Class, gender, and the 100th anniversary of Titanic
For the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Titanic, I’ve written a piece that appears at the online version of the Weekly Standard. Here’s the link—but if you want to comment, you’ll have to do so here, since the WS doesn’t have a comments section.
[NOTE: You might also be interested in this previous article of mine, about the origins of the maritime tradition of “women and children first.”]
Everytime I look at who’s currently president, and think that the opposition consists of “me-tooers” and whacko porn-hunters, I want to sing “Nearer My God to Thee” for what’s left of the Republic.
You have a name?
It is interesting that there is an obvious difference in outcome based on sex but the focus of many now is to make it an issue of class. Yet another example of the left attempting to distort reality to fit their preferred narrative. In the near future we’re likely to see the end of the current higher ed system and the end of leftist control of education (similar to what is happening in the media). This cannot come too soon as far as I am concerned.
Has Hilary Rosen claimed anywhere yet that the vast majority of the women who survived the Titanic sinking had never worked a day in their lives?
I second Steve’s points.
As Robert Heinlein said, “All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can – and must – be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempting to formulate a perfect society on any foundation other than Women and children first! is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly – and no doubt will keep on trying.”
We’re now testing whether or not this is still so.
I should like to add that the parenthetical in the last sentence no longer applies strictly to males.
The sinking of the Titanic, along with some other high-profile events around that time, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the Ludlow Massacre, played a large role in the rise of socialism. They all fed the narrative of greedy capitalists oppressing the working class.
In addition to that, Titanic inspired sermons in churches around the world that railed against man’s vanity and hubris. Apparently it was an affront to God to build large ships which were designed to be safer than ships of previous generations. I’ve read some of those sermons, and they’re enough to make a Randian’s eyeballs bleed.
It should also be pointed out that the Titanic sinking is what made the New York Times’ reputation.
At the time there probably a dozen newspapers in New York City. The Times was just one of them.
But a young technogeek named David Sarnoff was listening to the wireless traffic on the North Atlantic that night, heard the distress calls, and notified a friend who worked for the NYT.
The next morning, newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic were saying that the Titanic had been in an accident, but was being towed to port and all passengers were safe.
Only the New York Times ran with a front page story that the Titanic had sunk with great loss of life.
They’ve been coasting on that ever since.
Rickl– you could say the NYTimes has been going downhill ever since. Reminiscent of Dan Rather making his reputation by reporting that Kennedy was dead. and as it turned out, he didn’t have confirmation when he reported it, but by the time his writing was published, he was right.
When lean times come to a colony of bees, the workers (females all) stop feeding the drones (males.). Giving the lifeboat spaces to women and children stems from the same instinct.
What was the last song the ship’s band played on the Titanic? In the popular imagination, it was “Nearer My God To Thee”, and indeed many survivors said so.
But wireless operator Harold Bride, who stayed at his post until the power failed and escaped in the last lifeboat (the one that floated off upside down) said that the last song he heard was “Autumn”.
“Songe d’Automne” was a popular waltz of the day, and is definitely known to have been in the band’s repertoire. The melody is gorgeous and unbelievably haunting:
Songe d’Automne
(I’ve probably listened to that at least 30 times in the past few days. I can’t get enough of it.)
On the other hand, there was also a hymn called “Autumn”:
Autumn (hymn)
So which one was Bride referring to?
As for “Nearer My God To Thee”, it turns out that there were three versions of it, set to different music. They’re known as “Bethany”, “Horbury”, and “Propior Deo”.
The Bethany version is most widely known to Americans, and is almost certainly NOT the version that was played on Titanic.
Nearer My God To Thee (Full Version)
The ship’s bandleader, Wallace Hartley, was familiar with the other two, which were more popular in England. Here is Horbury:
Nearer My God To Thee (Horbury)
And indeed, that was the version featured in the 1958 British movie, “A Night to Remember”:
Nearer My God To Thee
I’ve only been able to find one example of “Propior Deo” on YouTube:
Nearer my God to Thee “Propior Deo”
Very much enjoyed the article. Some thoughts:
What’s wrong with a little class? Not to take it too far, but shouldn’t we respect those with property in a free market society? Kind of means they did something right.
