Could Everyone Have Been Saved?

With thanks to George Behe

Occasionally, a familiar question on various Facebook forums gets asked: "If there were enough boats, could everyone have been saved from the Titanic?" Inevitably, a even more familiar answer is proferred: "No because it took well over an hour to launch 18 boats and the last two floated off the ship not long before she sank."

- Which is indeed, quite true. The first boat (7) was launched at 12.40 and the last under davits, the 18th ("D") left at 2.05am. Some 40 people managed to utilise the last two craft, one of which was swamped and the other was upside down.

But this isn't necessarily the whole story. To discuss this matter, we need to consider the various aspects relating to the preparation and the launching of the lifeboats before we can determine some conclusions.

How efficient were the crew?

It is well known that at least some of the crew were not familiar with the davits. Henry Harper's description is eloquent: "Presently a number of stewards and other men of the ship's company began to fuss with the tackle of a couple of lifeboats near where we were on the upper deck. I say "fuss" with them, but I might as well say "make a mess of them." They seemed quite unused to handling boat gear." Although he was talking of stewards, it is clear from other statements that the seamen also had problems with the equipment. However, reading their testimonies, one would not know of this!

One possibility for this lack of proficiency may be because of the unfamiliarity with the new davits. They had been fitted to relatively few ships and out of the deck crew on board, 17 of them had come straight from the Olympic, and hence had some exposure to the Welin davits. Many crew had come from the Oceanic, which had older style davits. Of course, some crewmen who had come from the Oceanic could have spent some time on the Olympic in the preceeding 10 months but I have no data for their working history. It is quite plausible that some men simply did not know how to operate this new equipment.

On the whole, the only other examples of the crew being inefficient with the equipment is due to interference; seaman Fred Clench was starting to unlace boat 11, but was diverted to the other side of the ship by an officer. This may explain why the aft starboard boats were relatively late in being prepared for loading and launch; steward Fred Ray said that he saw the first boat lowered and saw boat 9 being swung out shortly before this. The point is that by 12.40am, No.9 was not ready. There were possibly others, if crewmen like Clench were seconded to other posts. Indeed, Boatswain's mate Albert Haines also said, "we were turning out the after boats while they were filling the forward one."

Lest it be thought that the crew's unfamiliarity with the Welin Davits was a factor, it should also be remembered that they had problems with the older style of davits, as Mahala Douglas wrote in an affidavit for the US Senate Inquiry: "When we arrived in New York the crew of the Titanic was ordered to get off in the lifeboats before we could dock. I sat in a deck chair and listened and looked. The unseamanlike way of going at their simple tasks without excitement showed me more plainly than anything I had seen or heard the inefficiency of the crew, and accounted, in some measure, for the number of the crew saved and the unfilled lifeboats. A passenger on the Carpathia also spoke to me of this."

How many people could the boats carry?

The capacities of the lifeboats are well known; in particular the 30 foot lifeboats were rated for 65 people. But it is also well known that very few boats departed with anything close to this number. How many could they actually hold? And was 65 people a practical value? As in the rest of this essay, we shall only consider the larger size lifeboats for simplicity.

If all the benches and thwarts could be laid out, end for end, the total length would be about 80 feet. 80 divided by 65 would be about 1.2 feet; this is the width that each person would have to take up, without anyone standing. But it is not as simple as that, as the diagram below shows.

From Dave Gittin's excellent ebook, modern day SOLAS (Safety Of Life At Sea) regulations would restrict the number of people in a 30 foot long Titanic lifeboat to only 34 using a prescribed "footprint". In fact, as Gittins points out, this is generous; SOLAS would prohibit people from sitting on the ledge around the perimeter, meaning that each full sized boat would only be able to carry 24 people today.

Using the author's seated footprint, a seating diagram similar to the one below can be constructed, which shows accommodation for 46 people. A lady would certainly take up only a few inches less than my frame, so the diagram here is representative of what a boat would look like with the occupants sat comfortably and with a little space to move around. But in Boat 13, Fred Barrett said that the women had to sit six athwart; if he is right, the occupants would have been severely "crunched up." Sitting six people on the two smaller thwarts would be very uncomfortable and probably impossible, but on the two larger ones amidships, this implies that the footprint would be on average only 1.08 feet (1 foot 2.3 centimetres) wide. This is possible, but still very restrictive. This gives the following figure, which shows how full the boat could conceivably be when the occupants are packed in tightly.

