Claim:   A man sneaked his way onto one of the Titanic's lifeboats by donning a woman's dress.

Status:   False.

Origins:   Many of the legendary tales associated with the Titanic's sinking deal with human acts of courage, heroism, and sacrifice in the face of certain death, tales all the more remarkable because most of them were true. One legend stands in stark counterpoint to those chronicles of bravery: the claim that an adult male passenger secured a place in a lifeboat by disguising himself as a woman.

If we imagined a disaster similar to the Titanic occurring today, we would likely picture it as an "every man for himself" free-for-all in which faster and stronger passengers shouldered aside the slow, weak, and elderly to secure places for themselves in the available lifeboats. No such melee took place on the decks of the Titanic, however, even though "women and children first" was not a regulation specified by maritime law.

Back in 1912, "women and children first" was a rule men followed primarily because doing so was a social imperative; it was, as a Titanic officer would later testify, "a law of human nature." In a very real sense, violating this social rule was worse than breaking the law: The criminal who stole money might "pay his debt to society" and rehabilitate himself by spending time in prison or making restitution to his victim, but the man who pushed his way into a lifeboat while women remained on board was an irredeemable coward. (Many men did end up in Titanic lifeboats without shame because they did not obtain their seats by displacing women; they were allowed into boats that were ready to be launched but remained underfilled because no more women could be coaxed into them.) To cast a man (especially a "gentleman," which is why this story so often specifies a First Class passenger) as a coward who would clothe himself in women's garb to save himself ahead of others was to stigmatize him for life, a fate that befell several of the Titanic's survivors, all falsely accused.

The man most victimized by this rumor was William T. Sloper of New Britain, Connecticut, who was publicly identified in the New York Journal as "the man who got off in woman's clothing." Sloper actually left the Titanic in lifeboat No. 7, the first boat lowered into water; at the time No. 7 was launched, many passengers did not comprehend the gravity of the situation and were unwilling to trade the warmth and (apparent) safety of their berths for a seat in an open boat on the freezing Atlantic in the middle of the night. Sloper was invited into the boat by Dorothy Gibson (a motion picture actress) and her mother, who had been his bridge companions earlier that evening, and since it was filled to only about a third of its 65-passenger capacity, the officer in charge of its loading allowed him in. (Boat No. 7 was eventually launched with fewer than 30 occupants, so no man willing to take a seat would have had to disguise himself as a woman to sneak on board.)

When the rescue ship Carpathia docked in New York four days later, Sloper was whisked away by his father and brother and taken to the Waldorf-Astoria. Reporters soon gathered outside his hotel room door to press him for a story, but Sloper had already promised an exclusive to the editor of his hometown newspaper. A reporter for New York Journal felt Sloper was acting a bit too disrespectful of members of the fourth estate and exacted revenge by writing a story that named Sloper as "the man who got off in woman's clothing." Sloper was talked out of suing the Journal for libel by his father, and he spent many years living down the reputation he had unfairly gained.

Two other men, William Carter and Dickinson Bishop, were also spitefully tagged as having disguised themselves as women to escape from the Titanic; in both cases the rumors were lent additional credence when the men's wives divorced them and cited their alleged less-than-honorable behavior the night the Titanic went down as one of the reasons. In the case of Dickinson Bishop, there seems to be little support for the accusation. Bishop reportedly "fell into the boat" his wife had entered, and "accidentally" falling into lifeboats was a scheme more than few men employed to try to secure seats. However, Bishop and his wife left the Titanic in Boat No. 7 (the same as William Sloper), a boat that was launched early and underfilled; as noted above, no man need have dressed as a woman to gain a spot in that lifeboat. William Carter's case may have had at least a little something to it, though. In 1915 Mrs. Carter's testimony from her divorce case (based on grounds of "cruel and barbarous treatment and indignities to the person") was leaked to the press, and a portion of that testimony read as follows:

When the Titanic struck, my husband came to our stateroom and said, "Get up and dress yourself and the children." I never saw him again until I arrived at the Carpathia at 8 o'clock the next morning, when I saw him leaning on the rail. All he said was that he had had a jolly good breakfast, and that he never thought I would make it.