Is it still 1912?
Suggested title: Titanic lies lie problematic.
rickl, hopefully, as society endorsed, at a grass roots level, socialism because of capital excess, but endured for, at least now, antother 100 years, we will again find our way. But you, what the heck? Nearer to God? Dare I hope? Just take your finger right off that repress button and open the doors of perception. What happens if God speaks to you?
I watched the film “A Night to Remember” last night for the first time in years. (It has just been re-release). It is a much better film in my opinion than “Titanic”. The class differences are not ignored, but they are not overdrawn either. Kenneth More is great as Second Officer. More importantly it emphasizes the value of duty among passengers and crew. The duty of the crew, the designer, parents, husbands and wives, and other ships was reinforced and applauded.
Consider that two hours from impact to sinking is a short period of time and yet there was little panic based on eyewitness accounts.
Cameron is a hack taking a trendy cross-class romance when there were so many true characters and amazing stories he could have used.
Ironically, women had the highest survival rate of all.
Apparently women are more important than men and children, at least if you assume this was a deliberate policy on the part of the ships crew.
Hmm. Some blogging gold about this type of thing:
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/chivalry-on-the-titanic/
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/why-wasnt-it-women-and-children-first/
According to the first link apparently ALL the women and children could have been saved and 200 more men as well had the lifeboats been loaded in a more efficient (and less overtly chivalrous) manner.
“A Night to Remember” is a great film, and was the gold standard for Titanic movies for many years. It’s still the most faithful retelling of the story on film. It was based on the Walter Lord book of the same name, which was published in 1955. The book and the movie are widely credited with sparking a resurgence of interest in the Titanic story, which has never abated since then.
Between 1912 and 1955, there occurred World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Holocaust, so I guess people had other things on their minds.
There have been many movies made about Titanic. The first one was a silent two-reeler made in 1912 which starred Helen Gibson, an actual survivor. She wore the same dress she was wearing when she was rescued by the Carpathia. Sadly, no prints of the movie are known to exist and only a couple of still photos survive.
The first American movie by Alfred Hitchcock was supposed to be about the Titanic, but it was apparently quashed by the shipping companies which were still powerful and influential in the 1930s.
There was a Titanic movie made in Germany in the early 1940s. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve read that among other things, it features a German officer on the boat deck who “selected” which passengers got to go into the lifeboats.
No, I’m not making that up.
There was a 1953 Hollywood movie called “Titanic” which featured fictional characters. The most memorable part of that movie was when the band switched from playing cheery ragtime tunes to “A Londonderry Air”, which we know as “Danny Boy”, and seeing the facial expressions on the passengers in the lifeboats change as the gravity of the situation began to dawn on them.
There was a TV miniseries around 1996 or so that was mostly forgettable, except for Catherine Zeta Jones. Woof.
When I heard about the James Cameron movie in 1997, I hoped that it would be a straight-up remake of “A Night to Remember” with new technology and the new knowledge that was obtained from the discovery of the wreck. When I heard that it featured fictional characters, I thought “oh, no”.
But I went to see it the second day after it was released, just before Christmas in 1997, and I absolutely loved it. As I’ve said before, the ship itself was the real star of that movie. Say what you will about Cameron, but he is a serious Titanic geek, and he spared no expense to depict the ship as accurately as he could.
I already knew enough about Titanic history to automatically filter out some of the more egregious parts, such as the treatment of First Officer Murdoch.
And I came to regard the fictional love story between Jack and Rose as a brilliant dramatic plot device. It threw the loss and heartbreak right in your face in a way that a straightforward telling of the story would not have done.
Wives lost husbands, husbands lost wives, parents lost children, and children lost parents all over that ship.
Many more people “could” have been saved if the lifeboats had been loaded to capacity. The first lifeboats left the Titanic less than full because it wasn’t apparent the ship was truly sinking. Why leave the big ship to float around the dark north Atlantic in a small lifeboat?
