In an emergency, lifeboats at the time were intended to be used to transfer passengers off the distressed ship and onto a nearby vessel. It was therefore commonplace for liners to have far fewer lifeboats than needed to accommodate all their passengers and crew, and of the 39 British liners of the time of over , 33 had too few lifeboat places to accommodate everyone on board. The White Star Line desired the ship to have a wide promenade deck with uninterrupted views of the sea, which would have been obstructed by a continuous row of lifeboats.