RMS Titanic and for the ship's operational use. Although "Titanic" had advanced safety features such as watertight compartments and remotely activated watertight doors, it only carried enough lifeboats for 1,178 people—about half the number on board, and one third of her total capacity—due to outdated maritime safety regulations. The ship carried 16 lifeboat davits which could lower three lifeboats each, for a total of 48 boats. However, "Titanic" carried only a total of 20 lifeboats, four of which were collapsible and proved hard to launch during the sinking. After leaving Southampton on 10 April 1912, "Titanic" called at Cherbourg in France and
CQ (call) the 1912 London International Radiotelegraph Convention, and is still used. A variant of the CQ call, "CQD", was the first code used as a distress signal. It was proposed by the Marconi Company and adopted in 1904, but was replaced between 1906 and 1908 by the SOS code. When the "Titanic" sank in 1912, it initially transmitted the distress call ""CQD DE MGY" (with ""MGY" being the ship's call sign). "Titanic"'s radio operator subsequently alternated between SOS and CQD calls afterwards. In amateur radio usage, a CQ call can be qualified by appending more letters, as in "CQ DX" (meaning