Using the "6 to a thwart" figure, we get the following:

This gives a total of 60 people; it seems reasonable to assume that the actual theoretical seated capacity is somewhere between 46 and 60. For simplicity, I shall assume an average value of 53 people during this discussion. But in actuality, it is not as simple as this.

The lifejackets would only add an extra 2 1/2 inches to the seating footprint due to the thickness of the cork blocks on the rear; not enough to impede anyone else nearby or take up much more room.

According to a respected analysis, boats 13 and 15 were heavily loaded - 55 and 68 people respectively and it is instructive to analyse these two craft further. How full were they?

If one looks in the various accounts and testimonies, there are some clues. Lookout Reginald Lee (boat 13) told the British Inquiry, "I was standing in the bottom of the boat" and Ruth Becker in the same boat told a TV interviewer in the 1980s that "it was standing room only" (in another interview she said, "Lifeboat No. 13 that I was in had about 60 or 70 people in it, so it was filled to standing room with men and women in every conceivable condition of dress and undress."). Walter Nichols (15) recollection's printed in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was that, "The women in our boat didn't see the [floating] bodies [in the morning]. They were too far down in the bottom of the boat...The women we had on board were huddled down in the center of the boat. Some of them were standing, but most of them were squatting down" Coupled together these point to every last space in the boat, including the spaces between the thwarts, being taken up.
There are other scattered mentions of how much the boats were crowded:

There are other examples of people standing but in some cases correctly assigning the person to a boat is controversial.[Footnote 2]

One must necessarily be wary, if one uses the argument that a full boat implies that people had to stand; Marie Young said, "We depended on girls to steer us, and all night the women rowed, standing facing the men, so four hands were throwing all bodily strength into each pull of the oars" (Washington Post, April 21, 1912). Mary Wick told her sister Mrs.Myron Arms upon arrival in New York, "The rowers had the center seats, while most of the women stood all night long." In boat 6, Helen Candee said that a woman "standing" near her helped with the rowing. This boat, like 8, was underfilled, with about 25 people aboard when she left the Titanic.
They were in boat 8, which had approximately 27 people aboard. It is hard to imagine this is a simple case of confusion caused by imprecise language. What of this, then: Norman Chambers, in boat 5 (about 36 people) wrote in the Lawrenceville Alumni Bulletin (October 1912), "When we were finally in the water, the passengers were so tightly packed in a standing position that the little quartermaster had great difficulty in crawling between our legs to reach the trigger amidships for releasing the falls simultaneously...Up to the time of the sinking, most of the men had been standing up, the women sitting on the benches around the edge of the boat. Later, when we had arranged ourselves as best we could, we were, with the exception of some three or four men, comfortably seated, but crowded ... the boat being just manageable!" 3rd Officer Pitman told the inquisitors in America that this boat could have taken a few more in; he also tellingly said that, "There is no room to move with 60 in it." Also in that boat, Karl Behr reminisced in 1944, "Our little group was congregated in the stern of the life boat. Dick Beckwith and I took turns rowing one of the large sweep oars. Helen, who stood next to me leaned over after some ten minutes or more and quietly said, 'The boat is leaking badly, I am standing in water.'" And let us consider the words of steward Alfred Crawford at the British Inquiry. He was asked, "When No. 5 was lowered, can you say what its complement of passengers was?" and he replied, "I could not say; the boat looked very full." (my emphasis). He later said the boat was crowded.

There were about 36 in Chambers's boat, but we saw above that approximately 53 people could fit in. So why was his boat so full? If one were being cynical, one could say that this was a ploy to convince others, and perhaps himself, that a rescue attempt to pick up those in the water would be futile.

Let us consider the following photographs, of boat 6 as it approached the Carpathia. There would seem to be about 24 people in it, or 12 less than in boat 5. And yet we can see that there is sufficient room to house many more.

There is another factor to consider: the oars. There were 10 of then, with corresponding thole pins and this would eat up a lot of space between the thwarts if one was to pull away from the sinking ship successfully. Admittedly, not every boat used up all 10 and some even lost oars overboard, but this is another factor to be considered. My diagram shows that two or three people could be seated on side benches, but bear in mind what Edith Rosenbaum wrote; "I was seated on the gunwale between two oarsmen and I caught the stroke of the oar either on the chest or the back, alternating with each stroke." Elsewhere she wrote that she had to alternately lean forwards and backwards to prevent impeding the rowers. Obviously what she is saying is that there was only room for one person on the benches!

