Bittersweet Infamy - #122 - Women and Children First

Episode Date: April 20, 2025

As part of our Titanic April series, Josie tells Taylor about the history of the famous disaster evacuation rule "women and children first," and how the gender roles of 1912 impacted the victims and survivors of the Titanic's sinking. Plus: history repeats itself as we check out the ambitious (or unrealistic?) plans for three modern Titanic replicas.

Welcome to bittersweet infamy, Titanic April. New stories about the Titanic every week in April. From the maiden voyage where the unsinkable did the unthinkable. To the echoes of infamy that ripple across history's surface in its wake. All aboard. Welcome back to Titanic April. You've survived the night. You are climbing up the rope ladder onto Carpathia.

Damn. And you've survived. You've made it thus far. And you've survived. You've made it thus far. And life is good. This is no more problems for me. Absolutely not. Yeah, this is your low point.

One big problem fairly recently, but thank goodness that I was standing next to that little girl and I could pretend she was mine and just hop on a lifeboat. There we go. I was reading recently that the morning after the sinking, the sun came out and the way that dawn was reflecting on the ice field was absolutely gorgeous.

It was just like oranges and pinks running through blue ice. You'd like to see it under better circumstances though, huh? Yeah, which you dear listener are in. Welcome to Titanic April. Yeah, welcome to Titanic April. Since our last episode, number 121, the anniversary of the Titanic has elapsed. That episode was sort of released on the eve of that.

And now we're sort of in the dying days of April, getting towards the icebergs are starting to melt. Yeah. You know, more. Yeah, more, more and more. We're still stuck. We're still stuck on Titanic. It's hard not to be. My gosh.

Every stone you unturned just reveals more and more and more. But Bitter Sweet Infamy isn't the only place we're going to be discussing Titanic this April. Head over to the Bitter Sweet Film Club and become a monthly subscriber and you can listen to me, Josie, special guest host Mitchell Collins, talk about James Cameron's 1997, kind of his opus, well I mean Terminator Avatar, one of his opi. Titanic. Josie, what's that URL for listeners who might not know? KO-FI.com slash bittersweetinfamy.

Coffee.com slash bittersweetinfamy. And we've gotten a really good response from a lot of the listeners. Thank you to those of you who've reached out and tell us that you're enjoying Titanic April. One of our favorite listeners reached out to us even, and that's your mom, Alice. I know, Alice Tyree. This was on the Instagram, right?

Yes, she did. She reached out to us on Instagram. Thank you. You can follow us by the way. Really our only social media is on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy, join us there. We keep it simple for you. Just one stop shop. We keep it simple for you. Just one stop shop.

We keep it simple. We try not to advertise too much, but the advertisements that we do tend to be little film clips and or pieces of art that I lovingly hand make for you. It's not a bad existence over on the Instagram account. It's pretty cute. So my mom posted or she commented.

DM, she slid into our DMs actually. Oh, Alice. Ooh. Yes, very saucy DMs actually. Oh, Alice. Woo. Yes. Very saucy behavior. Jessla sent great episodes. Side message to JM, her daughter. That's you.

That's me. That's you. Did you check out the survival payments the employees of the Titanic received? Parentheses. Secret parentheses. This was before workers comp was enacted in either Great Britain or the USA. Even the ones who died, many, their families received little or no compensation. I hadn't actually seen anything.

And interestingly, I guess because we are so fed when we tackle this big Titanic story, I hadn't even considered the idea of like recompensation for loss of life, for injury, for things like that, but of course that would enter into the question. And I was grateful and intrigued when your mother brought it to our attention. My mom worked as a workers' compensation lawyer. And so she definitely has this lens. And as she said, workers' compensation wasn't in place at the time. But what I did find in my research, even though I wasn't looking particularly for the workers'

compensation stuff, but I did find that once the Titanic sank, like once the hole was completely submerged, every crew member stopped being paid. That is how that works. God bless capitalism, man. It was like, okay, Annette, what is that? 2 18 a.m., okay, and that's when the clock stops for you. No more ship, no more shift. Pretty fucking rough.

Yeah, that's brutal. Your company doesn't love you folks, no matter what they're telling you. Yeah, yeah, you're not a family. No, you are not family. Not even at Applebee's, or is it Arby's? Where are we all family, other than Fast and it Arby's? Where are we all family? Other than Fast and Furious, what chain restaurant are we all family at?

Is it Olive Garden? At Olive Garden, everyone's family. These American chain restaurants, we don't have any of them, so I don't know what they are. So there was no workers' compensation for the crew, but what was enacted was something tied to maritime law at the time, the 1851 Limitation of Liability Act. So it meant that White Star Line really didn't have to pay out a whole bunch of money. And we discussed that of like paying out to passengers,

but they didn't even really need to pay that much out to crew or cruise families for the loss of life. Ugly. Pretty rough. I get it from a capitalist standpoint. And certainly from like, I understand why that would be a piece of maritime law that was relatively settled because there would be so many instances with big loss of, maybe not on the scale of Titanic, but big loss, entire crews lost at sea, right?

Yeah. And so I can understand how that could be something that would be litigated or limited. But apparently because it is a turning point in framing the legal context of workers compensation, but also liability and the cost of human life in a legal context. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Thank you, Alice. Thanks for writing in. Our guest lecture for this little segment of bittersweet law school. Always happy to be in session at the law school. Yeah. And Alice will send you a bittersweet infamy t-shirt. Thanks for your letter.

We don't have one yet. That's for legal purpose. I have to say we don't have one yet. Yes. That is not a contract. That was not a verbal contract. That was not a verbal contract. For my Minfamous today, I want to tell you the story of three proposed replicas of the Titanic. So we've seen before that Titanic truly is a global phenomenon in terms of interest, in terms of the places that people are from who are interested in this and communities that had a stake in it, various ethnicities of people that were aboard this ship.

All over the world. Even the Nazis loved Titanic as we now know. Yeah. And so it makes sense that I should bring you these three proposed Titanic replicas from three different countries and three different continents. Oh, shit.

We're gonna be looking at South Africa, Australia and China. So, South Africa. In 1998, South African businessman, Sorel Gauss, and that might not be the pronunciation, it's S-A-R-E-L-G-O-U-S. He embarked upon the project of Titanic Two, a replica of the great ship with safety

and modernity improvements, including a welded hull, diesel electric propulsion, and a bulbous bow. Josie, you said, mm-mm, tell me, why mm-mm? I mean, we've seen the movie Titanic Two, it sinks again. So I just- Let's talk about it, because I actually wanna get to the bottom

of that specific thought. I too had that reaction of, it will sink again. Yeah. What is that feeling? What do you think? Is that just like, it's so arrogant the way you're spitting in the face of like bad luck or something even? Cause there's no, like logically,

there's no reason the Titanic 2 should sink again. We know better things about ships now, but like in my heart, I know it would simply sink again. Yeah. There's a lot of things, but one of them is disrespecting the disaster that was the original Titanic. But the rebuilding the World Trade Center is that disrespectful? I don't know. See, oh, these bittersweet and blurred lines on bittersweet infamy. Blurred lines. Not the Robin Thicke song. That song's no good. Different. Okay,

but the other thing is that it's just reenacting the same hubris. You're the next rich guy who thinks that because you're so rich, nothing will go wrong when you do it this time. Yeah, you've seen all the errors and have projected everything precisely. That's the thing about rebuilding

maybe the World Trade Center is like- There wasn't really anything wrong with the first World Trade Center. No, nothing in the design was the cause of the disaster. The very design of the boat created the situation of the disaster. But we're improving the design. Welded hull, diesel electric propulsion, bulbous bow. What now? Still don't like it. Then call something else. Why does it matter that it's Titanic? Because we are compelled by the particulars of this story and we must reenact it. And also, how about this?

If it's not the Titanic, then it's just a ship that's a hundred years out of date in terms of its amenities. Call it E.J. Smith. Drag that poor dead man's fucking name into it, by the way. Ah. Perhaps getting on the E.J. Smith

even less than the Titanic, which is unfortunate because he was apparently a very accomplished seaman. But again, the Titanic name, it makes you think, well, if I get on this boat, I will drown. Yeah. Or freeze. Yeah. It's like getting married on 9-11. It's like, just don't choose that date. Everyone's going to see that date and think, oh gosh, major disaster in the early 21st century. Not, oh, what a wonderful time to get married. So the ship, the Titanic 2, Sarl Gauss's proposed version of the ship

took the cover spot of Popular Mechanics Magazine alongside headlines like Computer Virus Survival Guide and Kidproof Guns. Okay, well, technology's lost. Fingerprint locks, Josie, so your kids can't blow their heads off. Oh my God. The cover story

concluded that the project was doable but pricey, looking at about 400 to 600 million, and I take that to be US dollars circa 1998 or so. That's too much. In nods to the past, G.O.S. undertook a feasibility study with Harlan and Wolff, who built the the ship and proposed a 500 million pound construction plan to Belfast City Council in 2000. So we really are kind of talking about like the ritualistic reenactment of the Titanic thing. This time we get to the end safely ideally. This time we get to New York. If. If not explicitly, then implicitly, there's always the idea of this ship specifically doing the Southampton to New York

like original route. Right, yeah. Ghost signed an agreement with an investment company in Monaco and forecast the start of construction within nine months. That did not happen. The design repeatedly changed with heliports, swimming pools and discos being incorporated

because always too, there is this catch 22 that you can't just straight up do the 1912 Titanic, because the 1912 Titanic didn't have Wi-Fi. Right, yeah. And it had two bathtubs and fucking steerage. Exactly. And it doesn't have a fucking roller coaster on it, and it doesn't have a rock climbing

wall and that's what we want from cruise ships now. Steerage was just passage and nobody needs to take a boat for just passage anymore. So why would you have steerage designed the same way? Once the idea of being a completely faithful reimagining goes out, it sort of loses a little bit of its luster to me. Yeah. It's not that the exercise is entirely pointless. And again, you by necessity, you have to hear me out. By necessity, you have to fuck with the Titanic's design because Josie, what was very

famously wrong with the original Titanic? The bulkheads weren't built all the way. Yep. The waterproof rooms weren't entirely waterproof. There we go. But also, let's take that thought and extrapolate it. This is a boiler room for a steam powered ship. We're not doing a steam powered fucking ship. Although again, that would be kind of cool to me. But you also don't want to have guys down there

stoking all that's hell. No. Imagine the workers' compensation for that. Exactly, now that we have it. And I was specifically thinking my bugbear about the Titanic's design. There weren't enough lifeboats. There wasn't even enough room for enough lifeboat. So obviously you need to like add a new deck.

