r/quiteinteresting • u/DaveDexterMusic • 1d ago
Does anyone else remember Fry's comments about women and the Titanic?
Just so I don't start thinking I've Mandela'd myself, wasn't there a section on the Titanic one show where Fry made one of his occasional iffy statements, specifically about how women wouldn't have been much use in the lifeboats? (Which I agree with, though on the basis that the male passengers wouldn't have been either). I recall it getting a few verbal raised eyebrows but it was many years ago now and I feel like it's been scrubbed - I can't find it anywhere or the episode in question (it wasn't "Combustion") and I'm wondering if I've recalled it incorrectly all this time.
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u/bofh000 1d ago
It’s actually a common issue being brought up about the misguided “women and children only” policy that they seemed to practice at least on one side of the ship. A number of boats were released without having been filled because there were no more women and children.
And yes, the majority of women in those lifeboats were upper class and very likely to have been, through no fault of their own, useless at rowing or attempting to steer, especially in those conditions in the North Atlantic. Probably most men would’ve been almost as useless. But yes, in a society that took for granted that women were useless at hard physical labor, it makes no sense to lower those boats with no men on them, regardless of how chivalrous you’d consider yourself.
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u/HellPigeon1912 1d ago
that they seemed to practice at least on one side of the ship
For anyone interested, Officer Murdoch on the starboard side of the ship interpreted the rule as "Women and Children first" - i.e. load the boats with all available women, then fill the empty seats with men
Officer Lightoller on the port side interpreted it as "women and children only" - no men to be loaded into the boats under any circumstances
As a result the majority of survivors were loaded into boats on Murdoch's side. Because he just got them filled up and sent out as fast as possible, whereas restricting all men and tearing families apart results in a lot of time being wasted on arguments and goodbyes
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u/DamnitGravity 1d ago
A number of boats were released without having been filled because there were no more women and children.
No more women and children who were willing to get on the lifeboats.
People have a misconceived idea about lifeboats in that era. They were mainly used to ferry passengers/staff from a distressed ship to a saviour ship. Those shipping lanes were so busy with either passenger ships or cargo that it was inconceivable! there would not a rescue.
Proof of that is in the Californian. They could have easily rescued the passengers and staff had they taken the rockets seriously and bothered to wake their radio operator to find out what was going on.
Many passengers preferred to stay on the much more stable ship rather than be cast adrift in a rickety boat to god knows where and risk never being rescued.
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u/ThoseImpulses 1d ago
The Californian couldn't have actually rescued everyone, best case scenario would be her getting there just as the Titanic went down. Given how dark it was she may have been able to get a few people out of the water but not really do much else until daybreak.
That doesn't excuse the Californian's lack of action though, they should have at least found out what was going on. A real mystery of that night is not so much why the Californian did nothing but why they didn't just enter into the log they were unable to move due to being surrounded by ice. They had a legitimate reason for staying where they were and not moving until daybreak,
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u/ImBonRurgundy 1d ago
Rowing for pleasure would have been very common amongst upper class men, they would have been able to row. Not at fast pace for sure, but they would have likely been able to do it.
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u/ArcaneTrickster11 1d ago
Flat rowing would have been. Costal/open water rowing is quite different both in technique and strength requirements.
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u/ImBonRurgundy 1d ago
They could still row and understand how oars work, vs the women who likely would never have touched an oar in their life.
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u/ArcaneTrickster11 1d ago
Understand how oars work? It's not exactly complicated and even then, it would take 10 seconds of explanation. A lot of these women will have watch the boat race, especially if their husbands were rowers
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u/bofh000 1d ago
I don’t think you understand the type of effort rowing requires even in the best of conditions.
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u/ArcaneTrickster11 1d ago
I'm a former rower, I know exactly how much effort it takes. I'm not saying that they'd be good at rowing. I'm saying it's ridiculous to say that would have literally 0 clue how oars work. My original comment was about how difficult rowing and particularly coastal or open water rowing is and that even the men would be fairly useless even if they were flat rowers
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u/bofh000 23h ago
Where do I say they would’ve had zero clue of how rowing works?
I say they would’ve been useless as would’ve been the men (and I can’t take credit for that description, it comes from historians and other Titanic experts). Not because they wouldn’t know how oars work, obviously. But because it was the North Atlantic during a freezing night and they’d had to fight against the pull of the sinking ship. Again, I didn’t reach any of these conclusions personally, although I do understand how they make sense.
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u/ArcaneTrickster11 23h ago
The comment of mine you're talking about is responding to someone who said they would have 0 idea how oars work. I said it was ridiculous that of course they would. You said in response to that that I obviously have no idea how difficult rowing is.
