The tragedy of the wrecked cruise liner, the Costa Concordia, with its dreadful loss of life and hideous memories for the terror-stricken crew and passengers, has appalled all of us.

It would now seem as though the accident was avoidable, and this makes it all the more horrifying for everyone who lived through what one crew-member called a 36-hour nightmare.

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One of the features of the disaster that has provoked a great deal of comment is the stream of reports from angry survivors of how, in the chaos, men refused to put women and children first, and instead pushed themselves forward to escape; and how the Italian crew ignored passengers and reportedly shouldered their way past mothers and pregnant women to get into lifeboats.

Tragedy: As the shock of the Costa Concordia disaster begins to die down there has been anger from some passengers at the behaviour of some of the men on board during the evacuation

When the Titanic went down in April 1912, the Captain’s orders were: ‘Women and children first!’

Although this legendary edict was never part of maritime law, it was adhered to so strictly on the Titanic that men were actually stopped from boarding lifeboats, many of which went to sea only three-quarters full.

There were only a few exceptions to the unvarying tales of heroism: three men in steerage who disobeyed the rule — Italians, coincidentally — were shot.

The chivalry was reflected in survival rates: 74 per cent of the women were saved; 52 per cent of the children; and just 20 per cent of the men.

It meant that Titanic’s sinking quickly became the stuff of mythology. The Chairman of the White Star Line, Joseph Bruce Ismay, who was on board the liner and did escape in a lifeboat, was branded a coward by the world’s Press for leaving the Titanic while there were still women and children on board.

Nellie Taft, wife of the U.S. President, mounted a campaign to raise funds for a monument that would be inscribed: ‘To the brave men who gave their lives that women and children might be saved.’

Example: The chivalry displayed by the men on board the Titanic was reflected in survival rates

The Daily Mail, in an editorial of April 17, 1912, claimed that it was The Law of the Sea that: ‘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 bank-notes . . . but the defenceless wives and sisters and children.’

Yet surprisingly, perhaps, such an attitude provoked sharp responses from early feminists, who believed that ‘women and children first’ infantilised women, and it gave rise to the slogan ‘Votes not Boats’ for the female sex.

The Mail published several feminist ripostes to its celebration of chivalrous behaviour on the Titanic.

Flora Annie Steel — a forgotten name now, but a famous author in 1912 — wrote a poem in the paper saying that the men who perished in the Titanic disaster achieved a mercifully quick death and instant glory whereas their wives were left to grieve and fend for themselves. ‘Women and children last! That is the law of the land.’

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Lady Aberconway, also in the pages of this paper, questioned whether there was any such ‘fine tradition of the sea, as “women and children first” ’. She was right to say that the idea was, in fact, quite recent — but then, so was the idea of women and children in large numbers finding themselves at sea at all.

There were countless cases not so long before the Titanic sank in which soldiers and sailors displayed an utter disregard for the notion of protecting women and children, and there still exists many a seaman’s first-hand account of such behaviour,

After the Pegasus ran aground in 1843 against rocks off the Northumberland coast, one survivor wrote of how ‘the stewardess attempted to get hold of me, but I extricated myself from her in order to save my own life’.

Likewise, a survivor from the Northfleet, which sank in the English Channel in 1873, described meeting clusters of women on deck as the ship went down, but said: ‘I did not stop to speak to them for I was looking towards the boats, thinking I might get hold of one of them yet.’

He was asked by a mother to save her baby, but later recorded coldly: ‘I could not do anything. For I felt the last had come.’

As many as 293 souls drowned when the Northfleet went down, and of the survivors, 83 were men compared to just one woman and two children.

The wreck of the London, an emigrant ship which sank near Plymouth in 1865, is especially shocking — of the 258 on board, only 19 survived, none of them women.

One survivor later talked of ‘the horror of being in the company of nearly frantic girls and women, who thought that every roll would be the last’.

'Stand fast!' During the sinking of HMS Birkenhead in 1852, the troops on board were ordered by Lieutenant-Colonel Seton (right) to allow women and children to disembark first

'Stand fast!' During the sinking of HMS Birkenhead in 1852, the troops on board were ordered by Lieutenant-Colonel Seton (right) to allow women and children to disembark first

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When manning the pumps to get rid of the water flooding the hull, he noted he was ‘much happier here, away from the women, for seeing so many frightened had made me feel worse’.

It seems that the seafaring command about women and children being first to board lifeboats originated with the sinking of HMS Birkenhead off the coast of South Africa in 1852. The ship was carrying 480 British troops and about 26 women and children.

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When the ship foundered, the soldiers’ commander told his men to ‘stand fast!’ and allow women and children to make use of the few lifeboats on the vessel.

Some women did not want to go on their own — they had to be torn away from their husbands, carried over to the bulwark and dropped over the ship’s side. Most of the soldiers and sailors aboard drowned or were eaten by sharks, but all the women and children survived, and the chivalric ethos became known as the Birkenhead Drill, celebrated in a Rudyard Kipling poem, Soldier An’ Sailor Too:

To take your chance in the thick of a rush, with firing all about

Is nothing so bad when you’ve cover to ’and, an’ leave an likin’ to shout;

But to stand and be still to the Birken’ead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew,

An’ they done it, the Jollies — ’Er Majesty’s Jollies — soldier an’ sailor too!

The notion of women and children first reached its apogee in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, for the idea that women are weak and need protecting by males went hand-in-hand with the belief that women should be excluded from positions of responsibility.

Knights errant: The chivalry of Edwardian heroes such as Captain Scott (pictured) is today seen as old-fashioned

Mark Girouad, a great social and architectural historian, in his book on Chivalry In Victorian And Edwardian England, says the ‘chivalric’ treatment of women was part and parcel of the Victorians’ cult of the ‘gentleman’ and the ‘amateur’.

The great heroes of the Edwardian and pre-World War I days, such as Captain Scott, were passionate amateurs, and saw themselves as knights errant, women as damsels in distress.

But in our day, with the advent of feminism and the professional woman, chivalry and manners are considered stuffy and old-fashioned.

As the father of three daughters, I do not, with a single fibre of my being, wish to go back to a time when women could not have the vote or get a university degree. Nor do I, surrounded by extremely strong-charactered and intelligent women in my family and among my friends, feel tempted to regard women as the frail sex.

But the fact remains that there is a longing among most men to protect women and children, and chivalry is simply a manifestation of that longing.

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And whatever transpires about the reason for the Costa Concordia disaster, the disappearance of a chivalric code is a sorry reflection on society today.