Yeah. Change an existing deck. So it'll never be 100% faithful recreation. And at that point, why not do discos and fucking extra swimming pools and helipads and shit like that? Yeah. Well, and why not then just call it disco at sea? You know, whatever. Because you can't market that in the same way that you can market the Titanic disco at sea,

no one gives a shit. The Titanic has been beloved of the entire world for almost 125 years now. And because there's clearly something in the ritual enactment of this particular thing in an attempt to like redo it, to avert tragedy or to master it. All these other things that I do think come back

to hubris in a way, right? This was a situation that we famously did not control. What if I, a really rich man, could rebuild this boat and do it right? True, yeah, that same hubris of I can do it. I can see around all these corners. By 2006, the money was gone, public interest was low, and the project was abandoned.

Notably, it also suffered some criticism from Milvina Dean, the last Titanic survivor to pass away. Okay, yes. Who expressed her opposition to the project. In general, Titanic reboots tend to receive this kind of critique for being in poor taste, says Charles Haas, the president of the Titanic International Society.

It's a matter of sensitivity, respect, and thoughtfulness. We commemorate tragedies and those lost in them, not duplicate them. He also suggested the difficulty around replicating the Titanic is not only moral but practical. As good as the Titanic was in her day, it would be a practical and financial disaster, citing the lack of onboard activities and modern amenities such as theaters, casinos, and waterslides compared to today's cruise ships. Yeah, wi-fi, as you say. I need a fucking flat screen in my first-class cabin and I don't think that John Astor had one. Nope, nope.

But you can't talk Dreamers Out of Dreams and where Sarlgous left the baton of Titanic 2, another man picked it up with his own planned reboot of the same name, unrelated but another Titanic 2. Oh my gosh. The next Titanic 2 is the brainchild of Aussie billionaire Clive Palmer, who is known for over-promising on cockamamie schemes that never seem to quite pan out, including a Jurassic Park-style dinosaur park. Okay.

Perhaps another film that we should not try to replicate the events of. Right, yes. Another one of those hubris, you know, as well as a commercial zeppelin company in 2010. So he was like, we're bringing back zeppelin travel in 2010. Oh my God. Palmer announced Titanic 2 in a press conference immediately before announcing his own entry into national politics, founding and chairing the far-right United Australia party. Far-right.

Okay. The ship, the Titanic 2, is to be constructed, and I've used a lot of kind of vague language here because it's notionally still going, but it has, spoiler has not materialized yet. Okay. It's to be constructed by blue star line. If you get the reference there, a little white star line rev subtle, subtle white star line reference. Okay.

Yeah. Blue, not white. Features a number of enhancements meant to improve safety and customer experience like the other version. Cause again, you need to, despite these tweaks Palmer promises inauthentic experience down to period specific costuming and undergarments and on-deck delousings for third-class passengers. Oh my god. What? Are they paid to be there? I hope they're like paid actors. You're basically paying notionally for like an immersive titanic experience

in this one. A reenactment. Sans the sinking. Sorta. Ideally. Yeah. The budget doesn't support a lot of sinkings. Right, yes. Unfortunately. The board of this Titanic 2 includes relatives of several notable Titanic survivors. Oh.

Including one Terry Ismay. Oh. Get ready for this relative math. The great, great nephew of White Star Line Chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, he saw his moment. I wonder if, he must've been like the ninth Ismay they called. Get your nepotism where you can get it, you know?

The Ismay name has brought this family nothing but shame, but now we can turn it around. Now lean in, baby. And Helen Benziger, who is the great granddaughter of Margaret Brown. Okay. The intended launch date for Titanic 2 was originally set in 2016, then 2018, then 2022. Blue Star Line is currently offering a 2027 launch date.

Throughout this project, amid reports of its lack of financial viability, the project has variously been described as halted and abandoned. However, last year in 2024, after years of silence during the COVID era, Palmer re-pledged his support to Titanic 2 in another one of his goddamn press conferences that he likes to have. According to Rolling Stone,

in a March 13th, 2024 press conference at the Sydney Opera House, to announce his recommitment to reconstructing the doomed ocean liner. Palmer said it would be a beacon of hope amid war in Ukraine and Gaza, bring people together after the era of COVID lockdowns, and embody traditional values as opposed to woke politics. So if you're tired of going on woke ships, woke boats, here's a non-woke. Certainly no one would accuse the Titanic of being woke.

So there's that to consider. Oh my God, I love it. Just sort of this like, again, far right, kind of just brain rot gibberish about like, let's hit the talking points here. Right, yeah, wow. I read his interview that he gave to Rolling Stone and there was a whole like, this is a vaccine free space. And they're like, well, can vaccinated

people come aboard? And he's like, well, yeah. So, so, you know, they've got money to vaccinated people got money to its heart is right. We can still spray down vaccinated people with DDT on the third class deck. So it's fine. Yeah. As of 2025, there is no indication that Titanic 2 has started construction. Okay. That's good. I'm glad to hear that. That's for the best. Seems to just be a blowhard with a set of blueprints that he spent a lot of time doing

as a thought exercise, but nothing much else to it. And holding press conferences about it whenever he feels like it. But in terms of like, has he actually bought that 1910s gonch to put on the passengers? No, it doesn't seem so. And who the fuck wants that? No! That sounds like hell. I don't know what the menstruation situation was in the Jack and Rose era,

but it can't have been good. It's probably belts. No belts. Life belts, not period belts, man. Menstrual belts. No, thank you. Now that whole time you, life belts, not period belts, man. Menstrual belts, no thank you. No, that whole time you're describing that, I'm like, God, this guy's billions of dollars could be better used to like, I don't know,

invent a vaccine. And then of course, wait now. They specifically ask him in this Rolling Stone interview, because he's very much, and this is a thing that comes up again and again in these stories. When you ask these people why they're doing that, they're like, Titanic is a symbol of love. There is a thing that comes up again and again in these stories when you ask these people why they're doing they're like

Titanic is a symbol of love. There is a spirit that animates Titanic that embodies us all I believe Palmer even said like we all have our own Jack and Rose story I don't know about that So there is this idea that this in and of itself is the altruistic act to rebuild Titanic is the altruistic Yeah to give to the world and that's something that Palmer says over and over in the Sterling Stone interview. And then when they say like,

but like what about like building wells in places that need water and shit like that? Feeding people who don't have enough food. Housing the homeless, clothing, anything. And he's always just like, yeah, you know, I do some of that too. Yeah. Like it gets both, right man?

I've listened, shut up. That's kind of wild about the Jack and Rose cause it's like, oh dude, you know that's not real, right? I don't think he does. He saw James Cameron's 1997 documentary Titanic. And he was like, first of all, where did they get all of those color cameras? Second of all, what gonch is he wearing

and where do I get it? Exactly, I was thinking too, yeah. Yeah. He's just inordinately amazed and intrigued by all their undergarments and while neither the South African nor Australian Titanic IIs would even reach the construction stage oh shit the same cannot be said oh no about China's Romandisee Titanic. Romandisee? Romandisee. It's R-O-M-A-N-D-I-S-E-A. I think it's the name of a resort there that this Titanic is meant to be the grand show

piece of. Okay, okay. So while we know that the Titanic had Chinese passengers and indeed Chinese survivors, in 2020, James Cameron released a documentary about their story called The Six. The Titanic story was seemingly relatively little known in China before Cameron's 1997 smash hit film, Titanic, gained the saga new interest in the Middle Kingdom.

So like many, a theater goer in 1997 got Titanic, Pilled by James Cameron. Fair, I get it, who among us? As such, it should come as no surprise that in 2014, Seven Star Energy Investment Group formally launched their plans to build a replica of the Titanic, including overnight hotel accommodations

as part of the Romandisie Resort in landlocked Sichuan province. So it was still gonna be a boat, but a boat on land? Yes, this is what makes this one different. They build it near the Qijiang River, with apologies if I'm mispronouncing that, but the idea is that this is a, essentially a beached Titanic. I like it better. Can't hit Niceberg.

