When the Titanic sank beneath the waves, men famously stood back from the boats, and women and children fled to safety first.
But a new study suggests that the chivalrous rule of 'women and children first' rarely happens - and may only have happened on the Titanic because the captain threatened to shoot men who got into the lifeboats.
A new analysis of 18 maritime disasters where 15,000 people died only 17.8 percent of the women survived versus 34.5 percent of the men.
Of the Titanic's passengers, 70% of the women were saved, but just 20% of the men.
The idea of saving 'women and children first' has been described as 'the unwritten law of the sea'.
But a new analysis of maritime disasters suggests that women and children are often left to last - and that even on the Titanic, the 'chivalry' was helped by the fact that the captain threatened to shoot men who got into the lifeboats before women.
Economists Mikael Elinder and Oscar...
