Blog 152 - TITANIC - Part XII - The Sinking = The Survivors and the Martyrs
- ranganathanblog
- Jan 30
- 5 min read
TITANIC - Part XII - The Sinking
Titanic - The Survivors and the Martyrs
Total 20 Lifeboats
14 Clinker boats, capacity 65
2 wooden cutters, capacity 40
4 collapsible boats, basically rafts, capacity 47
Total space available 1198
Total on board, including crew, 2240
Time Line of Events:
11.40 pm (14th April 1912): Titanic crashes into/ scrapes against the iceberg.
12.25 am (15th April 1912): Capt Smith gives the order to ‘abandon ship’ and launch the lifeboats.
12.40 am (15th April 1912): The first lifeboat (Boat # 7) launched, with only 28 passengers.
02.05 am (15th April 1912): The last lifeboat (Collapsible Sides Boat) was launched.
The next collapsible boat launched turns over, but being a raft , still floats.
02.20 am (15th April 1912): The Titanic sinks
What the Titanic had in terms of Life Saving Appliances
Some of the negative aspects of the evacuation:
The well known fact that there not enough Life Boats for all on board.
Brand new ship - that a Boat Drill was not carried out at all is surprising.
In today’s world, a brand new ship with a fresh crew is not allowed to leave port without a Fire Drill and a Boat Drill being carried out.
(But all these rules came in the aftermath of the Titanic tragedy).
Due to not having carried out any Boat Drill the crew were inexperienced in collecting the passengers into designated spots.
In today’s world, on Passenger ships, even the Housekeeping and Catering staff are pressed into service and assigned duties to guide and assemble the passengers.
Each ship has well laid out procedures for assembly, for evacuation.
Boats were not loaded to near full capacity, as the crew considered it to be dangerous to do so, suspecting that the boat will collapse with weight.
They were unaware that the Life Boats had been strengthened for just such an eventuality.
If they had been (near) full loaded, another 200 or more would have been saved.
Those days, Life Boat releases were with block and tackles. Handling them can be cumbersome.
Some of the Life Boats did not have adequate provisions and water in them. Had there been a long delay to the rescue or if no ship had sighted them, the occupants of the Life Boat would have been in serious trouble.
Some of the positive aspects of the evacuation
Some of the Officers and crew were from the ‘Olympic’, the elder sister to the ‘Titanic’, transferred, as the ‘Olympic’ was undergoing repairs at H&W Ship Yard.
It is likely that the launching operations proceeded as smoothly as the ship’s staff could make it, because of this reason.
Some 1 h 40 mins to launch 20 lifeboats.
On an average, it took 5 minutes to launch one boat.
Since boats were lowered on both, port and starboard sides, the average would be 10 minutes per boat.
(Today’s SOLAS specifies a time of 10 minutes to launch lifeboats after an ‘abandon ship’ order is given.
Considering that it was all manual and a 70 ft distance from the water, the efficiency of the crew was laudable.
Tribute must be paid to the Marconi Operators, who sent out as many distress messages as possiible to all ships and stations in the vicinity.
They used the then established practice of ‘CQD’ (Come Quick, Danger) and also the newly recommended ‘SOS’.
One of the two operators survived.
Morse, first used in the 1840s through wire transmission, soon became wireless. It was finally - officially - put to rest in the year 2000 after 160 years of glorious service, Seafarers revered it.
The Life Boat Occupants
Most of the women, who had priority in boarding the Life Boats were of sturdy stock. They were also prepared for the cold and had sufficient warm clothing. Those that did not ere helped by others.
There were many instances of these Life Boats going to the rescue of people in the water and also those clinging on to the overturned raft (20th to be launched).
Those left behind
They were mostly men, who had chosen to abide by the orders of ‘Women and Children First’.
Captain Edward Smith gave the order to put women and children first on the Titanic’s Life Boats. The order was given after Second Officer Charles Lightoller suggested it to the Captain. (His own testimony? He was the senior most Officer to survive).
All the Engineers, the Electricians and most of the boiler staff stayed behind to keep the boiler fires stoked, to keep power systems on the go till the last few minutes. Then, it was too late for all in the Engine Room.
At least a thousand must have jumped into the icy cold waters in the last minutes before she sank. To those who did not drown, death by hypothermia within 20 to 30 minutes was assured in the -2 deg C waters of the North Atlantic.
Raw Statistics from various sources
Gender difference completely overruled even the widest class distinctions.
To the point that even some of the most fabulously wealthy and powerful men on the face of the planet were still secondary in consideration compared to even poor women.
Now there most certainly was a difference in survival rates by class, but a far greater one by gender.
Women - Three out of every four survived.
Men - Only one out of every five survived.
When gender and class were combined (there were three classes of passengers) -
The highest survival rate was for women in first class (virtually every one of them survived). Women in second class were a close second.
The lowest survival rate was for men in second class (less than one in ten, it’s interesting that men in third class had a higher survival rate than those in second, while there was a significantly higher survival rate for women in second class over those of their gender in third class).
What is also interesting is that even among the crew, virtually all women survived (nine out of ten, but among the male crew, only one in five did). I say that is interesting because today, it is a given that the crew - both men and women - are supposed in professional terms to be the last ones to leave and put the lives of passengers first. Not in that time though.
Here are the detailed statistics of the survival rates -
Women
First class - 97%
Second class - 86%
Third Class - 46%
Crew - 87%
Men
First class - 32%
Second Class - 8%
Third Class -16%
Crew - 21%
Children
First Class - 100%
Second Class - 100%
Third Class - 34%
AR
Comments