The sinking of the Titanic: a chronicle of the disaster, versions. What influences people's behavior in emergency situations

On the night of April 14, 1912, the largest and most luxurious liner in the history of mankind was rushing towards the shores at full speed. North America. Nothing foreshadowed the death of the Titanic. An orchestra was playing on the upper deck in a gourmet restaurant. The richest and most successful people drank champagne and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

There were no signs of trouble

A few minutes later the lookout spotted an iceberg. And a little later, the Titanic, a gigantic ship, will collide with a drifting iceberg, and after some time it will all be over. Thus begins the great mystery of the big ship. The next day the sinking of the Titanic will become a legend, and its history will greatest mystery 20th century.

International sensation

The very next morning, the office of the Titanic owner's company was stormed by dozens of newspaper reporters. They wanted to know where the Titanic sank and demanded clarification. Relatives of passengers on the ocean liner were outraged.

A short telegram from Cape Reis reported: “At 23 o’clock local time the most big ship"Titanic sent a distress signal." Company President Luster Whites reassured reporters: “The liner is unsinkable!” But the very next day, all the world’s newspapers were full of sensational messages: “The safest Titanic (ship) in the world sank in the icy depths Atlantic Ocean. On the fifth day of his tragic flight The liner took 1,513 lives."

Disaster investigation

The sinking of the Titanic shocked both sides of the Atlantic. The question of why the Titanic ended up at the bottom haunts us to this day. From the very beginning, people wanted to know in detail what the cause of the sinking of the Titanic was. But the court’s decision read: “The liner hit an iceberg and sank.”

The Titanic (the size of the ship, by the way, was very impressive) died from a banal collision with an ice floating block. It seemed incredible.

Alleged versions of the tragic death

The end to the history of this disaster has not yet been set. Fresh versions of the death of the Titanic arise even today, a century later. There are several plausible assumptions.

Each of them deserves close attention. The first version says that another sunken liner lies on the Atlantic bottom. It sounds like science fiction, but this version of the death of the Titanic has real grounds.

Some researchers argue that it is not the sunken ship Titanic that lies on the ocean floor, but its double, the Olympic liner. The version seems fantastic, but it is not without evidence.

Ocean Monster of Great Britain

On December 16, 1908, the firstborn was laid down in Belfast - the steamship Olympic, later the Titanic (the size of the ship reached almost 270 meters in length) with a displacement of 66 thousand tons.

Until now, representatives of the shipyard consider it the most perfect project that has ever been implemented. The ship was as tall as an eleven-story building and spanned four small city blocks. This ocean monster was equipped with two 4-cylinder steam engines and a steam turbine.

Its power was 50,000 horsepower, 10,000 light bulbs, 153 electric motors, four elevators, each designed for 12 people, and a large number of telephones were connected to the liner’s electrical network. The ship was truly innovative for its time. Silent elevators, steam heating, a winter garden, several photo laboratories and even a hospital with an operating room.

Comfort and respectability

The interior was more reminiscent of a fashionable palace than a ship. Passengers dined in a luxurious Louis XVI-style restaurant and drank coffee on a sun-drenched veranda with climbing plants. Bridge games were played in spacious halls, and high-end cigars were smoked in soft smoking rooms.

The Titanic had a rich library, a gym and even a swimming pool. These days, a business class ticket on the Titanic would cost $55,000. The liner became the flagship of the White Star Line company.

Almost the same in terms of comfort and technical specifications The Olympic liner lost the championship without a fight. It was he who was to become the star of transatlantic flights. But frequent accidents made him an outsider, and endless fines, lawsuits and repair costs only added to the managers' headaches.

Unsolved version

The decision was obvious: to send instead of the battered Olympic, which did not have insurance policy, the new insured Titanic. The history of the ship "Olympic" was very unrepresentable. However, just by changing the signs on the liners, which were as similar as two peas in a pod, several problems could be solved at once. The main thing is the payment of insurance in the amount of one million pounds, which could improve the financial affairs of the company.

Small accident, big money, job done. People shouldn't have been hurt, because the liner is unsinkable. In the event of an accident, the ship will drift, and ships passing by on the busy ocean route will pick up all the passengers.

Strange behavior of passengers

Main real proof This unprecedented scam is believed to be the refusal of 55 first class passengers to travel. Among those who remained ashore were:

• John Morgan, owner of the liner.
• Henry Frick, steel magnate and partner.
• Robert Breccon, US Ambassador to France.
• Famous rich man George Vanderbilt.

The mystery of the sinking of the Titanic has indirect confirmation of the version of the insurance scam, namely strange behavior Captain Edward Smith, who, by the way, was the captain of the Olympic during her first voyages.

The Last Captain

Edward Smith was considered one of the best commanders of his time. Working for the White Star Line, he earned around £1,200 a year. Other captains did not earn even half of this money. However, Smith's career was far from cloudless. Many times the ships he managed got into all sorts of accidents, ran aground or burned.

It was Edward Smith who commanded the Olympic in 1911, when the uninsured ocean liner I got into serious accidents several times. But Smith managed not only to avoid punishment, but even get a promotion.

He became the captain of the Titanic. Could the company's management, knowing about the captain's previous mistakes, assign him to the Titanic, and even just for one voyage? Could she use incriminating evidence on the captain in order to fire a man who brought huge losses to the company in case of disobedience with a scandal?

Perhaps the captain was choosing between a shameful write-off just before retirement and participation in a scam invented by his superiors. It was last flight for Edward Smith.

What was the first mate thinking?

Another inexplicable mystery about the sinking of the Titanic is the strange behavior of William Murdoch, the first mate. Murdock was on watch the night of the accident. When he received a message about an approaching iceberg, he gave the order to direct the ship to the left and engage reverse, which is strictly prohibited

Is it possible that the first mate made a mistake and this is the reason for the death of the Titanic? But Murdoch had already encountered a similar situation and always did the right thing, pointing the ship's nose at the obstacle. In all navigation textbooks, this maneuver is described as the only correct one in this situation.

On that last voyage for the Titanic, the chief mate acted differently. As a result, the main blow fell not on the bow, where the strongest part of the ship was, but on its side. Almost a hundred meters of the starboard side opened up like a tin can.

The Titanic, whose sinking story is told in less than ten seconds, was practically dead. This is exactly how long it took to pronounce the death sentence on the largest and most beautiful ship in the world. Why did Murdoch make a fatal mistake? If we assume that he, too, was in collusion, then the answer to the death of the Titanic is found by itself.

What were the ship's owners hiding?

