 Captain Harrington’s fictional death illustrates not only the concept of "women and children first" but also that of "the captain goes down with his ship".During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ships typically did not carry enough lifeboats to save all the passengers and crew in the event of disaster.In 1870, answering a question at the House of Commons of the United Kingdom about the sinking of the paddle steamer "Normandy", George Shaw-Lefevre said that,

The practice of women and children first arose from the actions of soldiers during the sinking of the Royal Navy troopship in 1852 after it struck rocks.