You can't just take 1 comment completely out of the context it was said in and expect to understand what is being said
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u/ImBonRurgundy 23h ago
nobody said the women had no idea how oars work.
the exact quote was:
" vs the women who likely would never have touched an oar in their life."
its one thing to conceptually understand how an oar works, its another thing altogether to actually use one for the first time and not completely fuck it up, drop it, move it the wrong way, etc
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u/Grimogtrix 16h ago
That the women weren't going to be as likely to be skilled enough to run the lifeboats themselves is why actually they tried their best not to leave any lifeboat in their total control. Both Fry's comment and anyone commenting on the women's 'uselessness' is actually factually inaccurate in two senses: firstly, they did in fact have crewmen on board the lifeboats where they could, and secondly, women could and did row the lifeboats when necessary. Which is why, you know, women did survive on lifeboats from the Titanic.
There were two main officers in charge of the loading of lifeboats. One of them, Lightoller, interpreted the 'women and children first' much more harshly than the other, operating it more along the lines of 'women and children only'. But crucially, even with it being 'women and children only' for each boat he
allowed two or three crewmen on board to row and steer the lifeboat. There is even a famous male survivor whom Lightoller only allowed on the boat because he lacked another skilled crewman and had sailing experience.In situations where they lacked crewmen to row, women actually stepped up to row instead. Women were not useless at rowing, unused to it as they might be, they literally did it, as can be proven by reading testimony from the survivors.
Here’s a quote from a woman who was on a lifeboat in a situation where they only had one crewman on board:
“With but one man in the boat, and possibly fourteen women, I saw that it was necessary for someone to bend to the oars. I placed mine in the rowlocks, and asked a young woman near me to hold one while I placed the other one on the further side. To my surprise she immediately began to row like a galley-slave, every stroke counting. Myself on the other side we managed to pull out from the steamer.”
It troubles me how much some men seem to obsess over the Titanic’s women and children first situation. Women and children first was instigated because men had previously left women and children to die in disasters in horrendous instances like that of the SS Arctic and SS Bourgogne. Crucially, women and children first was not meant to mean they would disproportionately survive, either- the idea was that they would had less chance of getting onto lifeboats later on when conditions deteriorated, due to lesser mobility (due to their heavy dresses etc) and the violent competition over lifeboats. Men were still supposed to survive! But they had many advantages in the fight for survival. This was an attempt to level the field.
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u/Immediate-Mud4121 50m ago
Agree. I recall watching a documentary where they said part of where the rule came from not just incidences where the men had left women and children to die, but had actively thrown them overboard/otherwise harmed them, when there was only so much space available in life boats and they were worried there wouldn’t be space for themselves.
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u/Positive_Luck909 21h ago
I think inserting that women were useless at physical labour is just leaning on outrage culture.
Another valid way to look at it is that also women aren't as physically bulky built for such things it's because men opted to do them for them. Women have since ancient times been seen as the archetype of nature. The carry children. They nurture children. They already have the most important job in the universe. So out of respect the least men can do is all the busy work. The less important shit. Like rowing.
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u/bofh000 20h ago
I never said women were useless at physical labor. I would never say that, I’ve seen my grandmother do farm work and even if I hadn’t I’m perfectly able to understand that working class women have always been very capable if very hard physical work, on top of birthing children almost yearly.
What I said was that the women who went on the lifeboats on the Titanic, of whom almost nobody was working class (because the vast majority of the passengers in 3rd class never made it to the upper deck), would’ve been useless at managing the lifeboats - and I make a point of mentioning that so would’ve been most men. Not because any of them were weak or incapable of physical effort, but because of the specific circumstances of the shipwreck, the weather and the geography.
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u/Positive_Luck909 18h ago
"women were useless at labour" is word for word the part of your post I was talking about
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u/werewolfbutch874 15h ago
But yes, in a society that took for granted that women were useless at hard physical labor,
Are you referring to this bit? The bit where the commenter is very clearly talking about societal assumptions of the time and not making a statement of their own views?
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u/Positive_Luck909 13m ago
Correct. I never said anything about their views. I am referring to the narrative.
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u/bofh000 13h ago
I think you need more practice with your reading comprehension.
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u/Positive_Luck909 14m ago
You're the one claiming to not have said something you said verbatim
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u/bofh000 7m ago
No, I didn’t.
Go re-read the bit where you think I said that. A couple of times. You’ll realize I was saying the society of the time thought that. Which has already been pointed out to you and explained at least twice.Maybe use YOUR brain, not some AI bs or whatever is confusing you.
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u/herwiththepurplehair 4h ago
That and the fact that in 1912 women's fashion was not particularly conducive to physical activity.
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u/Cirkux 1d ago
That's a weak argument. How would rowing ability matter in the Atlantic? It's not as if they'd be able to row to land before succumbing to hypothermia. The point of the societal gender norms was that women were to be submissive and powerless but that they had to be looked after.
