Titanic: The protocol

THE time-honoured ship disaster drill of “women and children first” seems to be losing favour with cruise ship passengers, according to a survey.

One hundred years on from the Titanic disaster, as many as 43 per cent of cruise passengers think families should stay together in the event of an emergency

A further 23 per cent said there should be no gender priority but that children, the elderly and the disabled should come first.

Only 24 per cent said that the women-and-children-first rule should be enforced.

Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor of CruiseCritic, which published the survey, said: “It should be remembered that lives were lost as a result of the women-and-children-first protocol. Meanwhile many of the women and children that did survive were left destitute because of the loss of a breadwinner.”