Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. The ss Arctic sank on September twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four, or one hundred and seventy one years
Speaker 1: ago today on the day this episode is coming out.
Speaker 1: Our episode on this disaster is Today's Saturday Classic.
Speaker 2: Please excuse our pronouncing the word Newfoundland the way we
Speaker 2: were taught to pronounce it in school, which is also
Speaker 2: how it's listed as pronounced in American English dictionaries, rather
Speaker 2: than the way many Canadians have told us that it
Speaker 2: ought to be pronounced. This episode originally came out on
Speaker 2: January fifteenth, twenty fourteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed
Speaker 2: in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fryed, I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson.
Speaker 2: And if there's a thing we get lots of requests for,
Speaker 2: it is more maritime and ship yep. So we're going
Speaker 2: to head back to the ocean today. And this particular
Speaker 2: incident is often held in a particularly tragic light because
Speaker 2: it seems that in the sinking of this ship, which
Speaker 2: was the ss Arctic, the what we now today perceive
Speaker 2: as a rule of women and children first, and.
Speaker 1: The captain goes down to this ship. Those things did
Speaker 1: not hold true. None of the women or children aboard
Speaker 1: the vessel survived the sinking spoiler alert. And the captain
Speaker 1: did survive, even though he.
Speaker 2: Did not expect to. Yeah, he did not abandon ship,
Speaker 2: but he did survive the ordeal. Yeah, we'll also talk
Speaker 2: about this whole women and children first idea. Yeah, end
Speaker 2: of the episode. Yeah, once we have all this context
Speaker 2: under our belts. Yeah, there's some cool modern statistical analysis
Speaker 2: that's been done as well as some research on sort
Speaker 2: of where that concept came from, and it puts things
Speaker 2: in an interesting light I think when we talk about shipwrecks. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we're gonna start was talking about the SS Arctic
Speaker 2: and it was completed in eighteen fifty and by every account,
Speaker 2: it was a really glorious ship. She was the third
Speaker 2: of four Atlantic steamers and the Colins Fleet, and they
Speaker 2: were recognized as just the finest of their time when
Speaker 2: they were introduced. The other ships were the Atlantic, the Pacific,
Speaker 2: and the Baltic.
Speaker 1: And the Pride of the Collins Line of New York,
Speaker 1: which was founded by Edward Knightcollins. The Arctic was a
Speaker 1: wooden hull paddelwheel steamer that was designed to carry both
Speaker 1: cargo a small amount and up to two hundred passengers,
Speaker 1: although the passenger space was expanded to accommodate two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty passengers in eighteen fifty one. And it was
Speaker 1: two hundred and eighty five feet long, which is about
Speaker 1: eighty seven meters, and it weighed in at two eight
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six tons.
Speaker 2: Although it launched on January twenty first, eighteen fifty its
Speaker 2: maiden voyage didn't happen until October twenty seventh of that year.
Speaker 1: And like her three sister ships, the Arctic could maintain
Speaker 1: a speed of twelve knot, which was really fast for
Speaker 1: the time, and in February of eighteen fifty two, the
Speaker 1: Arctic set a record for the fastest eastbound crossing of
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, hitting a speed of more than thirteen knots
Speaker 1: and sustaining it for a while. When the Arctic started
Speaker 1: its career, it was part of a lucrative contract that
Speaker 1: the Collins Line had with the United States Government to
Speaker 1: be a mail runner between America and Great Britain, and
Speaker 1: in addition to their income from mail service, they competed
Speaker 1: with the well established Canard line, which came out of
Speaker 1: Britain for passenger service. Yeah, and initially the Colins line
Speaker 1: did very well against Kinnard. Their ships were really big
Speaker 1: and beautiful, they were brand new. They could run several
Speaker 1: knots faster than the Cunard fleet. But the cost of
Speaker 1: ongoing maintenance of this advanced machinery that was in the
Speaker 1: Colin ships did draw off some of their competitive edge
Speaker 1: and sometimes it would put their ships out of rotation
Speaker 1: while they were being serviced. So when you see sort
Speaker 1: of a business analysis of the situation, it's Collins arrived
Speaker 1: on the scene and initially stole a lot of business
Speaker 1: from Kunard, and then it kind of leveled out as
Speaker 1: it became apparent that, you know, they couldn't always be
Speaker 1: running all of the ships, and it did cost a lot,
Speaker 1: so their initial wide profit margin shrank a little bit
Speaker 1: as it had to be allocated into just maintaining the fleet.
