Abstract
Crisis management literature has tended to categorise responses to events as either planned or bricolaged. This link is clear with many examples of both forms of response, and many post-crisis investigations into whether plans were followed in response and recovery. This work explores a third influence on crisis – the role of tradition. The sinking of HMS Birkenhead is presented as the first known incidence of ‘women and children first’ – the practice where the lives of women and children is prioritised in allocating spaces on lifeboats. Once established in this incident we argue that the practice becomes a tradition. Crisis traditions are defined here as events distributed in space and time which are practiced in the face of infrequent circumstances, with little to no participant experience between events. These traditional responses are often not inscribed in the way that plans, protocols or policy might be, though they are communicated through media and popular narrative. Maritime disasters are used as examples of the role of tradition in the formation of subsequent crisis responses. The article suggests that traditions might have more of a role in the response than has hitherto been considered.