9种方法从泰坦尼克号中逃出生天

译者 一盐姐姐

When his ship hit the iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912, J Bruce Ismay, President of JP Morgan's International Mercantile Marine, the company who owned the Titanic, helped to load the women and children into the lifeboats before jumping into the third-to-last boat to leave on the starboard side. He subsequently became, as a British headline put it, "The Most Talked-of Man in All the World." "The humblest immigrant in steerage," ran an editorial in John Bull, the newspaper of the working man, "had more moral right to a seat in a lifeboat than you." There are various other versions of Ismay's departure from the Titanic. Some witnesses believed he quietly slipped into in the first lifeboat to be launched, others say he fought his way through the crowds and gun-fire to squeeze onto the very last boat to leave. Ismay himself insisted that the deck was empty when he left the Titanic, that he saw no sign of the 1,500 people still remaining on the ship.

His survival was regarded as not only cowardly, but criminal. Ismay was revealed to have been the man responsible for limiting the lifeboats on the ship to sixteen (the Titanic was fitted with davits which could hold three times that number)--Why clutter the decks, he is said to have asked at planning meetings, when the ship is herself a lifeboat? He was known, on the day of the accident, to have been given by Captain E J Smith a Marconigram carrying an ice warning, which Ismay glanced at before absent-mindedly putting in his pocket. It was rumored that he had ordered the Captain to maintain the ship's speed as they entered the ice region, and following his rescue, Ismay admitted that he had not inquired into the number of people who had died nor into the state and condition of those who had survived. Messages he then sent to his New York office from the rescue ship, the Carpathia, suggested that Ismay was trying to avoid giving evidence at the American Inquiry. "Mr. Ismay cares for nobody," concluded the New York American. "He cares only for his own body, his own stomach, for his own pride and profit."

The right to survive the Titanic depended on the passengers' status on the ship. Ismay's defense was that he was travelling neither as the captain nor as a member of the crew, but an ordinary First Class passenger and that he was therefore entitled to save his own life. His argument was weakened by the admission that he had not paid for his ticket, and by the revelation that he conducted himself on board as the ultimate authority. Ismay was, according to the British Inquiry into the Titanic, a "Super Captain."

But Ismay wasn't the only passenger on The Titanic to be scrutinized for surviving: women, children, and lifeboat captains were also regarded as cowardly and irresponsible.

      不过，Ismay可不是唯一一个受核查的幸存者。妇女、小孩以及救生艇艇长，在当时都被认为是缺乏责任感的懦夫。

Here are nine ways that you could have survived the Titantic.

但其实生路还是有的。符合下面九条之一，你就有从泰坦尼克号上逃出生天的可能。

All images from How to Survive the Titanic, or The Sinking of J Bruce Ismay by Frances Wilson.

（所有图片均来自How to Survive the Titanic, or The Sinking of J Bruce Ismay， 作者 Frances Wilson.）

1. Be a Woman

1. 当个娘们儿

The law of the sea is women and children first.

海上的法律规定：妇女与儿童优先。

CATCH: Given that women on land were currently campaigning for their suffrage, the fact that those at sea were happy to accept the privileges of inequality was seen by many as iniquitous. 'What do women want?' asked the press - 'Votes or Boats?' One newspaper suggested that 'henceforth, when a woman talks women's rights, she be answered with the word Titanic, nothing more. Just "Titanic." 'Real' women stood by their men, and the heroine of the night was Ida Straus who stayed on board with her husband of fifty years, the owner of Macy's Department store. "Where you go, I go," Mrs. Straus is reported to have said. When it became known that the same women who had allowed themselves to be handed into the half-empty lifeboats then refused to return to rescue the drowning bodies of the men who had shown such gallantry, the fairness of the fairer sex was further questioned. Mrs. Stuart White, a first class passenger who lived at the Waldorf-Astoria, then put the cat amongst the pigeons by stating that the women who went down seventy feet to float on a frozen sea had been braver than the "heroes" who stayed on board the "unsinkable" ship. "I do not think that there was any particular bravery," she said, "because none of the men thought it was going down."

