Shipwrecks and Chivalry

This paper critically examines the nineteenth and early twentieth century revival of chivalry in Britain, with a particular emphasis on chivalry at sea. It gives a history to the so-called ‘eternal law of the sea’, the chivalric code of ‘women and children first’ during shipwrecks. For most of the nineteenth century, chivalry at sea had been organised around national identity, as well as class/race divisions between men. As a code, it justified the control of working class or foreign sailors by their class superiors. As a fable, shipwreck chivalry was emblematic of the need to exclude plebeian men and imperial subjects from political rights. At the turn of the century, working class sailors became more threatening, and were perceived as increasingly moblike, and even dangerously feminised. Codes of chivalry, and thus of control, became shriller and more insisted upon. But they could not continue to function as a means of illustrating appropriate class relations. For Edwardians, the new political claims of women generated a new shipwreck narrative, one in which all men, and not merely ruling class men, would put women first. The 1912 Titanic disaster can be situated as a key historical juncture, a point of choice between chivalry as dividing men, or as distinguishing all men from women. These narrative choices are explored in the paper. 1912 appears not as a highpoint of chivalry, but a moment of contestation. It is, I conclude, not helpful to describe a revival of chivalry without giving the components of chivalry their own history, and showing the varying uses to which they were put. Nor is it appropriate to see the Great War as an abrupt curtailment of an otherwise flourishing code of chivalry; chivalry was malleable and open to interpretation before the war, and was still in play after it, though with a new set of emphases that spoke to the concerns of interwar political argument.

The year 1912 has been portrayed as a highpoint of a revival of chivalry in Britain, a year which included the Scott Polar expedition, the ‘Elizabethan Triumph’ jousting tournament, and the sinking of the Titanic. Mark Girouard’s classic account describes chivalry as representing a code of behaviour for Victorian and Edwardian men, of bravery, loyalty, purity and protection of women.^¹ He sees chivalry as a successful and dominant code of conduct, dissolving the antagonism between middle and upper class Britons through the mythic image of a ‘gentleman’. Chivalry, he concludes, ‘helped keep England free from political rancour and war between the classes,’ and resulted, in the main part, in a ‘brave, honest, honourable and self-controlled’ ruling class.^² Extending this analysis, C J Hamilton points to the Victorian and Edwardian idealisation of ‘that type of English virtue, at once manful and godly, practical and enthusiastic, prudent and self-sacrificing,’ that was celebrated above all in naval heroes.^³ A picture emerges of chivalry as a benign, if slightly naïve, set of ideas that made for a comfortable class and gender settlement, and one that by the Edwardian age, Phillip Mason has argued, was almost universally accepted and aspired to.^⁴ This status quo was, it is argued, given a ‘death wound’ by the experiences of the Great War. The war shattered the illusions of a generation of aspiring ‘gentlemen’, and also created a socio-economic world in which chivalry could not be sustained – strictures on honour and ‘playing the game’, many commentators argue, became irrelevant.

This paper challenges this account of chivalry amongst Edwardians and Victorians. First, I examine the fragility of the idea of chivalry. Though a renewed interest in chivalry can certainly be traced out in the nineteenth century, chivalry should be seen as a discourse that was full of anomalies, and did not act as a coherent ‘normative centre’ for Victorian and Edwardian social conduct. Second, I argue that the absence of the experiences and voices of women and working class men from historians’ accounts of chivalry gives a false picture of consensus concerning this social ideal and code of conduct. This cannot be sustained when assertive and vocal late Victorian and Edwardian women and working class men are taken into account. This paper examines the resistance to chivalry among such women and men, and their proposals of alternative (mythic) codes of conduct. 1912 has been claimed to be a moment of vindication of chivalry, but was in fact a site for the rehearsal of new social norms and emphases, reflecting the unsettled socio-political environment and erosion of certainty for late Edwardians.

The ‘lens’ through which this paper examines the idea of chivalry is that of shipwreck narratives, and specifically, the ideal of ‘women and children first’.^⁵ I outline the development and dissemination of ‘crisis codes of behaviour’ for British seafarers, looking at their content, who they were intended to apply to, and how they altered with the material, technological and social changes experienced within the maritime world. This ‘genre’ is chosen due to it being widely used by historians (as well as Victorians and Edwardians themselves) as emblematic of chivalry.^⁶ Shipwreck narratives have not received much attention as a specific textual form, but had a distinctive, stylised format, were widely published, and clearly fascinated Victorians and Edwardians. Shipwreck narratives were developed within numerous popular pamphlets and books^⁷, fictional adventure stories^⁸, moral didactic literature^⁹, newspaper and periodical reports, and political commentaries, as sites for the discussion of character, masculinity, and concepts of ‘Britishness’ or ‘Englishness’.^¹⁰ Maritime conventions and seafaring were perceived as important components of British commercial, cultural and political life. They carried a weight of cultural meanings on many levels, symbolising Britain’s global pre-eminence in naval and merchant shipping affairs, her peculiar destiny as an ‘island nation’, the development of an honourable and upright naval officer or captain class, a site for the formation of ‘rugged’, independent working class masculinity, and so on. The ideology of ‘manly’ behaviour at sea was extremely important in shaping the broad social consensus concerning the nature of (chivalrous) masculinity. But this was not an unchanging entity; shipwreck narratives and their components such as ‘women and children first’ can be given a history, and be seen to have attached to them fluctuating meanings, according to political, cultural and material context. Shore life and shipboard life were at interplay; behaviour at sea could legitimate and sanctify conventions of behaviour on the shore, while equally, crises at sea could problematise gender relations and chivalry in a much wider sphere than on board ship. There was no static tradition of ‘women and children first’ which could be ‘vindicated’ by events such as the 1912 Titanic disaster, but rather a number of groups making strategic political choices concerning which narrative emphasis within stories of chivalry or heroism best served their interests. Chivalry was thus quite a malleable concept, and could be moulded to suit different groups.

The ‘law of the sea’

‘Women and children first’ was celebrated among Victorian and Edwardian commentators as a long-standing practice – a ‘tradition’, ‘unwritten law’, ‘law of human nature’, ‘the ancient chivalry of the sea’, a ‘communal morality … handed down in the race’^¹¹ It embodied the chivalric ideals of protection of the weak, exaggerated respect for women, courage and bravery on the part of men. Its practice is mentioned in some eighteenth century accounts of shipwrecks, and it certainly seems to have been part of maritime culture long before the ‘revival’ of chivalry of the nineteenth century. The new emphasis on chivalry in the nineteenth century, however, gave a different gloss to the practice of ‘women and children first’ – what had perhaps been a humane impulse to help those who were less likely to know how to swim, or were physically handicapped by pregnancy, heavy dress or youth, became a stronger and more normative code of honour, manliness and sacrifice. In other words, maritime chivalry took on more mythic elements^¹² and became more significant in broader national culture.

Greater attention to ‘women and children first’ as a form of chivalry can be dated from the wreck of the Birkenhead in 1852.^¹³ This wreck became lauded and commemorated for its example of manly discipline. A troop ship, carrying 631 crew, soldiers and their families, foundered off the coast of South Africa. Lifeboats were not easily launched, being ‘rusted in from sheer neglect and want of overhauling…’, but those boats available were reserved for women and children, of whom there were around 30.^¹⁴ After the boats had been launched, the captain then made a second ‘traditional’ declaration of ‘every man for himself’. But the commanding officer, fearing that the women’s lifeboats would be swamped, threatened any man who broke ranks with his sword. It was reported that only three men leapt overboard, and in the end, all women and children were saved. This event served, until the Titanic, as the paradigmatic example of male bravery, and was widely appropriated as an example of English character. A survivor’s account concluded ‘Thank God, it can seldom be said that Englishmen have left women and children to perish and saved their own lives.’^¹⁵ The Birkenhead story, it was reported in England, was read out to Prussian troops by the Kaiser, as an example of manly heroism. It served, therefore, to delineate English heroism from other national cultures – gender identity serving as a point around which national identity could be organised. Stemming from mythic moments such as the Birkenhead wreck, maritime traditions such as ‘women and children first’ served a cultural symbolic role in nineteenth century British understandings of gender and nation, as part of a complex of ‘rules’ enacted by chivalric men and protected women.