Saloon Steward William Ward (Boat 9, about 40 people) said in America, that it was "a full boat ... We had not room to pull the oars. [The occupants] had to move their bodies with us when we were rowing." In boat 11 (about 50 people), Steward Edward Wheelton said, that they "Had difficulty rowing because the passengers were so close together" and steward Joseph Wheat commented that it was "quite full she could not hold another soul." Also in 11, Charles Mackay, a Bath Steward, told the court in London, "Yes, they [the people the boat] complained about being crushed up so much, and they could not sit down properly, and other people complained because they had to stand all night." At the British Inquiry, Thomas Ranger said of boat 4 after it had picked people up from the water (he estimated there were less than 50 people in the boat), "[We could have accommodated] a few more, Sir, but it would not give you room to pull the oars in the boat." In that same boat was bedroom steward Andrew Cunningham. He said in America of the women in his boat; "They were fairly well crowded. I could not count them. There was not room to row." It seems that there were probably about 30 in the boat when she left the ailing liner.
But it is very subjective; Dr.Washington Dodge watched the boats on the starboard side leave, before finding himself in boat 13. He said, "not a boat was launched which would not held from ten to twenty five more persons." [Footnote 3] Of course, Dodge had a view from above, watching boats 7, 5, 3, 1, 9 and 11 being filled and reaching the water. He wasn't in the boats to judge how comfortable it was to the occupants, c.f.Norman Chamber's account.

It is very hard to determine how full the boats could conceivably be. But the volumes of "Titanic: The Ship Magnificent" tell us that with the weight[Footnote 4] of 66 men and 4 oars, the freeboard (the distance between the gunwale and the waterline) of the boats was found to be 2 feet 3 inches; without equipment this was 3 feet 6 inches and the estimated freeboard with 66 men and full equipment was estimated to be not less than 2 feet[Footnote 5]. With these figures, one must remember seaman John Poingdestre's evidence in London; his boat (No.12) had helped to pick up the stranded occupants of overturned boat "B"; although he claimed to have about 90 men in his boat, the authors of the occupancy paper conclude that there were 69 on board. Poingdestre said that, "The starboard gunwale was getting under water every time anybody moved", albeit the sea was choppy at the time anyway. It seems likely that considerably more than 66 people were on board for the gunwale to be so close to the waterline. Steward Sam Rule (15) also said that his boat was far down in the water ("right to the gunwales") [Footnote 6], and Bertha Mulvihill in the same boat said that her hair dangled in the water when she leaned against the gunwale. Fireman Frank Dymond, who was in charge, told J.Rummage in a letter, "We had, to move very carefully, for the gunwales were never more than 6in. above the water, and she was leaking on one side just about the water-level, where she had been bumped on the ship's gunwale. We were only able to get at five of the eight oars, and the men only rowed to keep warm."

It would be decidely odd if a boat should be so low down in the water being so slightly over her rated capacity!

What of the actual occupants of the boats? The boats may have been able to hold 66 people, but what do we mean by this? If "people" means adults, then a babe in arms could be accomodated with little extra weight penalty - and since they would be carried, they would occupy the "holder's" footprint, taking up no extra room. A boat for 66 grown adults could, say, hold 50 adults and 30-40 babies for the same weight. A similar argument could be made for children, except that they would certainly occupy some room unless their guardian chose to hold them in their lap. With this in mind, the boats could conceivably be overloaded, with the proviso that the davits and falls support the weight during descent[Footnote 7].

The occupants of the boats is argued about as ferociously as the occupancy. For boats 11, 13 and 15 we have, from Encyclopedia-Titanica (the Wormstedt-Fitch totals are in parentheses), 45 (50), 54 (55) and 54 (68). Colonel Gracie and the British Investigation puts 70, 64 and 70 respectively in these craft. Titanica says that, in No.11 there were 2 children aged under 1 year, 3 in the 1-5 bracket and 2 in the 6-10 range. For No.13, these numbers are 1, 2 and 2. For No.15, they are 0, 6, 0. Even there is a divergence in the lifeboat totals, there would not seem to be an overabundance of children.

One last point: as this contemporary magazine clipping from after the Lusitania sinking shows, there seemed to be a lack of trust in heavily-laden lifeboats.

Were the boats and equipment efficient?