Yeah. It's fulfilling the prompt of like, we are fascinated by this. We want to see it and feel it in the way that it was originally. We want the reenactment, but it's acknowledging like that was unsafe. So this will be different in that is on land. Finally an unsinkable Titanic. Yes, exactly. Yes.

We're fulfilling the dream in this way, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, very smart. And why China? Why not China? Speaking to Reuters, seven star energy CEO, Su Xiaojin said, it's not like a certain country owns this thing,

just like the US can make Kung Fu Panda, that's very common, same with Mulan. For China, the Titanic represents something of universal value. People have never forgotten how at that time, people sacrificed their lives to carry out their responsibilities with men protecting the women and children and couples side by side

in life and death. That is the Titanic spirit of responsibility and universal love. So again, this sort of like fluffing of Titanic as like symbol, symbol, symbol. In Titanic, we see humanity, right? Love, respect, responsibility, which again, I don't. I look at Titanic and I see folly and hubris

and bad judgment in a lot of ways and disregard for the lives of poor people. I see that all over the place. Exactly, yeah. Icarus, Milton. At the beginning of construction, Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group announced that the ship would cost approximately $161 million US

to build. It would include dining rooms, first-class cabins, second and third-class cabins, Turkish baths, gymnasiums and a swimming pool, as well as a replica of the original ship's engine and boiler rooms. There would be a new ballroom and theater and of course the ship's signature grand staircase. See, and this also relieves the issue of like, well, is it steam powered or not? Like who are we hiring to shovel coal? It's like, we're not, we're not doing that. It's fine. We're hiring some reenactors

to look like they're shoveling coal. Yeah, who can work hopefully nine to five and go home at night to their families. Here's hoping, here's hoping. While this Titanic was to be beached, that doesn't mean the guests were out of danger. I've been slightly misleading Josie about understating the threat of an iceberg.

Plans were announced for an audio visual iceberg an iceberg. Oh. Plans were announced for an audiovisual iceberg sinking simulation. Oh. Oh, back off board now, hey? Mm, yeah, I'm turning around on the gangplank. I'm like, eh, maybe not. This simulation, at least partially created

by Hollywood production designer Curtis Schnell, was eventually scrapped either for money or taste reasons. Okay, okay. So we're back to being unsinkable again, good news. Mm, great. Many big names signed on to the Romanticy Project in various capacities, including National Geographic, who agreed to document the construction of the ship,

and actor Bernard Hill, who played your boy, Captain Edward Smith, in the 1997 James Cameron Titanic. Oh, yeah, he does really look like him a lot. It's kind of wild. It's the role he was born to play. Yeah. He was born a 67-year-old man with a beard and like a sailor's outfit. Exactly. He was named the Romanticie Titanic's honorary captain,

and apparently he later expressed his regret for getting involved with the project. I think because the project was originally projected to be completed by 2017, by 2018 NPR was reporting on financial difficulties. Construction seemingly halted until 2021, then halted again, apparently only 25% complete. As of December, 2024, the project website is offline, its social media pages are suspended, and images of the skeletal Titanic replica

show it covered in rust. According to local officials, the project is still in progress. Okay, okay. And that's one thing that I really want to underscore is maybe the hubris here is this is an obvious money pit and how dare you not see that? Even with your billions of dollars, how dare you not see that this is a money pit? Yeah, yeah, that's the other thing, certainly.

It was funded by JP Morgan back in the day, you know? It's even the very, very rich would have a hard time with it. Yeah, and it was a viable, like, it was part of this huge mass transit movement that was happening in the world, and that's not what it would be. It would just be for tourism. Yeah.

Now this is an entirely a niche project for Titanic buffs, right? If you want to get your Titanic replica itch scratched as a consumer, you do have some options which are more affordable and practical than the ones I've listed here, if slightly less ambitious. John Joslin is a guy with a studded and varied career. Not only did he produce the infamous TV special, The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults, which we covered back in episode 43. Heck yeah. But he also headed an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic in 1987 and went on to create a

pair of Titanic-shaped museums. One is in the entertainment capital of Branson, Missouri, and the other is in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where you can get package deals with other local attractions like Dollywood and the Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Feud. local attractions like Dollywood and the Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Feud. Oh, I wonder if that is why that reference to Al Capone's vault is in James Cameron's movie. Infamous! Infamous! So infamous they talked about it in James Cameron's 1997 Titanic, thereby granting

it immortality even further. Exactly. By the way, I should say both these museums, the Branson one and the Pigeon Forge one are very well reviewed and everyone says check them out if you're in town. So there you go. Good to know. Yeah.

And so that is me, I guess, raving about the arrogance that people frequently bring to the story. One that is about the folly of arrogance in the form of three stories about replicas of the Titanic that go nowhere and are huge money pits. But wouldn't it be for the best if the original Titanic had gone nowhere too, you know? So this is the ghosts like karmically coming back

and saying like, no, no, no. Right, yeah, we learned our lesson. We learned our lesson. That one got through, but not this time. Never again, Never again. You ever see a viral makeup look and think, okay I need to try that? Whether you're just a mascara and gloss girly, or you're all about bold color and drama,

we've got that one product you can always trust. For me, it's Thrive Cosmetics. Their Liquid Lash Extensions mascara gives you the look of salon lashes without the glue or the damage. It doesn't clump, flake, or smudge, and it comes off with just warm water and a cloth. Easy.

I'm so happy I made the switch to this tubing mascara. Thrive Cosmetics is 100% vegan, cruelty-free, and every purchase contributes to one of their 650 nonprofit partners. So your glow-up gives back. Try your new trusty tubing mascara with 20% off your first order at thrivecosmetics.com slash beauty. That's Thrive Cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S dot com slash beauty for 20% off your first order. So Taylor, in our first Titanic episode, I keep thinking about what you said. You really wouldn't wanna be a man

at the time of the Titanic in World War I. Those are my two times where I would not be stoked to be a dude. Right, conscription in World War I and the lifeboat situation for men. And there's other things like too, I wouldn't fancy being draftable and an American young man during the Vietnam War, et cetera.

Right, so you would add that, yeah, yeah. But like I'm also not American, so like, listen, it's a very abstract concept. I'm also gay, which enters into it, there's a bunch of shit. Yeah. But I keep thinking of this part of that episode too, you posed to me like, what would I do if I were on deck

and being told like, you need to get on a lifeboat, but you, Taylor, couldn't, like my friend Taylor couldn't, but you could. Or does that look like? I think we might have cut all of this. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's right. I think that's also why I was like, wait, I want to bring it up again. But we're bringing it back now. Bringing it back now.

Of the 466 women on board the Titanic, 339 survived. That's a 73% survival rate. 339 survived. That's a 73% survival rate. Of the 843 men on board, only 160 survived. That's a 19% survival rate. That's no good. I mean, I'm not happy that anybody of any gender is dying, to be clear. Right. But oof. Yeah. Bad odds. Gender is more than two things. But 1912 we were less, again, this is not a woke boat, folks. This is a non-woke boat. Yes.

Especially considering that a much higher percentage of first class women were saved than second and third class. So 51% of women in the second and third classes died as opposed to just 3% of the first class women died. You want to be a rich woman on the Titanic. That's who you want to be. You really do. So there were only four first class women who died and they died for various reasons. One was Ida Strauss. Ida Strauss, She chose to stay there. She chose to

stay. Another woman was on the boat with her kid and she chose to get off because she heard that her husband was getting on another boat on the other side. Oh love, that's sad. And left her kid there? She took her kid with her. Oh love, no. And two other women that were kind of caught up in the same confusion and situation and they didn't make it onto a lifeboat. Right. But that is only four women from first class who did not survive.

Just to briefly interrupt what Josie's saying here, if you want the fuller picture of the entirety of the Titanic's goings on from raising to sinking, check out episode 120, the Sinking of the Titanic, which was also a great job that Josie did unspooling that giant saga. This episode, I assume, will sort of assume that you know a lot of that information.

Exactly, yeah. I'm kind of drafting off of that story certainly and all the other things that we've talked about in terms of the Titanic, which is kind of a nice thing of the larger theme is you kind of build on each. Build and build. We're making a masterpiece like James Cameron. A huge boat here. So this question of women and children first, that is what is dictating more or less these high survival rates of women. And of course we can acknowledge that first class women were given the opportunity to get on the boats

more frequently and towards the beginning of the lifeboats being sent out. So there's chances of survival were much higher than certainly third-class passengers. Anyone from third-class. Yeah. Anyone from third-class. Exactly. Just the sheer spread of information to first- class was much clearer, more succinct than it was to third class. So that makes a big difference and influences the disparity of the class survival rate. Yes.

But the disparity of men to women surviving, because there were first class men who were on deck and some of them willing to get on those lifeboats at the same time that the women were. deck, and some of them willing to get on those lifeboats at the same time that the women were. But the captain, Captain E.J. Smith, had explained, let's do women and children first. And this is a maritime tradition. It is not a law. It is not a rule. It is kind of a general vibe, we'll say. And it could be traced back to another British ship that ran aground, the HMS Birkenhead, which founded in 1852 and women and children were given the lifeboats, given access to the lifeboats before men. It is important to note that it's not a law. It's not written into any type of procedural situation. It's a very general, this is maybe what should happen.