David Sarnoff wasn’t just listening to wireless communications, he was an employee of the Marconi wireless network. Sarnoff went on to found the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which eventually founded the Red and Blue radio networks in the United States, which eventually became NBC and ABC.
During WWII David Sarnoff became known as General Sarnoff, although he was not a member of the military.
Brad: the earliest lifeboats were launched without a full load because people did not realize the gravity of the situation and did not to leave what they perceived as the relative safety of the ship. That’s part of the tragedy.
Mr. Cameron and Mendelsohn may want to rethink their use of the Titanic as an allusion to Class Warfare. Last Night I watched a docu drama on The History Channel about how Goebbles and the Nazis were spending the equivalent of 100 million to make a movie about the Titanc in 1943. Goebbles twist on the story? He turned it into an allegory for Class Warfare.
While the specific statistics are news to me, I never really dug into that, that women surviving merely for being women does not. It would, most likely (hopefully) be as true today as it was then. What also, actually, doesn’t surprise me is the fact that this fact is never mentioned. It is expected. By men. By women. It falls below radar as a fact of life. Men are more expendable.
As for children, I have to think that the adults may have left their children, to some degree, where they were in the hopes of coming back for them (leaving them, in their minds, where they would be safer). And, at some point, were given no chance or lost the chance to return for the children. That is just tragic, but also expected human nature to not be dragging children around without knowing where or what the real level of danger is. It usually works, but… not always.
While I see the survival of women above men as a non-issue. I also have to understand, in a time where the battle for relevancy and clarity and equality between sexes has become a true war that this is an issue. It is ordinance in the war between the sexes and actually even a weapon against the class-warfare clowns. So… yeah.
And I came to regard the fictional love story between Jack and Rose as a brilliant dramatic plot device.
Funny, ’cause that’s the thing that offends me about that movie. For some reason, for me, it trivializes the entire gut-wrenching, crying out of souls. I can’t explain why.
Thanks to rickl for all the insight he has provided into the Titanic story.
The idea of women and children first was a generally accepted fact of life in my childhood and a good portioon of my adulthood. Women and children held a special place in society. One of the ways this was recognized in law was in not using women or males under 18 in combat forces. Well, the feminists have now brought women down to the level of men. They demand combat roles for women. Will we decide to send younger children of both sexes into combat next? (Like Iran did in the Iran/Iraq war.) In the feminist world women are expendible, just like men, rather than special. Not, IMO, a step forward for our society.
Some people here seem to believe that men aren’t people in their own right but merely tools to be used for the good of women or perhaps whatever they consider the good of society to be.
It will be a good day when either
1. War is practiced no more
or
2. War is fought mostly using robots.
But then we’d just have a bunch more useless men around, being useless and dragging down the “special” sex with their evil male sexual drives and their bad behavior. Behavior of course which women have no part in shaping or encouraging in any way, shape or form.
I shake my head in sadness.
Oh and my opinion of chivalry and MY responsibility to women?
I am responsible for protecting my OWN woman and my OWN family. Not women in general, esp when they owe me nothing in return.
Any chivalry I display is to the weak in general and at times, that would be extended even to other men.
Neo:
You are right about the earliest lifeboats, but it’s still rather easy to make a case that
A. Chivalry harmed, not helped the evacuation
B. It’s stupid to launch a ship without enough lifeboats for everyone, I don’t care what maritime regulations “require” or how “unsinkable” your ship is.
Brad brings up an interesting point:
“It’s stupid to launch a ship without enough lifeboats for everyone . . . .”
Having never been on a cruise, exactly what do these modern day cruise ships that hold 3,000+ people do for lifeboats? At 50 people per boat they would need 60 lifeboats, but I never see them hanging on davits by the gunwhale of the ship.
T:
My understanding is that most modern boats have not only safety vests for everyone but more than enough lifeboats. I don’t know if these are somewhat inflateable, or if they are simply stored below decks in some cases.
Oh, and to be fair to the crew and owners of the Titanic based on all that stuff I have read today:
It went down far faster than they expected a ship to sink, and that certainly didn’t help matters any when trying to evacuate.
