How could the survivors of the TITANIC live with all those haunting guilts?
Most of the survivors had absolutely no control over who, or how many people, were allowed into the boats. A woman who departed in a half-filled boat while her husband was left to drown, for example, probably desperately wanted her husband to join her, but could do nothing to change the actions of the ship’s officers. Although many Titanic survivors may have, sadly, suffered the “survivor’s guilt” that is a well-known psychological phenomenon, it had no legitimate, rational basis in fact; the survivors had nothing to feel guilty about. Ironically, the one survivor who was, in fact, responsible for more unnecessary loss of life than anyone else, was also a survivor who seemed not to feel (or at least, credibly pretended not to feel) any regret about his appalling actions at all: Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller. Lightoller mis-applied the company policy (and Captain Smith’s order) regarding “women and children first” as if the policy had been ‘woman and children only,” which it