And considering that Captain Smith knew that there weren't enough lifeboats, perhaps, and this is obviously conjecture, perhaps he thought, well, this is a quick and easy thing to communicate that we can- It's catchy. Ask the tax. Yeah. Yeah. Make America great again. Women and children first. Right. Exactly. And it makes it easy to kind of filter out how many people can go on the boats and who can't. So maybe that was the thinking.

Yes. But as we all know by now, the way, and because you told us, the way that the women and children shake out on the Titanic, it would be mathematically impossible to fill the lifeboats way that the women and children shake out on the Titanic, it would be mathematically impossible to fill the lifeboats to capacity with women and children in such a way that everyone got on and didn't sink with the boat. Right. Which is certainly why Captain Smith didn't want to inform everybody in Steereage that the ship was going down. That makes me frustrated for obvious reasons. Yes. Even though this tradition of women and children first started on another British boat

or can be traced at least to another British boat. Y'all gotta keep your boats fucking floating better, Brittain if you keep needing to women and children first like this. Good point, very good point. Let's look at these blueprints, gang. Let's go to the library, hit the stacks. This wasn't always the case in other shipwrecks though. Or at least the survival rate of women on those other ships wasn't nearly as high as

what's on the Titanic. So there was a study recently done that had data on 18 different shipwrecks that involved 15,000 passengers. And they found that the survival rate was double for men than it was for women. Oh, interesting. That's a sample size that is much bigger than Titanic, certainly. And it's more spread out as well. So it's concentrated into one situation like the Titanic. But is it as dramatically perfect as Titanic?

Absolutely not. No, no, absolutely not. Yeah. So what are we really talking about here? So the kind of consensus for other shipwrecks around this time, and I should note that it is just women. It doesn't include children because those numbers weren't tracked quite in the same way Titanic did.

But the average survival rate for women and other shipwrecks around the time of the Titanic was 15%. And again, the survival rate for women on Titanic was 73%. Right, and like 96% of women in first class. Exactly, yeah, it was like 96.6, yeah. So Titanic presents a very different story from the norm, which also kind of contributes to exactly what you say, like the perfect narrative, like this question of like chivalry and like vulnerability.

Everyone knows women and children first. Yeah, that it's just basic human nature. That's what you do. But it's like, but that wasn't written down anywhere. That wasn't procedural in any case. That wasn't really played out in a lot of others, maybe not similar situations, considering Titanic was the biggest ship on the ocean. But in other shipwreck situations, that's not how it played out. Big ship, big chivalry. Is that the thesis? For chance, for chance. The extra smokestack was for all the chivalry?

Yes. That's where they stored it. Exactly. Got it. But of course, the Titanic being the perfect narrative that it is, it has come down to us in time that this is the way that men behaved then. This was the pinnacle of chivalrous behavior and men were really men and America was great and blah blah blah blah blah. You know, all the bullshit.

Yeah, I know. I got you. I got you. Enough so that we still kind of make fun of it in that way. And I'm going to send you a link to a YouTube video that is horrible. It's not funny, but it's played as funny. It's from like, I don't know, some influencers, whatever, who make money off of this. You'll need to credit them at some point. I know, but I don't want to like actually do it here because I find them. Okay. I will only end credits where no, brutal. It posits like if Titanic was in 2022 and it's examining these gender situations. So whenever you're ready. Yes.

In three, two, one. Ladies and gentlemen, for the time being, I'm requiring men and children only. Are you kidding me? It's 2022. This is what you wanted. You wanted to be treated equal to men? Well, this is how men are treated, like sh**. No, we don't. We just say that half the time.

We don't actually believe in it. Yeah, we do. Come on, we're just as capable as men are. Shut up! 47 million views on that bad boy. And we're out here begging for scraps from you folks. We're like, please, please tell a friend. Yeah.

I don't know. I hate the gender essentialist man shit now lately. The Andrew Tate shit that has kind of this whiff of, right? Yeah, exactly. Even though it's 2022, right? To the listener, the person who was like being whiny about shit was like a pink haired, you know, social justice type, I'm sure, with tattoos and piercings. I wasn't sure if she was supposed to be someone specific. No, I think she's

just supposed to be like a caricature of like a social justice type. Okay, yeah. Again, it sort of does, in a perverted way, tie back to what we were talking about with the Mimphemus, with this idea, this absurd idea that the Titanic narrative is desirable because it was a non-woke boat. Yes! Yes! Non-woke boat! That is kind of what they're presenting here too, is like, yeah, if you like wokeness so

much then would you die on the Titanic for it? And the answer's probably like, no. I think in that situation I would probably be stoked that my gender arbitrarily got picked to go first. Exactly. Yes. But I do think that it's, I mean, there's a lot of things wild about this, right? One, all the views it has. Two, it's playing Titanic. It's imagining the scenario in which men are men and women are women. But now... Now things are all topsy-turvy. And why did you come up with this sketch anyway? Like is there, I guess it was like the 110th anniversary maybe?

Let me mansplain something to you, truly, truly. Let me bridge the gap between boyfriend and girlfriend here. Like platonic. Get your head out of the gutter. We just hold hands. When I see Titanic, I know that I would die and it makes me mad. I feel unprivileged watching it, you know what I mean? Yes, yeah. So when you watch that shit and you're like,

oh, I would have gone down with the ship and for what? What's so good about women and children? You start thinking these dark thoughts when your ship is sinking, Josie. Yeah, yeah, fair, fair. I do think that like this sketch kind of bizarrely taps into that male experience of feeling like aggrieved that you would probably die on the Titanic. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I get that. I totally get that.

Yeah. The misogyny shit part of it. I got nothing. The wallowing in self-pity about dying in the Titanic most likely part. I totally get that part. Right. Yeah. And of course, that doesn't just apply to being a man or a woman, it applies to being first class or third class too. But what I do think is fascinating is that this, the same kind of question and positing that that video, that TikTok video in 2022, what it presents mirrors very closely to the conversations that happened after the sinking of the Titanic. The women should have drowned, is the take. Damn, ice cold, man.

Ice cold. At least feel that aggrieved status inwardly. Stiff upper lip, baby. Yes, yes. Well, here's the thing. It does play out slightly differently because it was 110 years before. And this was when women did not have the vote yet. Women in Britain got the vote in 1918.

Women in America in the US got the vote in 1920. White women. White women, yes, thank you. So in 1912, we are at this great flux of gender roles and what's happening. The suffragette movement is wearing white, marching in the streets, protesting as much as they can, not exactly successful yet until they get the vote six and eight years later. But the role of women is changing considerably

in both England and in the U.S. You know who I bet was not happy about that? Men. It's true. It's really true. If I know white men like I think I do. Queen Victoria, she's kind of known for being very laced up. Prude. Very prudish. Yes. Her son, Edward VII, he becomes the king in 1901 after Queen Victoria's death, and it ushers in an era of peace and prosperity and the British Empire is at the height of its powers. And he's younger, right? He's a little fresher.

It's not as like such a stiff lace collar on everybody, but it is still the Edwardian era, hence his name. And that means that there are very strict social relationships that are in place, especially when you're in the first class. Fucking boring. Fucking boring. That is, to me, that arbitrary social shit. But I guess this is very much a story about this, though. Like, women and children first is very emblematic of that sort of the Habsburg code of honor, my 30 phrases on my little card. Yeah.

That's what distinguishes the nobility from the plebs from the proles. Yes, exactly. And these, like, you know, you wouldn't probably need it written on a card, I would imagine, but it's just a very complex and rigid set of rules. There's so many fucking forks, Josie. Exactly. So many fucking forks, which, you know, James Cameron acknowledges. So women in the Edwardian era were still kind of under the purview of the Victorian ideal.

And the ideal Victorian woman was termed the angel in the house. So it meant that their lives were spent predominantly, if not exclusively, in the domestic sphere. That's where they had, at least upper-class women had some control, but it would never be outside of the house. And they were always expected to be subservient, even meek, towards the men in their lives, their fathers, their husbands, even their brothers. To those guys out there, don't you just wanna get dominated once just to see what it's like?

Oh my God, yeah. Just one time, let the angel in the house turn into like the demon in the sack. Yeah. Maybe you like her to boss you around a bit, you know? Maybe it's not about letting her leave, maybe she lets you leave the house every once in a while. That could be fun.

Yeah. Explore yourself, man. That could be fun. Yeah. Explore yourself, man. That's all I'm saying. I think that speaks to something very true about this entire story is that where women and how women are sequestered affects men directly. It's not simply a one-way street like women have to do this. It feeds back to the people who are enforcing those laws. Men in all their privilege have their own set of incredibly rigid gender roles that handicap us constantly.

Like you gotta go down on the Titanic. Like you gotta go down on the Titanic. Like you're not allowed to show pain or express grief. Yes. Like you are not responsible for your own medical wellbeing. You can either just outsource that emotional labor to women, side note, don't do that.

