When a ship is in distress,
one might assume that the captain and crew would risk their lives to keep passengers safe.
In popular culture, we’re often reminded of the Titanic—a prime example of chivalry at sea—in
which Captain Edward Smith ordered lifeboats to be lowered with women and children first.
This phrase itself — “Women and children first” — has
come to be known as the unwritten law of the sea.
It’s thought to have originated from the sinking of the
As it turns out though, the Titanic is not exactly
representative of the behavior seen in most maritime disasters.
In 2012, researchers looked at 18 famous shipwrecks between 1852 and 2011— and they
discovered that crew members were almost 20 percent MORE likely to survive than passengers.
As for women and children, they were far less likely
than men to survive — with children having just a 15% survival rate.
So why does this happen? Where does chivalry go in a time of crisis at sea?
One could argue that it’s simply a matter of survival of the fittest.
In disasters where ships sink quickly—more men survive because they’re physically stronger
than women and children — and thus, are more capable of staying afloat.
Then again,
have you seen what women wore back then? One has to wonder — would more men have drowned if
they too were thrown into the ocean wearing a corset, a petticoat, and layers of soaked wool?
I imagine it’s not too different from having a concrete block tied around your ankles.
But what about disasters where people have time to understand the predicament
they find themselves in? Where people have time to weigh their options, so to speak.
In those cases, did women and children still die because they were poor swimmers?
Or did they die because someone else denied them the opportunity to survive?
Today, we explore the story of the La Bourgogne, which is—shall
we say—the anti-Titanic when it comes to the code of conduct at sea.
If you’ve never heard of the Bourgogne, that’s not surprising.
The scandal around its sinking was quickly hushed up by French courts who ultimately
decided that the crew did everything they could to save passengers. Case closed.
In reality, the scene of hysteria that played out over the course of the Bourgogne sinking would
later be described by surviving passengers as one of the most pitiful displays of crew brutality.
Passengers were not only blocked from entering lifeboats by crewmen.
They were stabbed, beaten, and knocked unconscious into the water with oars.
In the end, nearly half of the crew survived, while only about 12% of the passengers survived.
And as morally reprehensible as we think this behavior is — research tells us that violent and
desperate battles for self-preservation like this are to be expected in these situations.
And when they happen, it’s almost always the women and children who pay the ultimate price.
The La Bougogne was one of four ships funded by the French government in the 1880s
under the agreement that they could be used in a time of war.
These faster and more modern ships were an immediate success for the French Line — doubling
revenue and helping the company compete with the White Star Line on the transatlantic route.
The success was rather short-lived however,
as the 1890s introduced the Spanish-American War and a cholera epidemic in France.
Meanwhile, German and British companies continued building larger, faster, and more luxurious ships.
The likes of which the French line simply could not compete with — not to mention
the company was gaining a less-than-stellar reputation for how they managed their ships.
Numerous mishaps involving their fleet were lowering the public’s opinion of the French Line.
The La Bourgogne happened to be at the center of several of these mishaps.
In 1888, the ship was damaged sailing through a cyclone and lost a sailor after he fell overboard.
“At night, the storm increased in intensity and
drove the vessel from her course,” reads this article from the New York Times.
“At midnight, a huge wave dashed over the steamer and tore away the center of the bridge.
A few hours later a companion wave took the same course and carried off the rest of the structure.”
The article proceeds to detail just how precarious and life-threatening of a voyage it was. A sailor
even fell overboard to his death, and yet — the article concludes with the captain
saying that if it hadn’t been for this pesky storm, they could have broken a speed record.
The next incident occurred in 1890, when the Bourgogne rammed an English vessel,
causing significant damage to both, but they managed to stay afloat.
The article from the incident reads “As water rushed into the forward compartment as fast as it
could be pumped out, the pumps were discontinued and the compartment remained filled with water.”
A flooded ship, though, was just a mere inconvenience to the captain’s schedule.
To make up for the half-day he lost, the captain increased speed and, again, sailed straight into a
cyclone — thus making it a rather uncomfortable but eventful voyage to say the least.
In February of 1896, the Bourgogne rammed two ships in the fog on two separate occasions.
The first collision caused only minor damage,
but the ship involved in the second collision wasn’t so lucky.
The Bourgogne rammed and sank a British steamer called the Ailsa.
And let’s be clear: this ship wasn’t even moving.
