Women and Children First

"Women and children first" (or to a lesser extent, the Birkenhead Drill) is a code of conduct whereby the lives of women and children are to be saved first in a life-threatening situation, typically abandoning ship, when survival resources such as lifeboats were limited.

While the phrase first appeared in the 1860 novel Harrington: A Story of True Love, by William Douglas O'Connor, the first documented application of "women and children first" occurred during the 1852 evacuation of the Royal Navy troopship HMS Birkenhead. It is, however, most famously associated with the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912. As a code of conduct, "women and children first" has no basis in maritime law. According to disaster evacuation expert Ed Galea, in modern-day evacuations people will usually "help the most vulnerable to leave the scene first. It's not necessarily women, but is likely to be the injured, elderly and young children."

The first-known appearance of the phrase "women and children first" occurred in the 1860 novel Harrington: A Story of True Love, during the recounting of the death of Captain Harrington, the father of the eponymous character John Harrington. Captain Harrington’s fictional death illustrates not only the concept of "women and children first" but also that of "the captain goes down with his ship".

"Back from the boats," [Captain Harrington] shouts, catchin' up the hand-spike. "The first man that touches a boat I'll brain. Women and children first, men."...

"Timbs," says he, "give my love to my wife and boy, if I never see 'em again. God bless ye, men."...

[Captain Eldad] paused, wiping away with his sleeve the salt tears which the simple epic of a brave man's death brought to his eyes. "That was the story, and them was the last words Timbs brought home to your mother ... An' that's the way he died. Women and children saved. That's a comfort...But he died...

"It was a manly way to leave the world," [John Harrington] said. "Life is sweet to me with the memory of such a father."

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ships typically did not carry enough lifeboats to save all the passengers and crew in the event of disaster. In 1870, answering a question at the House of Commons of the United Kingdom about the sinking of the paddle steamer Normandy, George Shaw-Lefevre said that,

...
Wikipedia