19th century The first documented application of "women and children first" was in May 1840 when, after a lightning strike, fire broke out aboard the American
packet Poland en route from New York to
Le Havre. According to a passenger, J.H. Buckingham of Boston: This led to a precautionary evacuation of women, children and a few male passengers into the longboat, while the other male passengers and crew remained aboard to fight the blaze. As Buckingham was a journalist, his vivid account of the incident was published first in the
Boston Courier, picked up by other papers including
The Times (London) and also reprinted in a book published in the same year, during the recounting of the death of Captain Harrington, the father 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 the ship". During the 19th and early 20th centuries, ships typically did not carry enough lifeboats to save all the passengers and crew in the event of disaster. 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, The practice of prioritising women and children gained widespread currency following the actions of soldiers during the sinking of the
Royal Navy troopship in 1852 after it struck rocks. The women and children were placed in the ship's
cutter, which lay alongside. The sinking was memorialized in newspapers and paintings of the time, and in poems such as
Rudyard Kipling's 1893 "Soldier an' Sailor Too". The loss of the French liner
La Bourgogne in 1898, when 199 out of 200 women died, as well as all children, may have added to the emphasis on saving women and children. As the ship began sinking, crewmen took all the available lifeboats for themselves. As they were launching the lifeboats, crewmen beat and stabbed passengers who tried to board the boats. Newspaper reports of the brutal behavior of the crew sparked outrage in the United States.
20th century By the turn of the 20th century, larger ships meant more people could travel, but regulations were generally still insufficient to provide for all passengers: 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 register 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 phrase was popularised by its usage on . Second Officer
Charles Lightoller suggested to
Captain Smith, "Hadn't we better get the women and children into the
boats, sir?", to which the captain responded: "Put the women and children in and lower away." The first and second officers (
William McMaster Murdoch and Lightoller) interpreted the evacuation order differently; Murdoch took it to mean women and children
first, while Lightoller took it to mean women and children
only. Second Officer Lightoller lowered lifeboats with empty seats if there were no women and children waiting to board, while First Officer Murdoch allowed a limited number of men to board if all the nearby women and children had embarked. As a consequence, 74% of the women and 52% of the children on board were saved, but only 20% of the men. Some officers on the
Titanic misinterpreted the order from Captain Smith, and tried to prevent men from boarding the lifeboats. It was intended that women and children would board first, with any remaining free spaces for men. Because not all women and children were saved on the
Titanic, the few men who survived, like
White Star official
J. Bruce Ismay, were initially branded as cowards.
21st century There is no legal basis for the protocol of women and children first in international
maritime law. In the
Boy Scouts of America's
Sea Scouting program, "Women and children first" was considered "the motto of the sea" and was part of the Sea Promise until 2020. In February 2020, a mural of the sinking of HMS
Birkenhead, bearing the slogan, was painted on the side of Gallaghers Traditional Pub in
Birkenhead. == See also ==