An episode from the sinking of the Titanic, from the testimony of passenger Mary Smith:

When the first boat was lowered from the left-hand side I refused to get in, and they did not urge me particularly; in the second boat they kept calling for one more lady to fill it, and my husband insisted that I get in it, my friend having gotten in. I refused unless he would go with me. In the meantime Capt. Smith was standing with a megaphone on deck. I approached him and told him I was alone, and asked if my husband might be allowed to go in the boat with me. He ignored me personally, but shouted again through big megaphone, ‘Women and children first.’ My husband said, ‘Never mind, captain, about that; I will see that she gets in the boat.’ He then said, ‘I never expected to ask you to obey, but this is one time you must; it is only a matter of form to have women and children first. The boat is thoroughly equipped, and everyone on her will be saved.’ I asked him if that was absolutely honest, and he said, ‘Yes.’ I felt some better then, because I had absolute confidence in what he said. He kissed me good-by and placed me in the lifeboat with the assistance of an officer. As the boat was being lowered he yelled from the deck, ‘Keep your hands in your pockets; it is very cold weather.’ That was the last I saw of him; and now I remember the many husbands that turned their backs as that small boat was lowered, the women blissfully innocent of their husbands’ peril, and said good-by with the expectation of seeing them within the next hour or two.

Bedroom steward Alfred Crawford was helping ladies into a port-side lifeboat when Isidor Straus, co-owner of Macy’s department store, arrived with his wife, Ida. “She made an attempt to get into the boat first. She had placed her maid in the boat previous to that. She handed her maid a rug, and she stepped back and clung to her husband and said, ‘We have been together all these years. Where you go I go.'” The two were last seen sitting side by side in chairs on the deck.

See Leaving.