Lifeboats played a crucial role during the sinking of the Titanic on 14–15 April 1912. The ship had been supplied with 20 lifeboats that, by lifeboat capacity of that time, could accommodate 1,178 people, a little over half of the 2,207 on board the night it sank. In around two hours time, 18 lifeboats were successfully launched. Two others were in the process of being prepared to be launched when the ship began its final plunge; Collapsible Boat A was cut free and floated off the ship's partially submerged deck and Collapsible Lifeboat B floated away upside down minutes before the ship upended and sank.
The majority of the lifeboats only carried a fraction of their nominal capacity. There are many reasons behind half-filled lifeboats; these included the order of "women and children first", and apprehensions from the crew that the lifeboats or the ropes could give away under the weight as the boats appeared overloaded. Additionally, many passengers did not feel safe stepping in a lifeboat hovering 90 feet above the freezing ocean, having to be convinced, whilst others refused to leave behind family and friends. As the boats rowed away from the ship, they were too far away for other passengers to reach, and most lifeboats did not return to the wreck due to a fear by its occupants of being swamped by drowning victims or being pulled down by the suction of the sinking ship. Only Lifeboat No. 14 returned to the wreck site to retrieve survivors from the water; one other, No. 4, was close enough to the sinking to let some survivors swim up to it.
Although the number of lifeboats was insufficient, Titanic in fact complied with maritime safety regulations at the time and even went over regulations by adding four collapsibles. The sinking highlighted that the regulations were woefully outdated for passenger ships. In the event of an emergency, it was not anticipated that all passengers and crew would require evacuation at the same time; it was believed that Titanic could float long enough to allow a transfer of passengers and crew to a rescue vessel, as had been the case with the a few years earlier.
A total of 1,496 people died when the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. Many of them had not made it into a boat. Only 711 people survived in the lifeboats until later that morning when they were rescued by the . Those aboard the lifeboats were picked up by Carpathia over the course of 4 hours and 30 minutes, from about 4 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., and 13 of the lifeboats were also taken aboard. The lifeboats were returned to the White Star Line at New York Harbor, as they were the only items of value salvaged from the shipwreck, but subsequently vanished from history over time.
Number and types of lifeboats
Titanic had 20 lifeboats of three different types:
14 clinker-built wooden lifeboats, measuring long by wide by deep. Each had a capacity of and had a nominal capacity of 65 people. The rudders were made of elmselected because it resisted splittingand were thick. The exteriors of the boats were fitted with "grablines" for people in the water to hold on to. They were fitted with a variety of equipment to aid the occupants, comprising 10 oars, a sea anchor, two bailers, a painter (effectively a tow-rope) long, two boat-hooks, two tanks of fresh water, a mast and sail, a compass, a lantern and watertight metal provision tanks which contained biscuits. This equipment was not kept in the boats for fear of theft, but in locked boxes on the deck. In many cases, the equipment was not transferred to the boats when they were launched on 15 April and ended up going down with the ship. Blankets and a spare lifebelt could also be found in the boats.
2 wooden cutters intended to be used as emergency boats. They were kept ready to be launched quickly in the event of an incident requiring a boat in the water, such as a man overboard. The cutters were swung out at all times when the ship was underway, uncovered and with all their equipment, including a lighted oil lantern placed in the boat every evening. The cutters were of a similar design to the main lifeboats, but smaller, measuring long by about wide by deep. Their capacity was and had a nominal capacity of 40 people. They were equipped similarly to the main lifeboats but with only one boathook, one water container, one bailer and six oars each.
4 "collapsible" Engelhardt lifeboats. These were effectively boat-shaped unsinkable rafts of kapok and cork, with heavy canvas sides that could be raised to form a boat. They measured long by wide by deep. Their capacity was and had a nominal capacity of 47 people. The Engelhardts, built to a Danish design, were built by the boatbuilders McAlister & Son of Dumbarton, Scotland. Their equipment was similar to that of the cutters, but they had no mast or sail, had eight oars apiece and were steered using a steering oar rather than a rudder.
The main lifeboats and cutters were built by Harland and Wolff at Queen's Island, Belfast, at the same time that Titanic and her sister ship were constructed. They were designed for maximum seaworthiness, with a double-ended design (effectively having two bows). This reduced the risk that they would be flooded by a following sea (i.e., having waves breaking over the stern). If a lifeboat had to be beached, the design would also resist the incoming surf. Another safety feature consisted of airtight copper tanks within the boats' sides to provide extra buoyancy.