Today it is impossible to prove the version of the insurance scam, the White Star Line company was closed, the Olympic ship was scrapped, and all documentation was destroyed. But even if we assume that the sinking of the Titanic was not rigged, then there was probably some human error involved.

Key to the Mystery Box

Many years have passed since the Titanic sank. The ship's story, however, continued in 1997, when the key was sold at a London auction for one hundred thousand pounds sterling. He opened only one box on the Titanic, but it was this key that was not on board the liner that fateful night. A chain of strange circumstances, a series of fatal coincidences and simply human negligence accompanied the superliner from the very beginning to the end of its first and last voyage.

Well, the item sold for fabulous money at a London auction was an ordinary key to an ordinary box. It contained the only equipment with which it was possible to recognize the danger threatening the ship - binoculars.

Forgetful first mate

The thing is that locators appeared only in the 30s of the last century. And at that time its functions were performed by the human eye. From the very high point on the ship, the sailor continuously looked forward as the ship progressed. An airliner weighing 66 thousand tons, traveling at a speed of 45 km/h, has very low controllability, and the sooner the lookout notices the danger, the greater the chances of avoiding it. Ordinary binoculars were the only help.

For unknown reasons, Chief Mate Blair was removed from the ship at the last moment. Frustrated, he simply forgot to give his replacement the key to the box where the binoculars were kept.

Meeting with an unusual iceberg

Those looking ahead had to rely only on their own vigilance. They noticed the iceberg too late, when it was almost impossible to change the situation. In addition, this iceberg was different from the others; it was black.

During the drift, a huge block of ice melted and turned over. The iceberg, which had absorbed tons of water, became dark. It was incredibly difficult to notice him. If that fatal iceberg for the Titanic had been white, perhaps the watchmen would have seen it much earlier. Especially if they had binoculars.

"Titanic": the story of the sinking, the beginning of events

But the strangest thing is that the ship’s command could have learned about the possibility of a collision with an iceberg much earlier than the lookouts reported it.

Radio operators, the voice and ear of the Titanic, repeatedly received messages about ice floes drifting in the area. An hour before the lookout noticed the iceberg, the radio operator of the steamer California warned of possible danger. But on the Titanic the connection was rudely cut off.

Even earlier, a few hours before the collision, Captain Edward Smith personally read three telegrams warning about ice floes. But they were all ignored.

Officer Murdoch could have broken the chain of human miscalculations by giving the fatal order: “Full back! Left hand drive." In the event of a head-on collision of the Titanic with an iceberg, there would have been much more time to evacuate passengers. Perhaps the ship could have stayed afloat.

Human negligence

Then the mistakes followed one after another. The evacuation order was given only 45 minutes after the collision. Passengers were asked to put on life belts and gather on the upper deck near the lifeboats. And then it suddenly became clear that the Titanic had only twenty lifeboats that could accommodate no more than 1,300 people, 48 lifebuoys and pith vests for each passenger and crew members.

However, the vests were useless for the northern regions of the Atlantic. A person who fell into cold water died from hypothermia within half an hour.

Prophetic predictions of a science fiction writer

Immediately after the disaster, the whole world was shocked by an incredible coincidence. The date of sinking of the Titanic is April 15, 1912. And fourteen years before the tragedy, the unknown London journalist Morgan Robertson finished his new novel. The science fiction writer spoke about the voyage and death of the huge transatlantic liner Titan: “On a cold April night, at full speed, the ship ran into an iceberg and sank.” Moreover, the science fiction writer pinpointed the exact location of the sinking of the Titanic.

The novel turned out to be prophetic, and the science fiction writer was dubbed the Nostradamus of the 20th century. There really were a lot of coincidences in the book: the displacement of the ship, its maximum speed, and even the number of propellers and lifeboats.

Moreover, a few years later, the writer published his new novel, in which he predicted war in the USA and Japan.

Another coincidence: a copy of the book about the ship “Titan” was on the ship with one of the firemen. The sailor read it during the first days of the voyage, and he was so impressed by the plot that in one of the ports he simply ran away. And this was not the only crew member to escape from the Titanic.

It remains a mystery: either everyone who escaped had read the book before, or they had more compelling reasons.

Testimonies of eyewitnesses to the tragedy

Immediately after the sinking of the Titanic, special commissions were created in England and the United States to investigate its causes. Surviving passengers spoke of a loud bang that they heard after the collision with the iceberg. It was like an explosion. According to one version, a fire was raging in the liner's coal bunker.

Some researchers believe that it started even before the Titanic left port, while others are confident that the fire broke out during the voyage.

A little bit of history

Britain was being transformed by the technological revolution. Beginning in the 30s of the 19th century, steam-powered merchant ships began to cross the Atlantic. The technology proved promising, and the kingdom's admiralty concluded that steam would make the sailing fleet obsolete.

When reports appeared in London that tests of a steam engine were already underway in France, which had also entered the struggle for naval supremacy, the British had no choice but to accept the challenge. At first, large paddle wheels were used, which were installed on opposite sides of the sides.

The first replacement for the paddle wheel appeared about ten years later, in the 40s of the 19th century. Shipbuilders have come to the conclusion that a propeller is much more efficient than a wheel. It was only after its invention and placement under the bottom of the ship that steam propulsion became a decisive advantage.

But in most cases it remained experimental developments; sometimes the innovation was used on warships. Steam engines became widespread only in the 20th century, and coal was the only fuel for a long time. In the future, the transition from coal to fuel oil will be a step to the next level of development.

But in the days of the Olympic class superliners, ships with an internal combustion engine were as rare as a steam engine in the first half of the 19th century. Be that as it may, the fire on board should not have affected the life of the ship and its passengers. There could be no emergency incidents on the liner, this is the Titanic.

Further developments

Captain Smith ordered the bunker in which the fire was raging to be localized. Due to the lack of oxygen, the fire should have died out, the problem would have resolved itself. A fire on board is a good enough reason to drive the liner with all your might to the nearest port. But when the Titanic hit an iceberg, it ripped open the ship's hull, and oxygen entered the bunker. There was a powerful explosion.

Many years later, after an underwater study of the remains of the ship, this version gained additional arguments. A huge fault runs exactly where the coal compartments were located.

For the first time, a version of the fire appeared on the pages of American newspapers even before the surviving passengers and crew members of the Titanic were delivered to New York. Without factual material, but using only rumors, newspapermen invented the most incredible stories about the tragedy.