The Welin davits were based on a design that had been used on a few previous ships and were able to handle more than one boat; in fact, several plans and recollections have been related showing the davits with up to 4 boats. There seems to be little concern about their capabilities; as far as this author is known, all worked correctly.

The boats could be swung out in under two minutes, according to tests performed by the Board of Trade. But there is something that should be remembered; for each davit pair (that is two davits on the same foundation), there was only one cranking arm. When one boat had been moved outboard using the screw mechanism, a lever was thrown, allowing the other arm to be manipulated. In practise this meant that two boats side-by-side could be moved outwards in under four minutes, but not simultaneously. Would a crewman unfamiliar with these davits know this? It seems unlikely but it might contribute to the impression left upon some passengers that the crew did not know what they were doing in some cases.

The falls were attached to the boat by means of hooks; a discharge lever in the bottom of the boats would be pulled, which would then pull a hook out of an eyelet at the end of the falls, thus releasing the ropes. Cutting the falls meant that they could not be re-used [Footnote 8]. With the Titanic, this was almost of no consequence as most of the ropes were only to be used once anyway. However, it is intructive to discuss the cutting of the ropes as it may indicate a problem with Murray's Disengaging Gear (or it may point to a difficulties with accessibility or unfamiliarity with the mechanism[Footnote 9]);

There is obviously something awry with some people's recollections, as both boats 13 and 15 were lowered and retrieved on April 10th as part of a Board of Trade inspection. This proves that there was nothing wrong with the disconnection mechanism for those two boats at least. Other cases of "cut falls" may be due to a misinterpretation of the situation[Footnote 11].

How many seamen, or competent crew were on board?

At the US Inquiry, seaman George Moore said, "There were 6 quartermasters, 6 lookout men, 13 in the port watch, 12 in the starboard watch, and 7 day hands." This is the same number that Seaman Osman gave, but he did not include quartermasters in this number. In his tally, he gave the following: "25 altogether in both watches, 13 in one watch and 12 in the other; then there was 2 deckmen, the cook of the forecastle, 2 window cleaners, 6 lookout men, and 2 masters-at-arms counted with the seamen." The deck crew lists 52 out of 66 men as officers, seamen, quartermasters or lookouts. Using the criteria mentioned by the two men in this paragraph, there were a total of 59 people; this also includes the carpenter (and presumably joiner), boatswain (and his mate) the lamp trimmer and the two master-at-arms who may be regarded as able bodied seamen. These inclusions are based on testimony at the British Inquiry where it was concluded that stewards and cooks may be included in this tally if they can prove that they had served as AB seamen. Based on these flexible criteria, at the US Inquiry, 83 sailors were mentioned as being on the ship; Lightoller said there were 71. Some "non-sailor" crewmen, such as Leading Fireman Charles Hendrickson, also claimed to have the necessary skills to prepare a boat for lowering. And seaman Frank Evans said that he helped to lower boat 10 level with the boat deck with the help of a steward. So, it is difficult to be specific when wondering how many people with seaman skills were actually on board.

Did any of the listed seamen lack the skills to handle a boat? While some were uncouth, there is only one instance (as far as I know) of a surprising inability to handle the craft. Henry Harper (Harper's Weekly, April 27, 1912) in boat 3 remarked, "Somehow or other they got her clear at last, and the four men at the oars began to row. And such rowing! You've seen the young man who hires a boat on Central Park lake on Sunday and tries to show off? Well, about like that - skying the oar on every recover, burying the blade on the pull or missing it altogether. There was only one man in the four who knew how to row. The steering was worse. The four oarsmen paddled as briskly as they could, and our boat, with say, some forty people in it, began to move away from the ship, slowly but not surely. For the man at the tiller would pull it toward himself for a while and send her around to port, or push the tiller away and swerve her around to starboard.
"Ow!" he exclaimed; "let's get on. There'll be a big wave when she goes under - ow! A terrible big wave! - so let's get out of her way!"
But the poor fellow was so anxious to escape from the neighborhood of the Titanic that he kept steering in half-circles or worse. At last he headed the boat clear around so that her bow was pointed straight toward the ship. I couldn't stand that.
"Here!" I cried, "do you want to run the ship down? I guess you may have steered with a wheel, but surely you've never handled a tiller. Shove the tiller the opposite to the way you want to go, and you'll be all right." He got her straightened out then, and our poor crew paddled very slowly away from the Titanic."