Or you just ignore it until you die. You're not allowed to fucking cry to your male friends. There's a bunch of weird gender roles is no fun for anybody. No, yeah, nobody has fun. But in this specific sense, I'd rather be able to leave the house. I'd rather be able to like exert influence in the world that is not my domestic sphere. And also kind of like framing this too when we think of the Titanic and we talked about ships are called by the female pronoun, they're identified as women. And kind of thinking around those realms when we're loading the boat with all of these people and all of these

women as well, the idea of calling ships by the female name doesn't actually have a traceable history. It's kind of an implied idea of, well, this was the law of the sea. Sailors are aware that mother nature is very important, so they want to please her and call her by this name. There's also theories that ships are vessels, they carry things. They're pregnant. Just like wombs. They're pregnant with a million little babies, weird babies all walking around and going

to the Turkish spa. Yes, yes. Which has all of these like quote unquote intrinsic feminine characteristics, but of course that's not really intrinsic, right? You could say a lot of different things. In fact, the German ship Bismarck, which was known as this huge ship, was decidedly referred to as He because He was so grand and was such a an instrument of war. So it's all fucking BS People are a trip man. People are something I was fluctuating there between so interesting and so tedious I think you can hold both on a trip. Yes People are a trip man. Yeah, so the Edwardian era had some

So, the Edwardian era had some successes for women. The Married Woman's Property Act allowed women to maintain ownership of their property and earnings after marriage, so if they were to become a widow. Even still, with that property act in place for women, there were still unfair rules regarding adultery and divorce was always favoring men. In 1901, just 14% of women under 45 were unmarried. And these women had very limited options for their living. They could be with their families, they could live with their families, or they could be a companion to a woman or another family member, kind of a governess vibe.

But there was no clear path for women in the higher classes to be in the world without being married. Yeah, first of all, I wanna say as an Agatha Christie fan, big governess fan. More governesses, always. Every Agatha Christie book has a governess fan. More governesses, always. Every Agatha Christie book has a governess. They're all great. Number two, a shame in something that we see

in the 1997 James Cameron Titanic, which is sort of about Rose Kate Winslet's widowed mother trying to pawn off her daughter to this like awful pantomime villain played by Billy Zane. True. Because that is sort of her worth, right? Her worth is to be married to someone of prominence. Well, and that is how she

can secure her own future, but also her mother's. Yes. That's what we have to do, sweetie. You know, there's the corset tightening scene. Would Alice do it to you? No, I don't think so. She cares about like employment law. Yeah. Exactly. There's this new woman that's coming on the scene and she is middle class up to upper classes and she's entering the workforce in some ways. She's moving away from the dominating male gaze and she is no longer wearing a corset. Her boobs don't have to be as prominently in your face. She is part of not having a corset is the waistline of dresses drops considerably.

And you'll notice like in fashion. The 20s. Yeah, it enters that rolls into the twenties. Yeah. And then later in the twenties. Non-woke garments. Non-woke garments. From non-woke boats.

We make you wear the corset. He's really into the undergarments. You're right. Yeah. We can see a little bit of the changing gender roles even already playing out on Titanic, according to Thomas Andrews, who was the chief builder of the Olympic class liners.

So he's the one in the movie that's like leaning sideways and checking the clock as the ship goes down. Yes, that's a very famous scene, isn't it? That's a good one. So he actually was doing a redesign on the RMS Olympic, the sister ship to Titanic, because it was noted that ladies of the first class were not retiring as they should to the writing room,

which was designed for women. So noticing that it just wasn't being utilized, he was making plans, architectural plans, to convert the ladies' writing room into just another accommodation for more passengers. So, is the idea that ladies are not retiring to the writing room because they're too woke now with these changing times? We no longer sit and do like silhouettes and write correspondence to our cousins who are also in loveless marriages? Like what's the implication? I think it is that these kind of traditional modes of being, especially when it comes to like separating men and women, women aren't following them as closely as perhaps the men,

right? Because the men have their smoking room and da da da and the women would have this, but the women just weren't interested in it anymore. They wanted to smoke and fuck. Exactly. And gamble. Yeah, spit all of it. A very direct connection that the suffragette movement and this changing women's roles has with the Titanic is that several of the passengers on board were suffrage activists. One of the most famous ones and we've talked about her, and I'm sure we might talk about her again, Margaret Tobin Brown.

Okay. Famously known as the unsinkable Molly Brown. That flew over my head. Yes, Molly Brown. Yes, yes, yes. She's been steady in terms of her presence in these episodes. Hasn't really let us down.

Unsinkable, some have said. Some have said, yes. And part of it is, I mean, I find her excessively charming. Like she comes off extremely well. You'd like to be sitting next to her at the bar while she kind of bends your ear about the awful other first class ladies that she talked to today kind of thing. And she's a straight shooter. Which we need in these dire times where no one on this boat is doing or saying what they

mean. Exactly. She was one of the first women in the US to run for political office. She ran for the Senate eight years before women even had the right to vote. Damn. Colorado? Yeah, her home state. She got on board Titanic in France. She was with her daughter and they were traveling with John Jacob Astor and Margaret had received word that her eldest grandson was ill. She hoofed it to the US and she very last minute bought a ticket on Titanic such that not all of her family knew that she was even on board when word came out. Wow. Yeah. It was reported in her own testimonies.

She helped load others into lifeboats when it came time to do so. And she worked with six other women in her lifeboat that she was put into to row the boat and to actually try and move them away from the boat, try and get survivors from the water. And it was all in this like push and pull that she had to do with the crew member that was assigned to her lifeboat.

Men! Robert Hitchens, he was such a fucking idiot. He saw one of the flares go up from Carpathia and he's like, that's just a shooting star. And everyone's like, shut the fuck up. Boo! And everyone's like, shut the fuck up. Boo. Exactly. Exactly. And she was like leading everybody. She was like, she was giving away her like fur coat, her stole and keeping other women warm and she was like, I'm going to row the boat because that'll keep me warm.

And it was just a perfect little emblematic nouveau riche America yay vibe. Yeah, we love that for her. And that's partially that is presented in some films, including A Night to Remember and 1997's Titanic. But something that isn't seen on screen is the fact that when she got on board Carpathia, the ship that is saving them, she was instrumental in providing care for the lower class passengers who were on board. Cool. Good for her. Yeah.

She's established the Survivors Committee and she was elected as chair. She was the only woman on the committee. She raised almost $10,000 for destitute survivors. Because she had language skills in French, German, and Russian, she was extremely helpful in just the basic communications on board with lower class passengers. Partly what is so extraordinary about what she does for lower class survivors as well is when they dock in New York, when Carpathia docks, she's given the opportunity of course to leave. Like they gotta go, right? But everybody in third class and steerage

had to go through immigration. So essentially they would have to go through like an Ellis Island situation where it's like, what's your name? Take down your name, spell your name, change your whole life, da da da. They decide, meaning Carpathia and US immigration, decide that they're not gonna ask Titanic survivors to do that, they'll do it on board Carpathia. They'll bring that immigration process to them. Okay. But that means that they have to stay,

the third class passengers have to stay in Carpathia another night. Oh. Let's get them off boats. Yeah. But Margaret Brown stays with them. She helps build beds and put together sleeping arrangements. A woman who likes to be of use, it sounds like.

Exactly. And not only that, she was also really funny. She's a pistol is her reputation, right? Yes. She wired her attorney in Denver when she got to New York and she said, because he had, you know, send all this information like, are you okay? What's happening? What do you need? She wrote back, thanks for the kind thoughts. Water was fine and swimming good. Neptune was exceedingly kind to me and I am now high and dry.

Wow. Can you imagine having that like good cheer after the ship goes down? And of course, she doesn't stop there. She goes on to use her platform because she does become quite famous through this. She was already a known entity, but now she kind of solidified herself as what becomes the unsinkable Molly Brown. And she continues to fight for labor rights, women's rights, education and literacy for children and historic preservation.

She works closely in World War I with the American Committee for Devastated France, even going so far that in 1932 she's awarded the French Legion of Honor from the French government. Wow, good for her. And all of this, because being the gnarnarly scoogum gal that she is, she was so pissed that she didn't get to give her statement of the Titanic sinking in the hearings that took place in the inquiry because women were not allowed to testify.

Oh, like they're nuts on Firemark. Yeah. What's that? What's that about? Exactly. There were other suffragettes on board. A woman named Helen Churchill Candy. She authored the Working Woman's Rallying Cry, a pamphlet called How Women May Earn

a Living. Sweet. And she was actually in the same boat as Margaret, so they were rowing together. Later, she was a nurse in World War I and supposedly treated Ernest Hemingway. Little side note. Elsie Bowerman was an assistant to a very famous suffragette, Emeline Pankhurst. She survived and she would go on to be the first English woman admitted to the bar, sole lawyer. We know though that these women were saved because they were placed

on a lifeboat under the pretense of women and children first. Now, there were men and predominantly we know of the first class men who did not get on lifeboats under the pretense of women and children first. We know John Jacob Astor, he puts his pregnant wife, 18 year old pregnant wife on a lifeboat. What a gent. What a gent, yes, exactly. Guggenheim, he dons his evening whites to go down with the ship in the way that is befitting of a man. And these stories are like, lauded, people glom onto them. It is the Edwardian manners of the era. It is the perfect shining symbol of chivalry.