In any case, when the stokers were interrogated, they denied that there was a fire, although it would seem that after the disaster they had nothing to hide. On the other hand, according to some accounts, Captain Smith went down to the boiler room and ordered everyone to remain silent about the burning coal.

We don’t yet know what actually happened to the giant liner. The Titanic, the story of whose sinking has become the subject of documentaries and feature films, will always be of interest to future generations.

New version about the death of the liner

The nature of the Titanic's fault not only fuels the theory of a fire in the hold, but also allows some researchers to make an unexpected assumption.

The liner sank another ship. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new secret weapon was tested in the seas. Perhaps the Titanic was hit by a torpedo.

The version seems unusual, but the facts of the fracture and torn edges, which could have resulted from a torpedo attack, force us to take it seriously. If the Titanic was nevertheless torpedoed, one can only hope that someday researchers will get to that part of the ship, the study of which will help shed light on this version.

Began shortly after she sank on April 15, 1912. The mistakes of the captain and crew members of the Titanic, the mass death of III class passengers, and the actions of the captain of the Californian aroused the greatest suspicion among both American and British investigators.

US Senate Subcommittee Investigation

From the American side, the investigative subcommittee of the American Senate, headed by Senator William Alden Smith from Michigan, took over the investigation into the causes of the sinking of the Titanic. The investigation lasted 37 days, 82 witnesses were interviewed, and costs amounted to $2,385.

The first witness to testify was the managing director of the White Star Line shipping company, Joseph Bruce Ismay. During interrogation, Ismay reported that although the maximum speed of the ship was determined by 78-80 revolutions of the propeller per minute, never during the voyage did its speed exceed 75 revolutions. Ismay also denied the accusation that he had in any way interfered with the authority of the ship's captain.

Then the second mate of the Titanic, Charles Herbert Lightoller, one of the senior officers who managed to survive the disaster, was interrogated. Lightoller denied that he knew that the Titanic was sailing into the area of ​​drifting icebergs. When the senator asked him to familiarize himself with a copy of the radiogram that the Titanic received from the America and handed over to the American Hydrographic Office, Lightoller gave an evasive answer. He stated that some radio messages had been received, but he could not say for sure whether they were from the Amerika or some other vessel. However, he noted that he spoke about the warning messages on the bridge with Captain Smith on April 14 in the afternoon, and a second time two and a half hours before the collision.

The fourth mate of the Titanic, Joseph Boxhall, was unaware not only of America's radiogram, but even of other persistent warnings received by the Titanic that day and evening before the disaster. In Boxhall's testimony, there was for the first time a mention of a "mysterious" ship, the lights of which were visible not far from the Titanic when lifeboats were already lowered from its deck. Boxhall described in detail how rockets were fired to attract the ship's attention, how he was signaled by a searchlight. He noted that Captain Smith had definitely seen the lights, so references to a mirage were excluded. And since two masthead lights were visible (in 1912, small ships carried only one white masthead light), we could be talking about large ship. Boxhall's statement about this ship was confirmed by two people: seaman first class John Bulley and steward Alfred Crawford.

The captain of the Californian, Stanley Lord, and two crew members were also questioned. As a result of the interrogation, Senator Smith and his colleagues came to the conclusion that eight missiles were seen on the Californian, that is, as many as fourth officer Boxhall fired from the sinking Titanic; The captain of the Californian most definitely, and perhaps three times, but he went to sleep in the chart room and gave the only order to the officer of the watch - to continue trying to establish contact with the ship that was within sight. And, most importantly, he did not order the radio operator to be woken up so that he could find out what was actually happening.

What happened on April 14, 1912 at 23:40 in the North Atlantic remains a mystery to many. That night, the largest passenger liner in the world at that time, the Titanic, collided with an iceberg, as a result of which it sank. However, this version has often been questioned. They even say that the ship sank not because of a collision with an iceberg...

One of the main questions that Senator Smith tried to answer during the investigation was the fate of the III class passengers. The testimony of Second Officer Lightoller, other officers and a number of crew members was consistent: there were no restrictions for third class passengers when boarding lifeboats. However, the testimony of some passengers indicated the opposite. Thus, the American writer Archibald Gracie, who was traveling first class, claimed that after all the lifeboats had been launched, a huge number of people ran out of the Titanic’s hold onto the boat deck.

Senator Smith managed to find three surviving third class passengers. However, none of them confirmed the information that the passage to the upper decks was blocked. As a result, investigators came to the conclusion that many third-class passengers died due to their own indecisiveness and lack of knowledge of the English language.

Based on the results of the investigation, the Investigative Subcommittee came to the conclusion that the degree of preparedness of the team was insufficient, and the discipline was very neglected, therefore, at a critical moment, the absolute unpreparedness for action paralyzed the crew. William Smith blamed the British Ministry of Trade, which, through its instructions and formal checks, contributed significantly to the horrific consequences of the disaster. Regarding the captain of the Titanic, Edward John Smith, he said that those who knew him well were forced, not with indignation, but with regret, to accuse him of exaggerated self-confidence and unwillingness to respect the repeated warnings of his colleagues. The senator also expressed critical words to the first mate of Captain Murdoch, who, trying to prevent a collision, changed course, which, in fact, led to a collision with an iceberg and tragic consequences. Further, Smith noted a number of other errors: a general alarm was not announced, the ship's officers were not assembled, the organization of the evacuation of passengers was extremely poor, and rescue work was not started immediately due to the low discipline of the crew members. Smith sharply criticized the situation, as a result of which the III class passengers were not promptly warned of the extent of the danger, and when they realized how things were, most of the lifeboats were already at sea. He emphasized that the boats were launched half-empty, were not equipped with compasses, and only three of them had lanterns.

Senator Smith cited the addition to Article 2 of the Brussels Convention, which obliges shipmasters to provide assistance to those in distress, and pronounced his verdict on Captain Stanley Lord: “The actions of the captain of the Californian require the most severe measures on the part of the British Government and the owners of this vessel.”

As for Joseph Bruce Ismay, the senator did not dare to put him on the same level as Captain Smith. The senator objectively touched upon those circumstances that were in favor of Ismay: his actions during the lowering of the lifeboats and the secondary warning of the impending danger. Smith said the CEO could only be blamed for his presence on the ship, which subconsciously encouraged the captain to make the Titanic sail at a higher speed.

Smith praised the actions of Captain Rostron of the Carpathia and proposed to the Senate that both houses of Congress pass a resolution recommending that the President of the United States award Arthur Henry Rostron the Medal of Honor, the highest award for courage that can be bestowed by the American Congress. The Senate voted for this proposal.