The man at the tiller was seaman George Moore! He gave evidence at the US Inquiry and he mentioned none of the above. It is tempting to think that the one man out of four who could row was AB James Anderson; the other crewman in the boat were members of the engineering crew[Footnote 12].

Although not germane to this discussion a few stewards did feign knowledge of rowing in order to escape from the ship. Perhaps one of these was No.13; 2nd class passenger Mary Hewlett wrote to a friend saying, "Then we pulled out from the Titanic somehow as the men at the oars did not know how to row - could not keep time & did not know starboard from port!!!"

Some conclusions

To reiterate, we shall only consider full sized (30 foot) long boats in this section rather than the smaller collapsibles and emergency boats.

We know the davits were built to handle more than one boat. How long could it potentially take to recycle a pair of falls and re-use them for a boat on the same set of davits? Fortunately, there is some data; boat 2 was launched at 1.45pm, with boat "D" twenty minutes later[Footnote 13]. This is slightly misleading as neither boat was full to capacity; boat 2 had about 17 people and "D" had only 20. And neither was lowered the full 60 feet to the water; Emily Ryerson wrote in an affidavit that when boat 4 (launched 5 minutes after No.2 and only slightly aft) left, "A" deck was only about 20 feet from the sea, meaning that the boat deck was some 30 feet from the sea.

We must ask ourselves how long could it take to fill a boat up with the nominal capacity of 65 people, lower it the full 60 feet distance and then have the next boat ready? It is a matter for conjecture, but I would suggest at the most, 35 minutes. Walter Nichols said in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle that "Altogether it took us about twenty minutes to fill our lifeboat [15] and get away" - and his boat was full.

An increased number of boats presents other problems: the clutter on the boat deck would severely handicap rapid entrance to the craft as one would have to clamber over them. A solution to this problem would be to lower the boats to "A" deck and enter them from there, assuming that the glass windows on the forward half had been cranked down. Even this is not a problem; the aft boats could be filled first while the forward screens were cranked down.

What else could go wrong to scupper the evacuation? A lesser known problem is that the falls could become fouled, caused by the block on the davit arms rotating. Lamp Trimmer Hemming noted this problem when boat "A" was being prepared, "I rendered up the foremast fall, got the block on board, and held on to the block while a man equalized the parts of the fall. He said, 'There is a futterfoot in the fall, which fouls the fall and the block.' " At the British Inquiry, Harland and Wolff marine architect Edward Wilding stated, "[the falls] tends to twist itself up, owing to the way the rope is made ... you can untangle them. There is nothing impossible in the untangling if you take a quarter of an hour or 20 minutes and disentangle those falls ... the best thing is to pull it up and straighten it out on deck ... Recover it by a hook, or something of that sort, and pull it out on deck."

This would add a latency of 15 to 20 minutes to the rope retrieval and re-deployment time. On the night the Titanic sank, this was not a problem; only Hemming noticed a fouling and by then it was too late to do anything about it.

It is a valid point that every time a boat left, it depleted the number of seamen available and there could conceivably come a point whereby there would be none left on the ailing vessel. But were seamen necessary for the handling of a boat? Two of the 18 that left (13 and 15) ended up with a fireman at the tiller. It is also noteworthy that no-one was put in charge of these boats when they were lowered; it was only when they were in the water that it was decided whom was to be in charge - Barrett in 13 and Dymond in 15. These boats were also lacking seamen; if the current understanding of the boat's occupany is correct, they had three and one respectively. This lack of seamen and the crowded nature of the boats didn't seem to hamper their handling. Estimates vary wildly, but boat 13 managed to get somewhere between half a mile to a mile and a half in the forty minutes it took the Titanic to sink. Boat 15 was between 500 yards and 3/4s of a mile (1320 yards) in the same space of time. So much for the myth that only seamen could handle boats!

George Behe makes a valid point: with an increased number of boats, the number of seamen would also be increased to a commensurate extent. There seems to be no way to quantify this at present. Conceivably, there could have been enough seamen to handle this expanded number.

No doubt the passengers, especially the ladies, helped in the rowing; boats 6 (2 men, one of whom was a lookout, rowing), 8 (2 or 3 men rowing despite some ineptitude) and 16 (perhaps 3 men rowing?) managed to get somewhere about a mile away from the stricken vessel. It is hard to believe this distance could be achieved with so few people rowing. In fact, this is rhetorical, as we know the passengers did indeed assist.