Brad,
You are probably correct on this; probably large inflatable covered rafts.
The problem with the old lifeboats on davits was that if the ship listed (tilted to the left or right) while sinking, the lifeboats on one side couldn’t be lowered to the sea. I’m not saying that this was a problem with the Titanic. I do not know the specific details the the sinking.
T,
Modern cruise ships carry enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew. The ships I’ve sailed on have had large, covered boats that will hold 150 – 300 pax carried on davits along each side just above the promenade deck. The life boats are exercised frequently during cruises to insure they are ready for use. Sometimes they are used as tenders to take passengers from a mooring to the dock.
One thing pax need to do if an evacuation is necessary is to dress as warmly as possible 9even in the tropics) and take any needed meds with them to the boat. I always carry a flashlight after dark, just in case. Knowing the ship’s layout is important if it is night and the lighting is impaired.
The cruise I was on in January was very strict about the lifeboat drill and being sure pax knew what to do. The Costa sinking has been a wakeup call for all cruise lines.
Titanic and many sinkings since have demonstrated that ships, no matter how well constructed and manned, do sink. S**t happens.
Brad,
“But then we’d just have a bunch more useless men around, being useless and dragging down the “special” sex with their evil male sexual drives and their bad behavior. Behavior of course which women have no part in shaping or encouraging in any way, shape or form.
I shake my head in sadness.”
For how long have men been the defenders of famillies, tribes, cities, nations, etc? As far as we know, since the dawn of humans. Men are the way we are because of that role. We’re stronger, more aggressive, and more willing to defend that which we value because that’s what we have been doing for a long time. If that makes you feel useless, I shake my head in sadness.
.
It was more than 20 years ago, and, until reading brad (brad!) I
Hey, that’s cool — you’re really a neocon at Weekly Standard!!
had forgotten about the incident. On a Portland street, some scum looking jerk was slapping and cursing his woman. Well, you know what happens? She cursed me for interfering! And the dumb asshole bent down and attempted to retrieve a very nice looking knife with brass ring handle. I brought my knee up as hard as I could in his face and he groaned and fell flat. She screamed, Oh my God. I looked at her with a “what the hell” look and walked away. I could sense trouble and knew it was best to remain anonymous. Then I heard something clatter by my feet. She had thrown the knife at me. Now I had learned violence early on through training in boxing and wrestling and “hand to hand” combat. And bullies are usually pussies; and they are stupid; they really believe that because they have found a partner that shares their dysfunction, that others will too. If you ever get in that situation, strike first and strike hard and with authority.
That brings to mind another incident when I saw a women do about the same thing to a man. It was gorgeous. She slapped him hard in the face and he stopped, slack-jawed, like a insect on a windshield.
Bullies, ie., liberals, don’t want to fight. They want to intimidate into submission. That’s why they hated Breitbart. He learned the art of response strike with authority.
Rose: I agree with you. I don’t understand the point of taking a real story that’s already loaded with the most heart-wrenching tales that are true, and adding a fake and not-especially-believable-or-interesting piece of fiction on top of it. To what purpose?
Curtis,
It has been said before, the left can punch but they can’t take a counterpunch. As conservatives awaken to this fact and begin “punching back” the liberals are left with no substantial defense.
That us why the internet and blogs such as these have been such a boon to level headed people. It gives them the ability to circumvent the left leaning mainstream media and counterattack the left’s consistent misstatement of facts and rewriting of history.
Brad and JJ, thanks for the responses (300 passengers, that’s no small boat).
To what purpose? To escalate the career of another actor who is going to school us in ethics which is basically adultery and fornication.
Doom: Don’t know if you’ve ever heard this song:
T, the left can’t punch. That’s their problem. They stab in the back, but a fair fight? Not so much. That is why they whisper into the ears of blacks and gays and the poor and equip them to do their fighting. That is why their is such a hatred of RINO’s who are seen as weaklings by us tea party people. We, up to date, haven’t even deigned to fight because we despise to get in a ring that is rigged. That’s the only way they win. So the left can’t punch. That’s their problem. Our problem is not caring until their is almost nothing we can do about it.
