# Women and children first
**Women and children first** (WCF) is a maritime evacuation custom under which women and children board lifeboats before men when a ship is abandoned. It is often called the "unwritten law of the sea," but it has never been codified in international maritime law, and a 2012 statistical study of 18 shipwrecks found that in most disasters women fare worse than men, not better.[1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d) • [2](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3421183/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Origin | Widely attributed to the sinking of the troopship [HMS Birkenhead](https://www.edgepedia.org/hms-birkenhead-1845) off South Africa on 26 February 1852; the practice became known as the "Birkenhead Drill"[3](https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/birkenhead-sinking) |
| Legal status | No international maritime law requires that women and children be rescued first; it is a social custom, not a binding rule[1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d) |
| Titanic outcome | On the Titanic (sunk 15 April 1912), 70% of women and children were saved compared with 20% of men[1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d) |
| Typical outcome | Across 18 maritime disasters from 1852 to 2011 covering more than 15,000 people, women's survival rate averaged about half that of men, and children had the lowest survival rate of any group[2](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3421183/) |
| Role of the captain | Women gained a survival advantage mainly when the captain ordered WCF and enforced it, in the studied cases with the threat of violence[2](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3421183/) • [4](https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/34514-maritime-disasters-are-women-and-children-really-always-given-priority) |
| Crew behavior | Captains and crew survive at a significantly higher rate than passengers; only 9 of 16 captains in the study went down with their ships[2](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3421183/) |
## The Birkenhead, 1852
The custom is traced to the British troop transport [Birkenhead](https://www.edgepedia.org/birkenhead), an iron-hulled paddle steamer carrying reinforcements for the Eighth Cape Frontier War. She struck an uncharted rock about two kilometers off Danger Point at the eastern tip of Walker Bay early on 26 February 1852 and sank within about twenty minutes.[3](https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/birkenhead-sinking) • [5](https://www.samilitaryhistory.org/vol124bd.html)
Only three of the ship's eight boats could be launched, and they were in danger of being swamped by men trying to save themselves. The senior army officer aboard, Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Seton, ordered his men to stand fast so the boats carrying women and children could pull away. Of roughly 638 passengers and crew, 193 survived, and all the women and children were saved; many of the men who reached the water were taken by sharks.[1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d) • [3](https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/birkenhead-sinking) Sources differ on how many women and children were aboard: the National Army Museum counts 26, while the South African Military History Society's casualty table lists seven women and thirteen children.[3](https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/birkenhead-sinking) • [5](https://www.samilitaryhistory.org/vol124bd.html)
The episode became known as the Birkenhead Drill. Hoping to model supreme discipline, courage, and self-sacrifice for his troops, King Frederick William of Prussia ordered the tale to be read out to each regiment of his army, and [Rudyard Kipling](https://www.edgepedia.org/rudyard-kipling) fixed the phrase in popular memory in his 1896 poem "Soldier an' Sailor Too": "To stand an' be still to the Birken'ead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew."[3](https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/birkenhead-sinking) • [1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d)
## The Titanic, 1912
The drill is most closely associated with the Titanic, which sank on 15 April 1912 with the loss of at least 1,500 of the more than 2,200 people aboard. Testimony to the British and American inquiries indicates that Captain Edward Smith and his officers ordered women and children prioritized for the lifeboats, of which there were not enough to evacuate everyone.[1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d)
**Two interpretations of one order.** The order was applied differently on the two sides of the ship. Second Officer Charles Lightoller, loading boats on the port side, treated it as women and children only, and many of his boats were lowered half empty; First Officer William Murdoch, on the starboard side, loaded women and children first but allowed men aboard when room remained. The Titanic's lifeboats could have carried 1,178 people in total, but only 705 of the roughly 2,200 aboard survived.[6](https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/titanic/women-and-children-first-origins-titanic) In the end, 70% of the women and children were saved against 20% of the men, and on the Titanic overall women's survival rate was more than three times that of men.[1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d) • [2](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3421183/)
## What the data show
In 2012, economists Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson of Uppsala University published an analysis in *PNAS* of a database of 18 maritime disasters spanning 1852 to 2011, covering more than 15,000 passengers and crew of more than 30 nationalities. Their central finding contradicts the popular image: women have a distinct survival disadvantage compared with men, averaging about half the male survival rate, and children have the lowest survival rate of all. Captains and crew survive at a significantly higher rate than passengers.[2](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3421183/)
The study tested several common beliefs and found little support for most. The duration of a disaster showed no association with norm compliance; women did no better when they were a small share of those aboard; and the length of the voyage before the disaster made no difference to women's relative survival. Two findings did stand out: the sex gap in survival has declined since World War I, consistent with women's rising status improving their relative survival, and women fared worse, not better, in shipwrecks involving British ships.[2](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3421183/)