评论：当今的妇女们一边在陆地上为争取参政权而游行，一边则高兴地接受了海上的“不平等待遇”，这让很多人觉得不可理喻。“女人们到底要啥？”一家报社发问道：“选票还是船票？”另一家报社则建议道：“从今往后，再有哪个女人谈到女权问题，我们就扔给她一句-'泰坦尼克号'。对，就这个词儿，别的啥也别说。”“与爱人患难与共的，才是‘真正的女人’。在泰坦尼克号沉没的那晚，Ida Straus成了当晚主角，她没上救生艇，而是与结婚50余年的丈夫-梅西百货公司的老板-一起留在了甲板上。”“你去哪里，我就去哪里。”据说她当时说了这么一句。而与此同时，那些被转移到救生艇上的女人，在艇上仍存有空位时，拒绝向那些先前帮助过她们的勇气可嘉的男人们伸出援手，而眼睁睁地看着他们沉入水中。在这一刻，两性的公平得到了更多的质疑。Stuart White女士住在Waldorf-Astoria豪华酒店，是一等舱旅客，她认为那些敢于坐在救生艇中，下降70英尺到达冰冷的海面上的女人们，可比那些呆在“永不沉没的巨轮”上的“勇士们”勇敢多了。”此言一出即引起了轩然大波。“我没觉得那些男士有什么特别的勇气”，她说：“因为当时没人相信这艘船会沉没。”

Of the 705 people who survived, 140 were women in First Class, 80 were in women in Second Class, and 76 were women in Third Class. Of the twenty-three female members of the crew, twenty survived.

幸存的705人中，有140人为一等舱的女性，80人为二等舱的女性，76人为三等舱的女性。23名女性船员中，有20人幸存。

2 Be a Child

2.当个儿童

CATCH: What constituted a child? Aged 12, children were able to leave school and begin work. Second Officer Lightoller tried to prevent 13-year-old John Ryerson from getting into a lifeboat with his mother. Mr. Ryerson, who would die that night, persuaded Lightoller that his son was a child and not an adult. "No more boys," the Officer was heard to mutter as he reluctantly allowed young John to leave the sinking ship.

评论：儿童的定义是什么？年满12岁就意味着能离开学校，合法地开始工作了。二副Lightoller曾试图制止13岁的John Ryerson随其母亲一同登上救生艇。注定不能幸免遇难的Ryerson先生劝说二副，坚持他的儿子还只是儿童，并未成年。最终二副不情愿地让步了。在孩子登船时，他嘟囔着：“下不为例。”

Of the 109 children on the Titanic 52 died, all from third class.

船上共有109个儿童，52人遇难。遇难的均来自三等舱。

3 Disguise yourself as a woman

3.若不是娘们儿，那就乔装成娘们儿

Edward Ryan, a third-class Irish passenger, put a towel over his head before stepping into a lifeboat. To prevent him from being detected, one woman threw a shawl over a passenger called Daniel Buckley who was hiding in her boat. Several men, including Ismay, were falsely accused of having dressed as women in order to save their lives.

Edward Ryan是一位三等舱乘客，他在跨进救生舱前，拿块毛巾在头上裹了一圈。Daniel Buckley躲在舱里，为了不让人发觉，一位女士在他身上盖了块披肩。还有一些男人，包括前面提到的Ismay，曾被误指证为男扮女装，以混入救生队伍。

CATCH: None. It later became a point of pride to say that you survived the Titanic because you were dressed as a woman.

评论：无语中。也许在很多年后的一天，你可以骄傲地说“俺能从泰坦尼克号上逃出来，是因为俺穿得太像娘们儿了。”

图4 Be a Stowaway

4. 当个逃票的乘客

Stowaways stood a good chance of surviving because they were in the lifeboats already. Ismay shared his lifeboat with four Chinese stowaways who had been hiding beneath the cover.

逃票的人有很大的存活几率，因为他们本身就呆在救生艇里。Ismay坐的那艘救生艇里就有四个逃票的中国人，他们从开船后就一直躲在那里。

图5 Man a lifeboat

5.当个划救生艇的

The lifeboats needed men to do the rowing; if there was not an available member of the crew, a male passenger was required to do their duty.

很显然，救生艇需要有人来划桨。假如船员不够用，那么船上的男旅客就会担当起这个角色。

CATCH: Accusations of cowardice still applied. Major Peuchen, a Canadian passenger who volunteered himself to man a boat because he was an experienced yachtsman, was afterwards maligned. One taunt that circulated about Peuchen was that, "he said he was a yachtsman so he could get off the Titanic, and if there had been a fire, he would have said he was a fireman."

评论：此举照样免不了被斥为懦弱。陆军少校Peuchen是一位技术娴熟的加拿大游艇驾驶员，他因此自告奋勇去救生艇上划桨，而随后便被舆论大肆批评。这里是关于他的一则嘲弄：“因为能从泰坦尼克号上下来，所以他才说自己是个游艇驾驶员。要是撞的不是冰山，而是起了场大火灾，他说不定就说自己是个消防员了。”

图6 Travel first-class

6 .出行要坐头等舱

While all the women in First Class, except those few who chose to stay with their husbands, survived, a blind eye was turned to the morality of the 56 other men in First Class who (apart from Ismay) had found their way into the lifeboats. Ismay shared his boat with an American First Class passenger called William E Carter, who was not called as a witness at the US Inquiry and whose survival was never questioned.