Use and locations aboard Titanic
All but two lifeboats were situated on the Boat Deck, the highest deck of Titanic. They were located on wooden chocks at the fore and aft parts of the Boat Deck, on both sides of the ship; two groups of three at the forward end, and two groups of four at the aft end. The two cutters were situated immediately aft of the bridge, one to port and the other to starboard. While Titanic was at sea, they were positioned outboard so that they could be lowered instantly in the event of an emergency, such as needing to rescue a person who had fallen overboard. The lifeboats were assigned odd numbers on the starboard side and even numbers on the port side, running from forward to aft, while the collapsible lifeboats were lettered A to D.
The collapsibles were stored in two places. Two of them were stowed on the deck in their collapsed state underneath the cutters, while the remaining two were situated on top of the officers' quarters. Despite the first two both being erected and launched without difficulty during Titanics sinking, the other two both turned out to be very poorly located. They were both located off the deck and lowering them required a piece of equipment held in the boatswain's store in the bow. By the time this was realised, the bow was already well underwater, and the store was inaccessible. They were manhandled down and floated away freely as the deck flooded.
The lifeboats were intended to be launched from davits supplied by the Welin Davit & Engineering Company of London. All lifeboats but the collapsibles were slung from the davits, ready to be launched. The davits were of a highly efficient double-acting quadrant design, capable of being slung inboard (hanging over the deck) as well as outboard (hanging over the side) to pick up additional lifeboats. The davits aboard Titanic were capable of accommodating 64 lifeboats, though only 16 were actually fitted to them. The collapsibles were also intended to be launched via the davits. Each davit was doubled up, supporting the forward arm of one boat and the after arm of the next one along. A bitt and sheave was located at the keel of each davit to facilitate the lowering of boats, and the falls could be taken across the deck so that a number of men could work simultaneously on each boat and davit. They had to be lowered by hand, ideally by a team of between eight and ten men. Despite Titanic having a number of electric winches, they could only have been used to winch the lifeboats back out of the water.
Lifeboat regulations
Titanic only had enough lifeboats to accommodate approximately a third of the ship's total capacity. Had every lifeboat been filled accordingly, they still could have only evacuated about 53% of those actually on board on the night of the sinking. The shortage of lifeboats was not due to a lack of space; Titanic had actually been designed to accommodate up to 64 lifeboats – nor was it because of cost, as the price of an extra 32 lifeboats (when it could have even held an extra 48) would only have been some $16,000, a tiny fraction of the $7.5 million that the company had spent on Titanic. The reason lay in a combination of outdated safety regulations.
In 1886, a committee of the British Board of Trade devised safety regulations for the merchant vessels of the time. These were updated with the passage of the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 (57 & 58 Vict. c. 60) and were modified subsequently, but by 1912, they had a fatal flaw – they had been intended to regulate vessels of up to 10,000 tons. At the time of the original regulations in the 1880s, the largest liners (the Cunard sisterships and ) had a registered tonnage of just under 8,000 grt. The 1894 act made provision for vessels with a registered tonnage "greater than 10,000 tons" but at the time the legislation was drafted, the largest liner in service was then Cunard's of 12,950 grt and with a maximum capacity of 2,500 passengers and crew. Between 1895 and 1910, the size and capacity of new liners entering service rapidly exceeded the scope of the act: Titanic had a gross register tonnage of 46,328 tons and a total capacity of over 3,300 people. Other ships were in a similar situation; 33 of the 39 British liners over 10,000 tons did not have enough lifeboats for all aboard, and the six that did were marginally over 10,000 tons. was perhaps the worst of them, with only enough lifeboats for 29% of her occupants. Non-British ships, such as the German liner and the American liner similarly had only enough lifeboat space for about 54–55% of those aboard.
The regulations required a vessel of 10,000 tons or more to carry 16 lifeboats with a total capacity of , sufficient for 960 people. Titanic actually carried four more lifeboats than was needed under the regulations. Her total lifeboat capacity was , which was theoretically capable of taking 1,178 people. The regulations required that lifeboats should measure between , with a minimum capacity of each. The cubic capacity divided by ten indicated the approximate number of people that could be carried safely in each lifeboat, and also dictated the size of the airtight buoyancy tanks incorporated into the boats' hulls, with each person corresponding to of tank capacity.
In reality, the given capacity was quite nominal, as filling the lifeboats to their indicated capacity would have required some passengers to stand. This did in fact happen to some of the last lifeboats to leave Titanic; at the subsequent British enquiry, Titanics Second Officer Charles Lightoller testified that the nominal capacity could only have applied "in absolutely smooth water, under the most favourable conditions." Harold Sanderson, Vice-President of the IMM, stated that the proper capacity, in typical Atlantic seaway capacity, would have been more like 40 people per boat. Additionally, there was also notable reluctance from passengers, some of whom did not wish to be separated from their families and others who felt the ship was safer than the wooden lifeboats.