British commission of inquiry

On April 23, 1912, the President of the House of Lords, on the basis of relevant legal regulations, instructed Lord Mersey to head a special commission to investigate maritime disasters. On May 2, the Mersey Commission began meeting at the Scottish Hall in London's Westminster. The work of the commission continued until June 30. 37 open hearings were held and 97 witnesses were heard. The commission's expenses totaled $87,500. At the beginning of the investigation, those who were on watch on the night of the sinking of the Titanic were first interrogated: the captain's assistants, mechanics, watch sailors and stokers.

Commit virtual tour along the famous Titanic (Click on the image to start the virtual tour)

Unlike the American investigation, the Mercy Commission focused primarily on seafaring and navigation issues and paid much less attention to the human aspects of the disaster. The collision with the iceberg itself, the nature of the damage to the ship, the process of its gradual sinking - all this was analyzed to the smallest detail, as well as issues related to the design of the Titanic, its general equipment, life-saving equipment, the captain's orders, the speed of the ship, its course, etc. This was explained primarily by the fact that, on the one hand, the commission of inquiry itself, with the exception of Lord Mersey, consisted of specialist sailors, on the other hand, Mercy, unlike Senator Smith, had the opportunity to summon and interrogate persons who could judge all this with knowledge of the matter.

Did you know that the Titanic could end its voyage immediately after sailing from the shore? That not all four of its pipes were working? That the places in the lifeboats, even theoretically, could not be enough for everyone, that the sailors at the observation post on the mast did not have binoculars, and that the iceberg that the ship collided with was “black”? The reliability of the facts collected here has been confirmed during investigations into the causes of the sinking of the Titanic, as well as by the testimony of many surviving passengers and crew members.

The first to be interrogated was the captain of the Californian, Stanley Lord. The investigative questions were aimed at proving that the signal flares that were launched from the ship that was near the Californian on the night of April 14-15 could not be anything other than distress signals, and they could only be launched from the Titanic. When Lord mentioned that, about eleven o'clock on the night of April 14, he noticed the lights of a ship coming from the east, this became the first of the decisive proofs of Captain Lord's guilt. The Titanic struck the iceberg at 11:40 p.m., and Lord admitted that the ship, coming from the east (in the same direction that the Titanic was heading towards the iceberg), stopped at 11:30 p.m.

Members of the Californian crew were then questioned. From the testimony of second mate Herbert Stone, the commission was able to identify two most significant facts: Stone confirmed that he saw eight missiles, and that the unknown ship disappeared from sight at approximately 2 hours 20 minutes (Titanic fired eight missiles and sank at 2.20). The commission's conclusion was unequivocal: the observed ship was the Titanic. However, Stone argued that the vessel in sight of the Californian was small, had one masthead light, and the signals he saw were not distress signals.

As in the United States, in London they hoped that the interrogation of the second mate of the Titanic, Charles Herbert Lightoller, could clarify much. The second mate took the position of White Star Line's innocence. His arguments were so convincing that the commission members retreated.

Bruce Ismay was interrogated for two days. He had to answer many tricky questions, and some of them were very unpleasant. However, the investigation in London turned out to be incomparably easier for him than in the United States.

During the London inquiry, none of the surviving II class passengers were heard. Only three 1st class passengers gave evidence. But they mainly tried to justify their actions and actions at the time of launching the lifeboats and later.

On July 30, 1912, Lord Mersey read out the Report on the results of the investigation into the circumstances of the sinking of the Titanic. In Mercy's opinion, there was no specific person or institution that could be blamed for their actions contributing to the greatest maritime disaster.

Regarding the actions of the captain of the Titanic, Edward Smith, Mercy said that he made serious mistakes, but ones that, having regard to past practice and previous experience, cannot be said to be associated with irresponsibility. And if irresponsibility is not established, then Captain Smith cannot be blamed.

Mercy assessed the behavior of the officers and crew of the Titanic during the organization of rescue operations as follows: “Witnesses convinced me that the officers carried out their duties very conscientiously, without thinking about themselves... The discipline of the passengers and crew during the lowering of the boats was also excellent, but the organization could have been better, and if it had been, more lives might have been saved."

To Joseph Bruce Ismay, Lord Mersey said that he did not agree that being general director shipping company, Ismay bears some moral responsibility for what happened and should have remained on the ship until the very end.

Lord Mersey explained the death of a large number of III class passengers by “the greater reluctance of III class passengers to leave the ship, their reluctance to part with their luggage.”

In the part of the final report relating to the Californian and Captain Lord, Lord Mersey focused entirely on allegations unfavorable to the captain. In controversial cases, and there were many of them, he joined the arguments of Lord’s opponents.

Based on materials from the book “Titanic” by Milos Hubacek, publishing house “Popurri”, Minsk, 2000

In modern agitprop, it is in vain to look for a real picture of the night of March 15, 1912, when the Titanic liner sank into the water and people abandoned the sinking ship. It is in vain to look for references to the indignation in society that was caused by the way the evacuation of the ship’s population was carried out, about the accusations that were heard and are being heard to this day. In connection with them, on both sides of the Atlantic - in the trial in Great Britain and in the investigation of the US Senate - the investigation into the circumstances of the death of the Titanic focused not even on the reasons for the sinking of the ship, but on the circumstances of the evacuation of people from its board.

The main accusations of the society were as follows:

Discrimination against 3rd class passengers who had limited access to lifeboats. - (Discrimination based on social status and material well-being).

Discrimination against men who, based on Captain Smith's sexist orders, were prohibited from boarding lifeboats or had limited access to them. - (Gender discrimination). Discrimination was carried out in favor of women, and not even children, whose death rate significantly exceeds the percentage of losses among women.

There were other outrageous circumstances, which we will cover further. Echoes of these accusations can be found in the dispassionate report of the British court. Investigating the lifeboat situation, the judge wrote in his report that during the hearing, “Witnesses tended to exaggerate the number of people in each lifeboat, exaggerate the proportion of women to men, and understate the number of crew in the lifeboats.”

This phrase reflects the following reality that was that night on the Titanic. The lifeboats departed from the side 1/3 full (boat No. 6 with 1st class passengers) or 1/2, only some were almost completely filled. People were prevented from boarding the boats, men were not allowed into the boats, and pistol shots were used to scare people away (there was such an incident, according to eyewitnesses). When boarding some boats, wives were separated from their husbands, who were left on board, condemned to drowning, despite the protests of the wives (there was such evidence). The crew, which was supposed to deal first with rescuing passengers and then with their own, boarded the boats in an unreasonably large proportion with the passengers, and thus significantly fewer male passengers were saved than men from the crew. All these facts are visible from the lists of passengers on the boats, from the report of the British investigation, from eyewitness accounts.