Whether Mr. Carter actually made such a callous remark to his wife when the Carpathia picked her up is something only they would have known; by other accounts he was standing along the Carpathia's rail desperately scanning the incoming lifeboats to find out whether his wife and children had survived. Doubts about his behavior remained, however, because Carter maintained he had seen his wife and children safely put aboard lifeboat No. 4 before leaving the Titanic himself in collapsible boat C, even though (according to the British Inquiry into the sinking) collapsible boat C was launched fifteen minutes before boat No. 4.

Whatever the truth of Mr. Carter's behavior, rumors about his dressing as a woman may have been fueled by an incident involving his ten-year-old son, Billy Jr. It began when millionaire John Jacob Astor was denied permission to accompany his pregnant young wife on Boat No. 4 and then saw a thirteen-year-old boy almost turned away as well:

John Jacob Astor helped Mrs. Astor across the frame, then asked if he could join her, She was, as he put it, "in delicate condition."

"No, sir," [Second Officer] Lightoller replied. "No men are allowed in these boats until the women are loaded first."

When Mrs. Ryerson led her son Jack to the window, Lightoller called out, "That boy can't go!"

Mr. Ryerson indignantly stepped forward: "Of course that boy goes with his mother — he is only thirteen." So they let him pass, Lightholler grumbling, "No more boys."

According to legend, Astor then placed a woman's hat on little Billy's head, claiming over objections, "Now he's a girl and he can go," an act that (real or not) might later have become associated with Billy's father instead.

Only one verified case of an adult male passenger's using an article of women's clothing to sneak onto a lifeboat turned up in the lengthy inquiries about the Titanic disaster conducted by both American and British authorities. During the American inquiry, Fifth Officer Harold Lowe testified about an incident that took place when he attempted to transfer passengers from his lifeboat (No. 14) to other boats so that he could row back towards the spot where the Titanic had gone down and pick up survivors:

I waited until the yells and shrieks had subsided for the people to thin out, and then I deemed it safe for me to go amongst the wreckage; so I transferred all my passengers, somewhere about fifty-three, from my boat and equally distributed them among my other four boats. Then I asked for volunteers to go with me to the wreck, and it was at this time that I found the Italian. He came aft and had a shawl over his head, and I suppose he had skirts. Anyhow, I pulled the shawl off his face and saw he was a man.

The "Italian" (a generic term used by Lowe to represent a foreigner of despicable behavior) was actually Irish, a scared eighteen-year-old Third Class passenger named Daniel Buckley who admitted he had indeed thrown a shawl over his head and sneaked onto Boat No. 14 just after Fifth Officer Lowe had brandished his revolver and threatened another young man who had tried to hide among the women. But contrary to Lowe's testimony, Buckley had only thrown a shawl over his head, not donned "skirts."

The Titanic's lifeboats held a boy in a woman's hat and a young man with a woman's shawl over his head, but the man who allegedly escaped in full female regalia remains elusive.

Sightings:   A memorable episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery ("Lone Survivor," original air date 13 January 1971) deals with the fate of a Titanic passenger who seemingly escaped his destiny by dressing as a woman.

Last updated:   18 December 2005

The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/history/titanic/woman.asp

Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2008 by snopes.com.
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  

---

  Sources:

    Gracie, Archibald.   The Truth About the Titanic.

    New York: Mitchell Kennerly, 1913.

    Lord, Walter.   A Night to Remember.

    New York: Bantam Books, 1955.   ISBN 0-553-27827-4   (pp. 183-185).

    Lord, Walter   The Night Lives On.

    New York: Avon Books, 1986.   ISBN 0-380-73203-3   (pp. 75, 80-81, 178-179, 184-185).