Speaker 2: On Wednesday, September twentieth, eighteen fifty four, the SS Arctic
Speaker 2: departed from Liverpool on what would it be its last voyage.
Speaker 2: On board were two hundred and thirty three passengers and
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty or so crew members. The captain
Speaker 2: was James C. Loose and on September twenty seventh, so
Speaker 2: a week into the voyage, the ship entered into a
Speaker 2: thick fog while it was approaching the Grand Banks, which
Speaker 2: is southeast of Newfoundland, Canada. Also in the fog was
Speaker 2: the French vessel Vesta, which was headed for grand Ville, France.
Speaker 2: When the Vesta was spotted, they sounded the alarm, but
Speaker 2: both ships traveling at full speed and it was just
Speaker 2: too late.
Speaker 1: A collision was unavoidable at that point. And while it
Speaker 1: may sound incredibly reckless for a ship to be running
Speaker 1: a head full in dicey visibility, it was actually policy
Speaker 1: at this time in the Collins line to run through
Speaker 1: a fog as quickly as possible so that they could
Speaker 1: clear the visual obstruction in the shortest possible time. Yes,
Speaker 1: this policy was as unwise as it sounds, though it
Speaker 1: was not uncommon for ships to do this at the
Speaker 1: time because the Vesta was doing a similar thing. So
Speaker 1: I feel like it's important to mention that this was
Speaker 1: not a poor judgment call on the captain's part. That
Speaker 1: was just standard operating procedure right to get into fog
Speaker 1: and gun it. It does in sort of a Hindenburg
Speaker 1: kind of a situation. Yeah, in hindsight, what a poor idea.
Speaker 1: Both of the ships were damaged in the collision, and
Speaker 1: initially it was believed that the Vesta, in spite of
Speaker 1: having this eye iron hull, had been damaged much worse.
Speaker 1: This belief was so pervasive that the passengers and the
Speaker 1: crew of the Vesta started traveling to the Arctic. But
Speaker 1: it became quickly apparent that the Arctic was sinking and
Speaker 1: was not going to help anybody in the situation, and
Speaker 1: the Arctic's wooden hull had been basically annihilated by the
Speaker 1: iron hull of the Vesta. There were multiple holes, and
Speaker 1: the ship quickly took on water, and the speed of
Speaker 1: the ocean rushing in through these multiple large holes caused
Speaker 1: a panic aboard the Arctic. The captain directed the crew
Speaker 1: to point the ship toward the closest land, which was
Speaker 1: Cape Race, and they started to accelerate toward it, but
Speaker 1: they took on more and more water and started to
Speaker 1: sink faster. Within four hours, the ship's furnaces were taking
Speaker 1: on water and that just stopped the steamer dead. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the panicked crewmen did not follow the captain's orders to
Speaker 1: prioritize the lives of the women and children and instead dead,
Speaker 1: many of them jumped into the lifeboats themselves.
Speaker 2: The first attempts to launch the lifeboats resulted in those
Speaker 2: boats being destroyed and the men aboard were lost. Subsequent
Speaker 2: boats did launch successfully, but most of them were lost
Speaker 2: at sea. A large raft that was assembled from the
Speaker 2: wreckage started out with nearly eighty passengers. All but one
Speaker 2: of them were eventually swept into the water, and only
Speaker 2: two of the lifeboats reached Newfoundland, carrying a total of
Speaker 2: forty five men, and two thirds of those men were
Speaker 2: I think it's thirty one men and fourteen as the numbers.
Speaker 2: Two thirds were crew members and only fourteen were passengers.
Speaker 2: Captain Luce had tried to save his unconscious son, although
Speaker 2: as the ship continued to break apart, he was hit
Speaker 2: in the head by a piece of debris and killed.