And this is what being a man really means at this time and era. But this idea of women and children first, and these very famous stories coming out of Titanic about very brave and noble and courageous men and they did it because they're men and that's what real men do. This is the spirit that should ideally animate our society, our civilization. Exactly. This becomes the frame for a very fierce and hot debate around the role of feminism. So I think an

important thing to do at this point is to recognize that the Titanic has sunk, survivors have been picked up by Carpathia and it is docked in New York. Now we are entering the story of Titanic lore where it is no longer about what actually happened. Now it is no longer about what actually happened. Now it is about how people are reacting to the news. And I want to make that distinction because those are two very different things. Absolutely. There's a reaction to the event, and then there's the reaction to the meme of the event. Yeah. For example, there's in this vein, and maybe it ends up being something that you discuss, I don't know, but there's a very popular idea

that men on the Titanic were dressing as women to get aboard lifeboats. And as far as I could tell in my research, that never actually happened. Somewhere along the way it got glommed onto the snowball. Yes, yes. And this is also the era of political cartoons too. So there's a lot of very salient imagery.

Political cartoons suck. It's one of my least favorite genres of anything. I didn't know this about you. Oh my gosh. It's like Donald Trump, picture of Donald Trump, a big toilet and the toilet says toilet and then there's like a fucking page that says US Constitution. It's just, it's rotten. American political cartooning.

At least the stuff that I've seen. Holy shit. It's like getting a brick to the face, man. It's not subtle or funny. No, no, it's not good. But he creates these images, right? Because it creates the man trying to like have a, you know, shawl over him looking like a woman. Written on the woman is like Calvin Coolidge. Yeah. That's who you're trying to demonize. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. So we know from previous episodes that on the Carpathia there were wireless messages being sent about what had happened. Of course, the whole story hadn't been conveyed for various reasons. Go listen back to episode 120. But something that does happen because of that is that people hear that these very courageous, chivalrous men have sacrificed themselves for women and children. And it is seen as a triumph of the Anglo-Saxon, chivalrous man and his fortitude. Yeah. It's brave to go down with the ship like that. It is brave.

It's brave. And if it's put into the context of gender, which the practice of women and children first does, then it gets tied to gender, right? It is brave to be a man, to have been a man on the Titanic and have gone down. That is what it means to be a man. Even though the full story hadn't been relayed, these like crumbs of the story, right? The easiest things to pick up become the story. So even though once the boat docks and more people are talking, more people are interviewed, it's still the case that the press, the public, they're interested in hearing stories that are going to kind of confirm this preconceived notion that they have that the chivalrous white man is strong and brave and true.

We need our institutions reaffirmed the Titanic just sank. Yes, exactly. Give us something to hold on to. Give us something to unimpeachable, unsinkable, right? Exactly. You have a lot of grieving widows too. Of course. Who just got like separated from their husbands under really traumatic circumstances.

Yeah. Who may not have to raise a child alone, all these things. Exactly. And as we know, there's won't be really much compensation for their husband's loss of life either. Yeah. You know, these women aren't gonna be there being like, oh, that guy was an asshole anyway.

Like that's not the story that is getting told and reconfirmed. I wanna hang out with her though. Yeah, right? That boat saved me a lot of work. Yeah, yeah. No, the story that is being shared though is the, he died like a man.

He died bravely, strongly, truly and went under. Other Savage Garden songs, yes. Yes. Something to be noted here too, it was the triumph of the chivalrous Anglo-Saxon man. There were plenty of accounts of people of color being unchivalrous, being quote unquote animalistic, not having the bravery and courage.

They got on a fucking lifeboat because they saw these white people doing this weird shit around them. They were like, I don't know what that's about, but I'm getting on this, this ship is sinking. Right. Yes, exactly. Another damning element of these gender roles too,

is that it's like creating the scenario where white men particularly are the peak of not only of women, of white women, but like of anybody on planet earth, right? It's all that bullshit. And it ties into like, we associate that bravery with masculinity and we use what we call these other people's lack of bravery in an attempt to like emasculate them

and dehumanize them and so on. Yes, exactly. And in that way too, this narrative that is being told and cemented into the story of Titanic and its sinking is this idea that the real tragedy of the Titanic was that 58 men were saved where women were not. This sense of responsibility, male responsibility, didn't extend only to white men. It did include a Japanese passenger, male passenger by the name of Masabumi Hosono. He was a Japanese civil servant who was on Titanic, kind of connecting to the US so that he could travel

on to Japan. He was on his way home, essentially. Long trip. Made longer by this, I'm sure. Long trip. But the fact that he survived meant that he had the same kind of scrutiny on him of being a man that survived the sinking, but it was intensified when he got home because not only was he a man that survived, but he was a Japanese man that survived. And so this code of chivalry in Japanese culture was such that it was like you were supposed to be the model Japanese. Why didn't you die? Yes. Yeah. That's brutal. Why didn't you uphold not only this British idea of chivalry, but this Japanese. It was really brutal because he lost his job. His name was kind of dragged in the mud. Eventually he was rehired by the Japanese government, so they didn't think it was that bad.

Fascinating to know that that same level of scrutiny was even applied in Japan. Very interesting. And I think too, it's on, you know, this is the eve of World War I more or less. And yeah, this idea of strong masculinity, it's more recognizable in the idea of conscription maybe for World War I and World War II later too. Another thing I'm famously not a fan of, conscription. Exactly. Yeah. There's, I think, kind of something perhaps tied in that, at least from like my vantage

point in 2025, looking back, it's like, wow, it really sounds the same notes of like, go fight for your country, go fight for your women at home kind of thing. Another man who survives, and we talked about him in episode 120, was J. Bruce Ismay. Another recurring character along with Margaret Brown and one of our very interesting archetypes, the cowardly CEO, the cowardly executive. His story, right, is that he kind of hops onto a lifeboat and saves himself and in inquiries he's trying to absolve himself as much as he can. I don't know what a boat does. What's floating, huh? And it is an interesting question because he's the de facto owner. So should

he have gone down with the ship and fulfilled this courageous white man narrative? No, that's stupid. But he also in the aftermath, he's not very helpful. He is kind of just like an idiot. Yeah. He's his own worst enemy. He doesn't have the sense of like, you unfortunately are now in like the Richard Gere Chicago position where you need to play the game a bit and start kissing some babies and shit because you don't look good right now. Apparently, on board the Carpathia, Margaret Brown and some other first class female passengers,

they were working with third class passengers to make sure that they were safe, that they had blankets. Some of these women were like sewing garments for the kiddos and people who needed more warm things to wear. And at one point they were moving through the ship going down to Steerage because even Carpathia had the same class divisions in its building. And according to this source, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage by Hugh Brewster, Margaret Brown found that not everybody supported her altruism. Two of the women on her committee were approached by Dr. McGee as they made their way down to the third class decks one morning.

Madam, we have the situation under perfect control, he said to one of them regarding the steerage passengers, adding that cutting up blankets would not soothe their tortured minds. Since the doctor had just emerged from the room of Bruce Ismay, the committee women suspected he was taking orders from the quote-unquote, secluded plutocrat, as Margaret Brown had dubbed him, and this simply increased their resolve to do more. Secluded prudocrat. She's got a good vocab. I know. She's, she's whip smart. It's pretty great. I should also add that her husband, JJ Brown, when he heard that his wife had survived the disasters had said she's too mean to sink. That's really funny.

That's extremely funny. Yeah. Good couple. Good couple. Yeah. Good couple. J Bruce Ismay on the other hand, he just was not doing himself any favors. He's digging his hole deeper and deeper. Sinking. Yeah. I guess we should probably use a sinking one, not a digging one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. His ship was sinking even further. Titanic. Listen, we got two more episodes. Yeah, yeah. Just hang in there. Hang in there. J. Bruce Ismay, I think is kind of, is interesting.

It's where I kind of started thinking about this because I was like, my initial reaction was like, don't get on the fucking lifeboat, dude. You're fucking jackass. Get on the lifeboat. But the thing is, get on the fucking lifeboat. But this intense idea of manhood being connected to dying, right? The masculine sacrifice. Dying nobly too, and dying nobly for women even.

Yeah. That idea, he gets kind of, you know, swept away with that, and all that negative press comes down on him under that pretense. And I'll say it again, he doesn't do himself any favors to kind of combat that especially. But he's kind of wrongfully, I think at least, that he's wrongfully remembered as getting in the lifeboat incorrectly, because he's just trying to stay alive. JAY It depends. It depends on whether you accept his account of the circumstances on how he got in, that it was sort of like literally the last possible second and it was the last possible boats and no one else was around. If you accept those circumstances, then yeah, I'm fine with it.

STACEY Right. Yeah. Another interesting man who survived the Titanic. He was a second class passenger. He was a school teacher named Lawrence Beasley. And after the sinking, he wrote a book that was very successful, The Loss of the SS Titanic. This is so fascinating to me because he got on a lifeboat. He was saved. He wrote this book. He was like a consultant on the filming

of A Night to Remember, the 1958 film that is like very historically accurate, at least one of the first historically accurate film depictions of the sinking. And which I should say, now that you've given me a prompt here, I forgot to mention it last time, but a few scenes from Nazi Titanic remain immortalized in A Night to Remember. They used a handful of like establishing shots and like rooms flooding, I think, from the 1943 Titanic,

which we talked about in last week's show. A few of those end up getting reused in a night to remember. Wow. Like Al Capone's vault in Geraldo, it lives on via the medium of Titanic film, as do we all someday. Yeah.

