Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic

The expression ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic’, sometimes shortened to just ‘rearranging the deckchairs’. clearly refers to the sinking of the great ship in 1912.

There’s no evidence to suggest that anyone did waste their time in rearranging the Titanic’s deckchairs while it was sinking – the expression is purely metaphorical. The ship’s band however, who all eventually drowned, did continue to play on in an effort to calm the passengers.

Some deckchairs were thrown overboard to act as floatation aids for passengers already in the sea. While a noble gesture this had little effect as the icy water was quickly fatal.

As to the expression ‘rearranging the deckchairs…’ it isn’t contemporary with the ship’s sinking. The earliest example that I can find of it in print is from the Canadian newspaper The Times Colonist, December 1972:

“Best quip of the year was the remark about Trudeau’s cabinet shuffle – ‘like rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic’.”

That suggests that the writer at least hadn’t heard the phrase until that year. All the prior printed examples of ‘rearranging the deck-chairs’ refer to literal events involving real chairs.

It’s a rather sad irony that the deckchairs, useless at the time, are now highly prized and, a hundred years after the tragedy, a single chair recovered from the sea was sold for £100,000.