Barbara Kay on the Titanic and women’s suffrage: It’s about votes and boats

One of the more fascinating spin-offs produced by the Titanic — which sank 100 years ago this weekend — was the public debate over women’s rights. Most of the survivors, it was almost immediately learned, were women and children: 75% of women and almost all the children were saved, as opposed to just 20% of the men.
At the time, women’s suffrage was a hot issue. In his 1965 book, Down with the Old Canoe: A cultural history of the Titanic disaster, Steven Biel, citing reports of wealthy men in first class sacrificing their lives for women and children, suggested “that women were better served by male chivalry than by the vote.” A popular refrain, “votes or boats,” illustrated the stark dichotomy of perceived choice between equality and existential entitlements. A letter to the editor of the St. Louis Post-Despatch of the time advises that “henceforth, when a woman talks women’s rights, she be answered with the word Titanic, nothing more, just Titanic.”

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