Going Down with the Ship: Difference between revisions

A maritime tradition that if a ship is sinking, the Captain should remain aboard it, or at least [[The Men First|be the last one to escape]]. This can also extend to other crewmen, usually so they can oversee and direct passengers onto the lifeboats first. The latter often goes hand in hand with [[Men Are the Expendable Gender|"Women and children first"]] (leading to jokes where adult men dress in drag or like children). A common twist in comedic works is for the captain to [[You Are in Command Now|appoint someone else captain]] and let ''them'' go down with the ship. Sometimes the new captain then uses the "promotion" to reassign the old captain as captain, often going back and forth repeatedly.

 

 

In many cases, the captain goes down with the ship because he would [[Dirty Coward|face major disgrace if he didn't]]—for example, if he'd royally screwed up.

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* Brutally averted in [[Mobile Suit Gundam 00]]: {{spoiler|Christina tricks Feldt into joining Sumeragi and Ian Vashti in a support craft moments before the Ptolemaios is destroyed.}}

 

 

* Played with in ''[[Spaceballs]]''. When Dark Helmet, Colonel Sandurz and President Skroob are standing in front of the last escape pod, President Skroob says: "Well boys, it's a beautiful ship. I think you should go down with it."

* ''[[Titanic]]'' is full of this. Apart from the captain himself there's the band who remain on deck (which actually happened in [[Real Life]]) and anyone who took the orders of "women and children first out" to heart.

* ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: Dead Man's Chest''. The Kraken destroys the Black Pearl with Captain Jack Sparrow {{spoiler|handcuffed}} aboard.

{{quote|'''Palifico:''' The captain goes down with his ship.}}

* The ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' sketch [http://www.montypython.net/scripts/ww1.php "World War 1"] has a ship captain announcing "women and children first!", then we see that the captain and crew are all dressed as women and children... and other costumes, which forces the captain to change the announcement to "women, children, Red Indians, spacemen, and a sort of idealized version of complete Renaissance Men first!"

* ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'' invokes this trope a few times in S3. I'm not sure whether this falls squarely under this trope since no immediate crisis is involved—Adama simply kicks (almost) everybody off the ship when it's not in active duty, but refuses to leave with them. The other IS this trope, though. Lee Adama, Commander of the Pegasus, is the last to leave the ship (and says the customary good-bye) before it takes off on a collision course with the Cylon Baseships. Also in S4 {{spoiler|Adama is the last to leave the Galactica, except for Sam who is now more part of the ship than part of the crew}}.

** Happens to Sisko again with the ''U.S.S. Defiant'' as it's being blasted to scrap. He's the last one on the bridge after calling for the crew to abandon ship, and probably the last one off before the Dominion finish the job.

** Subverted hard in The Original Series episode "The Doomsday Machine". Commodore Decker evacuates all of the crew of the ''U.S.S. Constellation'', remaining aboard because the captain is the "last man to leave the ship". The planet killer knocks out the ''Constellation'' transporters, then begins devouring the planet her crew had taken refuge on.

== Literature ==

* The poem "Soldier an' Sailor Too" written by [[Rudyard Kipling]] as noted above. Although, unlike in Kipling's account, the soldiers who died aboard ''Birkenhead'' '''weren't''' Marines, but Army troops being transported to a new assignment.

* In Golding's To The Ends Of The Earth trilogy (a great satire, deconstructing many sea tropes) we get this for poor {{spoiler|newly-made Commander Summers}} when the old ship catches fire and sinks. In the book he apparently has no time to flee, in the TV mini-series he could but he doesn't.

* A variation happens in [[Mikhail Akhmanov]]'s ''[[Arrivals From the Dark|Fighters of Danveyt]]'', when the novel's protagonist finds himself in a no-win situation with a much more powerful enemy ship. He orders the ship's semi-sentient computer to eject the two other crewmembers (who are sealed in personal pods) and sets a collison course for the enemy's [[Antimatter]] gun. The ship decides to alter the plan slightly by ejecting the captain as well a few seconds before the collision. The collision results in the loss of containment for the [[Antimatter]] and the destruction of both ships. The protagonist wakes up a week later having barely survived the blast.

* Averted by [[Dirty Coward|Admiral Trigit]] in ''[[X Wing Series|Wraith Squadron]]''. His fleeing his damaged but still combat-capable Star Destroyer prompts the beginnings of {{spoiler|Gara Petothel's}} [[Heel Face Turn]]. She blows the whistle on him to Wraith Squadron, and Myn Donos shoots him down.

* Invoked in [[Robert Westall]]'s ''[[The Machine Gunners]]'' with Nicky Nichol's dad, who went down with his ship when it was torpedoed.

* A twist in [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]' [[John Carter of Mars|Martian]] novels: traditionally, a (flying) ship caught in a hopeless battle can't surrender until ''the captain'' abandons ship—by jumping over the side and falling to his death. Whenever it's shown, this is explicitly noted as a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to save the lives of his crew.

{{quote|An important detail: all life shuttles were in place.

It's unlikely that three, even if very strong, explosions destroyed all the crew of a battleship to the last man. Remembering the Concordian mores, it was easier to believe that space navy men remained at their stations and continued the battle to the end. To the last sip of air, to the last spasm of stiffening muscles.

[[Category:Seaborne and Submersible Vehicles]]

[[Category:Choosing Death]]