Here are the resulting tables of the number of survivors from the Titanic (from the British report).

According to the British report, the 20 lifeboats had 1,178 seats, an average of 59 seats per lifeboat (they varied in capacity, from 40 to 65 people). Of the 711 people who survived, only 625 people left the Titanic on lifeboats, that is, the average load of lifeboats was 36 people per boat (61% utilization of capacity). The rest apparently got there by swimming. The evacuation of lifeboats from the Titanic began at 0.45 and ended mostly before 2.00, after which only 4 collapsible lifeboats were sent. The boats were launched from both sides of the deck, from different places. The Titanic sank at 2.20. The number of surviving crew members was 189 people, which is 10 people per boat - an unreasonably high number.
The crew explained the half-empty boats by saying that women were afraid to board them, that many passengers did not believe in the danger of sinking the Titanic, etc. These statements are repeated to this day. But they forget to quote the reasonable objection of the British judge, written in the investigation report:

“... but, nevertheless, I believe that if the boats had been delayed a little longer before being launched, or if the passage doors had been opened to the passengers, more of them might have gotten onto the boats. And if women could not be induced to board the boats, the boats could then be filled with men. It's hard to justify leaving such a ship large quantities incomplete boats from a sinking ship with a completely calm sea. These boats left hundreds of lives unsalvageable.”

It is widely believed that the large number of victims of the Titanic's sinking is due to the lack of lifeboats. But the numbers say that there were enough places in the boats for almost all the passengers of the Titanic! According to the British report, there were 1,316 passengers (and 885 crew members) on the ship, and the number of places in lifeboats was 1,178. The reason for such a large number of casualties (1,490 people, including 817 passengers) was in fact poor management of the evacuation crew and personally Captain Smith, who was more concerned with keeping men out of the boats and giving women priority on boarding than with evacuating all passengers. At the very beginning of the evacuation, he gave the order to evacuate women and children first, and during the departure of the last boat he again shouted into a megaphone: be British, women and children first!... If the boats had been fully loaded, there would have been 553 more casualties less; in addition, they did not think about using improvised means to build something like rafts that would make it possible to stay on the water (some people saved themselves in the water by holding on to an overturned boat); and they even forgot about one collapsible boat - it surfaced after the ship sank. Instead, they closed the doors and blocked access to the deck...

In the reports on the investigation into the circumstances of the evacuation from the Titanic, attention is drawn to a detailed breakdown of the surviving and dead passengers by gender, by class (and these latter again by gender). Such detailed data is not found for other major shipwrecks. This detail reflects the enormous public concern about the procedure for evacuating passengers from the Titanic, which was visible from the figures of a disproportionately large number of women rescued, an extremely low percentage of men and children rescued, and a large disproportion in the percentage of passengers rescued by class 1, 2, 3. There are allegations that the third class passengers actually managed to break onto the deck towards the end of the evacuation. The lists of passengers on the boats show that the first boats departed sparsely filled, with first class passengers in full families (husband, wife, children) and even with servants and lap dogs (however, the last boats, if a select public departed in them, were little filled: for example, boat No. 4, the sixteenth in a row, left the Titanic). The captain's order to send women and children first did not apply to them.

However, this order of the captain was not carried out on many other boats. The lists of people who escaped on boats show that there were boats filled mainly with men, and there were boats filled mainly with women. On many boats there are a large number of men on the crew. Everything depended on who was in charge of the landing, on the personal persistence of the men. Some jumped into already departing boats from the side. The behavior of the crew and captain made us remember the article of the criminal code “Failure to provide assistance to a person in a life-threatening situation” when it was possible to provide such assistance (and there was such an opportunity - half-empty boats). There were also those who wanted not to drown, no matter what the team members came up with. What was to be done with such “irresponsible” people? Could they be denied salvation? No, the law does not allow this, one could only offer to give up their place to women, but the “irresponsible” had the right to refuse. As a result of all this, a serious investigation into the circumstances of the abandonment of the ship subsequently took place. Only the main culprit of the events - the captain - was no longer present.

It is easy to calculate that only 1/6 of the male passengers were saved (there were 805 male passengers in total, and 146 (18%) of them were saved). But almost 1/4 of the crew (24%) were saved, among them there were mostly men, only 20 women. The crew was interested in the order of boarding the boats that he had established. By driving away male passengers from the boats, not allowing them near them or even on the deck, the men from the crew had the opportunity to take seats in the boats themselves, covering their selfish interests with the “noble motives” of caring for women and children. The crew understood perfectly well that if all the passengers, men and women, took seats in the boats, the men from the crew would never get into them and their chances of salvation would be guaranteed to be zero. The crew had no reason to consider their duty fulfilled - most of the passengers remained on the ship without hope of salvation (out of 1316 passengers, 817 died); even the order to save women and children first was not carried out - several dozen children, and more than a hundred women never got into the boats, they died.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the part of the crew that does the hardest work in the hold. It is believed that they voluntarily, in the half-flooded engine and boiler rooms, used their last strength to ensure the operation of the pumps and power plant in order to enable those above to escape. They all went down. But what could these unfortunates do there while, shortly after midnight, most of the boilers were extinguished and huge clouds of steam roared out of the pipelines on the sides of the chimneys? How could the pumps work if the ship filled with water so quickly that at 1 hour 15 minutes the Titanic’s bow was hidden in the water, and by 2 a.m. the water was 3 meters from the promenade deck? It is known that workers in the engine and boiler departments were considered a lower caste. None of them escaped. But most of the so-called deck crew were saved.

A much smaller proportion of women in class 3 were saved (76 women out of 165) than women in classes 1 and 2 (for example, 80 out of 93 women in class 2 were saved). Children in grade 3 suffered more than other children - the percentage of survivors among them was lower than the percentage of survivors of children in other classes.