However, no simple narrative of unified allegiance to ‘women and children first’ in nineteenth century texts can be found. It appears that the meanings attached to ‘women and children first’ were not strongly insisted upon or ‘policed’ as a form of cultural narrative. Though well-established as a myth, a fascinating unconcern with heroism and chivalry could emerge from shipwreck narratives in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Counterexamples to the Birkenhead narrative abound. Some of these were simply narratives that did not include any reference to ‘women and children first’, despite their presence on board ship. The Amazon, sunk in the same year as the Birkenhead, gave an example of complete unconcern for the fate of women and children on the part of the crew. A survivor from the emigrant ship the Northfleet, sunk in 1873, described meeting clusters of women as the ship went down, but ‘did not stop to speak to them for I was looking towards the boats, thinking that I might get hold of one of them yet.’ When asked by a mother to save her baby, he records ‘I could not do anything. For I felt the last had come.’ In the end, only one woman and two children were saved, while 83 men were rescued.^¹⁶ A survivor of the Pegasus wreck in 1843 wrote ‘the stewardess attempted to get hold of me, but I extricated myself from her in order to save my own life.’^¹⁷ Survivors and authors clearly felt little need to censor themselves or emphasise their subscription to gender norms.

The wreck of the London, an emigrant ship, sunk near Plymouth, England in 1865, is especially revealing for the lack of concern for chivalry in survivors’ narratives. Of 258 on board, only 19 survived, none of whom were women. A survivor’s account is notable for its failure to display appropriately chivalrous sentiments. He mentions ‘the horror of being in the company of nearly frantic girls and women, who thought that every roll would be the last, and not quite clear on that point yourself…’. When manning the pumps, he noted ‘I felt much happier here, away from the women, for seeing so many frightened had made me feel worse…’. When given a chance to escape, the crew revealed a very superficial and token concern for women:

‘When the sailors saw that the [life]boat was safe, and there was a chance of getting away, then they were anxious to have a few women. Mr Munroe was at the side, intending to leap, when they sung out to bring a lady; he turned round … and asked the nearest, a young girl of 16 or 18, if she would go. She said ‘yes’. They went to the side to jump, but when she saw the fearful sight below, the little boat being tossed about and a prospect of being smashed at every heave of the sea against the iron wall of the ship, she said ‘I can’t do that.’ There was no time for delay or consideration; as she would not leap, Munroe, seeing the boat shoved off, leaped in himself.’^¹⁸

The narrative concludes with a repeated description of the captain’s failure to make any provision for ‘the ladies’ as ‘unaccountable’. Clearly, the writer felt some tension concerning men’s treatment of women during this wreck, but not so much concern as to try to give an appropriately ‘tailored’ account it. Indeed, what emerges is his somewhat tenuous grip on his own ‘rugged’ masculinity, and uncertainty over how women should be treated in a crisis situation. There was, then, a lack of self-censorship, or social pressure for narratives to cohere around a conventional gender order. Even in the fabled Birkenhead disaster, the troops had gained self-control under the threat of violence. Moreover, for some commentators, the officers were portrayed as self-interested rather than heroic and chivalrous.^¹⁹ A survivor, Lieutenant Girardot, described the behaviour of officers in less than admirable terms: ‘Most of the officers lost their lives from losing their presence of mind and trying to take money with them, and from not throwing off their coats.’ He also commented ‘a great many more might have been saved but the boats that were got down deserted us and went off.’^²⁰ His comments reveal a current of criticism within the overall Birkenhead eulogy to English manhood. In sum, the Birkenhead did not represent a long-standing tradition of putting women first, but a celebrated exception; and even there, it was military discipline rather than a ‘law of the sea’ which was recognised to have saved the women and children. Nonetheless, during the second half of the nineteenth century, it was read as establishing such a tradition of chivalry – but not one to which all women were equally entitled, nor all men governed by.

Nuances of the ‘women and children first’ myth are revealed through attention to the class and racial status of the women to be saved; not all women were given equal precedence. The convention ‘women and children first’ in the nineteenth century would in fact have been better stated ‘ladies first’, followed by white women and children. In a number of accounts, the saving of ‘all the ladies’ was mentioned, while ‘women’ were yet to be saved; in the Northfleet wreck of 1873, clear priority was given to the captain’s wife over the emigrant women. An account of the loss of the Kent in 1825 distinguishes between ‘the lady passengers’ and the soldiers’ wives and children. The former were given precedence, and indeed once the cutter had been filled, ‘the remaining women and children had to be tied together and lowered by ropes from the stern,’ during which process many drowned.^²¹ During the sinking of the Halswell, the captain, officers and ladies barricaded themselves in the poop deck, refusing admittance to working class and non-European women.^²² Commentators frequently talked in terms of a ‘law of human nature’ of women’s precedence. But in fact, the class and racial dimensions of precedence in life saving were better established than the supposedly universal norms of chivalry.

Class and race divisions also operated amongst the men who were supposed to enact chivalry. Whether certain groups of men could put women and children first in disasters signaled their class and national status.^²³ The sources I have examined suggest that it served the interests of commentators on maritime affairs to emphasise ‘women and children first’ as a tradition that working class or foreign seafarers or passengers (mostly steerage emigrants or soldiers) could not be trusted to observe. In many accounts of shipwrecks in the mid to late nineteenth century, descriptions of the failure of chivalry among working class and non-British men are prominent. Many narratives portrayed ‘women and children first’ as a priority – but only for the Anglo Saxon officers, and not the men. The Arctic wreck of 1845 was one where the captain’s reported order of ‘women and children first’ was entirely ignored. In the sinking of the Northfleet, a survivor noted ‘there was a terrible panic … among the strong, rough men, when it became apparent that the vessel was sinking. The wild rush for the boats, and the mad confusion which took place, were like the trampling of a herd of buffaloes.’ This language of animality was common within shipwreck narratives – the panicked men were frequently compared with wild animals (‘rabid tigers’, ‘hornets’, ‘wild-cats’ etc) and pictured as stampeding, trampling, or baying. Within these narratives, the ship’s captain or commanding officers typically played the role of proposing or enforcing ‘women and children first’, by appealing to the moral sensibility of the men or, more commonly, by violence. In the Northfleet disaster:

‘Poor Captain Knowles, brave as a hero all this time, was nevertheless angered at the reckless selfishness of the men, and he drew a pistol and threatened the big fellows, who were leaping helter-skelter into the boats. He said:- ‘The boats are not for such as you; they are for the women and children… Despite the threats and entreaties of the captain and boatswain, the men continued to throng into the boats. Captain Knowles discharged his pistol several times and wounded one man, who, however, kept his place in the boat. At length, Mrs Knowles was got on board…’^²⁴

It is clear, however, that the emigrant women and children did not have their interests defended in the same way as the captain’s wife.

So despite ‘women and children first’ being known as ‘a law of human nature’, the working class or foreign seafarer was widely regarded as unable to put the weak first; steerage men, soldiers and sailors were portrayed as actually or potentially mob-like, and in need of control by their social superiors. Where they were disciplined, it was seen as the strength of traditionally structured hierarchies that kept them in their place, or the threat of violence. The prevalent focus of shipwreck narratives was on men controlling other men, rather than on the role or fate of women at sea. As John Tosh has argued, for late nineteenth century middle class men, ‘Chivalry towards women was de rigueur, but it was secondary. Manliness was essentially a code which regulated the behaviour of men towards each other.’^²⁵ Gender served to foreground class and racial difference, and provide a justification for the political and social control of the ‘animality’ of working class men. By lacking chivalry, working class sailors were held to be correspondingly unable to display civic and political virtue. A Fabian commentator, Benjamin Hall, noted in 1893:

‘A working sailor is not a member of the community in the actual at all. He does not live in it, … and he can do nothing, by taking thought, for its welfare. … In the upward development of the community he has no part, doomed to remain eternally beyond the pale. He can never be a citizen: to become that he must cease to be a sailor.’^²⁶

Citizens were required to put the interests of the vulnerable first, in Hall’s terms, to display ‘the subordination of personal interests, or groups of interests, to those of the whole, and collaterally, the cultivation of a sense of individual responsibility...’ Maritime masculinity was described by Hall as ‘anarchic’ and expressed in ‘riot and disorder’. The very qualities that made for an attractive form of ‘rugged’ masculinity in sailors – independence, physical strength, horizontal comradeship - could threaten the political order and class hierarchy, and thus had to be controlled by political exclusion. The obedient sailor, and not the chivalrous one, was the ideal:

‘There is neither need nor opportunity for common action on board ship, save in the temporary necessities of danger; but not then is there call for thought or sense of responsibility. Blind, unreasoning, unqualified obedience is [the sailor’s] ideal, held up to him by law, and rendered easy of achievement by the alternative of Irons and the Goal.’^²⁷.^²⁸

Shipwreck narratives split men according to whether they had internalised the norms of chivalry or not. This served to shore up authority structures aboard ship and, through the circulation of shipwreck narratives, to preserve conventional class authority more generally in British society. This late nineteenth century desire for an obedient sailor can be linked to a change in the profile of men who went to sea in the late nineteenth century, as the material conditions of seafaring changed. That seafarers were seen as newly insubordinate and politically aware is partly explained by the new class of working men at sea. Rather than the skilful and deferential sailor, men at sea might be ‘ordinary’ working men – engineers, stokers, labourers of all kinds, needed to staff the new steam-driven passenger liners and merchant ships. Shipboard working life was becoming seen as much more similar to shore life, and sailors could now merely be seen as ‘working men that got wet’, with a greater potential for working class militancy and less interest in traditional ‘codes of behaviour’ at sea.

The perceived experience of ‘deskilling’ in the second half of the nineteenth century, as steam replaced sail and ships expanded in size, was widely seen as not only bringing a new kind of working man to sea, but also having an emasculating effect.^²⁹ Historians have argued that the Victorian and Edwardian periods witnessed a slowly developing crisis in maritime masculinity, as men were asked to take on an increasing range of service tasks at sea.^³⁰ Margaret Creighton argues that ‘the industrialisation of shipping and the shift from sail to steam would certainly have serious consequences for a mariner’s sense of manhood and for relations between the seafaring sexes. Even as it was becoming more important for men to define themselves in terms of combative, strenuous, and daring labor, … it became less possible to do so at sea.’^³¹ The increasing focus on luxury and convenience among passenger lines required a higher level of service staff on board ship. This shifted the gender profile of employees to slowly include more women, while also shifting the nature of masculinity at sea as seafaring life became ‘disturbingly domesticated’.^³² Stereotypes of ‘British Jack Tar’ could no longer convey a mythic world in which women went first. The mid-Victorian sailor had been a relatively unproblematic site for a cultural projection of ‘rugged’ masculinity and its social confinement. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, this could no longer be assumed; sailors became closer to the working men of the shore, worked at service tasks, and had begun to make political demands. Britain witnessed a public debate on the deterioration of seamanship, loss of skills, and routinisation of work. This concern was not only for the declining skill of seafaring, but for its traditions – including, of course, traditions of maritime chivalry.

Uncertainty about maritime masculinity led to some ambivalence among Edwardians over how to portray seafarers and their gender order. Sailors could be portrayed either as brutal and self-interested (the politically conscious sailor), or as emasculated and thus prone, like women, to mob-behaviour and panic, unable to put women first because of their own feminised state.^³³ Either way, sailors seemed predisposed to act as a mob. As an early Edwardian fictional adventure story describes it, during a shipwreck, the men represented

‘selfishness triumphant, beating down and eradicating in a moment every nobler instinct of humanity. It was ‘every man for himself’ with a vengeance; women and children were struck out of men’s way with horrid curses and savage, murderous blows; men were fighting together like furious beasts… The struggling crowd was no longer human, save in shape; it had become a mob of senseless, raging demons.’^³⁴

This language of ‘mob’ and ‘crowd’ parallels the concerns emerging within British political culture at the fin-de-siècle over the nature of ‘the crowd’ in political life. Political theorists, following Gustave Le Bon, feared the influence of demagoguery, mass advertising and mass popular participation in democracy, as likely to undermine the status quo.^³⁵ For Liberal MP Charles Masterman, the crowd was the most notable feature of modern life, which he described in startling terms in 1909:

‘there is a note of menace in it, in the mixed clamour which rises from its humours and angers, like the voice of the sea in gathering storm. There is the evidence of possibilities of violence in its waywardness, its caprice, its always incalculable mettle and temper, forming in the aggregate a personality differing altogether from the personalities of its component atoms… But more than menace, the overwhelming impression is one of ineptitude; a kind of life grotesque and meaningless.’^³⁶

This was exemplified by politicised and unionised Edwardian sailors.^³⁷ The Sunday Times referred to a seamans’ strike in 1912 as ‘a manifestation of the real reason why these men belong to the lower social strata and why they should be among the governed and not among the rulers.’ Sailors represented ‘men who are not endowed with a full sense of their civic responsibilities and are incapable of responding to a healthy public opinion, … a drunken and noisy rabble whose excitability has been aroused by the oratorical outpourings of professional demagogues.’^³⁸

In sum, by 1912 we can see the code of chivalry as perceived as under attack by the values of the mass society. Traditions such as ‘women and children first’ became more shrilly insisted upon by Edwardians, in order to shore up an eroding status quo.^³⁹ Narratives of shipwrecks took on a more strident, didactic tone, and ‘discrepancies’ in chivalrous behaviour surfaced less often. The relatively unpoliced nature of chivalry in the mid nineteenth century was replaced by a narrower, more exacting code to which narratives – though probably not behaviour - conformed. As Steven Biel has commented on North American shipwreck narratives, epitomised in the 1912 Titanic events: ‘there was an insistent, combative quality to the narrative that belied the assurances; the heroism was laid on too thickly.’^⁴⁰ Baden-Powell asserted in Scouting for Boys (1908) that ‘of course, in accidents men and boys will always see that the women and children are safely got out of danger, before they think of going themselves. In two wrecks which occurred in 1906 … it was notable how carefully arrangements were made for saving the women and children and old people, before any idea was given as to how the men were to be rescued.^⁴¹ Edwardian narrators reported shipwreck events as exemplary: ‘an orderly procession of women and children to the gangway. No confusion, no haste, no prearrangement even; only pleasant words and short farewells.’^⁴² There was a renewed interest in the Birkenhead, with commemorating volumes published in 1902 and 1906.^⁴³ But simple tales of gentlemanly chivalry and moblike sailors were not longer adequate to shore up the status quo. For Edwardians, changes in the position of women introduced another unsettling dimension into the shipwreck genre.

Women at sea and in shipwrecks

Seafaring was a particularly ‘masculine’ realm, where few women were found in the mid-nineteenth century. Where they did encroach, it was to be as protected visitors, or objects to be safely transported, depending on the woman’s class status. ‘Feminine characteristics’ of hysteria, physical weakness and weakness of character meant that women could not successfully occupy the ‘male sphere’ of the ship at sea.^⁴⁴ In nineteenth century shipwreck narratives, women of all classes served as objects around which male behaviour could be discursively ‘organised’. During the Birkenhead disaster, women were loaded into lifeboats in a fashion described by survivors to be ‘a wretched task’ of ‘main force’. It is important to note that many women did not acquiesce in the ‘women and children first’ tradition, which was enforced against their wishes: ‘Tearing [the women] from their husband’s sides, they were carried over to the bulwark and dropped over the ship’s side.’^⁴⁵ Mythic chivalry and precedence was acknowledged to be a process of ‘the terrified women being torn from their husbands and dragged to the gangway by main force.’^⁴⁶ Women were often treated as inanimate or passive objects in accounts of their survival. Many authors used a language that denied any agency to women, speaking of the ‘disposal’ or ‘deposit’ of the ‘cargo’ of women and children. A Birkenhead survivor noted his feelings on seeing the women forced to the boats: ‘It is hard to describe the sensation of oppression removed from one’s mind on knowing the utterly helpless part of the ship’s living cargo had been deposited in comparative safety.’^⁴⁷

As well as passive objects of cargo, women also served as hysterics, dangers to the process of evacuation. The shipwreck genre lent itself to a combined emphasis on heroic individuals and the passive or hysterical crowd from which the hero was to be distinguished. Women passengers admirably served the purpose of providing a dramatic backdrop of despair, panic and lack of initiative. On the Evening Star, sunk in 1866, ‘women rushed on deck, and sobbed and wept, ceaselessly demanding if there was no hope of safety. The captain was compelled, as a measure of precaution, to send them below again, and fasten the doors of their cabins.’^⁴⁸ Mid-Victorian women, then, were to be contained; the rule giving them precedence was partly for the relief and safety of the men on board ship. Where precedence was not feasible, they might instead be locked up. Nineteenth century chivalry norms did not insist that such treatment be disguised.