**Leadership is the decisive factor.** The Titanic and the Birkenhead were the notable exceptions, and in both a commanding officer enforced the evacuation order. Elinder and Erixson found that it is the captain's policy, rather than the moral sentiments of male passengers, that determines whether women receive preferential treatment, and that women survived at higher rates than men only where the WCF order was enforced with the threat of violence. They concluded that human behavior in life-and-death situations is best captured by the phrase "every man for himself."[2](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3421183/) • [4](https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/34514-maritime-disasters-are-women-and-children-really-always-given-priority) The 1915 sinking of the [Lusitania](https://www.edgepedia.org/lusitania), which went down in under 18 minutes, illustrates the other pattern: the ship listed so severely and sank so quickly that no evacuation protocol could be carried out.[7](https://www.thecollector.com/birkenhead-drill/)
## Law and modern practice
No international maritime law requires that women and children be rescued first. Edward Galea, a professor at the [University of Greenwich](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-greenwich) who specializes in evacuation and human behavior, has stated that there is no law or regulation to this effect and that the tradition owes much of its currency to popular culture. The Geneva Convention does provide special protection and evacuation priority for pregnant women and mothers of young children in armed conflict, a separate and narrower rule.[1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d) • [8](https://www.lhlt.mpg.de/gplh_volume_10)
The Titanic did reshape maritime safety law in other ways. The first International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), concluded in London on 20 January 1914, was drafted in direct response to the disaster and established international rules on ship subdivision, life-saving appliances, wireless telegraphy, and the duty of shipmasters to proceed to the assistance of persons in distress.[9](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08438714251412652)
Modern evacuations have not followed the custom. In the 2012 [Costa Concordia](https://www.edgepedia.org/costa-concordia) grounding off Giglio, Italy, 32 of the more than 4,000 people aboard died, and Captain Francesco Schettino was sentenced to 16 years in prison for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning ship before the evacuation was complete. Researchers note that a captain leaving his ship ahead of passengers, as on the Concordia, is common rather than exceptional in maritime disasters.[1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d) • [4](https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/34514-maritime-disasters-are-women-and-children-really-always-given-priority)
## Cultural memory
The historian Lucy Delap of the [University of Cambridge](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-cambridge), who studies feminism in Britain and the United States, has argued that the chivalric code of "women and children first" was never as universal as later retellings suggest. For most of the nineteenth century, chivalry at sea was organized around national identity and divisions of class and race among men; in her words, "not all women were equally deserving of protection at sea," and lower-class women, wives of sailors and soldiers, poor emigrant women, and women of color were frequently excluded from the rule.[10](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233705884_%27Thus_Does_Man_Prove_His_Fitness_to_Be_the_Master_of_Things%27_Shipwrecks_Chivalry_and_Masculinities_in_Nineteenth-_and_Twentieth-Century_Britain) • [1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d)
The Titanic's evacuation became the prime illustration of chivalry at sea, and the 1997 film *Titanic*, in which the order is spoken in a key scene, helped fix the phrase in popular memory. Historians of the disaster note that this image has been contested since 1912: suffragists and their opponents both used the evacuation in debates over gender roles, contrasting the protective "law of the sea" with the restricted legal and social position of women on land.[1](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d) • [11](https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/law-women-children-first-suffragette-movement-sinking-rms-titanic.html)
## References
1. [Women and children first? Experts say that in most crises, it's more like everyone for themselves, AP News (2023)](https://apnews.com/article/24526080537db00a78945bfb2112f86d)
2. [Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson (2012). Gender, social norms, and survival in maritime disasters. PNAS 109(33): 13220–13224.](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3421183/)
3. [Women and children first, National Army Museum](https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/birkenhead-sinking)
4. [Maritime disasters: are women and children really always given priority? CORDIS, European Commission (2012)](https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/34514-maritime-disasters-are-women-and-children-really-always-given-priority)
5. ['Women and Children First', South African Military History Journal, Vol 12 No 4 (2002)](https://www.samilitaryhistory.org/vol124bd.html)
6. [Women and Children First: How a Rarely-Used Maritime Practice Caused Confusion On Board the 'Titanic', Mental Floss (2022)](https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/titanic/women-and-children-first-origins-titanic)
7. [Where Did the "Women and Children First" Rule Come From? TheCollector](https://www.thecollector.com/birkenhead-drill/)
8. [Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Global Perspectives on Legal History, Volume 10 bibliography](https://www.lhlt.mpg.de/gplh_volume_10)
9. [Gard Paulsen (2026). 'Proceed to the assistance of the persons in distress': The sinking of the Titanic and the international regulation of safety of life at sea. International Journal of Maritime History.](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08438714251412652)
10. [Lucy Delap (2006). 'Thus Does Man Prove His Fitness to Be the Master of Things': Shipwrecks, Chivalry and Masculinities in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Britain. Cultural and Social History 3(1): 45–74.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233705884_%27Thus_Does_Man_Prove_His_Fitness_to_Be_the_Master_of_Things%27_Shipwrecks_Chivalry_and_Masculinities_in_Nineteenth-_and_Twentieth-Century_Britain)
11. [The law of the sea: women and children first. The law of the land – that's different, Encyclopedia Titanica](https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/law-women-children-first-suffragette-movement-sinking-rms-titanic.html)
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