the white star line didn't put enough lifeboats on the titanic.
the white star line didn't put enough lifeboats on the titanic.
who didn't put enough lifeboats on the titanic?
the white star line
the white star line never envisaged that all of the crew and passengers would have to be evacuated at once, as "titanic" was considered almost unsinkable. the lifeboats were instead intended to be used to transfer passengers off the ship and onto a nearby vessel providing assistance. while "titanic" was under construction, an incident involving the white star liner appeared to confirm this approach. "republic" was involved in a collision with the lloyd italiano liner in january 1909 and sank. even though she did not have enough lifeboats for all passengers, they were all saved because the ship was able to stay afloat long enough for them to be ferried to ships coming to assist. this fact is what led to the harsh condemnation of captain stanley lord of , 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. in this scenario, "titanic"s lifeboats would have been adequate to ferry the passengers to safety as planned. however, it is worth noting that the ferrying of passengers between two ships would have been a long, arduous process even under the best conditions. it took "carpathia" well over four hours to pick up and account for all of "titanic"s lifeboats in the morning after the disaster. during the sinking of the aforementioned "republic" in 1909, it took nearly half a day to ferry all of her passengers to rescue ships, and during the sinking of the italian liner in 1956 it took nearly eight hours to ferry all her passengers to safety. both liners sank at a much slower rate, roughly half a day, in contrast to "titanic", which sank slightly shy of three hours after her collision with the iceberg.
lifeboats of the rms titanic
in 1886, a committee of the british board of trade devised safety regulations for the merchant vessels of the time. these were updated with the passage of the merchant shipping act 1894 and were modified subsequently, but by 1912 they had a fatal flaw – they had been intended to regulate vessels of up to 10,000 tons, a limit that had long since been exceeded by shipbuilders. by comparison, "titanic" had a gross register tonnage of 46,328 tons. other ships were in a similar situation; 33 of the 39 british liners over 10,000 tons did not have enough lifeboats for all aboard (the six that did were marginally over 10,000 tons). was perhaps the worst of them, with only enough lifeboats for 29% of her occupants. foreign ships, such as the german liner ss "amerika" and similarly had only enough lifeboat space for about 54–55% of those aboard. a random sampling of ships that exceeded 10,000 tons in 1912, of numerous different shipping lines in the united states, canada, and europe, show the ship that came the closest to carrying enough lifeboats for all its passengers was the french line's "la province" which carried enough boats to accommodate 82% of her passenger capacity. walter lord stated in his 1987 book "the night lives on" that the lack of lifeboats on the "olympic"-class liners might have had more to do with economics than one might have thought. had "olympic" and "titanic" been properly provisioned with enough lifeboats, it might have drawn notice by the press that other smaller and perhaps less safely equipped liners were lacking sufficient lifeboats. this could have created a domino effect, leading to a call for more stringent regulations concerning lifesaving equipment onboard ships, circumstances which would have cost numerous shipping lines a considerable amount of money to accommodate.
lifeboats of the rms titanic