But like British working class men, British women came to resist their status as objects and hysterics in the late nineteenth century. Their demands for professional opportunities, education, political rights and equality dramatically culminated in widespread political activism in the Edwardian period.^⁴⁹ The increasingly high profile of feminist and suffrage demands brought forth a response in some shipwreck narratives, which could be used to counter claims for women’s equality. As women grew more politically insistent, so commentators referred back to shipwrecks as events that proved their physical inferiority, inability to govern their emotions and general lack of political virtues. The key message was that women’s interests were safe in men’s hands; far from exploiting women’s weak position, men would put them first, both in politics and at sea, as long as women did not encroach on their sphere. It was implied that gender norms continued in their traditional form in the maritime world, uncorrupted by feminism. In 1908, an anti-feminist, Ethel Harrison used a shipwreck narrative to convey appropriate gender relations, in which ‘purity of type’ would be preserved and each sex would know its place:

‘In the recent terrible shipwreck off the Dutch coast, when death seemed imminent and the sailors were straining every nerve to save the passengers and ship, a little company of women – chorus singers in the great opera, returning home weary and disappointed – rallied round them the half-frozen, half-starved passengers, and through the long and dreadful night sang to them hymns and choruses from Wagner and other composers, given their souls in song to cheer, stimulate and uplift. What award of merit can be made where all is noble? But the men acted as men, the women as women.’^⁵⁰

Women might be ‘heroic’ in crises at sea, but only by a strict division of labour, leaving men to the real task of chivalrous life-saving. Another Edwardian anti-feminist, Harold Owen, looked back to the famed Birkenhead chivalry, glossing over the question of class differences between men: ‘The wreck of the Birkenhead is man’s answer to the cry for equality of the sexes; and I do not understand the man or woman who wishes to produce such an ‘equality’ between the sexes that the cry of ‘Women first!’ will sound absurd and ‘mid-Victorian’ … For, of course, it will always be heard.’^⁵¹ Gendered codes at sea continued to serve as a symbolic representation of an appropriate class and gender order in this new context of women’s demands - as fables that warned of the social and political outcomes of deviating from the status quo. But this shift in focus from chivalry as the control of men by men to the control of women meant that the emphasis on the mob-like tendencies of working class men was problematised. If all men did not chivalrously stand back to give women precedence, then it could be argued that men were not fit to look after women’s interests. Edwardian shipwreck narrators hesitated, as they faced a choice between a portrayal of class conflict, or a new narrative of transcendence of class in the interests of a unified masculinity, a united front against feminist claims. Titanic narratives convey this moment of hesitancy and choice, and are best read as a site of competing meanings of the idea of chivalry, as well as an opportunity for new ‘morals’ and fables to emerge.

The Titanic

The loss of the Titanic on April 15 1912 brought the strategic choices concerning male chivalry to the forefront of British political argument. That women and children had been saved ahead of men was central to almost all accounts of the disaster in the periodical and newspaper press. Many historians have taken the frequent references to chivalry and heroism to mean that these were unquestioned frames of reference used to make sense of the disaster.^⁵² But dilemmas of emphasis persisted. Should the Titanic ‘women and children first’ narrative convey class/race hierarchy and the need for control of mob-like working class men? Could it somehow justify women’s political claims? Or should it imply a unified masculinity, that transcended class difference and vindicated men’s claims that they protected women? Survivors’ accounts would support various options – some spoke of total discipline and lack of panic; others of steerage mobs rushing the boats and the use of violence by captain and crew to contain the men.^⁵³ The attraction of an account that retained the nineteenth century formula of mob-like plebeian men was that it emphasised their lack of political responsibility and need for control by social superiors. The disadvantage was that it gave an argument to feminists – women’s interests could not be safely governed by men. In the face of women’s claims, most commentators preferred to situate the sexes as two homogenous and fundamentally divided groups, and thus to group together all men during shipwreck. The Daily Mail’s editorial of April 17 1912 chose this option of class transcendence, reinforced by a concluding biblical quote:

‘Those who are saved are not the strong and able-bodied but the weak and the dependent – not the grasping millionaire from the private suite on the promenade deck, clutching a roll of banknotes, or the lusty shell-back from the fore-peak, wielding the sheath-knife plucked from his leather belt, but the defenceless wives and sisters and children, from the saloon and steerage alike… Thus is our civilisation vindicated; thus it is demonstrated that the mainsprings of action in us are spiritual; thus does man prove his fitness to be the master of things, because he is master of himself; thus is “death swallowed up in victory.”’^⁵⁴

The cultural and political message is clear - men had vindicated their ‘fitness to be the master of things’ by transcending their traditional divisions. This approach served two purposes – to deny women’s political claims, and to deny the existence of class conflict. The message was reinforced by an accompanying poem, titled ‘The Law of the Sea’, which also celebrated the transcendence of class – men of all classes (if British) would put women of all classes first, due to their shared gender and racial heritage:

Some commentators even abandoned the racial or national element to the narrative in their desire to stress the unity of men. E F W Barker argued in the Daily Mail that the chivalry tradition was not one of civilisation, but ‘one of Nature’s laws which decree that the male animal will always protect the female… There never can be and never will be “equality” of the sexes, otherwise the weaker is bound to go to the wall.’ The Daily Mail editor felt compelled to comment that feminists were ‘clearly wrong in describing the man’s sacrifice as if it were merely a “fine tradition of the sea.” It is more than a tradition. It is an instinct common to mankind in every civilised and uncivilised country. To protect the life and honour of his women the savage in darkest Africa does not hesitate to lay down his life. Most of the tribal wars and the blood feuds among the Pathans have their origin in this instinct.’^⁵⁶ Given the prevailing tradition of strong racial prejudice in shipwreck narratives, this was a remarkable shift. It was clearly felt that the gender status quo was worth defending even at the expense of the racial hierarchy other commentators had attempted to set up in order to explain the Titanic events.

Constant references to male sacrifices on behalf of women dominated the press coverage of the Titanic – ‘Without any distinction of rank or wealth or strength, the men stood aside. There was no wild fight for life, in which the stronger gained an ignoble victory. The ancient law of the sea, ‘women and children first’ was maintained with perfect courage by more than a thousand men… In the words of the Prime Minister, ‘the best traditions of the sea’ were observed ‘in the willing sacrifices which were offered to give the first chance of safety to those who were least able to help themselves’.’^⁵⁷ Though the papers were forced to admit that ‘there may, indeed, have been isolated cases in which a man here or there momentarily lost his self-command’,^⁵⁸ these were glossed over and downplayed. The Daily Telegraph editor concluded: ‘At such moments, what man gives a thought to the ‘war of the sexes? In the face of a calamity, men are still men, and women are still women… In the hour of mourning … it is a healing thought that the old chivalrous cry of English seamen ‘women and children first!’ rang from deck to deck...’^⁵⁹

The political subtext to these comments was rendered explicit by anti-feminists and anti-suffragists. They immediately perceived the Titanic events as a fable, a means of discounting the entire feminist and ‘progressive democratic’ case. A broad political analogy was made in the Sunday Times, in order to reject the political claims of the excluded, in favour of the ‘virility’, ‘grandeur of character’ and right to rule of the ‘men of Anglo-Saxon blood’:

‘Veritably, on a small scale the Titanic was a nation. She had her government and social classes and every man to his duty. She was sailed by an aristocracy, the trained and tried captain and his officers… the chances of destruction are, of course, minimised when sailed by a nautical aristocracy. And, conversely, they would be illimitably increased if a vessel were sailed by the contradictory and clamorous counsels of her democracy, the passengers and crew. Obvious though this is, we as a nation are sailing yet a mightier vessel than the Titanic, by the divided and incoherent counsel of a democracy incompetent to guide the affairs of state. Every nation is a vessel launched upon seas deeper, more tumultuous, more fraught with unseen dangers, than the Atlantic or Pacific.’^⁶⁰

On April 19, Harold Owen published a column in the Daily Mail titled ‘“Women First!” And the Cry of “Sex Equality”.’^⁶¹ He called for a rethinking of ‘the sex war’ in the light of the Titanic, and asked whether ‘the claim for even political equality which Feminists prosecute cannot be presented with more respectful regard for that sex which has again shown, as it will still show again and again, that it is willing to pay the price of its notion of sex inequality.’ Owen dwelt on ‘Feminist propaganda’ that implied a disbelief in chivalry, and a disrespect for men. In the ideal Feminist world of sex-equality, he argued, ‘the sloping decks of the great ship would have beheld a struggle that would have been, I think, in itself a greater tragedy than that which two hemispheres now mourn; and the boats would have pushed away from the ship’s side laden with the shame of unmanly shamelessness.’ But actual events had vindicated the proponents of chivalry; in ‘the sacrifice of men to man’s theory of “the weaker sex”’, men ‘exhibit the justice of sex inequality.’ What kind of person, Owen concluded, ‘would ask for such equality as would have degraded the tragedy to a squalid struggle between proclaimed “equals”, all fighting ignobly for life in a world from which the code of manliness was banished?’ The usual class conflict emphasis found within accounts of chivalry was notably absent, and ‘manliness’ could apply to all men.