Speaker 2: The captain managed to scramble aboard a paddle box and
Speaker 2: use it as a raft, and he and two other
Speaker 2: men were eventually we picked up by the Cambria. The
Speaker 2: Cambria was captained by John Russell, and it picked them
Speaker 2: up on September twenty ninth, so all one hundred and
Speaker 2: nine of the women and children that were aboard were killed,
Speaker 2: as well as one hundred and forty nine male passengers
Speaker 2: and ninety two crew members. And then I think we
Speaker 2: should have a note on these numbers, because the actual
Speaker 2: number of deceased fluctuates a good bit amongst accounts, you'll
Speaker 2: see anywhere from two eighty five to three fifty one listed,
Speaker 2: So the counts, even in women and children, passengers, and crews,
Speaker 2: should not be taken as absolute. Some passengers managed to
Speaker 2: make it to the Vesta and they would have been
Speaker 2: theoretically reported, and others were picked up adrift in the water,
Speaker 2: but they there wasn't always a clear line of record
Speaker 2: as to what had happened to everybody. So even like
Speaker 2: the captain's account, which we'll get to in a bit,
Speaker 2: he lists the two hundred and thirty three passengers, but
Speaker 2: their historical accounts will list different ones. So just keep
Speaker 2: that in mind that there's some sponginess to the math
Speaker 2: on this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and at the point that he was rescued, he'd
Speaker 2: been in the water for a couple of days. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we cannot imagine his mental state, although based on
Speaker 2: his description, which we'll get too shortly. It was an
Speaker 2: extremely rough experience as you would imagine, also aboard the
Speaker 2: ship during this wreck, where E. K. Collins's wife and
Speaker 2: his children and they, naturally, based on those numbers that
Speaker 2: we just said, did not survive. The Vesta did manage
Speaker 2: to make port in Saint John's three days after the collision,
Speaker 2: and accounts of the time kind of talked about the
Speaker 2: great skill of her captain at managing to take that
Speaker 2: damage ship into port. But before we get to the
Speaker 2: next little bit of business and how this affected the
Speaker 2: Collins line, would you like to take a moment and
Speaker 2: talk about our sponsors.
Speaker 1: Let's do that.
Speaker 2: So let's get back to what happened once people realized
Speaker 2: the death toll.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, as news of this horrible incident reached news
Speaker 1: outlets and the shore, the disproportionate amount of the crew
Speaker 1: survivors versus passenger caused a major scandal on both sides
Speaker 1: of the Atlantic, and it really really set in motion
Speaker 1: what was eventually the financial ruin of the Collins line.
Speaker 2: While the American Maritime Company had initially been a huge
Speaker 2: threat to the established Quneard line of Britain, the Singing
Speaker 2: of the Arctic, followed by the disappearance of the Pacific
Speaker 2: during a voyage in eighteen fifty six, meant that the
Speaker 2: Collins line was basically finished, despite attempts to revive their
Speaker 2: reputation with a new and larger vessel named the Adriatic.
Speaker 2: They went and bank just a few years after the
Speaker 2: Pacific was lost, and.
Speaker 1: As a point of interest, the Kunard line is still
Speaker 1: in business today. They did quite well for themselves and survived.
Speaker 1: And now we get to Captain Luce's account of what happened.
Speaker 1: So on October fourteenth of eighteen fifty four in Quebec,
Speaker 1: the captain wrote a letter to E. K. Collins to
Speaker 1: describe the incident and notify him of his family member's deaths.
Speaker 1: And the letter begins with Dear sir, it becomes my
Speaker 1: painful duty to inform you of the total loss of
Speaker 1: the Arctic under my command, with many lives, and I
Speaker 1: fear among them must be included your own wife, daughter
Speaker 1: and son, of whom I took a last leave the
Speaker 1: moment the ship was going down, without ever expecting to
Speaker 1: see the light of another day. To give you an
Speaker 1: account of the heartrending scene. He goes on to say
Speaker 1: that about fifteen minutes after leaving the deck at noon,
Speaker 1: he heard hard starboard called out from the officers of
Speaker 1: the deck, and immediately after the crash, Loose himself believed
Speaker 1: that the primary goal that he and the crew should
Speaker 1: focus on should be the rescue of the people aboard
Speaker 1: the Vesta. They really did think that the Vesta was
Speaker 1: the one that was going to go down, and his
Speaker 1: account says that his first officer took six men and
Speaker 1: one of the boats with the intent that they were
Speaker 1: going over to the Vesta to collect people to bring
Speaker 1: back to the Arctic. He also describes the general state
Speaker 1: of panic and the abandonment of the women and children.
