Very good comments everyone. Well done!

The father leaving his family in a burning house is a good analogy given by titanic_charlie.

u kno me♥ made the point that staying behind is "what it is to be a man" (I would like to think I would have done that, but I would only know if I actually experienced it).

And, lilcandycane made a great point about Andrews young age maybe being a factor in not standing up to White Star.

Great debate everyone!

I always like to question certain broad mindsets about the disaster, because, it seems if we do not question them, we can sometimes miss something.

I mean, for years, the broad realm ofTitanic buffs (myself included as a kid) thought that Titanic had a 300 foot continuous gash in her side. It was only about 10 or so years ago that we found this to be false (with regards to exploration and also reviewing expert testimony). This had to do with some of the press coverage and all its hype.

Finally, I posted this before, but speaking of press coverage, the Titanic Historical Society has a great article on how Ismay really became a villian in the story because of the American journalist William Randolf Herst (who did not like Ismay even before the disaster).

http://titanic1.org/articles/ismay.asp