So, what would we have to assume in a "perfect" evacuation? We have the following list:

With the boat statistics discussed above, this author would recommend about 40 adults in a boat; the remaining 25 spaces could be loaded with children and babies. As stated, since they would not occupy as much room or have as much weight as a fully grown adult, conceivably more than 25 could be placed in a boat but this is unquantifiable.

With this in mind, we can create an assumed schedule for the evacution, using the starboard quarter's boat stations as an example:

There were 8 officers and 4 boat sections, each one consisting of 4 davit pairs. I suggest 2 officers to each "quadrant" of boats. I have abitrarily placed a junior and a senior officer together. In this scheme, a staggered boat lowering plan is suggested; for instance, boat 9 and 13, and then 11 and 15, allowing the officers to superintend one boat at a time. This also reduces the number of seamen necessary to lower the boats, as the men who lowered boat 9 could then work on 11, and then back to boat 9's placing. This means only 4 seamen to lower, rather than 8. Note also that I have named the boats to indicate successive launches from specific davits, eg. 9a, 9b, 9c etc. for boats lowered from No. 9's station. I have placed an arbitary gap of 5 minutes between adjacent boat launchings. Note that I have also not included the 15 or 20 minutes to de-foul boat falls.

Time Boat 15 station Boat 13 station Boat 11 station Boat 9 station Running total
12.40am Boat 13a launched Boat 9a launched 130 people
12.45am Boat 15a launched Boat 11a launched 260 people
1.15am Boat 13b launched Boat 9b launched 390 people
1.20am Boat 15b launched Boat 11b launched 520 people
1.50am Boat 13c launched Boat 9c launched 650 people
1.55am Boat 15c launched Boat 11c launched 780 people

In 1 1/4 hours, 780 people could have been saved in one quadrant of boats. Extrapolating this to all four quadrants, this leads to a possible 3120 people. This is in excess of the number of people on the maiden voyage, but not enough for the full complement of some 3500 people. Potentially these extra 400 people could be evacuated utilising the remaining boats as rafts, and floating them off the deck? Or some boats could possibly be overloaded, as we have seen above? Or perhaps a few crucial minutes could be shaved off the time necessary to cycle the davits and falls? As stated above, the time taken for boat 2/"D"'s davits to be reused was 20 minutes. This is partially because the boats were lowered a comparitively short distance to the water and hence the falls could be retrieved sooner. As the Titanic dipped lower in the water, this would apply to all the boats on the forward boat deck (conversely, the time taken for the aft boats would be increased.)

Note that, if the crew could not launch two boats from each davit pair in 1 hour and 40 minutes and thus save naerly everyone on the ship, it speaks volumes for their competency.

The big difference here is that the boats in this proposed scheme are being handled in a parallel capacity; the lowering schedule is interleaved. On the night of the disaster, once a boat was launched the crew moved onto the next one. There was obviously no need to stay at a boat station with no boat there. In short, in the early hours of April 15th, the boat lowerings were tackled in a serial capacity - that is, one after the other.

So, in this staggered arrangement, how many crew would be needed to lower the lifeboats? Just 32, well within the number of "official" seamen onboard. The myth that the Titanic would run out of crew to lower and save 2200 people is exploded, finally.

If the niggles of the exact number of qualified crew and their complement depleting with every launch etc. is neglected and we just consider the question, "could everyone have been saved?" the answer is definitely "yes" with the caveat that this would quite possibly mean just lowering the boats. The arguments over the minutiae of boat and crew complements etc. will no doubt rumbled on, but the answers show that, with an efficient crew, everyone could have been saved. But unfortunately there weren't enough boats - and the preparation and lowering of the boats was anything but efficient.

