HalfPointFive t1_j63xzwe wrote
Reply to comment by Boris_Godunov in TIL that the civilian ship pilot in Dunkirk is based off a real person - Charles Lightoller, the second officer of the Titanic who sailed his own ship to save 127 servicemen at Dunkirk by flotiste
I don't think you should be downvoted because you make some good points. If you look at him through the lens of someone obviously very chivalrous (in the traditional sense) his actions are more understandable. It's easy to say "more lives could have been saved", however the argument that men would have swamped the ships is also a possibility. At all times, he appears to have been eminently concerned with the welfare of women and children, which I think is quite honorable. This comes at the expense of men, obviously, and also himself. His chivalry also makes the war crime more comprehensible. Having been on the Titanic, he would have experienced a passenger ship sinking with women and children. The idea of a warship (the uboat) sinking passenger and merchant ships probably pissed him off. It's not right of him to kill the uboat survivors, but I feel like if he were ordered to sink ships full of women and children he would refuse the order.
Boris_Godunov t1_j644et3 wrote
> It's easy to say "more lives could have been saved", however the argument that men would have swamped the ships is also a possibility.
When the boats were going away half empty, there wasn't any danger of this. The evacuation was quite orderly and without such panic for most of the sinking, it wasn't until near the end that you had the frantic mobs trying to get at the last boats. Lightoller himself indicated that not allowing men in the boats was simply a point of pride for him, not for any such practical reason.
>At all times, he appears to have been eminently concerned with the welfare of women and children, which I think is quite honorable.
Except for Jack Ryerson and other young boys, right?
>The idea of a warship (the uboat) sinking passenger and merchant ships probably pissed him off. It's not right of him to kill the uboat survivors, but I feel like if he were ordered to sink ships full of women and children he would refuse the order.
Women and children were accepted collateral damage of waging war in that era, and Lightoller didn't seem to have any problem with such acts of war, so long as it was his own side doing it. The allied embargo on Germany caused mass starvation of women and children--was that any more "honorable" than sinking ships? Bear in mind that the British sank German merchant ships, too. And of course, once we get to WW2, there was wholesale bombing of civilian cities by all sides, killing millions of innocents.
What Lightoller did was a war crime even in that era, so I can't see any way to skew it as "honorable." He would have known it wasn't.
And if he'd been given a lawful order to sink a German merchant vessel that may have had civilians on it, I'm pretty sure he would have. Bear in mind that merchant vessels were legit targets if they had deck armaments installed.
And not to harp on it, but the blatant lies about Bride and Phillips weren't "honorable," by any definition.
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