The losses of the 3rd class men were the greatest; there were many more of them on the ship than the men of the other two classes combined. 84% of class 3 men died (387 out of 462 people). The most “powerless” were male 2nd class passengers, 92% of them died (154 out of 168 people). Thus, when rescuing drowning people, priority on the Titanic was given to the lives of women-and-children of the 1st and 2nd classes (rich and middle class), much less - to the lives of women-and-children of the 3rd class (poor, proletariat), and even less - to the lives of men of 1st class, and very few - men of 2nd and 3rd classes.
The behavior of the people sitting in the boats after the sinking of the Titanic deserves a separate discussion. Many people swam in the water (-2°C) and died from the cold, but in the few hours that remained before the arrival of the Carpathia, an insignificant number of people, about four people, were taken onto the boats from the water. In half-empty boats, they could calmly listen to the heartbreaking screams of the unfortunate people in the water for an hour without saving them. They had nerves of iron. If some of those sitting in the boats offered to save someone, the rest objected. The half-empty boats were lifted half-empty aboard the Carpathia. For women in boats, such behavior is especially undignified, because they have just been given advantages during rescue... In addition, women are considered weak and kind creatures. Most of those swimming in the water died and drowned.

It can be assumed that in other classes the situation was equally fair. Against this background, the situation that was on the Titanic looks simply monstrous. (For comparison: on the Titanic in 1st class, 34% of men (including boys) and 97% of women (including girls) survived.)

2) After a torpedo attack on a similar ship to the previous two, the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945, it sank within 50 minutes. There are no reliable data on the number of people on board and those who survived/died, so we do not provide any data, but the following detail is reported: during the evacuation, the captain insisted that women and children should be the first to board the boats, but people ignored his demand, regarding it as a recommendation that they did not follow (and they were absolutely right - all people are equal, have an equal right to save their lives, and no one has the right to take this right away from them).

3) The ship “Okeanos” sank off the coast in 1991 South Africa. As reported in an article from the Wikipedia encyclopedia, passengers accused the captain of this ship of leaving them without help during the evacuation. The captain insisted that he left the ship to organize rescue efforts and then oversaw the rescue from a helicopter. The New York Times quotes the captain: “Once I have given the command to abandon ship, it does not matter at what point I abandon it. If some people want to stay, let them stay.”

4) The German liner "Schiller" sank in May 1875, losing most of its passengers and crew. After the ship hit the reef, passengers began to fight for the opportunity to board the boats, many of which were unusable due to damage. The captain tried to establish order (or rather, his idea of ​​order) with a pistol and a saber, but while he was doing this, the only 2 usable boats set sail with 27 people in them, which was significantly below their capacity. These boats landed on the shore, there were 26 men and 1 woman in them. On board, 50 women and children took refuge from the storm in the control room. In front of the crew and male passengers, a huge wave washed the wheelhouse and all the people in it into the sea, they all died. Few of those remaining on the remains of the ship survived until the morning during the raging storm, but in the morning salvation came for those who remained. Of the 254 passengers and 118 crew members, 37 people survived.
These were the first cases of passenger ship crashes that we came across. Since we did not make a special selection of cases, we can conclude that these examples reflect real life practice in such situations.

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The sinking of the Titanic was not the largest in the 20th century in terms of the number of victims, and the evacuation of people on it was also not exemplary. However, everyone knows the Titanic. What is it about him that attracts those who popularize this tragedy so much? The story of the Titanic, with its surviving women and unsaved men, represents a potentially good opportunity for edifying men and instilling in them a second-class complex compared to women - you just have to present the matter as the norm, explain to men that this is how it should be. And as we see, there is no shortage of this kind of propaganda. This is not even feminism, which declares the equality of the sexes and, therefore, in the case of the Titanic, should demand equal access to lifeboats for both women and men. This is something else that does not yet have a name. Most famous event of the propaganda stream we have outlined was the 1997 Hollywood film Titanic. This stream has existed for decades. For example, a similar approach is in Semyon Isaakovich Belkin’s book “The Blue Ribbon of the Atlantic” (1975), where a separate chapter is devoted to the death of the Titanic. The presentation here is most likely based on English-language literature, a list of which is given at the end of the book.

The low percentage of surviving men here is explained by the personal desire of men to die for the sake of women. The author seems to set an example of such behavior (which, as we saw, did not happen on the Titanic and never happens in shipwrecks). All sharp corners are smoothed out, contradictions are shaded, the presentation is presented in sentimental and romantic tones. As if for the edification of readers, S.I. Belkin provides the following information: “Among the service personnel on the liner there were many 15- and 16-year-old boys: stewards, elevator operators, etc. They had every right to be among the first to take places in the boats, but no one of them did not exercise this right. They all died." The meaning of this passage can be expressed in these words: look, even boys understand that they need to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the ladies! The author knew what kind of reader the book was intended for, so he probably considered this example appropriate. In the preface to his book, he writes: “Great difficulties were caused by the problem of presenting figures: since the book is intended for a wide range of readers, mainly young people, the author wanted to avoid the abundance of digital material.”

There is also an example of a colonel who was already sitting in a boat with his young bride, and who immediately gave up his place in the boat when several more women appeared on deck. An absurd example, the colonel left his bride a widow; There was no need to give up space - all the boats, with the exception of one, departed not fully loaded, there were free places in them. You need to remember in what era this book was published in the USSR - and not be surprised at anything.

The author's main efforts are aimed at proving (with the help of examples) the position that men themselves, of their own free will, due to their high “consciousness,” doomed themselves to death for the sake of women they did not know. Although it is not clear where such consciousness comes from, what it is based on - after all, people are equal in their right to life, everyone has an instinct of self-preservation. On the other hand, the order to allow women and children first into the boats indicates that men wanted to take places in the boats and it cannot be said that men did not board the boats of their own free will. And S.I. Belkin, indeed, is forced to inform the reader: “Of course, there were many other passengers who tried to save their lives at the expense of the weaker and slower ones...”. The failure to provide assistance from the boats to those who swam in the water also suggests that there were such irresponsible passengers, and, what is most interesting, half of those callous, irresponsible souls in the boats were women. Now they, apparently, considered those dying in the water to be weak and slow - after all, they could not get into the boats at the time when they needed to do this - from the deck of the ship.

Propaganda also makes efforts to justify the principle of the captain of the Titanic: women and children first. They boil down to the fact that women and children are weaker, and the weak should be given advantages. We already know what monstrous lies and abuses are hidden behind this demagoguery in the case of the Titanic. The same lie is hidden behind it in any other cases. It is known how the captain “protected” the interests of the socially weaker 3rd class passengers. Maybe someone offered the 3rd class passage to the boats first, and offered the 1st class passengers to wait and show consciousness as being stronger and richer? There is no point in engaging in scholastic debate on this issue. The example of "Lusitania" shows how to act in such situations. However, is everyone so seriously concerned about ensuring advantages for the weak? When boys (children who are clearly weaker than adult women) give up their right to salvation in favor of women, that is, stronger ones, this seems to cause a positive assessment...
It’s amazing how propaganda can turn a dishonest and scandalous tragedy into a cautionary tale that instills in men a inferiority complex compared to women and false behavior patterns.