Notes

  1. With a boat as full as No.13, it is amazing that Beesley was able to jump into it from the boat deck without causing massive disruption, knocking people over and then being able to find a seat (Don Lynch opines that Beesley got into the boat the same way as everyone else - via "A" deck)
    One would have thought that people would have been injured or winded by Beesley landing in such a confined space; after all, some people reported wounds caused by people leaping into boats on the aft port side. But it is not necessarily the case that people would report such incidents. Arpal Lengyel, a Doctor on the Carpathia, said, "There were forty-two wounded; many had broken ankles and fractures in their limbs." And elsewhere, "The disaster had 1600 fatalities, we saved altogether 705 people, 42 were injured. From a medical point of view it is interesting that there were no cold-related illnesses at all. There were mostly bruises and fractures: leg, ankle, wrist, rib and upper arm." Unfortunately, how these people came to be injured is mostly a mystery. George Behe has performed exhaustive research on ailments suffered by those on the Titanic; Irene Harris broke her arm during the maiden voyage, Hanna Touma injured her hand and Ella White twisted her ankle boarding the ship at Cherbourg. During the evacuation, 15 people reported being wounded. Of these, the following tally of fractures, twisted limbs etc. are as follows: 2 to the leg, 2 to the arm, 2 to the ribs, and 1 each for the foot, ankle and neck. Of those unfortunates who struggled in the water afterwards and whose stories are undisputed, we have 19 incidents though a fair portion seem to be fairly minor (two of them, Thomas Whiteley and John Thompson had injuries to their extremities so they can be included in Lenygel's total). If we take Lengyel's comments that "most" of the 42 were bruises and fractures, then there may be some wounds that we know nothing about; we only have 13 accounts of "fracture-like" injuries. Perhaps Lengyel included severe injuries like Harold Bride's frostbitten feet in his total? Incidentally, Paul Mauge said that six or ten people jumped into a boat on the aft starboard side, but there is a dearth of data if these actions caused any woundings.
  2. Florence Thorneycroft told the Utica Herald-Dispatch (20th April 1912) that they were obliged to remain standing in the the lifeboat for seven or eight hours until picked up. She may have been in boat 10. Addie Wells story appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal that same day. She may have been in boat 14 or 16 and said, "There were 40 or 50 in our boat and I couldn't get a chance to sit down, but stood up keeping the babies warm and dry in my skirts."
  3. Boats 5, 9, 11 and 13 still had their mast, sails and rigging on board which on the face of it meant that even more space had been taken up. But we must remember what Washington Dodge (Boat 13) wrote; "[We secured] an oar with considerable difficulty, as the oars had been firmly lashed together by means of heavy tarred twine, and as in addition they were on the seat running parallel with the side of the lifeboat, with no less than eight or ten occupants of the boat sitting on them, none of whom showed any tendency to disturb themselves." It might not have been very comfortable, but people seemed to show no aversion to taking up whatever space was available.
  4. How much weight did this constitute? This author does not know, but researcher Bob Read recently uncovered a document detailing davit tests on the Olympic in March 1913. The Board of Trade report noted, "It was assumed each person would average 140 lbs." Some data on 21st century average weights can be found here, and interesting discussions can be found here and here, which shows how the average weight has increased in 40 years. Researcher Brian Ticehurst related in a c.1992 documentary documentary how the boats had been tested in Belfast with the weight of 70 men. However when I asked him, he could not recall where he had heard this.
  5. Barrett in 13 stated at the British Inquiry that the freeboard of his boat was half a foot. Given the number of people likely to have been in his boat, it has been suggested that this seems unlikely; it was dark and he was perched up higher than the others on his platform at the tiller. Perhaps perspective played a part here? One should also remember Dymond's comment about his own boat, No.15 where he gave the same freeboard and his boat, it is claimed, was more heavily laden.
  6. In an interview with the "St.Ives Times", Rule also said, "We [were] loaded down to the gunwales and we could pull just about half a stroke." Despite this, the boat managed to get a respectable distance from the Titanic before the end.
  7. Edward Wilding testified in London that as part of the testing of the winches in May 1911, one of the Olympic's boats was loaded with half hundredweight weights equivalent to about 65 people, and then raised and lowered 6 times without incident. At the Limitation of Liability hearings three years later, his evidence changed slightly; "The equivalent of 68 people [was used]. We intended to get the boats passed for 68; they were eventually only passed for 65; the equivalent load was put in the boat which was lowered in the presence of the Board of Trade surveyor, for his satisfaction." Unfortunately we do not know how much volume these weights took up. Incidentally, another surveyor for the board, William Chantler was in charge of inspecting the lifeboats. Following the disaster, he made a calculation on the load imposed upon the boats: "Yes, I made such a calculation. The results I arrived at were that the stress at the gunwale would be 2 cwts. to the square inch, and at the keel about 2 1/4 cwts." This is for 65 people, with the boat suspended from the davits. He said that the boat could handle twice as much load.