Speaker 1: He writes, finding the leak gaining on us very fast,
Speaker 1: notwithstanding all our very powerful efforts to keep her free,
Speaker 1: I resolved to get the boats ready and as many
Speaker 1: ladies and children placed in them as possible. But no
Speaker 1: sooner had the attempt been made than the firemen and
Speaker 1: others rushed into them in spite of opposition. Seeing this
Speaker 1: state of things, I ordered the boats astern to be
Speaker 1: kept in readiness until order could be restored. When, to
Speaker 1: my dismay, I saw them cut the ropes in the
Speaker 1: bow and soon disappear as stern in the fog. Another
Speaker 1: boat was broken down by the persons rushing at the davits,
Speaker 1: and many were precipitated into the sea and drowned. This
Speaker 1: occurred while I had been engaged in setting the starboard
Speaker 1: guard boat ready and placed the second officer in charge,
Speaker 1: when the same fearful scene is what the first boat
Speaker 1: was being enacted. Men leaping from the top of the
Speaker 1: rail twenty feet, pushing and maiming those who were in
Speaker 1: the boat. So quite clearly not exactly noble or chivalrous behavior.
Speaker 1: And this is a quick side note. When we reference
Speaker 1: firemen in this instance you probably know by context, but
Speaker 1: they mean the people that are working in the steam
Speaker 1: engine area, not firemen in the modern sense of people
Speaker 1: that deal with fires. One of his officers, who was
Speaker 1: a mister Dorian, did try to get a boat filled
Speaker 1: with women and children loaded, but when an alarm sounded
Speaker 1: signaling that the ship was sinking, the boat was really
Speaker 1: hastily shoved off with no oars or other safety equipment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like he tried to keep the oars out
Speaker 1: of the boat on purpose, so that these gentlemen that
Speaker 1: were rushing the boats and just trying to take them
Speaker 1: would not be as tempted to. But as a consequence,
Speaker 1: those oars got left behind when the boat was shoved
Speaker 1: off without sort of a proper check, and Luce describes
Speaker 1: the sinking, and he says, in an instant, about a
Speaker 1: quarter to five pm, the ship went down, carrying every
Speaker 1: soul on board with her. I soon found myself on
Speaker 1: a surface after a brief struggling, with my own helpless
Speaker 1: child in my arms. And when again I felt myself
Speaker 1: impelled downwards to a great depth, And before I reached
Speaker 1: the surface a second time, had nearly perished and lost
Speaker 1: the hold of my child. As I again struggled to
Speaker 1: the surface of the water, a most awful and heartrending
Speaker 1: scene presented itself to my view. Over two hundred men,
Speaker 1: women and children struggling together amidst pieces of wreck of
Speaker 1: every kind, calling on each other for help and imploring
Speaker 1: God to assist them. Such an appalling scene, May God
Speaker 1: preserve me from ever witnessing again.
Speaker 2: LuSE goes on to give an account of losing his
Speaker 2: son and watching the others die slowly around him during
Speaker 2: the days of drift, And it's truly harrowing.
Speaker 1: It really is. It's so it's one of those letters
Speaker 1: that's clearly written from the point of view of a
Speaker 1: man who is trying to do his job and write
Speaker 1: a report and is clearly messed up by the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And it should be noted that he captained nine other
Speaker 1: vessels before taking his position on the Arctic, and he
Speaker 1: had lost only two of them, which was actually quite
Speaker 1: a good record. He was considered to be a really
Speaker 1: skillful navigator and a very able captain. And according to
Speaker 1: his obituary, when he returned to his hometown of Yonkers,
Speaker 1: New York after this incident, he quote found two long
Speaker 1: lines of citizens formed through which he walked, receiving warm
Speaker 1: congratulations and hearty welcome.
Speaker 2: He then went on to work for more than two
Speaker 2: decades as an inspector for the Great Western Marine Insurance Company,
Speaker 2: and he died in July eighteen seventy nine of heart disease.
Speaker 2: He was seventy nine years old. And we're going to
Speaker 2: pause one more moment and take another word from a sponsor,
Speaker 2: and then we're going to talk about some modern analysis
Speaker 2: of this stuff. Yeah, so, now let's look at this
Speaker 2: whole idea of women and children first. Yeah, that's one
Speaker 2: of those things where it's a good question to ask
Speaker 2: where it came from and sort of how that happened.