So Beasley was on set and he was just meant to kind of give like, yeah, that looks good. Thumbs up. No, he was more like this. He was a consultant, right? But apparently he tried to sneak on set as they were filming so that he would depict a character who went into the ocean that sank with Titanic. So essentially he was trying to rewrite his story of getting on a lifeboat and instead, in the fictionalized version, he went down with Titanic. The director noticed and was like, uh, cut, excuse me, get over here. They're going to wonder why you're in the water.

He was concerned that he wasn't a SAG actor. He wasn't part of the guild, so he didn't want to get into trouble. No, absolutely. That's fair. Can't piss off the guild. No, but I do love that he attempted to remain on the ship in the fictionalized version, trying to rewrite his story in some way. I understand it. It must be hard to be the villain of the Titanic story. That's a tough pull. It's a tough one, yeah. It's a tough draw. Bittersweet infamy, some have called it. So as we were discussing, this idea of masculinity being tied to death, right? To the courageous sacrifice for women and for children. While that cements all these narratives about masculinity, especially in the Edwardian

era, it doesn't really do much for men, right? No, it sure doesn't. Apparently there were a lot of men on board Carpathia that, at least according to Margaret Brown, she found their attitudes kind of pathetic. They kept trying to explain why they were saved, quote, as if it were a blot on their manhood, end quote. Defensive. I get it.

And note too that Margaret Brown is a suffragette. She's like, I want equality. I want to be on the US Senate. I want to vote. Man, complicated gender shit going down on the Carpathia here, huh? So intense. Yeah. You know, you don't have to apologize.

You survived. That's an instinct. And yet all these men, like, just couldn't, they couldn't not say, like, well, it was just there and I got oh I'm sure that comes with such intense survivors guilt too no that's true yeah I can understand being defensive if you're like being told it like the pinnacle of manhood is to be more like is me he doesn't give a shit right exactly after the sinking this question of manhood and femininity, this question of gender roles,

becomes like a very big talking point. And the suffragette movement has this moment to respond, right? So it's kind of a big turning moment in the public consciousness of women's roles and men's roles. Because according to narratives that are being espoused by the press, isn't it so great that all these men died? Wasn't it so horrible that these courageous men died? We're going to be without them in our lives and what will we do without the John Jacob Astors and the Guggenheims to protect us and keep us safe? So the anti-sephirgette movement at the time, their take on the sinking of the Titanic was this is proven human nature that women should be subservient to men. Which we're still fucking fighting.

Exactly. It was proof that women are naturally weaker and require men to take care of them in times of danger and that men are willing to do those acts of bravery, quote, self-denial and unequaled consideration. So therefore men can take care of women in any sphere. Women don't need to vote because men understand how to take care of them. Just get in the lifeboat, darling. I'll be right behind you. Yeah. No, I was thinking this. I didn't want to go too deep into it because I feel like there's no way to express

this nuance point without sounding like a raging misogynist. But I do think it's like implicitly insulting to women the idea that like this whole setup propagates that, that like you're not capable of like doing this without men shepherding you toward it, that you have implicitly the reasoning capacity and temperament of a child with whom you are also in the lifeboat.

Yes, yeah. Or that like your value is to watch over this child because your value is as a mother or a caretaker, right? As this vessel for another human, yeah. So there's all of these things that like come into it, but I'm also like, I'm not about to argue with you, a woman, like get off the lifeboat too. Like that's not a good look.

Yeah. So I bit my tongue so as not to be a misogynist, but since you're bringing it up, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy this goddamn women on the boat means men are stronger shit. It's the men who fucking contributed to this discussion to begin with. They decided this. Yeah, women did not have a decision in this. I think that's a point that we'll hear from. There's various points made by the suffragette community, but that is definitely one. For the anti-suffragists,

what happened on Titanic was just indisputable proof that women's rights are off the table because men will always have their best interest, that women are weaker and will be willing to get on boats in this situation. Women are better off protected anyway. Man, leave it to men to take this rare public relations optics win and just fumble it. Yeah. Yeah. Just fumble it by trying to make it too big of a thing.

God damn it, boys. According to the Baltimore Sun, quote, the action of the men on the Titanic was not exceptional, but it must be recognized as an act of supreme heroism and a showing that women can appeal to a higher law than that of the ballot for justice, consideration, and protection. I don't see how the two are related.

I genuinely don't. Well, and it's a little bit of like, I think what's happening too is the anti-suffragists are kind of accusing women of having their cake and eat it too. They fucking hate women and they're choked that the women won the Titanic. Yeah. In the end, never twice. That's what it is. They're choked that they kind of have their cake and eat it too.

Like you got to get off the boat, but you also want the vote. But there's something very have your cake and eat it too about this idea that like these men are supreme heroes and Uber men or whatever. But also like this is just how every man is. This is believe this to be the case in every situation. Every man of the type that you're describing feels that way about themselves, feels that they are that guy, with or without evidence.

They're probably getting that echoed back at them because they're talking to other men who have those same beliefs. Yeah. And so it just seems natural that all men are like this when really, can I fucking rattle your bones at home, folks? People are different from one another. Trying to paint people with these incredibly broad brushes

of all men are axol women are white. It just doesn't like, you just have to meet like three different people from that group and you'll be like, oh, actually you're pretty different when I have a fucking conversation with you. Yeah. There was a anti-suffragist poem written by Clark McAdams that was published shortly after the sinking. Are we gonna do a little poetry reading?

Votes for women was the cry, reaching upward to the sky. Votes for women was the cry when the brave were come to die. Votes for women was the cry. Damn. And I think earlier when I was like wondering, I'm like, why am I being made to watch this shitty misogynist YouTube video? Yeah. Now I know why.

Yes. Because they were making shitty misogynist poems instead, but- It was all the same, even 110 years ago. Nothing changes, Josie, nothing changes. Forget what I said about painting with broad strokes. Nothing changes. Nothing changes.

I mean, your infamous was building Titanic too. So let's keep building Titanic over and over until we get it right. As always, don't want to paint with a too too broad a stroke. God forbid we never do that here on this show. The suffrage response was varied, of course, right? Some suffragists were saying, well, you know what? Women are more valuable, we're cooler. So was it really a sacrifice for these men to die? No. Damn.

Ice cold. There's the iceberg. Damn. It doesn't quite lock into the equality conversation. No, no. That's maybe just, maybe just a Miss Andress who wanted to talk to the times.. No, no, that's maybe just a misandrist who wanted to talk to the Times. Yeah. Point made, yes. But there was also discussion of, you know what? Those women shouldn't have got on

the boat. They should have waived their advantage. According to Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, who's the author of the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, which is like a bing of women's lit. She wrote in a newspaper, we honor the women who wave the sex advantage and choose to die like brave and conscientious human beings. End quote. She's just saying it is brave to die, which I, nah. Charlotte, I know you're not gonna wanna hear this from me, brave to die, which I, nah.

Charlotte, I know you're not gonna wanna hear this from me, but I don't think it's fair to make absolutes about what anyone should do in a situation like that. I think that there's like, don't start taking babies and crushing their skulls, obviously, like there are limits. But like, Josie, you're not willing to go along with that? I'm just, I'm listening. You're just, like, stay open, limits. Okay. But like, Josie, you're not willing to go along with that? I'm just, I'm listening.

You're just, like, stay open, man. It's crazy on the water. But I do think that like, by and large, when it comes to like, should you seed your spot on a lifeboat to someone else or not? Yeah. That's, oh, that's such an ask. How can you put yourself in everybody's shoes

and everybody's circumstances? And this person has like a sick relative back home that they're taking care of and you don't know. It's so unfair. I think that it's an individual thing, right? Yeah. And you know, you don't wanna be in this strange situation where it's like, no, you take the spot.

No, you take, no, you, no, you. And then the fucking Titanic goes down, folks. We're on a clock here, it's tick-tock. That is not what you want, exactly. No. And there were other members of the suffrage movement who were like, you know what, majority of those women, all but like what, half a handful,

they weren't even suffragettes anyway, so who cares? They were predominantly privileged, upper class and white. And that's not what the suffrage movement is about. They were like, I am a weak ass waif. Put me in the boat. Yeah. Yeah. I know three recipes I'm hoping to learn for and I can sew. That's what I got. Put me in the boat. So there were some other suffragettes who were like, eh, write them off. Whatever.

Yep. Now, of course, there were women in the suffrage movement who were arguing for not the fact that it was grand and wonderful that women and children were saved. What they were positing was that a new type of chivalry should exist, one which expands protection, not just for women and children, but for everyone. Of course, in kind of the political rhetoric of the time, they tied that to, you know what, women need to vote, women need to vote so that we're never put in the situation where there aren't enough lifeboats. Because that was, I think in my opinion,

the best rebuttal to women being vulnerable in that situation is, well, actually, women weren't given any role in designing the ship, in crewing the ship, in any type of- In developing escape strategies. Exactly. And women were put in this vulnerable situation by men. Men's decisions made this all happen, including the decision to put them on

the lifeboats. The design of the boat, the design of not having enough lifeboats. If women had more roles of power in the creation of Titanic, one, would it ever have been built? Would we have ever been like, oh, let's big dick the oceans? Maybe not. But at least they would have made sure that there were enough lifeboats on board for everyone. Interesting. Because they're inherently nurturing and caring. Well, and I think that is kind of getting maybe to a seed of the suffrage movement is that equality means that men won't have to die for women and children. JANELLE But it gives us something to do.

