100 Years since the Titantic distaster

[Loz]

Clare from marketing? Maybe.

But anyone from HR I would gladly throw over the side myself. Even in the ship wasn't actually sinking.

[Otta]

Was "women & children first" not another way of saying "children first (because they are the future), and women with them, because they need to care for them" (something that men of the day wouldn't really have thought of as their role).

As an aside, "night to remember", when the bloke finds the lost little boy amidst all the chaos, and takes him, and holds him close as the ship sinks. Lump in throat moment.

[DJKillaQueen]

The other issue is that not all the passengers could be saved so a choice had to be made. As pointed out above for all the reasons stated, it was seen as the right thing to be done at the time that women and children be saved first and men tough it out to the inevitable end. There is another aspect to this victorian view of chivalry. While it's correct to say that women and children were seen as weaker, women were also the child bearers. Their role in continuing and raising the human race was also given some value. This was still a time of high infant mortality (birth rates were accordingly high) and population was regularly culled by diseases we can treat easily today. Women regularly died during child birth too.

It was all just a reflection of the times. Thimgs are different today and have changed on the whole for the better. In the aftermath of Titanic many rules regarding Maritime Health and Safety were changed. Today there would be no need to declare women and children first as all ships contain enough lifeboats/rafts for every passenger. There are still issues in reacting to accidents at sea though, that cost lives, and issues regarding the design of some types of vessels that accelerate sinking when accidents happen. Ultimately though....human error is something that no amount of tinkering with laws can completely eradicate, along with human behaviour, in all it's forms and variety, in the face of danger.

[woodrot]

We are now all experts on the Titanic it would seem.

[Alan Medic]

So when does the discussion on the Tit Antic begin?

[Mick Mac]

Declan. Please.

[maxxi]

woodrot Wrote:

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> We are now all experts on the Titanic it would

> seem.

"...and heading towards our own iceberg of ignorance" - C'mon woody - not like you to miss an open goal like that.

[woodrot]

Titanic experts are like Ripperologists innit

Like Captain Edward Smith, we should give some things a wide berth

/ ship puns

[DJKillaQueen]

What's the matter woody (may I call you that?). Disappointed that an effort to start a thread for people to ridicule and make fun of the deaths of approx 1500 people didn't pan out that way? :D

[woodrot]

.

[????]

Nope DJKQ. I'm with Woody on this.

It's not like the Somme or any WW1 remembrance enourmous, selfless sacrifice. Just a bunch of randoms on a big boat that hit an iceberg and didn't have enough lifebots - tragic for them and interesting on an 'intellectual' level. The mawkish Diana like sense of grief that some people (those tools on the boat that went to lay wreaths!) have for this when really, really, really there must be no-one in the world left who remembers anyone on it is a bit beyond me. The wall to wall coverage was ridiculous too.

Woodrot I salute your thread and others joined in a bit too.

[????]

PS twice as many people died on our roads last year

[Michael Palaeologus]

By drowning? Bloody Hell. Those drains need sorting.

[Mick Mac]

Sorry Quids, but not sure I can agree with you on this. It was far from a rich list of dead. It was a combination of working class passengers and then an additional 500 or so staff from Southampton who made up the dead.

Southampton mourned this tragedy more than any other town. I was coincidentally in Southampton on the anniversary week and went to the exhibition and the local feeling is still strong amongst families there.

100 years is a major anniversary and that will be the end of it.

More stella?

[????]

Mick, where did I say they were all rich???? Just saying it's all a bit mawkish sentimentality as they've all been gone a long, long time. Are there really huge swathes of Southampton that it's still raw with? My grandad was in Silverrtown when a massive bomb hit a shelter in 1940, the 'official' figures were 600 mainly school kids and women, you don't meet hardly anyone who was effected by this nowadays. It's all a bit ancient history...unless we want to 'emote' about this stuff for ever. A minutes silence for the Titanic? Behave. Nearly twice as many, and mainly kids, went dowm with the Luithisaina 3 years later...don't hear much about that. Just a bit of fake sentimentality in my book. Understand the interest for various reasons but the sentimantality MEH

[Huguenot]

Gosh, I didn't realise there was a lot of sentimentality going down - if so I'd have to agree with Quids, I can only imagine it's people vicariously reinventing emotions because they've seen the film surely?

[Alan Medic]

We are now the product of other peoples thoughts. What they write, we become...................well some of us.........you.

[DJKillaQueen]

While I can agree with quids on the passage of time and unfounded sentimentality, most historians on the other hand would agree that the Titanic was symbolic of many things and marked a turning point in the aftermath of the tragedy at the time. That's what makes it an interesting episode in History. Yes people die all the time, often in tragic circumstances, but sometimes the world changes as a result of those deaths. The impact of the Titanic on society (not to mention maritime health and safety) was as big as anything that has the same impact today. Chapter Seven in Walter Lord's book eloquently communicates what Titanic stood for at the time and came to symbolise since. And it's not the only landmark in Maritime History either, to be fair.

Also just to follow on Mac's point. I can totally understand why Southampton would want to mark a 100th anniversary of a tragedy so attached to the city. Who are any of us to ridicule that?

[Townleygreen]

Also, there were 4-5000 who drowned in 1940 when the Lancastria was sunk off Brittany