Speaker 2: And it's in an interesting coda to this issue. There
Speaker 2: was a study that was performed by the Uppsala University
Speaker 2: in Sweden and it was published in July of twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: and it suggested that women and children actually have the
Speaker 2: least likelihood of survival in a maritime disaster. This study
Speaker 2: was co authored by two economists, Mikhail Ellender and Oscar Erickson,
Speaker 2: and they analyzed data from eighteen shipwrecks that happened between
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty two and twenty eleven. They only included the
Speaker 2: instance that involved at least one hundred people with at
Speaker 2: least five percent surviving and at least five percent dying,
Speaker 2: and these statistics took into account the fates of more
Speaker 2: than fifteen thousand people from thirty countries. Yeah, and those
Speaker 2: numbers kind of gave me a bit of a jolt
Speaker 2: at first, and like, fifteen thousand people, but it's only
Speaker 2: eighteen shipwrecks, and when you're thinking about it in the
Speaker 2: context of a shipwreck like this, where it's roughly three
Speaker 2: hundred ish people. That seems impossible math, But then when
Speaker 2: you think about the more modern ones right, Cruise liners,
Speaker 2: for example, can carry anywhere between two to six thousand
Speaker 2: people depending on their size, so that kind of makes
Speaker 2: up for those what seems like a big number gap
Speaker 2: maybe on first look. And the Titanic, which was included
Speaker 2: in this study, had three times more women survive the
Speaker 2: incident than men, but this turned out to be the
Speaker 2: exception rather than the rule. A similar outlier was the
Speaker 2: HMS Birkenhead, which sank in eighteen fifty two, and in fact,
Speaker 2: the Women and Children First Rule is sometimes referred to
Speaker 2: as the Birkenhead drill because that ship, sinking off the
Speaker 2: coast of South Africa is usually recognized as the first
Speaker 2: time that order was ever given. So all of the
Speaker 2: women and children that had been aboard the Birkenhead did
Speaker 2: actually survive, while many soldiers just stood there silently, sinking
Speaker 2: with the ship into shark infested waters. According to Ellender
Speaker 2: and Ericsson's findings, women were only half as likely to
Speaker 2: survive a shipwreck as men. Crew members had an eighteen
Speaker 2: point seven percent greater chance of survival than passengers, and
Speaker 2: only seven out of sixteen captains actually went down with
Speaker 2: the ship and their data set. And furthermore, women had
Speaker 2: the worst survival rates on British vessels, even though the
Speaker 2: women and Children first Order is documented as having been
Speaker 2: given much more frequently on British ships than other vessels. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and today people look at it as sort of a
Speaker 2: Victorian British sensibility in particular.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Prior to this research, there had been a theory that
Speaker 2: selfish behavior would more likely erupt on fast sinking ships,
Speaker 2: while a slower sinking would allow people who were involved
Speaker 2: to stay calmer and exhibit more socially accepted behavior patterns.
Speaker 1: But Elsinder and Erickson found that it was actually the
Speaker 1: captain's behavior rather than a time sensitive situation, that tended
Speaker 1: to determine the crew's behavior. So in only five of
Speaker 1: those eighteen sinkings that they studied was the women and
Speaker 1: Children first order issued by a captain. Ellender frames this
Speaker 1: information as an insight into human behavior. He says, although
Speaker 1: maritime disasters are tragic events, they can contribute to our
Speaker 1: understanding of how people behave under extreme stress and when
Speaker 1: it is a matter of life and death. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's one of those things where it's easy to
Speaker 1: kind of vilify people or kind of judge them for
Speaker 1: their behavior. But I I don't know how I would
Speaker 1: react in such a moment. I don't think you know
Speaker 1: until you're in it. Yeah, well, as you've undergone very
Speaker 1: specific like emergency style training, right. Well, in their particular
Speaker 1: study looks generally at the question of men and women,
Speaker 1: but not some of the other factors that influence who
Speaker 1: makes it off the ship and who doesn't. Like on
Speaker 1: the Titanic, for example, first class women and children had
Speaker 1: a pretty astounding survival rate, but women and children in
Speaker 1: steerage did not so much. Yeah, so it was not
Speaker 1: quite so much women and children first as it was
Speaker 1: rich women and children first when it came to in
Speaker 1: the Titanic in particular, I kind of after I read
Speaker 1: your notes, I kind of went down this rabbit hole
Speaker 1: of the whole idea of women and children first and
Speaker 1: where it comes from and what it means today when
Speaker 1: since when it first came about was in the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and that was a very different time in terms of
Speaker 1: gender relation and relations and sort of the perception of
Speaker 1: women as both whether women were perceived as weak or
Speaker 1: strong and whether women were perceived as like actual autonomous
Speaker 1: people or objects. Right, So I kind of went down
Speaker 1: a crazy rabbit hole of that, and it reminded me
Speaker 1: in a way of how I've traveled by ship several
Speaker 1: times in the past few years, and we always have
Speaker 1: a safety drill, and the safety drill is always about
Speaker 1: getting everyone off the ship. It's about like every person
Speaker 1: knowing where they need to go to get on a lifeboat,
Speaker 1: and every ship having enough lifeboat accommodations for every person
Speaker 1: on the ship to make it off safely. Yep.