KATE It gives us something to do. JANELLE Men love to fix things. JANELLE Men love to just showily play the victim in situations where it's like, I tend to take the suffragette line of view in this first one. Yeah. Stoked that women can vote, congrats. Yeah.

Thanks. No worries. Second of all, I do think of the point to me that it is men that put us in this situation entirely from the design of this ship down to the evacuation of this ship. I'm very amenable to that argument. Yes.

And I think too, the idea of women and children first, which created this huge disparity of survivors along those gender lines. If you go back and you look at the shipwreck that's attributed to HMS Birkenhead that ran aground in 1852, there is a report, there's a quote taken from one of the women survivors and she says, quote, it is hard to describe the sensation of oppression, which is removed from one's mind on knowing the utterly helpless part of the ship's living cargo has been deposited in comparative safety. This is a very kind of like turn back around on self 1852 type of sentence. Can you give me the emoji version of that?

To survive is human and to try to impose gender norms on survival is fruitless. If not kind of stupid. I agree. not kind of stupid. I agree. It's this idea that that oppression of a gender norm is kind of tossed to the wayside when you're given the opportunity to survive. And I want to actually end on an account from a Titanic survivor. And I think it best if he tell the story.

Okay. Because he's not specifically giving his account on the gender norms and the sinking of Titanic because he's not fucking writing a term paper. But his experience, I think, plays on to what we're talking about in terms of surviving doesn't have a gender. His name is Frank Prentiss and he was a crew member of Titanic and he worked in the Purser's office, which I believe is kind of like money exchange like the bank on board. We'll encounter him mid-story of the sinking of the ship. of the sinking of the ship. But before I got my life built on, I met a young couple and I can tell you her name.

It was Mrs. Clark. They'd spent their honeymoon in France and we'd picked them up at Sherburg. And she was having trouble with her lifeboat. So I fixed that on to her. And I said, I think you better get with her lifeboat. So I fixed that on to her. And I said, I think you'd better get into a lifeboat. And there was one on the port side. So she said, no, I don't want to go there.

I don't want to leave my husband. So I said, well, it's just precautionary measure. You get in, your husband will follow later on. And I got her away. That was that. And then I picked up my own lifeboat will follow later on. And I got her away, and that was that, and then I picked up my own life-build and put it on. Well, things went there, and then the third-class bachelors were coming up. There were 700 of them, and they swarmed the decks and filled up the decks. And I thought, well, I'd done all I possibly could. I'd helped them all I could.

And I thought, oh, now I'll go up and get out of all this scrumming and go on the poop deck. And she was sinking past then. And all of a sudden she lifted up quickly and you could hear everything crashing through her. Everything that was movable was going through her and then she went down and seemed to come up again so I thought well now I'm going to leave and I was hanging on to a board we had two boards stabbed in the port

which said, keep clear of propeller blades. And I was hanging on to one of these and I was getting higher and higher in the air and I thought, well, now I'll go. And I dropped in. I had a light built on. And I hit the water with a terrific crack. Luckily, I didn't hit anything when I dropped in.

There were bodies all over the place. Then I looked up at the Titanic. The propellers were right out of water, the rudder was right out, and I could see the bottom. And then, gradually, she glided away, and that was the last of the Titanic. I didn't want to die, I mean, and I didn't see much chance of living, but I was gradually getting frozen up, and by the grace of God,

I came across a lifeboat, and they pulled me in. And there was a fireman dead in the bottom, there was about a foot of water in this boat. There was another man who seemed to be trying to get away from it again, I don't know what was the matter with him, they were tying him down. And the rest were women and children. And I sat on a seat and who should be... I sat next to Mrs. Clark, the

girl I'd put into a lifeboat. And she said, the first thing she said, where's my... have I seen my... have you seen my husband? So I said, no, I haven't. I expect he'll be all right. Anyway, I was pretty, you know, pretty a bad way then, as you can imagine. Frozen solid almost. And she wrapped me around with a cloak. She had some sort of blanket or a coat on. Anyway, I think she probably saved my life, I don't know. But I saved hers. Usually I think I might have done. I think I did.

And she saved mine. And is this like, in your mind, the utopian aspect of a man saving a woman and a woman saving a man? This is the gender parody that we should have had on the Titanic? I mean, I think it's the gender parody that works within the framework of Titanic. Because men who got into lifeboats were very apologetic later. They didn't quite know how, you know, that Margaret Brown kind of like, oh, they seem just to be so pathetic and like trying to make excuses. But any man who went into the water and then came out of the water, which there were very few,

but the ones who did, they didn't seem to have this same survivor's guilt. Right, because they completed their end of the deal. They tried to sync with it. They just happened to get out of it. Yes, yes, yeah. And in his case too, he was crew. And I think he kind of, he even says in that,

like I done what I thought I could do. And then I just, every man for himself. Yeah. That's that. Yeah. But I think there is something very sweet about coming, like sitting next to this woman that he saved, though her husband did not survive. And even still, he knows her as Mrs. Clark, right? He doesn't really have, I'm assuming her first name is not Mrs. and that last name is her husband's. Right? Yeah. Even in that way, it's still wrapped up in formality between the sexes kind of thing. Yes. Yes. Yes. Depended on marriage and man's last name and... Certainly a widow. You wouldn't want to be disrespectful to her in any way.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Damn. But I think he also understands, at least in that telling, the way that he talks about like, I believe I saved her life and she saved mine. The equality of survival. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our Ko-fi account

at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinfamy. But no pressure, bittersweet infamy is free, baby! You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bittersweet Infamy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet! The sources I used for this episode include Full-size Titanic replica built in China will stage simulation of iceberg collision

by Harry Cockburn November 30th 2016 in The Independent Billionaire says his long-glade Titanic 2 ship will be antidote to woke politics by Miles Clea for Rolling Stone March 27th 2024 I sourced the cover of the September 1998 issue of Popular Mechanics. I looked at the websites for the Blue Star Line. You can find them at bluestarline.com. I also looked at the website for the Pigeon Forge Tennessee Titanic attraction, titanicpigeonforge.com. Lastly, I read the Wikipedia articles Replicant,, Titanic, Titanic 2, and Romance, Titanic. The sources that I used for this episode included the TikTok video, If Titanic was in 2022, which I watched on

YouTube. It was uploaded by Matt and Justice September 7th, 2022. I looked at Encyclopedia Titanica. I looked at the articles for Margaret Brown, first class passenger, Lawrence Beasley, second class passenger, the article Class and Gender in Shaping the Memory of the Titanic Disaster Since 1912, Boats for Women, Gender and Titanic, and I looked at the encyclopedia Titanic article The Statistics of the Disaster, an in-depth analysis of the number of Titanic passengers lost and saved. I read an article from New Scientist, Sinking the Titanic, Women and Children First Myth, written by Alison George, published July 30, 2012. I read an article from Bustle, The Secret Feminist History of the Titanic, written by J.R. Thorpe,

published June 16th, 2017. I looked at the article, How suffragists reacted to the Titanic disaster, written by James P. Denke and Wayne A. Weingand, in Print Culture in a Diverse America, published 1998. I looked at selections from the book Down with the Old Canoe, a cultural history of the Titanic disaster, written by Stephen Bial, published in 1996. I read an article, Semantic Enigmas, from guardian.co.uk,

Why Are Ships Always Female? I looked at an article from History is Now Magazine, edwardian.co.uk Why are ships always female? I looked at an article from History is Now magazine, What Was It Like for Women in Edwardian Britain? Written by Amy Chandler, posted February 21, 2024. I looked at History Extra, What Was Life Like for Women in Edwardian Britain? Written by Eleanor Evans, published January 26, 2023. I looked at a timeline, Women's Suffrage, on the American Bar Association website, and I looked at the Wikipedia for passengers of the Titanic. I read selections

of the book, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage, the Titanic's First Class Passengers and Their World, written by Hugh Brewster, published 2012. And lastly, the account from Frank Prentiss, I found on YouTube, uploaded by BBC Global, and the video is entitled Titanic Survivor Recalls Harrowing Moment Ship Sank, posted April 15, 2024. Don't forget that we'll be chatting about 1997's film Titanic directed by James Cameron over at our film club Bittersweet Film Club. To listen to that please head over to ko-fi.com that's k-o-f-i.com slash bittersweetinfamy and become a subscriber to access the Bittersweet Film Club. When you become a subscriber, you'll be lovingly adored like our other subscribers, Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie D, Erica Jo, Soph, Dylan, and Saksha the Cat.

Bittersweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode was lovingly edited by Alex McCarthy with help from Alexi Johnson. Our cover photo was taken by Luke Bentley. The melodica intro music that you heard earlier for Titanic April was played by Mitchell Collins. The interstitial music you heard earlier was also by Mitchell Collins. And the song you are listening to now

is Tea Street by Brian Steele. was also by Mitchell Collins. And the song you are listening to now is Tea Street by Bryan Steele. ["Tea Street"] Did you know there's a fresh chicken option raised completely free of antibiotics? Maple Leaf Prime raised without antibiotics chickens have never been treated with antibiotics or added hormones. And the chickens are humanely raised and grain fed right here on Canadian farms. Plus, you'll find it packaged in recyclable trays. Choose a Canadian brand you trust. Try Maple Leaf Prime raised without antibiotics chicken. Brand Power, helping you buy better.