Thread: The Titanic and what men are like

The Titanic and what men are like
By Denise Noe


Atlanta’s Civic Center currently has an exhibition of Titanic memorabilia. April 15 is Titanic Remembrance Day, making this a good period to review to lessons from that catastrophe.

Late on the night of April 14, 1912, the supposedly unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg. By next morning, the ship was on its way down.

It is common knowledge that entrance into the lifeboats was made on the basis of “Women and Children First” but it is a point for reflection. An ancient cliché says, “It’s a man’s world.” Seeing the world as dominated by men is not without logic. Men have historically predominated in areas of formal power and in what can roughly be called “public” arenas.

However, a deeper look discloses that societies are composed of patriarchal and matriarchal elements with the latter dominating in some important respects. The patriarchal tradition excluded women from professions and demanded wives “obey” their husbands; the matriarchal tradition held men responsible for the support of their wives and debts incurred by them. The patriarchal tradition placed limits on how far women could rise; the matriarchal tradition placed limits on how far they could sink – figuratively in the sense of homelessness and hunger and occasionally literally.

The “Women and children first” rule on ships puts our matriarchal tradition into sharpest relief. Perhaps it is instructive to review its origins. According to “A ship tradition: women and children first,” at essortment, an online website, the tradition began in 1852 with the sinking of the HMS Birkenhead. The ship was sailing around the coast of southern Africa when she (is it patriarchal or matriarchal that a ship is a “she”?) ran into trouble. There were 638 people onboard, 476 British (presumably male) soldiers, and 20 women and children. On February 26, 1852, the ship ran onto a rock off the justifiably named Danger Point between Cape Hangklip and Cape Aguilhas. According to essortment, “The metal hull was torn open and just over a hundred soldiers drowned as they lay sleeping. The rest of the troops rushed on deck and tried to help the crew to man the pumps and free the lifeboats. Alas, the lifeboats had rarely, if ever been used and the rigging was clogged with paint and they were only able to free three of the lifeboats. The women and children were ushered into the three lifeboats.”

The commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Seton, ordered the men to stand fast lest they rush the lifeboats, swamping the small crafts and leading to the deaths of the women and children.

Some men survived because they were picked up by lifeboats or managed to swim to shore. However, most, like Seton himself, died.

The tradition grouping women with children is arguably “fair” because the physical differences between men and women mean that the former have a greater chance of swimming to safety. However, those chances can be minuscule. The rule means men must die so women can live.

That was true when the Titanic hit the iceberg.

According to Titanic Destination Disaster: The Legends and the Reality by John P. Eaton and Charles A. Haas, the wealthy and famous John Jacob Astor, “assist[ed] his five-months pregnant wife into [a] lifeboat, then asked the officer in charge if he might accompany her. After being refused, Astor joined the other gentlemen on deck in assisting ladies into the boat.”

Eaton and Haas write of the privilege conferred on females: “Generally on the port side only women and children were allowed in boats, while on the starboard side men could board if no women were present.”

Even when they could have entered a lifeboat, some men on board the doomed vessel felt duty bound to first see that women were safe. Eaton and Haas note that a first officer permitted men to enter one of the lifeboats but that “there were several gentlemen who, after assisting ladies into the boat, stood away and went elsewhere, to be lost.”

After the sinking of the Titanic, some women felt it imperative to honor the sacrifices made by the men on that tragic ship. The grateful women organized to raise money for the building of a monument to those men. Designed by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a statue was sculpted depicting a man with his head held high and outstretched arms in a kind of Christ-like pose. According to “Titanic Memorials,” the face of the figure resembles that of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s “brother, who coincidentally died on the Lusitania.”

On May 26, 1931, Helen Taft, wife of former President William H. Taft, unveiled the statue. President Herbert Hoover and several Cabinet members attended the ceremony. Erected in Washington D.C. in Rock Creek Park, it was moved in 1966 to make way for the creation of the John F. Kennedy School for the Performing Arts. It now stands near Fort McNair.

Below the figure is this inscription: “To The Brave Men Who Perished In The Wreck of the Titanic, April 15, 1912. They Gave Their Lives That Women and Children Might Be Saved. Erected By The Women Of America.”

All too often, men as a sex are judged by the worst actions of some: the rapist, the batterer, or the child molester. While individual men may be credited for the good they do, the positives are, unlike the negatives, rarely used to show “what they’re like” as a gender. However, the truth is that men have criminalized and punished the worst that some men do. They have sometimes mandated the best. Warren Farrell in his groundbreaking book, “The Myth of Male Power” pertinently asks, “If men make the rules, what does it say about men that they make rules demanding that they put the lives of women before their own?”

The Titanic Women’s Memorial stands as a tribute to the extraordinary self-sacrifice of which men are capable.

That sculpture may be seen at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootbearwdc/35733167/in/set-72057594085185449, at
http://www.titanic-titanic.com/titanic_memorial-washington_women.shtml, and at
http://www.pottsoft.com/home/titanic/womens_memorial.html.