Titanic—Not Enough Lifeboats

Jim Whiting
The Running Encyclopedia

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     In the early morning of April 15, 1912, the ocean liner Titanic sank on her maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg. The ship carried just over 2,200 people. More than 1,500 perished.

     The main reason for the high death toll was that the ship had only 20 lifeboats. As they pulled away from the sinking ship, many were only half-full or even less. Even if all had been filled to capacity, only half the people would have been saved.

     Why didn’t Titanic carry enough lifeboats for everyone on board?

     There were several reasons. 

    Titanic’s original design called for 64 lifeboats. That number was later cut in half, then nearly halved again. The ship’s owners felt that too many lifeboats would clutter the deck and obscure the First Class passengers’ views. 

     The ship sailed under safety regulations that originated nearly 20 years earlier, when the largest passenger ships weighed 10,000 tons. Titanic was more than four times that amount. Yet officials maintained that ships had become much safer. Revising the regulations was therefore unnecessary. Under those regulations, Titanic actually had four more lifeboats than she was obligated to carry. Nearly every other vessel of that era was similarly deficient in the quantity of lifeboats.

     The prevailing thinking at that time was that the ship itself would serve as a gigantic lifeboat. Nearly everyone believed that even a heavily damaged vessel would remain afloat for many hours before sinking. That would allow plenty of time for the lifeboats to go back and forth several times, ferrying passengers to nearby ships. This assumption was not unreasonable. When the smaller liner Republic was involved in a collision in 1909, she remained afloat for more than 24 hours. All 742 passengers and crew were ferried to safety. 

     The flaw with this assumption was that Titanic sank far more rapidly than anyone anticipated. The first rescue ship arrived more than two hours after Titanic had gone down.  

     In 2012 an explosive document emerged. It consisted of safety inspector Maurice Clarke’s handwritten notes, urging the addition of 10 more lifeboats five hours before the ship sailed. The ship’s owners wanted to leave on time. Clarke was threatened with being fired unless he kept his mouth shut. If the owners had followed his advice, almost 700 more people might have survived.

     The disaster prompted a massive overhaul of regulations. All ships were required to carry enough lifeboats for everyone.

RMS Titanic departing Southampton on 10 April 1912

Engraving of the sinking of the Titanic by Willy Stöwer

Titanic carried a tot al of 20 lifeboats: 14 standard wooden lifeboats with a capacity of 65 people each and four Englehardt "collapsible" (wooden bottom, collapsible canvas sides) lifeboats, shown here, with a capacity of 47 people each. In addition, she had two emergency cutters with a capacity of 40 people each.

An artist's drawing of the arrival of Titanic's survivors at New York

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Frederick Douglass was a slave, but from an early age, he was determined to become a free man. He escaped to the North when he was about 20. A few years later, he discovered that he was an outstanding public speaker. For the rest of his life, Frederick would courageously speak out about the issues that affected his fellow blacks. Sometimes his actions placed him in great danger. During his lifetime no other African American did as much for blacks as Frederick Douglass. Even today his memory continues to inspire many people to work for civil rights and racial justice.  For more information on Jim Whiting's book, click here.

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​MLA 8 Citation
Whiting, Jim. "Titanic - Not Enough Lifeboats." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think
     Tank, 31 May 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/
     Titanic-Not-Enough-Lifeboats.