Anti-feminist interpretations of chivalry following the Titanic wreck were common, but did not go unchallenged. Contemporary political argument reveals a number of competing interpretations of chivalry. How did British feminists counter the anti-feminist emphasis? Two strategies can be picked out. First, some argued that the logic of chivalry required putting women first in politics as well as aboard ships. These feminists dwelt on women’s special role as life preservers, and rooted their arguments within theories of sexual difference. This option left shipwreck chivalry more or less in place; chivalry was validated and even implied women’s political inclusion. Second, others offered a critical analysis of chivalry, and tried to attach new sets of meanings to shipwrecks.^⁶² I shall look at these in turn.

The first strategy was a more polemical one, used for instant and popular political effect. It did not challenge the ‘hero’ status of the men aboard the Titanic, but asked that men be more consistently ‘chivalrous’. In Votes for Women, the periodical of the Women’s Social and Political Union, the editor argued ‘Aboard the ‘Titanic’ we saw what men can be at the highest, at Westminster we see what men can be at their lowest and at their most greedy.’ She also reinterpreted chivalry as a code for women’s behaviour:

‘The chivalry of man towards woman is no less beautiful a thing than the chivalry of woman towards man. The distinction we should be inclined to draw between them is that whereas the chivalry displayed by women is more constant, more a thing of every day, that which men display is inclined to be spasmodic and uncertain in its operation.’^⁶³

This was a reference to men’s brutality and failure to ‘protect’ politically active women, culminating in their imprisonment and force-feeding. This argument was part of a wider trend within suffragist rhetoric, that sought to portray their male supporters as chivalric, and the denial of women’s political rights as a failure of chivalry. Sandra Holton has argued that men’s support for women was represented as chivalric in the sense of ‘staunch and unbending resistance to the forces of repression and barbarism’, as an English cultural heritage.^⁶⁴

Within this popular style of argument, little attention was paid to the sort of morality that was implied by men putting women first, and whether chivalry might in fact be problematic for women. When probed as to why women should go first, this group of feminists tended to turn to women’s mothering role. A Mrs Robertson wrote to the Daily Mail with a defence of chivalry in relation to mothering.^⁶⁵ ‘Women first’ was to be preserved because women were, or might be, mothers^⁶⁶ – but she denied that this meant political exclusion. Chivalry would not lessen because woman ‘claims a right to have some say in the government of the world she has to populate.’ She felt that chivalry could and should co-exist with a greater involvement of women in politics. Women’s role as a mother, she argued, gave her a special interest in preserving life, which the Titanic had proved to be a part of government that men were likely to neglect. A Votes for Women editorial agreed:

‘Some people think that the grievous tragedy of the ‘Titanic’ supplies a reason why women should not have the vote. On the contrary, it supplies one of the strongest reasons ever heard of why they should have it. … The loss of the ‘Titanic’, and the huge consequent death roll are the direct consequence of bad laws. Because the law allows it, the ‘Titanic,’ in order to make a record and save a few hours, followed a dangerous, and, as it proved, a fatal northerly course, instead of a longer and more southerly course. Because the law allows it, she was equipped with a hideously inadequate number of lifeboats… A terrible sacrifice this, made with full legal sanction, to the essentially masculine passion for record-breaking and money-making at any and every cost!’^⁶⁷

If women were to have to vote, the editorial went on, ‘…they will strike their legislative blow for sanity, safety, and a sense of proportion! They will rank life above dividends, above speed-records, and above luxury… For every man on board, as well as every woman, they will demand a place in the lifeboats.’ This was perhaps their strongest argument (and one that had been famously made by Olive Schreiner in her 1911 Woman and Labour) - that women had a different value system that was currently (and dangerously) unrepresented in politics.

Other feminists were more critical of chivalry; they perceived that putting women and children first on board ship implied their object status within political life, and allowed them to be bracketed off as a universal category of ‘the weak’, those who could not defend their own interests. Some analyses, therefore, attempted to unpack male chivalry, arguing that it was unnecessary and unwanted. By implication, if women were given a voice in making laws, they should then take the consequences of the political and legal regime in the same way as men.

Lady Aberconway wrote to the Daily Mail to make this case for equality. She pointed out that if ‘women first’ was observed at sea, this was a rarity: ‘I know not the origin of “this fine tradition of the sea.” For surely there is no other instance in any of the serious affairs of life where the interests of women are preferred to those of men.’^⁶⁸ The well-known author Flora Annie Steel took up a similar theme in a poem contributed to the Daily Mail. She and many other feminists noted that in shipwrecks, men gained honour and a swift death, while women faced a lifetime of bereavement and economic hardship, caused by the unacknowledged tradition of

Women were not weak and in need of chivalry, but rather socially and politically impeded in their struggles as wage-earners and in need of representation For the first time, the idea of the chivalrous tradition - at sea or ashore - was being questioned, and placed within quotation marks to indicate its possibly fictional status. Lady Aberconway made it clear that, if ‘women first’ was observed, it was out of date: ‘In great disasters nowadays on the high seas … there is often no such great difference in the chances of rescue as between men and women. … Noble as was [the devotion of the men of the Titanic], it is in my opinion a sacrifice which ought not be demanded of the male sex, nor accepted by the female. … An equal chance of life is all that women in danger should ask or take from men.’ It was important to some Edwardian women that women (and men) be given choices rather than traditions of chivalry: ‘this traditional custom [saving women first] is now carried out without the direct consent of the individual men who are thereby doomed to die, or of any wish expressed by women, who no doubt are almost equally deprived of choice... In loss at sea we claim our right to die for those we love, or share their doom.’^⁷⁰

Others took up the same theme of denying the weakness of women. ‘M.M.’ wrote of women’s contribution to public life, and the failure of the code of chivalry to take account of it, in The Englishwoman.^⁷¹ A correspondent of The Freewoman, a radical feminist weekly, argued that ‘”Women and children first” was a fine sentiment, the right sentiment, for times when women were helpless, loving, dutiful chattels; their weakness claimed consideration. … Now that men and women are comrades and co-workers, … it seems to me, not a right one.’ She went on, ‘Women who claim sex-equality … cannot consent to this formula of “women first”… Women must have a chivalry of their own. Let us say, “The children first.” To this end, she argued that fathers should precede childless women.^⁷² The Freewoman editor, Dora Marsden, joined the call for a ‘new chivalry’, one that women could practice:

‘It becomes abundantly plain that the kind of assumption which lies at the back of the notion which gives rise to the rule of the sea is an assumption which denies to women her growth of soul. It denies her her soul’s test. Physical weakness is not spiritual weakness… Woman’s physical weakness, translated as spiritual feebleness, and held as an axiomatic certainty, undermines a growing strength.’