  8. One must perhaps question the claims that the falls of the boats were cut; at the British Inquiry, James Johnson says of Boat 2: "We got lowered, and then we cut her adrift. The razor came in handy ... we had to [use it] because nobody else had a knife." In this case, the falls for boat 2 were re-used minutes later for boat "D". Perhaps Johnson was confused? Mrs Douglas said that, "Mr. Boxhall had difficulty about getting the boat loose and called for a knife" but Boxhall never mentioned this in testimony. However, another possibility is that if the falls were cut, another boat's vacant falls were used but we have no evidence of this.
  9. Henry Harper (boat 3) for one noted that the men didn't know how to cast their boat loose and "fussed and fiddled" with the release mechanism.
  10. Seaman Evans gives a similar explanation for boat 10: he stated that the women were packed so tightly that it was impossible to reach the release lever, and the crew had to lift the lifeboat off the hooks attached to the falls.
  11. Ellen Walcroft (The Maidenhead Advertiser, April 29, 1912) wrote of her experience in boat 14: "One side worked better than the other and the ropes on one side did not act so the officer gave the order to cut the ropes and the boat fell some distance and then we got safely away from the ship's side." Clear Cameron also said that the ropes had to be cut. But seaman George Crowe testified in America, "I stood by the lever. The lever releases the blocks from the hooks in the boat, and [5th Officer Lowe] told me to wait, to get away and cut the line to raise the lever, thereby causing the hooks to open and allow the boat to drop in the water." Crowe seemed to have been confused as he at first said, "After getting the women and children in, we lowered down within 4 or 5 feet of the water and found the block and tackle had gotten twisted in some way, causing us to have to cut the ropes to allow the boat to get into the water."
    Lowe himself told the British Inquiry that, " - Something got wrong and I slipped her ... I should say I dropped her about 5 feet ... That was because I was not going to wait and chance being dipped down by the stern by anybody on top, so I thought it was best for me to drop, and know what I was doing." Looking up, he could see nothing wrong with the falls themselves. Seaman Joseph Scarrott gave a detailed answer; " ... she hung up. The forward fall lowered all right, sufficiently far enough that the forepart of the boat was afloat and the forward fall slack. Her after-fall then would be about ten feet - we had about ten feet to go on the after-fall. Our boat was at an angle of pretty well 45 degrees. I called Mr. Lowe's attention to it. He said, "Why don't they lower away aft?" I know the man that was lowering the after-fall, it was McGough. I looked overhead naturally enough, seeing the boat did not come down, and the fall was twisted. It resembled more a cable hawser than a fall, and would not render at all. I called Mr. Lowe's attention to the fact. He said, "What do you think is best to be done?" I said, "I can case it. I will cut one part of the fall, and it will come easy. I have not the least doubt but what she will come away with her releasing gear." He said, "Do not you think the distance rather too much?" I said "No; she might start a plug, but I will look out for that." We dropped her by the releasing gear ... "
  12. Although her testimony has vanished, a brief summary of Mrs. Horace S. De Camp [Mary Marvin]'s words during the Limitation of Liability were reported. She said that the two seamen and the fireman who manned her boat did not know how to row. She is sometimes placed in boat 10. Although these words are damning, one should be wary as she said that there were only thirteen persons in her boat. It is possible that she was mistaken about the competency of the crew, to put it charitably.
  13. This "20 minutes" also includes the time to manhandle boat "D" over the bulwark abeam of the bridge. For most of the lifeboats, this impediment did not exist meaning that the 20 minutes could be reduced by a small amount. Also, some little time was spent putting up the canvas gunwale of "D" which does not apply to the wooden boats. Again, this would reduce the 20 minutes by a tiny amount. Another contributing factor is that Lightoller, not being familiar with collapsible boats looked for a plug but did not find one and concluded that there weren't any for these type of boats. We do not know how long he looked, but taking all these factors together into a very rought guess, the time between launch for regular lifeboats could be reduced to about 10 or 15 minutes.
  14. Passenger Hugh Woolner said at the US Inquiry, "I took particular note of the mechanism for raising and lowering the glass windows on the A deck, and I watched the sailors winding them up with these spanners that are used for that purpose. It struck me as being rather a slow job." It is not known how long it would take to crank them down; Woolner informed Captain Smith that the windows were closed at about 12.20-12.30am. When attention shifted back to the forward port boats an hour later, sufficient windows had been opened to allow the temporarily abandoned boat 4 to be filled.
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