[Fair Paul]

Wasn’t there a rule of “women and children first” in the lifeboats? That can’t be, this was well before the age of feminism. Men are the source off all things bad.

[tanknetter]

Wasn’t there a rule of “women and children first” in the lifeboats? That can’t be, this was well before the age of feminism. Men are the source off all things bad.

The first lifeboats launched from the Titanic were only partially full. Few thought the ship would actually sink and wanted to go, so male passengers were allowed aboard to man the oars.

One of the many controversies of the sinking is that those initial launches did not return to the ship to pick up more passengers. This may have been partly due to difficulties in getting more people onto them while they were already in the water (the process was to fill the boats with people first, THEN lower them. So to put more passengers aboard they'd have to be hauled back up), but also because the crew manning the boats didn't want to deal with a mass of panicked passengers trying to scramble aboard ...