When the Costa Concordia ran aground and her captain Francesco Schettino was accused of abandoning his passengers and crew, a long and detailed media conversation about the etiquette of abandoning ship started. As reports came out that not only did the captain take off in a lifeboat, other men took seats in rescue vessels over women and children, the patchy history of naval chivalry and masochistic machismo was put in thespotlight. But what do the lifeboat priorities in this tragedy tell us about who and what we’re trying to save? If the age of chivalry is dead, what does this disaster tell us about our current survival priorities?
As we read and watch outraged reports of the behaviour of the Concordia’s captain and many of his passengers, as we listen to cries that chivalry and civility are dead, how do we understand our fascination with this event and our confusion about what we believe is right action in a time of disaster?
Mary Dejevsky, commenting on the etiquette of the new order as it manifested in the wreck of the Concordia, speculates that women and children first has become fathers first instead. With several passengers recounting how fathers refused to be separated from their children and took lifeboat places ahead of childless women and the elderly, are we witnessing a new code emerging? If fathers are now leaping into lifeboats to be with their children, has the nuclear family become the new priority in our hierarchy of the right to live?
The cry “Women and children first!” was coined during the wreck of the Birkenhead, but it was during the sinking of the Titanic, where more than 1300 men and only 100 women died, that the chivalrous patriarchal principle of men laying down their lives for women and children became part of our general understanding of the unwritten naval code.
I believe we know instinctively that we could all behave as Captain Schettino is alleged to have done. We have all put ourselves first at the expense of another, either to our shame or triumph, on countless occasions. But when we are caught doing this, when it becomes even marginally public, we usually cite a code in our defence, except when our actions will be seen as absolutely indefensible.
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