men in the “Titanic” and another sinking; in eleven disasters it was the other way round. However, once the express order was given, the researchers' chances of survival rose again.

Individual evidence

  1. Rudyard Kipling: Soldier to 'Sailor Too. bartleby.com, accessed February 3, 2017 .
  2. Page no longer available , search in web archives: Robert Anson Heinlein: Double Star. Gregg Press, Boston 1978, 169@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / books.google.com
  3. Southworth Allen Howland: Steamboat Disasters and Accidents Railroad in the United States: To All which is Appended Accounts of Recent Shipwrecks, Fires at Sea, Thrilling incidents, Etc . Dorr, Howland & Company, 1840, p. 306 ( google.com ).
  4. ^ The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Destruction of the Ship Poland by Fire , December 3, 1840
  5. ^ " Let us take care of the women and children first.
  6. Joachim Hayward Stocqueler: A Familiar History of the British Army, from the Earliest Restoration in 1660 to the Present Time: Including a Description of the Volunteer Movement, and the Progress of the Volunteer Organization . E. Stanford, 1871, p. 251 ( google.com ).
  7. ^ William Topaz McGonagall: The Wreck of the Abercrombie Robinson (English).
  8. ^ William Douglas O'Connor: Harrington: A Story of True Love. Thayer & Eldridge, Boston 1860, p. 188 ( online at archive.org )
  9. ^ The Phrase Finder: Women and Children First . From: phrases.org.uk , accessed April 16, 2010.
  10. Chronik der Gegenwart, Monatsrundschau, Munich 1865, p. 33.
  11. Walter Lord: A Night to Remember . Bantam, New York, NY 1997, ISBN 978-0-553-27827-9 .
  12. Chuck Anesi: Titanic Casualty Figures . Retrieved December 8, 2013.
  13. Tom de Castella: Costa Concordia: The Rules of Evacuating a Ship , BBC News . January 16, 2012. 
  14. Mikael Elinder, Oscar Erixson: Every man for himself: Gender, Norms and Survival in Maritime Disasters . Uppsala Universitet, 2012. Archived from the original on December 30, 2013 Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.anst.uu.se
  15. Codice della navigazione: 'Abbandono della nave in pericolo' , accessed on February 26, 2013
  16. Codice della navigazione: 'Abbandono di nave o di aeromobile in pericolo da parte del comandante' , accessed on February 26, 2013
  17. Christoph Drösser: Right? Does a captain have to be the last to leave the sinking ship? … Asks Johannes Meißner from Berlin . In: Die Zeit , No. 6/2012
  18. "Women and children first" exposed as a myth. Retrieved October 7, 2019 .