Speaker 2: And the only real reference to children that has come
Speaker 2: up in the ships that I have been on has
Speaker 2: been that for the parents, if their children are not
Speaker 2: with them, the parents are to go to their lifeboat
Speaker 2: station and their children will be brought to them by crew,
Speaker 2: because all the children have to have little wristbands or
Speaker 2: whatever on saying this is my lifeboat station. So it's
Speaker 2: like there are still special accommodations for children, but other
Speaker 2: accommodations seem to be based on actual threats to people's safety,
Speaker 2: people who may have a mobility impairment that need to
Speaker 2: be assisted with getting off the ship, and not so
Speaker 2: much based on gender or class yeah, and it is
Speaker 2: also a very different time in terms of now this
Speaker 2: is kind of always referenced as part of the Titanic's legacy.
Speaker 2: Now there are enough lifeboats for everyone. They did that
Speaker 2: on purpose, yes, whereas there were not. That was not
Speaker 2: standard operating procedure for a very long time, right, So
Speaker 2: it did become a matter of who do we save?
Speaker 2: And there have been some interesting discussions if you kind
Speaker 2: of trawl around the internet and like maritime interest boards
Speaker 2: at all, where discussions will come up of well, women
Speaker 2: and children are less likely just physically to survive something
Speaker 2: like hypothermia adrift at sea than men might. So in
Speaker 2: saying women and children first, are we in fact doing
Speaker 2: everyone to die? It's into a very interesting arena of
Speaker 2: discussion and can get very heated very quickly. So you
Speaker 2: are not ready for very grown up angry talk. Don't
Speaker 2: visit those boards. No, it definitely does seem to come
Speaker 2: from a sense of like chivalry. Yeah, and what we
Speaker 2: might classify today is benevolent sexism, which I don't think
Speaker 2: we've talked about that on this podcast, but we have
Speaker 2: on our prior podcast before talked about the idea that
Speaker 2: there's sometimes sexism is intended, yeah, to be benevolent, even
Speaker 2: though it doesn't really play out that way when you
Speaker 2: follow it to its logical end. So it's framed that
Speaker 2: way rather than any kind of practical sense of actually
Speaker 2: ensuring the survivability of the group.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets into very interesting stuff and I like
Speaker 1: that there. The study that was done in Sweden to
Speaker 1: analyze all of this covered such a nice wide range
Speaker 1: of you know, eighteen fifties to modern day cruise ships, right,
Speaker 1: because that's a pretty wide For example, now we have
Speaker 1: enough boats for everybody. But even so they're finding that still, yeah,
Speaker 1: men have better survival right.
Speaker 2: Well, the differences between first class and what used to
Speaker 2: be called steerage are much different now.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so that's today's maritime story. Uh, we'll have more,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, but everybody loves a good shipwreck tale and
Speaker 1: it did. This one is interesting to me because it
Speaker 1: did bring up so many interesting questions about, uh, how
Speaker 1: people handle panic and fear and yeah, I can't judge anybody.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know what I would do.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If
Speaker 2: you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses
Speaker 2: History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and you can subscribe
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Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.