Marsden called for women to practice chivalry, allowing them to ‘love as grandly, to live as fearlessly, to die as greatly as men…,’ repudiating men’s ‘second-rate gifts’ of material precedence. ‘The rule of the sea is a great soul-opportunity’, from which ‘the element of sex should be eliminated.’ Until the memory of feminine precedence had faded, she proposed that men and women be separated in shipwrecks, and each allowed to act chivalrously towards their weaker brethren.^⁷³

The feminist critique of chivalry was widely discussed in the newspaper press, mostly in terms of disgust and outrage as demeaning the heroism of the Titanic men. But despite this reaction, no Titanic narrative attempted to portray women as the ‘objects’ of chivalry in the style of the Birkenhead women, unceremoniously forced to the lifeboats. Nor was it assumed that chivalry was endorsed by women. It is revealing, for example, that the anti-feminist Harold Owen was not able to write of ‘men’s sacrifice for women’ aboard the Titanic, since it was clear that many women neither wanted nor accepted this sacrifice. Instead, he wrote clumsily of ‘the sacrifice of men to man’s theory of “the weaker sex”.’ The choice of Mrs Isidor Stauss to remain with her husband on the Titanic was widely reported and respected – Edwardian women at sea were not just placeholders for organising male behaviour, but had some potential for making choices themselves. There was, then, a code of heroism that they could follow that was perhaps already replacing the code of chivalry in which they served as passive or hysterical objects.

There was, overall, a high profile current of resistance to the ‘traditional’ narrative of shipwreck chivalry. It was open to challenge not only from feminists but also from working class commentators, who were incensed by the class discrimination in the statistics of who was saved, and by the sentimental comments about transcendence of class. Class was not transcended, they argued, but tragically represented in the survival of the first class passengers at the expense of the steerage. This campaign was vigorously led by the newly founded Labour paper, the Daily Herald.^⁷⁴ It was noted that though all men were said to have stood ‘shoulder to shoulder’, the stories of chivalry all revolved around the ‘gentlemen’ who had perished. The editor bluntly argued ‘All the fine things the Press of England has been saying about the heroic self-sacrifice of first-class passengers turn to mockery… This is the tale of chivalry! This is the tale of equal treatment for all classes! This is the truth behind that magnificent cry, “Women and children first”! “Women and children last,” were nearer the truth of it.’^⁷⁵ Chivalry, in their eyes, was an inadequate code of practice since it did not guarantee the interests of the (female) steerage passengers. Male unity could not be sustained if ‘women first’ meant ‘ladies first’. In a reversal of the Victorian shipwreck narrative, the Daily Herald argued that only the ‘poor stokers’ of the Titanic looked after passengers’ interests - the officer class had neglected them: ‘as usual, the “common man” came in to save the situation that the expert had bungled.’^⁷⁶ In another reversal, progressive papers reported panic among first class passengers, compared to calm among the steerage.

These denials of class transcendence and subversion of conventional shipwreck narratives prompted rebuttal from more mainstream sources. A Times editorial rejected the claim that British society was class divided. ‘The spirit of malicious hatred [the self-styled representatives of “Labour”] exhibit is not the spirit of British workmen. It is a loathsome thing and a vile contrast to the scene enacted upon the Titanic where men of all classes stood shoulder to shoulder in the hour of their supreme agony.’^⁷⁷ But this narrative of class transcendence would not stick. The Daily Herald insisted ‘While our papers were vaunting the chivalry of the men and claiming it as an argument against women’s suffrage, almost half of the steerage women and seven-tenths of the steerage children were lying dead at the bottom of the Atlantic.’^⁷⁸ Their cry was taken up by some high profile literary figures and periodicals. A New Age writer, William McFee pointed out the dangers of appeals to class transcendence: ‘Take care … for if you demand equal conditions on board a ‘Titanic’ you may discover yourself faced by the demand for equal conditions everywhere.’^⁷⁹ George Bernard Shaw, writing in the xxx mainstream Daily News delighted in uncovering the ‘romantic demands of shipwrecks – the first, of course, being ‘women and children first.’’ He was disgusted by the mythmaking surrounding Titanic chivalry, and instead pointed out the failure to save third class passengers. Shaw made clear the existence of conventions of shipwreck narratives, and their potential for ideological manipulation.^⁸⁰ H G Wells also pointed out the lack of class solidarity aboard the Titanic, and the failure of ‘women and children first’ when assessed on a class basis, in The Daily Mail.^⁸¹ The high profile questioning of chivalry by such progressives indicates that it was not a comforting and accepted social code, but a crumbling one. It was either rejected entirely, or harnessed to new agendas – feminist and socialist – that deployed it in the service of widening political opportunities for excluded groups. Working class leaders, for example, pointed to the hypocrisy of chivalry, in its failure to be extended to all women. For many working class activists, the ‘women first’ tradition could still be celebrated. Ben Tillett of the National Transport Workers’ Federation commented: ‘I feel glad that the motto “Women and children first” is the great call in the hour of danger at sea. Mr Astor’s heroic end was in keeping with the heroic end of the humble third class and the members of the crew.’^⁸² Clearly, some working class men hoped for political gains by portraying themselves as capable of the political virtues of chivalry and self-control, but demanded that if ‘women’ were to go first, this must include what an American newspaper referred to as the ‘sabot-shod, shawl-enshrouded, illiterate, and penniless peasant woman of Europe,’ the third class Titanic woman.^⁸³

In this contested context, with different uses of ‘women and children first’ made by a number of different political interest-groups, no one interpretation of Titanic chivalry dominated. The class and gender fables – class transcendence, class insubordination, vindication of sex inequality, ‘new chivalry’ - that the Titanic wreck might have exemplified were weak, none emerging as an overall ‘moral’. Chivalry was not ‘vindicated’, women would not accept the status of passive objects to be saved, and class tensions had not been transcended by an all-embracing masculinity. For Edwardians, class and gender were too politically loaded and contested for any clear lesson to have emerged from Titanic events. As a speculative conclusion, I shall explore two narratives which did emerge as acceptable fables within the political argument of the first three decades of the twentieth century. The first was one of professional duty, and implied the substitution of ‘women and children first’ with the saving of all lives as an absolute priority, without qualification of ‘fitness to survive’ criteria. The second was that of racial difference, the illustration of which within shipwreck narratives seems to have had lasting power, and, unlike class and gender differences, to have remained relatively uncontroversial throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

Mark Girouard has argued that professionalism is an ideal that conflicts with chivalry, and suggests that Edwardian heroes like Captain Scott were admired partly for their amateur idealism.^⁸⁴ Some accounts of the Titanic wreck tried to celebrate the way in which the chivalry of ‘women and children first’ trumped a professional approach to lifesaving. The Daily Mail reported the story of stewardesses ordered into the boats, despite their consciousness that as professionals, they should remain to help passengers: ‘When Mr. Ismay told them to get in the boat they said, “we are not passengers; we are members of the crew.” “It doesn’t matter,” Mr. Ismay replied. “You are women, and I wish you to get in.”^⁸⁵ The sentiment of the stewardesses, however, was more in keeping with the mood of the times, and the Titanic can be seen as marking a turn away from the ‘amateur’ element of chivalry. Critical attention was directed to the lack of sufficient lifeboats, lack of trained crew to supervise evacuation and general amateurishness in lifesaving aboard the Titanic. This contrasts to the complete absence of critical debate about the inadequate equipment aboard the Birkenhead; such debate was eclipsed by the narrative of ‘dying like gentlemen’. In 1912, it became more prevalent to argue that all lives should have been saved. This emphasis was adopted by some within the women’s movement. A contributor to The Freewoman submitted a poem titled ‘In the Wake of the “Titanic”’ in which she argued that

This emphasis seems to have set the trend for subsequent shipwreck narratives. In interwar accounts of shipwrecks, ‘women and children first’ received much less comment than the professionalism of crew members; in 1930 Frank Shaw looked back to famous nineteenth century shipwrecks which had formerly attracted comments about women’s precedence. In relation to the Kent (1825), he noted ‘the fact that only one sailor perished is sinister: no sailor should save himself whilst one entrusted to his charge is in peril. That is part of the duty he takes upon himself when signing into the service of the sea.’ On the Amazon (1852), he commented ‘that seamen could witness that appalling devastation without bearing a hand to aid, appears incredible, when one remembers how far flung the chivalry of deep water is to-day.’^⁸⁷ Chivalry was here being given a new dimension, one more akin to professional duty than to the acts of the ‘gentleman’. Even on the Titanic, Shaw noted ‘the percentage [saved] of the crew was too high; it was their duty to remain behind and give place to those who had entrusted themselves to professional keeping...’^⁸⁸ This had become a more important concern than the precedence of women. The ideal of professionalism was also one that undermined the image of women as universally weak and in need of protection, since female crew members could also practice ‘deep water chivalry’. One suffragist in 1913 noted the ‘female chivalry’ of the Titanic stewardesses, who performed their duty just as faithfully as male crew members in putting passengers first. Likewise, he argued, nurses would and should save their male patients first in a hospital fire.^⁸⁹ H G Wells also noted ‘in the unfolding record of behaviour [aboard the Titanic] it is the stewardesses and bandsmen and engineers – persons of the trade-union class – who shine as brightly as any.’^⁹⁰ The 1915 sinking of the Lusitania, occasioned some pride that ‘sixteen stewardesses and matrons and hospital attendants lost their lives.’^⁹¹ No longer portrayed as ‘those least able to help themselves’, women now had a positive role in saving lives. Their professional role on board ships, and in public life, supplanted the traditional ‘women and children first’.