CATCH: William Carter's wife and two children were apparently still on board when he left the ship; Mrs Carter later divorced her husband on grounds of deserting his family while they were on the Titanic.

评论：Carter先生登上救生艇的时候，他的夫人和两个孩子还站在甲板上。不久后，Carter夫人便休了她丈夫，理由是他在泰坦尼克号上遗弃了自己的家人。

Of the 175 First Class men on board, 118 died.

头等舱共有175位男士，118人遇难。

图7 Follow orders

7 遵照指令

Survival was legitimate if you had been ordered by an Officer to get into a lifeboat.

CATCH 1: It was unclear to the passengers who had the authority to issue such an order. Ismay was apparently ordering passengers of both sexes into the lifeboats, but as no one knew who he was they ignored him.

评论1：到底谁有这个发号施令的权利呢？乘客们其实也不清楚。Ismay当时一直在号召男人和女人都可以进救生艇，但没人知道他是谁，因此人们集体忽略了他的声音。

CATCH 2: Being given permission to survive left you with a sense of responsibility. The Titanic's barber swore on oath that he had seen Ismay being 'practically thrown' into a lifeboat by Chief Officer Wilde, a claim Ismay vehemently denied despite the fact that it would exonerate him from accusations of cowardice. Ismay preferred to be branded a coward than to be seen as the appointed spokesman for the disaster.

评论2：被准许坐进救生艇的同时，你也被赋予了无形的责任。泰坦尼克号的随船理发师发誓道，他曾亲眼看到Ismay是被Wilde大副“扔进”救生艇的。尽管这个指证能帮助Ismay消除对其“懦弱”的指控，他还是断然否认了。因为他宁可被称作“懦夫”，也不愿被认为是这场灾难的元凶。

图8 Be American

8 当个美国人

"Be British, my boys, be British," Captain Smith reminded the shipload of international men and women. Recent research has shown that being British - in other words, letting the ladies go first and not pushing in a queue - meant that the British men on board were 7% less likely to survive, while the more assertive American male was 8.5% more likely.

“当个英国人吧，伙计们。当个英国人。”Smith船长对船上熙熙攘攘的国际旅客说。最近的研究表明，英国人固然有“女士优先”和“耐心排队不推挤”的优良传统，但这同时也意味着甲板上的英国男人和美国男人相比，后者有8.5%的存活率，而前者只有7%。

图9 Go down with the ship

9 随船一同下沉

The only legitimate way to survive the Titanic was to have initially gone with the ship. After loading the lifeboats on the port side, Second Officer Lightoller had taken a dive from the rapidly sinking vessel and been drawn, by a rush of water, to the wire mesh of a giant air shaft on which he became glued by the pressure of the sea. A blast of hot air from the shaft then blew Lightoller back to the surface of the water. He was pulled under again, this time resurfacing by a up-turned lifeboat. Holding a piece of rope, he floated alongside the boat until one of the ship's giant funnels fell, missing him by inches and causing both Lightoller and the raft to be flung fifty yards clear of the ship. He balanced on the boat all night until being rescued.

和泰坦尼克一同下沉，这是唯一正当的逃命方式。在把所有救生艇都装载到左舷以后，二副Lightoller走到船舱底部，随后被一阵激流卷入巨大的螺旋桨内，并被水压牢牢地吸在了上面。轴承散发出的猛烈的热浪又将他推出海面，随后他又被涡流吸入，而再一次地被一艘翻转的救生艇带了上来。他抓住救生艇边缘的一根绳子，随船漂流了一会儿，直到巨轮的第一根烟囱倒下，狠狠砸在他旁边，激起的巨浪将他和救生艇推出足足50英尺远。他趴在船上以保持平衡，直到被搜救人员救起。

CATCH: Lightoller's survival was seen by no one, except his own wife, as heroic. He was subsequently treated by the inquiries as a stooge of Ismay, who expected him to defend the White Star Line. Having spoken up for his employer, Lightoller was neither thanked nor promoted by the company. He had been used, he later said, as a scapegoat.

评论：除了他夫人认为Lightoller的存活是壮举外，没人持有同样想法。他被认为是Ismay的傀儡，后者曾让他为白星航运公司做辩护。然后在Lightoller照做了以后，公司既没有感谢他，也没有提拔他。之后他表示，自己就像只“替罪羊”一样，被利用了。

Thirty men survived the Titanic by straddling Collapsible A.