There are many mental theories swirling around the Titanic, explaining how and why men had to behave there (women were left alone), why women were given preference, but we will not delve into them as unnecessary. Be that as it may, both boys and men have the right to throw the savage myths instilled by propaganda out of their heads.

* * *
Maybe this procedure for rescue from a sinking ship, like on the Titanic, is the norm? We did a search on the Internet, which showed: this order is an exception. In the other examples of shipwrecks that we found, we did not see such a disproportion among the survivors by gender, nor such a disproportion depending on the class of passengers. The incident on the Titanic is strange. The strange elderly Captain Smith first, with his inept leadership, brought the ship to sinking in complete calm, then began to impose discrimination against men and give advantages to women, and with his orders during the evacuation he ruined hundreds more lives that could have been saved. (This may serve as a metaphor for what is happening in some countries).

Here are examples of other shipwrecks.

1) The ship Lusitania, almost identical to the Titanic in size and number of passengers on board, was sunk by a torpedo on its last voyage in 1915. He disappeared under water in 18 minutes. But even during this short evacuation time, 773 people were saved from it (and 711 were saved from the Titanic).

Here is a breakdown of survivors by class, it shows an approximately equal percentage of survival for all:

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The plot of the movie “Titanic,” which triumphantly screened around the world, was based on a real tragedy. The real Titanic, setting out on its maiden voyage on April 10, 1912, collided with an iceberg and sank. Of the 2,800 people, less than 700 were saved

Ocean cruises attract adventure lovers not only with the luxury of floating hotels, but also with the fact that sailing is never completely safe. Part of the romance of sea travel lies in the fact that even on board a multi-deck liner, the passenger clearly feels the dangerous grandeur and power of the sea elements, making his heart beat faster.

Titanic and Lusitania

After the terrible disaster on the first transatlantic voyage of the Titanic, humanity began to realize the importance and complexity of the safety problems of large passenger ships, their adaptability to the rapid evacuation of passengers. After all, “perfectly safe,” as they considered in 1912, the liner sank quite slowly: after colliding with an iceberg, the huge ship filled with water for more than two hours, and then plunged into the abyss, nose first, with almost no lateral roll. Nevertheless, the evacuation of passengers and crew from the Titanic proceeded chaotically and stupidly: passengers rushed in panic through the intricacies of decks and corridors, not knowing the exits to the boat decks, and ended up in dead ends and locked passages. There were not enough boats to save all the passengers and crew (they could accommodate 1,178 people, although there were 2,224 on board), but most of those launched remained underloaded, and many died completely in vain.

This terrible disaster, which killed about 1,500 people, and the stupid rescue organization was quite accurately described in the film by James Cameron, which was watched by a record number of moviegoers around the world. The problem itself first attracted public attention immediately after the sinking of the real Titanic. Already in 1913, the International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea, also known as SOLAS, was adopted. According to the convention, very stringent technical requirements began to be applied to seagoing vessels: each passenger ship must be equipped with a sufficient number of places in lifeboats, and the time for the evacuation of all those on board was limited to one hour. Even if there is a huge hole in the hull, it must remain buoyant for at least an hour.

Since then, these requirements have been the basis for the design of passenger ships and their safety in emergency situations. Compliance with these rules determines the number and placement of lifeboats.

Built shortly before the Titanic, another large-capacity passenger ship, the Lusitania, owned by the same Cunard company, did not have time to re-equip it in accordance with the new requirements after the adoption of the convention, and this also resulted in huge casualties. On May 7, 1915, en route from New York to Liverpool, the Lusitania was attacked by a German submarine. The torpedo hit caused an explosion of steam boilers, and the liner, carrying 1,198 passengers and crew members with it, disappeared under water 20 minutes later.

Under the gun of terrorists

Of course, after the sinking of the Titanic and the adoption of the convention, disasters with large numbers of victims did not stop. Passenger ships were caught in terrible storms, collided with other ships, were blown up by mines, landed on reefs and burned, but in the vast majority of cases, evacuation within an hour turned out to be impossible. According to experts, even the most modern ships often cannot guarantee compliance with SOLAS requirements, and everyone knows this - from ship owners to insurance companies.

Suffice it to remember the disaster passenger airliner"Admiral Nakhimov" (a luxurious German captured ship that previously bore the names "Berlin" and "Hermann Goering"). On August 31, 1986, at the exit from Novorossiysk Bay, the cruise liner Nakhimov collided with the dry cargo ship Pyotr Vasev, received a large hole below the waterline and, having a list to starboard of more than 60 degrees, moved by inertia another 900 meters and disappeared under water. Of the 24 lifeboats, only one was lowered.

According to the conclusion of the government commission, only 7 minutes passed from the moment of collision to death.

Over the next two days, most of the 1,234 people on board were picked up at sea and rescued, but 423 died.

We can consider that the survivors were very lucky: there was a port nearby, in the summer the water in the Black Sea is quite warm, and most of the passengers were still awake at the time of the collision. So only those who were unable or did not have time to throw themselves overboard and swim away from the sinking ship died.

Belief in the myth about the reliability of large-capacity airliners has long been dispelled - like any large structures, they pose a danger. Nevertheless, huge liners not only did not stop being launched, but in the last decade there has been a real boom in their construction. Moreover, the beginning of the new century is also accompanied by the threat of international terrorism, which became a reality after September 11, 2001. Now not only trains, subways, airliners and skyscrapers are attractive targets, but also sea passenger ships.

Today, few people remember that back in 1996, in the Turkish port of Trabzon on the Black Sea, a Turkish-Chechen terrorist group seized the Eurasia motor ship with 200 Russian passengers and held them for four days. Then everything worked out, and none of the passengers were hurt. However, that warning should not be forgotten. Recently, American intelligence agencies acquired information about al-Qaeda's plans for maritime terrorist operations. The captured head of naval operations of this organization, Ahmad Belay Al-Neshari, was found to have an entire dossier listing naval targets, including tourist cruise ships.

One of the targets is called QM2 (this is the abbreviated name for the newest and most luxurious superliner Queen Mary 2), owned by the same Cunard.

This huge 17-deck ship, 345 meters long and 41 meters wide, with 800 cabins for 2,600 passengers (plus 1,250 crew), was launched in January of this year.