Where ‘women and children first’ did persist as an ingredient of chivalry, it was frequently in order to illustrate racial and imperial hierarchy. Nineteenth century shipwreck narratives had been used to illustrate class insubordination, but racial difference had also long been a subtext of these accounts, implying a racial contrast between Englishmen and the rest of the world. Foreigners, though they might seem like good workers, were portrayed as unable to put women and children first where appropriate, and would ‘lose their heads’ in a crisis. In 1893 Benjamin Hall, like many other commentators, focused upon the non-British sailors’ behaviour during crises at sea to indicate their unsuitability for the job: ‘the employment of Lascars – physically and morally unfit as they are to cope with times of stress and storm, should be curtailed.’^⁹² Numerous examples can be found of reference to racial or national distinctions (the two are often elided) becoming evident during shipwrecks, especially in relation to women and children. An 1887 account of the sinking of the Victoria describes

‘Frenchmen scrambling [into the lifeboat] without the slightest regard for the women who were crying piteously for aid. The French travellers, no doubt, lost their heads completely. They are always excitable, and in this case it appears to me that they lost their presence of mind altogether.’^⁹³

Lascar crewmen were described as having ‘panicked abundantly and jeopardised the safety of all on board’ during the wreck of the Delhi in 1906.^⁹⁴ Lascars and Chinamen were also singled out by the Daily Herald in number of Edwardian shipwrecks as particularly unreliable and unchivalrous. In 1912 Harold Owen identified the chivalric code of manliness as a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon entity. ‘No other race of men at any rate excels our own in its respect for woman; the men of other races may have a more gallant bearing, but is there so much regard when it comes to the actual pinch? But always among our own race that disciplined cry goes up…’ The Daily Mail testified on April 20 that aboard the Titanic ‘Perfect discipline was maintained by the officers and men,’ but went on to claim that this only referred to ‘the white man’:

‘There are only a few exceptions to the unvarying tales of heroism, and the exceptions are due to the excitement at the last moments in the steerage … three Italians who disobeyed the rule of the sea, ‘women and children first’, were shot down.’^⁹⁵

Which groups subscribed to this racialised version of chivalry? It was expressed quite generally by those aiming to preserve the racial and imperial status quo, but also by some by working class radicals, in order to preserve their conditions of work and resist undercutting. The trades union leader Ben Tillett used the Titanic wreck to express his hope that ‘the introduction of Chinamen, which is the latest pet of the shipowners, may receive a check. If the saloon passengers can be frightened against the use of Chinamen, we might still be able to hold the Western ocean free from the Chinky.’ Tillett highlighted the ‘otherness’ of foreign sailors, best illustrated by questioning their gender identity – their manliness - at moments of crisis. He concluded:

‘the earth is scoured for the dregs of civilisation from China, India, and the gutters of Europe to take [the British sailor’s] place. I make an appeal for the British seaman to have his chance, and would be glad for the flag to cover only that race and that language we call English.’^⁹⁶

Racialised chivalry narratives served to justify wage differentials, and both shipowners and white workers used the ‘women and children first’ fable in this way. Overall, Edwardian political uncertainty (prompted by the political claims of women and workers) meant that the class and gender order at sea became contested. The racial emphasis within shipwreck narratives, however, remained relatively uncontested. Concern at the turn of the century over racial degeneration and a crisis in masculinity made the illustration of racial hierarchy increasingly important. Indeed, racial metaphors could be used to illustrate tensions within gender identity. The perceived emasculation of white, British ‘Jack Tar’ was described by some as a process of ‘orientalisation’: ‘Surely no Lascar could be more submissive! … save when actually in the presence of death, [the British sailor] bows as silently and as faithfully to Kismet as the Asiatic.’^⁹⁷ The racial profile of sailors on British ships became increasingly diverse at the end of the nineteenth century as ships grew, employed more types of workers and as the need to cut costs became more intense. Foreign sailors could be employed at lower wages, given smaller living quarters and worked longer hours.^⁹⁸ These changes in the workforce made for a renewed emphasis on race within ‘the law of the sea’, that to some extent sustained a version of chivalry in the first decades of the twentieth century.

The predominant view of the non-British seaman as useful but dangerously unable to internalise traditions such as ‘women and children first’ persisted throughout the first half of the twentieth century. One shipowner in the 1930s described black seamen as usefully docile and diligent at their ordinary tasks, but ‘in an emergency they are practically useless’. In contrast ‘Not a winter passes but brings evidence of [Englishmen’s] ability to meet with an every-day, undramatic heroism the cold-blooded perils of the sea.’^⁹⁹ In this period, the decline of empire intensified the anxiety about race, an anxiety that shipwreck narratives spoke to. In 1930, Frank Shaw looked back to the Titanic events as defined by race: ‘Proverbially, the North European in hours of crisis maintains his coolness and his determination to die like a man… But as the North European is capable, so is the South European apt to hysteria when trouble shows its face. … the bulk of the Titanic’s passengers hailed from the South and Southeast Europe…’ They had ‘attempted one mad rush for the boats’ and only the officer’s pistol had controlled these ‘men [who] had shamelessly forgotten their manhood.’^¹⁰⁰ From this later perspective, the importance of stressing universal masculine discipline in order to counter women’s claims had become less important than emphasis on racial difference. As Shaw saw it, stories like the Birkenhead provided ‘a good picture – a picture we might do well to treasure in our memories in an age when we are told on all hands … that we are effete and played-out... The men of the Birkenhead were British… No matter what disaster befalls a British ship to-day or to-morrow, it is a safe assertion that the first order will be: ‘Women and children first.’^¹⁰¹ The ‘law of the sea’ persisted as a racial discourse, losing its connotations of class control, and its anti-feminist value.

Conclusion

I have examined the historical moments at which shipwreck codes of behaviour became explicitly celebrated or contested within society, culminating in the 1912 wreck of the Titanic and the intense foregrounding of gender, class and race issues. ‘Women and children first’ as an ingredient of the wider phenomenon of chivalry has long been a mythic element within maritime culture, but is one that has been used within British culture and politics to serve a number of different causes. This paper offers an account of chivalry that places 1912 not as the high point of a hegemonic code of conduct, but rather a point at which chivalry could not be sustained as a dominant discourse. Though Titanic historians have downplayed the resistance to chivalry within radical, feminist and literary circles, and have rather emphasised the conservative nature of the ‘conventional’ Titanic narrative, it seems clear that no single narrative was established as dominant in 1912. The Titanic story, like the other shipwrecks examined in this paper, was subject to many different interpretations and slants. The uncertain Edwardian political situation made for a moment of fluidity and contestation; some groups still had a strong investment in ‘women and children first’, but used it to support conflicting political and cultural agendas. Others proposed new narratives, such as that of professionalism, that contrasted sharply with ‘gentlemanly’ chivalry, or placed a renewed emphasis on long-standing elements of shipwreck narratives such as racial difference. The first world war did not deal a ‘death wound’ to Edwardian chivalry – instead, the ideal was already tenuous and undergoing a process of change. The war did, however, became a metaphor for these new shipwreck codes of behaviour, characterised by stress on duty and racial pride, rather than heroism and chivalry. This can be summed up in Frank Shaw’s assertion that during shipwrecks, sailors

‘see their duty clear before them, and after the stolid, sturdy fashion of men whose blood is salt with the salt of the sea, they go and do it, uncomplainingly and with a quality of thoroughness which is only comparable to the quality with which Great Britons the world over saw their duty in the Great War and set forth to do it.’^¹⁰²

Manliness and Morality: Middle Class Masculinity in Britain and America 1800-1940, ed. J.A. Mangan and James Walvin (Manchester University Press, 1987). Articles by

George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford University Press, 1996).