I gather about three quarters of the men died and three quarters of the women lived.
I also found, poking around on fem threads several years ago, that they didn’t, really didn’t want to hear about it.
Curtis,
“Our problem is not caring until their is almost nothing we can do about it.”
I think that’s changing. Don’t be too quick to give up hope. If we are at the beginning of a sea change then it will take time to evolve into a movement. I, for one, believe that we are at the beginning of the end for nigh on 100 years of progressivism. That’s why I supported Newt (We cannot spare this man. He fights!). We have yet to see what Romney’s campaign is capable of, but I’m not pessimistic in the least.
In the meantime, I highly recommend to you Walter Russell Mead’s essays “Beyond Blue.” I’ve recommended them here before and I believe that his analysis is spot on.
You bet.
T. says, “(300 passengers, that’s no small boat).”
The boats are fiberglass, divided into fore and aft compartments. They are seaworthy, weather protected, and compact with small diesel engines. The seating is tight. Meaning it’s worse than economy in an airliner. If someone had to lie down it could get ugly. Days/weeks of survival at sea are not envisioned. Most cruise liners are in sea lanes where other ships can come to their aid rather rapidly. In most instances ships would arrive in 4-72 hours to pluck people from the life boats. It would not, however, be a pleasant experience. You might never want to see those passengers you shared such tight quarters with, ever again. There were 12 life boats on the last ship I was on. 150 X12 = 1800. The pax were about 1200 plus 550 crew. The cruise line cannot sell any more tickets than the life boats will handle. They also have some inflatables on board as additional safety margin.
JJ,
Thanks. That all makes sense.
No, I hadn’t heard that. But I might as well have written it. I don’t always like it, it’s a hard pull. But for me, in black and white, that is the way it is. I have seen other options and have had zero temptation to pursue them, other than… well… you know.
But I got better. Ha!
Changing is hard, but not impossible.
I’m a changer, like Neo. I was raised to be an “Islamist,” (note: I use the term as an analogy) like millions of people on the planet.
It’s not unusual to be raised such. Children are raised to execute bitterness.
I had the advantage of being raised in the great United States of America where there was freedom of thought and conscience and the ability to make comparisons. And so I compared: who was happier, who was better? And slowly but surely I rejected the hate part of my raising. (But maybe, just maybe, parts remain? Yes, of course.)
Which makes me an effective protector. Flawed and hugely reactive, (like King David who was not allowed to build the Temple of God because of the blood on his hands), but, nonetheless, I know the program, or, at least, part of the program, the evil program. And I want to tell you, it is evil because there is intent.
But, it’s good to be on the right side.
T and Curtis:
See Sergey Brin’s (of Google) fears as headlined on Drudge today re the Left’s counterpunch.
I realize this is not exactly on topic but it’s an amazing piece of Titanic-related trivia:
In 1898 a novel Futility (author Morgan Robertson) was published. It was about a huge, “unsinkable”, British passenger liner that struck an iceberg on an April night about 400 miles from Newfoundland. The ship sunk, there was an inadequate number of lifeboats, and there was great loss of life. The ship’s name in the novel was Titan.
My son went through a huge Titanic obsession when he was 5 & 6, and we did a lot of reading and watching of movies and documentaries. The reason that there were too few lifeboats is that at that time they were not intended to rescue every single passenger at once. They were meant to make multiple trips shuttling passengers to all the ships that were to have come to the rescue of the one sinking. If Titanic had sunk slowly enough for rescue ships to arrive, the lifeboats would have been adequate.
If you’re ever in the Orlando area, the Titanic museum there is worth a few hours. They have a room with one wall made of solid ice that the kids can touch. The temperature in the room that simulates the deck is lowered to the actual nighttime temperature of the North Atlantic. My son no longer asked why they didn’t just swim. The guide made a point of stating that the 3rd class passengers had their own set of lifeboats and no one prevented them from getting on deck. He portrayed a 3rd class man who had been rescued.