It had been anchored in New York Harbor waiting for the fog to clear.
Passenger reports of what happened on board the Ailsa as she sank
are almost identical to what would soon happen on the Bourgogne.
Crewmen frantically raced to the lifeboats, pushing and hitting anyone who stood in their way.
Tugboats would eventually have to save passengers
who were clinging to the rigging and smokestacks sticking out of the water.
Despite the Bourgogne ramming the Ailsa — which had been anchored
and waiting out the fog — the French liner was cleared of any wrongdoing.
The Bourgogne would encounter a similar — but much
deadlier scene — in the North Atlantic just two years later.
On July 4, 1898, the Bourgogne was traveling from France to
New York when she collided with an iron sailing vessel called the Cromartyshire.
Despite the dense fog and hearing the whistle of the other ship—the
crew of the La Bourgogne kept their ship cruising at its top speed of around 17 knots.
The fog was so bad in fact that visibility was reportedly no more than 60 feet, or 18 meters.
This would hardly be enough distance to stop a bicycle, much less an ocean liner.
One would think the captain and crew would have learned their
lesson considering the Bourgogne was no stranger to ramming ships.
But around 5 am, the liner struck the Cromartyshire and immediately started flooding.
The captain made a futile attempt to beach the ship on Sable Island — which
was still some 60 miles away — but the engine room quickly lost power.
As the ship rapidly listed to starboard, the scene turned chaotic.
Numerous claims of crewmen fighting off — and in some cases — killing
passengers for seats in the lifeboats — made their way into newspapers.
Most of the blame for this violent behavior was placed on a select group of crewmen and
steerage passengers — but it was also pointed out
that the ship’s captain and officers did nothing to intervene.
To their credit though, most of the officers did remain at their post and go down with the ship.
After only some 30 minutes, the Bourgogne vanished beneath the surface,
falling some 2 miles to the ocean floor.
Out of the 506 passengers on board, fewer than 70 survived. This included just one woman out
of the estimated 300 on board. Sadly, all of the children died in the sinking.
Meanwhile, out of the 220 crew, nearly half survived.
Once word of this made it back to land, outrage against the French Line intensified.
Newspapers stoked the public’s anger as they described in vivid and gruesome
detail what survivors saw: murder and savagery among a group of men who had
been entrusted with the safety of the ship and its passengers.
Three days after the sinking, an article published in the New York Times
seems to place all blame for the incident on Mother Nature.
“A great French liner has succumbed to the one peril of the sea which it seems that the
progress of science can do nothing to avert. That is, the peril of collision in a fog.
That is the form of disaster which has been most frequent and most fatal
to the populous floating towns by which the transatlantic commerce is now carried on.”
The French courts agreed with this logic. The tragedy was simply
unavoidable in weather like this — and as for the crew,
they did nothing wrong. In fact, they should be applauded for their courage in the face of danger.
Sure, there may have been some violence on board, but it would be unfair to hold the
French Line responsible. After all, it wasn’t their crew that incited violence: perhaps it
was a group of foreign sailors traveling as passengers who caused all the trouble.
Every other court — including The U.S. Supreme Court and the Board of Trade — concluded that
the Bourgogne caused the collision due to sailing at high speeds in the fog.
If we are to look at this case objectively, it’s entirely possible that the French crew
wasn’t wholly responsible for the violence that took place. Surely,
there must have been passengers who were out of their mind with fear as well.
But the staggering loss of passengers over crew — combined with the French
Line’s history of ineptitude and reckless sailing — would
suggest that perhaps they ought to shoulder a bit more of the blame.
The story of the La Bourgogne is tragic — but it’s not unique.
Reports of crews abandoning ship before passengers
have permeated maritime disasters throughout history.
More contemporary instances include the Oceanos sinking in 1991 in which a guitarist and other
members of the ship’s band had to oversee the rescue of more than 500 passengers.
And then of course there’s the Costa Concordia in 2012,
in which the captain said he tripped and fell into a lifeboat.
Regardless of the situation — whether it’s a sinking ship,
a burning building, or a rush of people at a concert — panic can turn otherwise
rational people into violent savages in the name of self-preservation.
So — while we’d like to believe we live in a world where “women and children”
do indeed deserve to be rescued first — history has shown us that
the more likely code of conduct we’ll encounter is “every man for himself.”