After examining the economic and social backgrounds of the 2,200 passengers and crew onboard the fated ocean liner, University of Zurich economist Bruno Frey and colleagues from Queensland University of Technology found that the Britons on board were 10 per cent less likely to have survived than all other nationalities.

The researchers suggested that good manners, or "noblesse oblige", might have had something to do with that in the rush for the lifeboats, the Swiss news agency ATS reported.

Their as yet unpublished study concluded that social norms such as "women and children first" do survive in the kind of situation found on board the British liner for nearly three hours after it hit an iceberg.

But they also found that Americans had a higher survival rate than all the others when the Titanic sank in icy Atlantic waters.

"We were interested in how people behave when it's a matter of life and death," Frey said.

The Titanic did not have enough lifeboats and some 1,500 people died when the reputedly unsinkable liner went down on its maiden transatlantic voyage.

The study also found that women of reproductive age were better off, while women, as a whole, had a 53 per cent better chance of survival. But children were only 15 per cent more likely to have survived than adults.