Broader chivalry: Hilary Marland is co-editor of Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant Welfare, 1870-1945 (Routledge, 1992).

5 The chivalric ideal of courtesy and service to women is only one aspect of chivalry – others might be said to be bravery, loyalty, meeting death without flinching, summed up in the idea of manly character. My examination of chivalry, taking men’s treatment of women as its primary component, is thus more narrowly focussed than the literature on heroism, which looks at broader themes of exemplarity, commemoration and collective identity. See for further discussion {Girouard 1981; Mason 1982; Keen 1984; Cubitt 2000; Jones 2003}.

6 Mark Girouard’s account deploys ‘a sequence of heroic shipwrecks’ that includes the Birkenhead of 1852 and the Titanic of 1912. Other historians of the Titanic have noted the popular resonance of ideas of chivalry, bravery and heroism that were mythologised in this shipwreck narrative. {Howells 1999; Biel 1996; Larabee 1990}. Of course, other sites or practices of chivalry were important. Much attention has been paid to Victorian and Edwardian games playing, and the public school as a model of manliness. {Mangan and Walvin 1987}. The interest of shipwreck chivalry is that it was undertaken within a realm where, unlike the public school or cricket field, women and representatives of other classes or races might be present. Narratives of chivalry at sea had to ‘manage’ the presence of these ‘others’, and organise ideals of behaviour around them.

8 Cf. Collingwood 1906. Fictional sources can, I argue, be used as complementary cultural texts to the purportedly factual accounts of shipwrecks that predominate in this paper – each deployed a very similar narrative style, and were strongly stylised. It seems that the mythical element of shipwreck stories was strong enough to homogenise both ‘fictional’ and ‘factual’ accounts, so that the two became very similar sorts of texts. ‘Factual’ survivors’ accounts often implied an overarching knowledge of the shipwreck, when in reality they can only have witnessed small parts of the event, and it may have been accepted that they ‘fictionalised’ their narratives in this way.

12 Richard Howells explores at length the term ‘myth’ in the specific context of the cultural memory of the Titanic. He defines myth as ‘a cultural device in which abstract values are encoded in concrete form’, {Howells 1999:10}. Roland Barthes’ definition is more normative, seeing myth as part of the naturalising work of the dominant ideology {Barthes 1957, mythologies}. It may be helpful to understand myths as more open to contestation, resistance, and able to serve multiple purposes than Barthes’ definition allows. In this sense, what is crucial is to give myths a history. Even where the format of a myth may be relatively unchanged, as with ‘women and children first’, the encoded values may be quite different over time. ‘Women and children first’ is variously referred to as a tradition, convention, code, or law in Victorian and Edwardian texts; I focus on its mythic aspects, as a ‘naturalised’, but not necessarily dominant cultural narrative or political ‘fable’. Seafaring was particularly suited to provide myths in British culture due to its portrayal as especially tradition-bound, and thus exemplary for the nation. In 1936, an editor commented ‘There is no branch of English life in which ancient custom and usage die so hard as they do in anything connected with the service of the sea.’ {Fox Smith 1936:7}. The prevalence of shipwreck narratives in didactic moral literature suggests this amenability to ‘fable telling’.

28 Though Hall was affiliated to a progressive movement, and his pamphlet called for reform of maritime conditions, he did not want to enfranchise sailors. Instead, ‘Socialism should take these helpless outcasts [voteless sailors] under its wing… If he cannot be got to share the Socialist’s views and work, we can none the less impose upon him the material conditions which the Socialist considers human.’ The sailor, then, was a passive object, almost a feminised one, who was to be rendered ‘human’, rather than politically empowered.

30 This crisis has been described in broad terms by M S Kimmel ( (1987)) in American society, dating from 1880 to 1914, and can also be traced out in the UK (see for example John Tosh, in Eustance and John 1997:55). Kimmel sees such ‘gender crises’ as occurring ‘at specific historical junctures, when structural changes transform the institutions of personal life such as marriage and the family, which are sources of gender identity.’ I have emphasised the changes in workplace identity for working class men, which were experienced by seafarers in a very direct fashion. Unlike Kimmel, I argue that the crisis in masculinity as played out in the maritime world was not reactive to changes in the behaviour of women, but rather to do with technological and legal changes within seafaring.

33 Gustave Le Bon had argued ‘Crowds are everywhere distinguished by feminine characteristics.’ He elaborated that the mass was marked by those features – ‘impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement and of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments, and others besides – which are almost always observed in beings belonging to inferior forms of evolution – in women, savages and children...’ {Le Bon 1896:21,17}. His work was highly significant for Edwardians, and echoes of his ideas were found in the work of many theorists (cf. note 38).

35 See for example {Wallas 1908; Masterman 1960}. These authors were influenced by Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, first translated into English in 1896. {Le Bon 1896}. Wilfred Trotter’s influential book, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, was published in 1916, drawing on articles published in the Sociological Review in 1908 and 1909 {Trotter 1916}.

37 The Amalgamated Sailors’ and Firemens’ Union of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in 1887 by Havelock Wilson. By 1889, it had 65,000 members, and was renamed the National Sailors’ and Firemens’ Union in 1894. Wilson gained a seat in parliament during the 1890s, the first working sailor to do so, {Hope 1990:323-4}.

52 Steven Biel and Richard Howells both emphasise an almost ‘universal’ acclaimation of chivalry. Though Biel does admit to some contestation of hegemonic codes of chivalry, he argues that feminist or socialist counternarratives were ‘either negligable or easily suppressed.’ {Biel 1996:52}. Howells notes that despite the political crisis of women’s suffrage in 1912: ‘Questions [about gender] were never asked, let alone answered, in the British, late Edwardian Titanic texts. It is as though the suffragettes – to say nothing of the issues they so visibly raised – had never existed.’ {Howells 1999:74}. I argue, however, that these counter narratives were far from negligable, and contributed to a major shift in ideals of chivalry and heroism. The work of Max Jones on Edwardian ‘languages of sacrifice’ suggests a similar shift. Jones argues that the Titanic was emblematic for a curious combination of incompetence, hubris, cowardlyness, and heroism. {Jones 2003}.

64 Holton, Manliness and Militancy: the political protest of male suffragists and the gendering of the ‘suffragette’ identity, in {Eustance 1997}. See also Angela John, who makes a similar argument in her ‘Men, Manners and Militancy: literary men and women’s suffrage’, same volume, p.89

66 A number of correspondents made the argument that if chivalry was based on motherhood, single women should not be included. Indeed, married men, as supporters of mothers, should be saved before women. Charles Jerningham, for example, noted that chivalric precedence should be extended to men with absent wives and children, before it was given to ‘the casual woman in distress.’ Daily Mail April 25 1912:6

70 Aberconway was extremely sceptical about women’s so-called precedence: ‘For what reason should a woman’s life be accorded the more valuable?’ She pointed out that women’s lives were overshadowed by their lack of social and professional opportunities, as arranged by men, and so women’s value could not lie in these areas. Moreover, their role as mothers could not serve as a reason for preferment without denigrating this role. Mothering was not to be ‘paid’: ‘For this service … we disdain to take payment. Our gift is free.’ Daily Mail, April 23 1912: 6

98 Following the repeal of the Navigation Acts in 1849, which had required that three-quarters of crew members of ships sailing into British ports must be British sailors, increasing numbers of foreigners began to be employed aboard British ships. Laura Tabili has described the substitution of black employees for white in the early twentieth century in those roles considered ‘menial, unskilled, or low in status’ – in other words, ‘shipboard women’s work’. Gender divisions of labour were maintained in a predominantly male environment, she argues, through the racializing of work and skill. Tabili in {Creighton & Norling 1996:173}.

100 Shaw 1930:104-106. Pride in the British nation or empire was eclipsed by this attention to much broader racial characteristics, and thus American Titanic passengers could have their chivalry commemorated in unity with that of the British. It is unclear from Titanic commentary whether this racial character was considered to be biologically or culturally based. Frequent mention was made of ‘blood’ in relation to Anglo-Saxon character, but this could simply be an allegorical reference to cultural norms, rather than to any specifically biological feature.

The ‘law of the sea’

Women at sea and in shipwrecks

The Titanic

Conclusion