Today, the women are not worth dying for, as they have declared unilateral enmity and war…
We are all feminists now…
So don’t be a throwback misanthrope, join the new world, women are now as disposable as men!
if women are equal, then there is no more deference, and any such is just “moral momentum” and oppressive!!!!
[of course the women that supported this will be confused, but not the LEADERS who are the ones who put direction to the power]
and this was the event that told us all what the new deal was… i remember how they reported it… and now they bring it up because of its association ideologically to titanic!
but remember, even THAT has changed… as a recent ship run aground shows that such forittude does not come from secular living
Chivalry at sea a ‘myth’, Swedish study shows
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/chivalry-sea-myth-swedish-study-shows-175610345.html
ah… since 1852…
like lynching they pick the dates for a reason…
the swedes wanted to change the history…they didnt want their ship to be the one that usured in the difference between the secular world and others…
so they decided to make myth of reality and witness testimony and so on.. (as to the titanic)
out of the 18 maritime disasters studied, Erixon and Elinder found that while the survival rates were about the same for men and women in some cases, women survived to a higher extent in just two cases.
The most famous maritime catastrophe of them all — the Titanic — is one of the exceptions to the rule: 70 percent of the women survived that tragedy compared to just a 20-percent survival rate for the men, according to the study.
so what one CAN say is that if one is wealthy, one lives by a higher standard… that one accepts ones death as a gentleman..
its a far far better thing… no?
but if your a common wastrel… might as well push and shove… you and your women are equal… no?
i would prefer they didnt cherry pick the disasters…
A survivor’s story from MS Estonia
http://www.varsi.net/english/estonia1.shtml
I recently read a book about the recovery of the SS Central America, a sidewheel steamer that went down about 1857. It carried passengers back from the CA goldrush, and contained considerable amounts of gold.
All or nearly all the women survived. Most of the men didn’t.
The women and children first thing is very much a matter of Western culture, or even Anglo-american culture.
From Dodger’s Estonia link:
“Humans react very different from what they are supposed to in the event of a disaster.
60% of the people become totally inactive. They don’t do anything, and even if you tell them what to do, they still don’t.
Another 10-12% panic, totally panic. They do stupid things; scream, cry, and are not able to save themselves.
The next group of people are the ones, that don’t do anything themselves, but expect to be instructed of what to do. If you tell them, they will do anything you say, but if nobody tells them anything, they will most likely perish.
The next group are the ones that only think of themselves. They are dangerous, because they will do nothing other than save themselves; they even leave families and loved ones behind.
The final group of people are the opposite. They will do anything to save as many as possible, and often with great risk of their own lives.”
Nota bene: PBS is airing “WHY SHIPS SINK” on Nova this Wednesday at 9 pm EST.
I’m old enough to still believe in women and children first. Hell, I’ve spent my most productive years doing without so I could raise my kids, who turned out just fine, thank you.
I will admit that it is MY women and children first, though. After that the other women and children.
1912 Titanic Disaster: Was Racism To Blame?
http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/1912-titanic-disaster-was-racism-to-blame-t8819.html
🙂
Anybody hear of this too? That the reason why the 3rd class were kept locked below had nothing to do with Brit class snobbery and everything to do with US Govt bureaucracy: It was easier to process the tired and poor and huddled masses that way.
About Hitler’s Titanic movie. I’ve seen it and my German is pretty bad but I got the gist. A greedy corporation that put profits before people; anybody heard that one recently by any chance? But here’s the weird part. It was a Nazi wartime propaganda movie, so you expect rabies, but the British officers and crew were shown bravely doing their duty to the end. I’ve never seen a movie made in time of war where the enemies in uniform were treated with such respect.
rickl Says:
April 15th, 2012 at 11:54 am
In the interest of accuracy, I need to correct that. It was Dorothy Gibson, not Helen. And it was just one reel, only ten minutes long. It was released just one month after the sinking.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0002475/
Writing from memory is always a dicey proposition for me. 🙂
Apropos of nothing, I read the other day that, thanks to his numerous dives on the wreck, James Cameron has actually spent more time on Titanic than the original passengers and crew. I thought that was kind of interesting.