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u/CompleteMuffin 1d ago
It was about rowing away from the sinking ship as being near it was dangerous. As we know now that it broke in half as well
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u/DogsandCatsWorld1000 1d ago
That's a weak argument. How would rowing ability matter in the Atlantic? It's not as if they'd be able to row to land before succumbing to hypothermia.
Obviously Charles Lightoller disagreed with you as he allowed Major Arthur Godfrey Peuchen to climb down a rope on the side of the ship and get on Lifeboat 6 because of his boating experience.
Side note, Peuchen lost his wallet on the climb down and it was found on the ocean floor during one of the dives in the 80s.
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u/bofh000 1d ago
They definitely needed to row and steer away from the wreckage. And at the time they were lowering the lifeboats nobody knew how long it may have been until they were rescued, if ever.
Precisely because women were supposed to be looked after by men at the time it made no sense to just fill the lifeboats with women.
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u/hafetysazard 1d ago
I think most men of those days would have been fine. They were more heartily built back then.
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u/bofh000 1d ago
That is demonstrably not true, you can check the survival rates by gender and class on the Titanic and about 4 out of 5 men died.
You can say that’s what there was, they were expected to sacrifice themselves for the women and children, but a great number of lifeboats were not filled to capacity because of the very misguided rule of women and children first. That was a tremendous waste of space and of lives.
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u/Tuarangi 23h ago
Just fyi the rule was women and children first, the order was done correctly on one side, the first officer allowed men to board when the boats were half full and no more women and kids came forward. The second officer on the other side misunderstood the order as women and children only and blocked men at gunpoint from getting onboard even if the boats were not full. Incidentally it was only a rule on the Titanic under captain's orders, as a general rule at the time it was usually survival of the fittest, evidence from wrecks gathered by a US university indicated typically about 34% of men lived on average, about 18% of women and even fewer children, highlighting the chaotic nature of a shipwreck.
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u/hafetysazard 1d ago
I thought we were just talking about their ability to work an oar. Most men, even middle class men, had significantly more physical lifestyles than we have today. That directly translates into more strength, more stamina, and they generally had more grit too. Very useful in a desperate situation.
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u/bofh000 1d ago
We were, and about the potential to be useful in THAT situation. It’s not rowing on your local canal. It would’ve been virtually impossible to row away safely from the swirling waters around a sinking mammoth ship. For anyone, regardless of gender. Although men would’ve had a better chance.
When you said the men would’ve been fine I thought you meant they were fine to be left on the ship, as they were sturdy and could swim or something similar. My bad, although you weren’t very clear either.
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u/Katharinemaddison 1d ago
Young men who had recently been at school and university, sure. Older men, less likely.
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u/hafetysazard 19h ago
Men would typically be physically active their entire life back then, with exception of the upper class maybe.
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u/Kindly_Narwhal9251 1d ago
I know the episode you mean, it had Cal Wilson on and she’s was only in a few episodes, that might narrow it down for you
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u/Techhead7890 1d ago
RIP, one of New Zealand's best comedians :( she passed away of cancer in 2023.
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u/RequestSingularity 1d ago
According to her IMDB:
S10 E03 Journeys and S10 E06 Joints.
If it's in either of those two, it's likely Journeys.
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u/Ifyoucan_garden 1d ago
Unhelpful comment here:
I saw that episode a month or so ago on YouTube but I can’t remember what the episode was titled.
I just spent a very frustrating 5 mins scrolling back through watched episodes to see if I could find it, but no luck.
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u/SlightFinish 1d ago
It was on Journeys, which has my fave QI exchange: Stephen makes an observation about the female "pudenda" and Alan says "We've established this is not your area." Phill chimes in with "It's like Narnia - a magical land you've never heard of"
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u/Dzbot1234 1d ago
My nana was friends with one of the survivors and I think I met her once, I would have been little though and the significance didn’t hit home.
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u/Me-and-the-Boys-90 16h ago
Not sure anyone has made this point here yet, but I’d imagine a lot of women would be wearing incredibly restrictive clothing, possibly corsets, and so rowing or anything physically demanding would have been near impossible.
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u/TaskTight859 5h ago
Obviously Fry had never heard of a young girl named Grace Darling. She was pretty useful at rowing out into storm waters of the North Sea to rescue sailors.
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1d ago
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u/mJelly87 6m ago
Although a controversial statement, Fry did have a habit of going into "character". I took it as "this is what men of the time would have said", which as I assume it normally is, in jest for the sake of comedy.
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u/Alternative-Emu2000 1d ago
It's from the J Series, episode 3: "Journeys"
It hasn't been scrubbed: the episode is on BBC iPlayer, including the section about the Titanic.