How long did their hearts go on? A Titanic study

Subjects, methods, and results

We limited our study to passengers. We used data from biographies listed in Encyclopedia Titanica, a website that claims to have “among the most accurate passenger and crew lists ever compiled.”1 Of the 500 passengers listed as survivors, 435 have been traced. We calculated the proportion alive at each anniversary of the sinking.

The largest groups travelling in first and second class were North American or British; most of those in third class were emigrating from Europe to the United States. Unable to find a comparison group with the same mix of backgrounds and selection factors, we created two “next best” comparison groups from available data. We calculated what proportions of an age and sex matched group of white Americans alive in 1912 would be alive at each anniversary. To do so, we converted current (cross sectional) life tables for the years 1912-20002 into cohort life tables. We created a second comparison group from life table data for Sweden, which was already in cohort form.3 Longevity differences were assessed by log rank tests.

The survival of the 435 passengers was slightly, but not significantly, longer than that of the two comparison groups (figure). On average they lived 1.7 years longer than the general population of the United States and 0.5 years longer than that of Sweden. This small advantage was limited to female passengers in first and second class (figure). Five women lived past 100, and the three survivors still alive are now in their 90s. Despite their higher socioeconomic status, male passengers in first class did not outlive similar age males in the general populations.

Percentage still alive on each anniversary of sinking of Titanic among 435 survivors and Swedish and white American comparison groups matched for age and sex. Inset: analysis by sex and class of travel (n=No of passengers; age=median age in 1912)

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Comment

The longevity of Titanic survivors who could be traced was not remarkably different from that of age and sex matched individuals in the general population. The available life table data did not allow us to match on social class. Nevertheless, those who travelled third class had similar survival to our comparison group. We therefore wonder why males (and maybe even females) in first and second class did not fare considerably better than the general population.

Follow up is complete for 87% of the passengers who survived the sinking; only 65 people, several of them servants to those in first and second class, are still untraced and excluded from our analysis. The quality of the follow up data on those traced seems to be excellent. Most dates of birth, important for age matched comparisons, also seem to be trustworthy.

Although unable to find the perfect comparison group, we avoided errors made in other longevity comparisons.4 5 For the comparison group, we calculated the remaining lifetimes of people alive in 1912. Since age specific death rates fell substantially during the 20th century, we calculated these remaining lifetimes using the 1912-2000 death rates.

In the closing song of the 1997 film, the heroine tells us that her heart “must go on and on” and tells us twice more that it “will go on and on.” The Titanic survivors did not have shorter life spans than the general population. Nor did they, despite the determination implied by the lyric, substantially outlive them.