Failures began to plague Queen Mary 2 even at the construction stage. Before going to sea, a tragic incident occurred there: a poorly secured ladder collapsed on a liner docked at a shipyard in Saint-Nazaire. At this time there were forty people on the ladder (thirteen died).

The press anticipated that disaster might await the ship on its first transatlantic voyage, and the headlines predicted: “The Queen Mary 2 liner will set off after the Titanic.” This was not idle malice, since the special services received a warning that already on the first voyage, terrorists could choose the ship as a target for attack. But everything worked out, and on January 24, 2004, it safely crossed the Atlantic.

Man-made shipwreck

And yet, discussions on the safety of passenger ships have received new food. Many people ask unpleasant questions for shipowners: are modern ships much safer than the Titanic and what needs to be done to comply with the requirements of the convention and prevent disasters? But back in 2000, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a member of the UN, ordered a two-year analysis of the safety of large-tonnage passenger ships.

Several years ago, with funds from the Canadian government, researchers from the company Fleet Technology built a huge mock-up of the ship in the laboratory. They wanted to establish with precision what prevents passengers from quickly leaving the ship in the event of an emergency. After all, before that, shipbuilders used only guesswork and imperfect computer simulators that modeled the behavior of the crowd during the process of evacuating buildings and other artificial structures. More than two hundred volunteers participated in the experiments in the age range most typical for the real composition of passengers - from 4 years to 81 years. Moreover, each of the volunteers performed his role only once, so that during the experiment he could not learn to save himself faster. Those who moved with a cane or in a wheelchair were also invited to participate in the experiment. It is known that passengers of many cruise ships- pensioners, and their average age sometimes exceeds 65 years.

The experimenters took into account the obvious condition: a sinking ship will certainly have a list. In addition, in a stormy sea, waves throw the ship from one side to the other. Therefore, the model of the corridor with a ladder 21 steps long was installed on hydraulic supports that rocked and tilted it 20 degrees in different directions. It turned out that most passengers do not have a clear understanding of the design of the ship and simply do not know where to run or how to get to the desired deck. Moreover, mock-up tests have shown that standard corridors and stairways are poorly suited to moving crowds of people if the ship lists even slightly.

The movements of the experiment participants were recorded by video cameras and then processed on computers. It turned out that since life jackets are stored in cabins on many ships, during a disaster some passengers rush there, creating a counter flow to those who have already put on life jackets and are in a hurry to leave the ship. Difficulties and congestion on the ladders arose due to the fact that people wearing life jackets could not see their legs and hesitated on the steps for fear of falling.

The situation in the corridor became even more dramatic if the lights were turned off (on the Admiral Nakhimov, the emergency lighting went out two minutes after the collision, and the ship sank in complete darkness) or the corridor was filled with smoke. But, for example, on board the Scandinavian Star ferry in April 1990, a fire started immediately after leaving the port of Oslo and lasted for two days. This cost the lives of the 158 passengers remaining on board. Investigators found that thirty people passed by the exit and died literally three meters from salvation.

Researchers from the International Maritime Organization propose only one effective solution to the safety problem of existing passenger ships - reducing the number of passengers. However, it is likely that more years of international negotiations will be needed until shipowners stop resisting the urgent changes, which today are seen only as an attempt to limit their profits.

Friends are learned in adversity, and a person's true character is revealed in extreme situations. Each person undergoes a test of strength at one time or another in his life, but some are found in a private setting, and some find themselves, for example, on the Titanic or Lusitania. And in the face of history they may (or may not) show selfishness or love for people.

If the story of the sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912 is well known and has been interpreted in different ways a dozen times, then the Lusitania is not so well known. This British liner, after eight years of successful transatlantic voyages, was torpedoed by a German submarine on May 7, 1915 and sank in 18 minutes just 13 km off the coast of Ireland. 1,198 of the 1,959 people on board died (by comparison, 1,502 of the 2,208 passengers on the Titanic died, and it sank for about three hours).

History has preserved for us a striking feature: the passengers of the Lusitania (primarily the strongest and most capable men) for the most part thought only of themselves, but on the Titanic many were ready to sacrifice their lives, saving women and children. In particular, it is known that the chief architect of the Titanic, Thomas Andrews, died heroically saving women and children, and did not exercise his right to take a seat in the lifeboat.

Psychologists believe that social behavior in such cases is determined by the speed of development of an emergency situation with a risk to life.

National Maritime Museum

“When you have to act very quickly, instincts guide a person to a greater extent than acquired social norms and principles. Instincts simply work automatically, which means faster,” said Professor Benno Torgler, author of a study of behavior patterns on the Titanic and Lusitania, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Shipwrecks are, in a certain sense, ideal “psychological laboratories.” People are in a completely enclosed space; it is physically impossible to escape from the circumstances. The Titanic and Lusitania disasters were chosen for study because of their similarities: the proportion of survivors, the design of the ships, and the date of the disaster differ little. In addition, the social structure of the ship's crew and passengers also differed little.

Scientists analyzed in detail the statistics on the dead and survivors on both ships, including the following items in the analysis: gender, age, class of service, nationality, family ties with other passengers. According to these exact parameters, the catastrophes were already noticeably different.

Children during the sinking of the Titanic were found to be 14.8% more likely to survive than adults.

On the Lusitania, by contrast, children were 5.3% more likely to die. The statistics for women are even more striking - on the Titanic they survived 53% more often than men, and on the Lusitania - 1.1% less often.

In general, it is clear that on the Titanic the men made every effort to save women and children, and on the Lusitania - themselves. Psychologists believe that three hours is enough time for instincts to recede, transferring control to social norms and upbringing, and 20 minutes is too short for this.

However, the idea expressed has already had critics.

“The idea of ​​a sense of time while trying to survive is great, but perhaps oversimplifies the model. Perhaps, for a correct interpretation, it is necessary to study the group behavior of people, paying more attention to the relationships of individuals within groups,” says University of Delaware sociology professor Benigno Aguerre.

Aguerre himself published a work analyzing the social behavior of people during the time in 2003. He found that people who were in a club with friends, relatives or acquaintances were less likely to survive than “loners” who had no one to care about but themselves.

When analyzing the situation on the Titanic and Lusitania, only family ties were taken into account. Perhaps it would be more correct to take into account the relationships of friends, colleagues and acquaintances. In cases where we are talking about the choice “to live or die,” such connections can also have a noticeable impact on human behavior.

Now the authors of the described study continue to study social behavior during disasters. This time they analyze the texts short messages, which were sent by people locked in the towers of the International shopping center in New York on September 11, 2001. It turned out that the main motives for these messages were love for family and faith in God.