Is chivalry dead?

[GD on Wheels]

With the near sinking of the cruise ship Costa Concordia there have been reports of crew members putting their lives before the passengers. A case of "Captain and crew members first:the rest of you can be fish food!"
So what would you do in such circumstances? Would you make sure all the women and children got off first and salute as the ship went down under you? Or would you fight tooth and nail to bag a seat in a lifeboat?

I for one would make sure those close to me would be seen safely onto a lifeboat but I would make sure I was as close behind them as soon as possible.With every one else taking their chances.

But to be honest do we really know how we would react when faced with those kind of events? Or do we dream of being the hero?

 

[grumpyoldb]

April 14th 1912:
MAN: "Women and children first please."

25 years ago:
WOMAN: "Women want sex equality"

15 years ago:
WOMAN:"Women to fight sexism"

5 years ago:
WOMAN:"Women winning on sex equality"

3 days ago:
WOMAN: "It was unbelievable, men were trying to get into the lifeboats before women" I like this!

 

[StickyFingers]

GrumpyOldB makes a good point.

As for the original question I'd be throwing people out off lifeboats who pushed infront of a mother and her children.

The strong single women would drown with me though.

 

[rest have risen above me]

GrumpyOldB makes a good point.

As for the original question I'd be throwing people out off lifeboats who pushed infront of a mother and her children.

The strong single women would drown with me though.

What about a strong single mother? Surely it should be any woman should take their chances? Fathers have rights as well, just look at all the buggers claiming Paternity leave....Personally I couldn't wait to get back to work after my two parasites were born... Screaming, wailing and ungrateful, the kids were bad as well as the wife..DT_Xtremez_30:

 

[Ex-Bay]

April 14th 1912:
MAN: "Women and children first please."

25 years ago:
WOMAN: "Women want sex equality"

15 years ago:
WOMAN:"Women to fight sexism"

5 years ago:
WOMAN:"Women winning on sex equality"

3 days ago:
WOMAN: "It was unbelievable, men were trying to get into the lifeboats before women" I like this!

Sad, innit ?
I hope I'd have the guts to hold the door or help a woman or a child in similar circumstances.

 

[vim_fuego]

I was once on a Nim during start up when the crew chief in a very understated manner said 'The roofs on fire around the HF aerial socket'...Not many of us heard it or processed it in the manner we ought to...I bloody heard it as I was on comms that day so listening to a few things and began to unstrap...now we were trained to egress aircraft on the ground in various ways and a tannoy eventually announced the escape route as the port rear door via the steps as we had no engines running and the groundcrew were already pushing them in...The crew was an experienced one and we all knew each other....There was a delay between us gathering at the door and the steps, that appeared at that time to me to be moving in slow motion, arriving...I roughly was about 3-4 in the queue to get off and the amount of pressure from behind I was feeling on my back motioning me towards a gaping hole and a fair drop was considerable...luckily I'm a big chap and could lean back offering encouragement to stop pushing.

The point here is if you don't know what is occurring in your environment (we had all unplugged so had lost the commentary from the chief) then even the most trained of people who have flown many times together can forget to be calm when you have a chance of going bang...airplanes can go up much more quickly to be fair though.

This chap on the Concorde should have had bags of thinking time but I think his thought processes and training were clouded by the dawning realisation that he had just fecked up in the most unimaginable way....From what I can gather, for the sake of a crewmen being able to have a closer look at his home island, he had just written off a vastly expensive ship and potentially killed a deal of it's passenger list. The bridge crew on these vessels and the senior engineers I expect are highly trained, experienced and qualified...The rest of the crew I wouldn't be surprised if they were the equivelent of minimum wage Maccy D's employees...When the sh1t hit the fan I imagine many of them were clueless, leaderless and ultimately useless. If someone had been able to look at a chart and broadcast that the seabed was only 20 metres down and the ship some 80 metres high that may have bought some calm and lives....

 

[Barch]

It's not all bad ...

 

[amfortas]

My local rag ran an article in which someone said "those men were gutless ba$tard$ getting in the lifeboats and leaving their women behind". To which I responded that I could not recall the women on the Titanic who got in the lifeboats and left their men behind - to drown - being called 'gutless bar$tard$'. But maybe I just didn't read it.

Adults are adults. Equal. Maybe there were no adult women then. Or now.

 

[CC]

TBH, I think the Captain's actions appear to be that of a coward. He appears to have left the ship very early on and then refused to return. In the past, one of the reasons the Captain "Went down with his ship" was the subsequent difficulty in 'doing' him if he was to blame. However, yeah I'd like to think we'd all act heroically when the situation calls for it, but in reality would we?

 

[Shugster]

Here's what I hope I would do..

Check to see how quickly the ship is rolling over / going down. Based on that info time would dictate what I could do.

If it's rolling over continously and doesn't look like stopping then there's almost nothing you could do even if you wanted to.
If it's listing slowly then you have time to organise something, get everyone to muster staions get the crew to start loading lifeboats quickly. Kiddies have priority one but adults get shoved in in on a first come first served basis.

As Vim says though, the natural instinct to survive makes it almost impossible to control the situation. When I fly on a jet I always check how far I am from the exit, but in the back of my mind I know that if everyone tries to get through the over wing exit at once it will get blocked and I can forget using it.

Effective mass escape from any life threatening situation has to be designed to take into account that it'll be every man for himself and panic levels will rise very quickly.

 

[grumpyoldb]

It may bring out the liney in me and go for a quick minesweep................ DT_Xtremez_42:

 

[Oldstacker]

Two thoughts on this one;
Firstly; like most of us I'd like to think I'd do the decent thing but who knows what they will do in that situation? A professor on the Radio & TV today who has studied these things, made the valid point that if some people are standing back and trying to usher others through, you actually create a log jam in the passageways, particularly if families start to argue about being split up - first come first served may mean more served in the long run.

Secondly, some passengers complained about crew getting into the lifeboats first - well, der, some of them are supposed to do that in order to control boarding and lower them safely. Some passengers also commented that it was stewards and the like that were helping them and manning the lifeboats rather than crew - again, many of the 'hotel' staff on board are dual hatted to do just that.

 

[XVR RA RA RA]

Surely if the max capacity of a cruise ship is 4000 people then there should be enough lifeboats for 4500 incase not all the lifeboats are able to deploy or some deploy half-full. So if the Concordia was not sinking rapidly, it shouldn't matter who goes first, as you'll all get off eventually.

The women complaining about chivalry being dead remind me of a quote...
"Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others". Napoleon the pig.