Lifeboats of the RMS Titanic the ship. The boats were supposed to be stocked with emergency supplies, but "Titanic"s passengers later found that they had only been partially provisioned. No lifeboat or fire drills had been carried out since "Titanic" left Southampton. A lifeboat drill had been scheduled for the morning before the ship sank, but was cancelled, allegedly because the ship's captain, Edward Smith, wanted to deliver one last Sunday service before he went into full retirement. Lists had been posted on the ship allocating crew members to particular lifeboat stations, but few appeared to have read them or to have known what they
Sinking of the RMS Titanic sight the awful spectacle ... Then, with the deadened noise of the bursting of her last few gallant bulkheads, she slid quietly away from us into the sea." "Titanic"s surviving officers and some prominent survivors testified that the ship had sunk in one piece, a belief that was affirmed by the British and American inquiries into the disaster. Archibald Gracie, who was on the promenade deck with the band (by the second funnel), stated that ""Titanic"s decks were intact at the time she sank, and when I sank with her, there was over seven-sixteenths of the ship already under water,