Class & Society in Accounts of Titanic Survivors
When the Titanic sank on April 14, 1912, only approximately 700 of her more than 2,200 passengers were rescued. Out of those rescued, 203 were first class passengers (63% of the total 337 first class passengers), 118 were second class (42% of 285), and 178 were third class (26% of 721). The rest were crew (Geller 197-216). Subsequent survivor accounts would reveal that first and second class passengers were given more opportunities for rescue in several ways. But the increased likelihood of survival based on one's passenger class was merely a product of a society that valued the lives of the wealthy over those of the working class. Eloise Smith was a first class passenger who escaped in a lifeboat. Her account hints at the underlying view that largely determined who survived the sinking of Titanic: "The cries [of passengers in the sea] we heard I thought were seamen, or possibly steerage who had overslept, it not occurring to me for a moment that my husband and my friends were not saved" (Quinn 112).
On 10 April 1912, the American-owned British-operated White Star liner Titanic departed from the Irish port of Queenstown on her maiden voyage. She carried approximately 2,228 passengers and crew, including 1,697 men (12 years of age and older) and 528 women and children (Geller 8). Four days later, on April 14, 1912, the Titanic sank two hours and 40 minutes after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic (Geller 8). Titanic was built in a period of history called the Edwardian Era in Britain, La Belle Epoque in France and the Gilded Age in America (Geller 13). The period was characterized by the Industrial Revolution, which helped fuel a change in the traditional social hierarchy. Before then, society was distinctly divided into the haves and the have-nots. Judith Geller calls the Titanic "the steam and steel embodiment of that time" (Geller 13). And the view of Titanic's crash by...