Lifeboats of the Titanic

The 1894 act made provision for vessels with a registered tonnage "greater than 10,000 tons" but at the time the legislation was drafted, the largest liner in service was then Cunard's Campania of 12,950 grt and with a maximum capacity of 2,500 passengers and crew.

The White Star Line preferred to maximise the amount of deck space available for the enjoyment of the passengers[17] (and the area that was free of lifeboats was, not coincidentally, the First-Class promenade[18]).

The reasoning for this was explained by Archibald Campbell Holms in an article for Practical Shipbuilding published in 1918: The fact that Titanic carried boats for little more than half the people on board was not a deliberate oversight, but was in accordance with a deliberate policy that, when the subdivision of a vessel into watertight compartments exceeds what is considered necessary to ensure that she shall remain afloat after the worst conceivable accident, the need for lifeboats practically ceases to exist, and consequently a large number may be dispensed with.

Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, who served simultaneously as a high-ranking Royal Navy officer and Member of Parliament, told the House of Commons a month after the disaster: Remember that on not more than one day in twelve all the year round can you lower a boat.

[21] This fact is what led to the harsh condemnation of Captain Stanley Lord of the Californian, who both American and British inquiries into the disaster felt could have saved many if not all of the passengers and crew had she heeded the Titanic's distress calls.

[24] Thomas E. Bonsall, a historian of the disaster, has commented that the evacuation was so badly organised that "even if they had the number of lifeboats they needed, it is impossible to see how they could have launched them" given the lack of time and poor leadership.

[32] Later testimony at the U.S. Senate inquiry into the disaster stated the ship's officers believed the lifeboats were at risk of buckling and breaking apart if they were lowered while fully loaded.

[35] When Titanic went down at 2:20 a.m., the noise of hundreds of people screaming for help was heard by the lifeboat's occupants, a sound that Gibson said would "remain in my memory until the day I die."

[38] Murdoch and Lowe were joined by Third Officer Pitman and the White Star Line's chairman J. Bruce Ismay to help them lower Lifeboat 5, which left at 12:55 a.m.[30][31] The boat was loaded primarily with women and children.

[51] The occupants of Lifeboat 8 numbered around 27 people,[30] including: After Titanic sank, Seaman Thomas William Jones, in command of the boat, suggested going back to save some of those in the water.

In fact, when Walter Lord, author of A Night to Remember, interviewed the Countess and Seaman Jones in 1954, he discovered their mutual admiration had led to a lifelong correspondence.

[53] By contrast, Ella White was so annoyed that the stewards in Lifeboat 8 were smoking cigarettes that she complained about it at the US Senate inquiry into the disaster;[49] she was particularly indignant that one of the ship's crewmen had said to another during the night: "If you don't stop talking through that hole in your face, there will be one less in the boat!

"[52] The occupants of Lifeboat 8 spent the night rowing towards what they thought were the lights of a ship on the horizon but turned around at daybreak when Carpathia actually arrived on the scene from the opposite direction.

Lucile had consented to a request from a Carpathia passenger, Frank Blackmarr, to take the image, but the sight of some of the crew posing in their lifejackets disturbed some fellow survivors who subsequently complained about the incident.

[30] Denver millionaire Margaret "Molly" Brown was among Lifeboat 6's most prominent occupants, along with Washington, D.C. writer and feminist Helen Churchill Candee, and English suffragettes Elsie Bowerman and her mother Mrs. Edith Chibnall.

Third Class passenger Carla Andersen-Jensen, who was most likely in Lifeboat 16, gave a detailed depiction of the disaster: [...] We were now up on the deck and there were not much commotion, we had hit an iceberg, but everyone felt the ship would stay afloat.

[50] The millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim brought Léontine Aubart, his French mistress, and her maid, Emma Sägasser, to Lifeboat 9 before retiring to his stateroom with his secretary, Victor Giglio.

[78]Kate Buss and her friend, Marion Wright, were standing with their shipboard acquaintances Douglas Norman and Dr. Alfred Pain, watching the boats being lowered, when a call came for "Any more ladies".

[80] First-Class passenger Edith Louise Rosenbaum, a Paris-based correspondent for Women's Wear Daily, brought along her toy pig, a music box that played the Maxixe and had been given to her as a good luck token by her mother.

He owed his presence aboard the boat to the apparent guilty feelings of Steward F. Dent Ray, who had urged the Dodges to sail on Titanic in the first place.

[84] 12-year-old Second-Class passenger Ruth Becker was placed in this boat by Moody after being prevented from entering the heavily overloaded Lifeboat 11, which her mother and two siblings had boarded.

He testified to the Senate inquiry into the sinking that he had helped put women and children in at least five lifeboats when he made a quick decision to jump in with a number of males.

[96] The windows proved unexpectedly difficult to open and to add to the problems, the lifeboat got caught up on Titanic's sounding spar, which projected from the hull immediately below the boat.

[100] It picked up six or seven more men: trimmer Thomas Patrick Dillon, Seaman William Henry Lyons, Stewards Andrew Cunningham and Sidney Conrad Siebert, storekeeper Frank Winnold Prentice,[103][104][105] and one or two more unidentified swimmers.

Titanic was clearly not far from sinking and this realisation led to an increased urgency to load the lifeboat; children were rushed aboard, one baby literally being thrown in and caught by a female passenger.

[110] After Wilde called repeatedly for women and children to enter, a number of men took up the remaining spaces in the lifeboat, including Ismay; his decision to save himself ultimately proved to be very controversial.

[115][66] Another First-Class passenger, Frederick Maxfield Hoyt, who had previously put his wife in the lifeboat, jumped in the water immediately after, and was hauled aboard by Woolner and Björnström-Steffansson.

Also aboard were Jack Thayer (whose mother was saved with her maid in Lifeboat 4, but whose father died), military historian Colonel Archibald Gracie, who later wrote a popular account of the disaster, and Chief Baker Charles Joughin.

Lightoller organised the men on the hull to stand in two parallel rows on either side of the centerline, facing the bow, and got them to sway in unison to counteract the rocking motion caused by the swell.

Three bodies, including that of Mr. Thomson Beattie, were left in Collapsible Boat A, which was allowed to drift off; they were not recovered until a month later, by RMS Oceanic, another vessel belonging to the White Star Line.