Unwritten Law Of The Sea,claimed To Be Falsified

[ritu 1]

It is true that many people started to take interest in incidents of shipwrecks after watching the movie 'Titanic', but there are people who have dedicated their mind and time for conducting extensive research on the same issue. It is due to their efforts that some of the surprising facts that relate to such shipwrecks.

Some economists from the Uppsala University in Sweden, have found results that do not conform to the set beliefs that women and children are more likely to survive ship disasters than men. In fact, the new study establishes that the male passengers on the ship and the crew members are more likely to escape the mishap because according to the lead researcher Mikael Elinder, as the ship faces disastrous conditions, and the passengers are to make their way out of the ship, the idea of "every man for himself" prevails.The case of Titanic however differs, there the women and children were allowed to board the life boats before the others.

The team dedicated to research studied as many as 18 cases, where they included in their study the information about the sex of the survivors.They also found out another surprising fact that the crew members have the highest possibility of surviving shipwrecks, it is surprising because it is considered to be the responsibility of the crew members to provide for the safety of the passengers.

Another striking outcome of their study is that on British ships, where most of the times, women and children are ordered to evacuate the ship first, the condition of the same lot is the worst.

It is not that the study can be taken as an established fact related to survival of shipwrecks, but it, with the range of cases and time covered in the study, at least can serve as the stepping stone for more studies in this field to come.

For more details about the study, have a look at survival in shipwrecks

[caviarbaeri 0]

"Every man for himself" is truly true as it seems that chivalry is dead nowadays. You can see it in just about any daily occurrence in our life. For example a seat given to an elderly. As man evolves, survival seems to come uppermost in one's mind. I just hope that should that scenario happen to me, that chivalry would prevail and not self preservation.

[sheepdog 10]

My guess would be that the survial rate of the crew is due to the fact that they are probably more familiar with the physics of ship travel and safty protocols and know what to do to help insure their survival. In other words, they know where the life jackets are! They may also be more confident and experienced. Lifeboats have never really sounded like a great idea to me in the first place. If the sea is rough enough to sink a great big ship, what chance does a little bitty life boat have?

[k_nitin_r 8]

As sheepdog suggests, the crew know where the life jackets are so if they've got two seconds before the ship sinks and it would take two minutes to get passengers into the life boats, guess what they would do. I doubt the captain would go down with the ship. Remember the Pirates of the Caribbean when the Black Pearl was sunk despite Captain Barbosa's best effort? Okay, so maybe he just talked about it in the dialogue. If the ship was sunk, one question that I am sure that a lot of people would have is why was the Black Pearl in a bottle on Black Beard's ship? And what is with Jack Sparrow's obsession with the Black Pearl?One of the problems with hopping into a life raft and attempting to get away from a sinking ship is that the inflow of water into the sinking ship would create a suction that threatens to sink the life raft, unless the life raft is far enough from the sinking ship. When given the choice of waiting for the ship to sink and hopping onto the life raft, perhaps hanging on to the highest part of the ship would be a better choice because when the ship has been submerged, it would have taken in as much water as it can to create a powerful suction and when the ship is going downward, the area affected by the suction goes downward too. Then again, there's the storm that the little life raft has to weather out. What are the odds of making it to safety in a life raft? If you are in equatorial waters, perhaps having a life jacket would be enough to get to land - the water is not freezing enough to cause hypothermia.

[sheepdog 10]

Yes, unless you are able to get a long distance from the sinking ship the down draft (I'm sure there is a proper term for this, but I mean as the suction K_nitin_r is talking about) If it happend to be dark and stormy, it might even be difficult to tell where the ship was and what direction to paddle the lifeboat in. I"m not sure a person has very much better odds of surviving a shipwreck than they do an airplane crash. I'm sure they are a little better but not much. However, in todays technoligy the odds of surving are probably a lot better. Homing becons on life rafts will aid in the search and rescue of those in the lifeboats. And we have a lot more ocean traffic than in years past, not to mention satalites that could probably aid in the search. So in this day and age, if you could make it to the raft and get far enough away from the sinking ship, at least you have pretty good odds of being found before you die of exposure.

[fermin25 3]

First, it is logic to think that women and children have to survive and we can simply see the titanic. if men were arrived the boats before women and children the results had been more disastrous because women and children can not swim and maybe the number of people death had been greater. Like sheepdog says the crew have an advantage over the rest of tripulation and passengers because the know everything about what to do if an emergency happen in the ship. So is logic to think that they will have more possiblities that the other people. The difference here is that the crew have the job to help all the passengers so if they do their work the changes to survive are reduced drastically. I think that in this cases the titanic action of save more women and children is correct because they are weak and men can figth more for their own lives.