John Edward Hart: Dubious Hero

Appendix | Tables | References | Endnotes

Appendix

Below are Tables that encapsulate basic data on: 1) the occupancy of passengers in lifeboats launched from the Titanic (not including those who died in boats); and 2) the times of departure of lifeboats from the ship. These Tables are referred to in the text.

Occupancy data is notoriously questionable (Encyclopedia Titanica expressly warns against their use). This is especially true when it comes to identifying the lifeboats of individual passengers in the second and third classes; the kind of microscopic research that marks much of the research on the Titanic. Our concern in this piece is, however, with more macrocosmic questions of class and gender about which reasonable conclusions, perhaps, can be drawn, despite the limitations on a micro level. As a hedge, we employ two separate data sets, the sources being, respectively, Encyclopedia Titanica and Michael A. Findlay's Appendix 2 to Titanic: Women and Children First by Judith Geller (1998).

It is useful, as a hedge, that the two sources take disparate approaches to the data. The Encyclopedia Titanica is highly speculative, identifying virtually each of almost five hundred surviving passengers with a boat, (adding in the case of only a tiny proportion of passengers some qualification, to indicate uncertainty). Findlay on the other hand only identifies a passenger with a lifeboat when there is a high degree certainty. Thus he provides observations of about 95% of surviving first class passengers, 53% of second class survivors, and 40% of third class survivors.

Findlay's data is presented (Tables 2 and 4) both in raw and adjusted forms. The latter provides a convenient means of comparing the two data sets, and also points up where Findlay's observations might be distorted. The adjustment is the following. The quantity of passengers, in a given class, not identified by Findlay with any lifeboat, are simply allocated to lifeboats, in the proportion of the known identifications. These quantities are then added to the known identifications for each class in each lifeboat. Thus, for instance, 191 first class passengers are each identified with one or another of the lifeboats by Findlay, out of 202 first class passengers placed in boats by the Encyclopedia Titanica. The basic adjustment we make, then, is to allocate (quantitatively) the 11 passengers not identified in the raw data to lifeboats according to the proportions that lifeboats are occupied by the other 191, and to add this to the raw data. This gives us adjusted figures, using Findlay's data, for the total first class passengers occupying each lifeboat, and adding together the three classes we arrive at adjusted figures for total passengers occupying each lifeboat as well.

Anomalies can arise from this method of adjustment to the extent that there is either a disproportionate dearth of information, or a surfeit of it, in relation to particular lifeboats. One sees this in Findlay's data on three of the boats: Findlay identifies only 3 passengers in Lifeboat 12 (the adjusted figure is 6) and 0 in Lifeboat 16. On the other end, the raw data for Collapsible C is 27 third class passengers, which when adjusted becomes 70 (almost 80 occupants for the whole boat when 2 first class passengers-one of them very famous indeed-are included, as well as about 6 crew members). The capacity of Collapsible C is 49 (Encyclopedia Titanica 1996-2001). These anomalies are touched upon in the text of the piece.

In two minor instances, where there is information that is certain, it would be a distortion to adjust Findlay's raw data, so we don't. The relevant figures involved are in bold-face in Tables 2 and 4. The first instance is the 24 first class passengers in Lifeboat 4, each of which--following Gracie (1913, in Winocour, 1960: 202)--are listed identically by the Encyclopedia Titanica and Findlay. The second is the 14 passengers in Lifeboat 2, 8 from the first class and 6 from the third. Here again the Encyclopedia Titanica and Findlay lists are identical. The allocation of quantities of unidentified passengers to the various lifeboats within each class, does not therefore include 32 first class passengers and 6 from the third class. Thus, in reference to the example we offered above, we did not use a universe of 191 known observations and 202 first class survivors altogether to adjust Findlay's data on first class passengers occupancy, but excluded the (24 + 8) = 32 survivors known to have occupied Lifeboats 4 and 2. Thus we employed (191 - 32) = 159 known identifications out of (202 - 32) = 170 first class survivors in total. Along the same lines the known identifications of third class survivors used was (71 - 6) = 65 out of (176 - 6) = 170 third class survivors in total.

The second dimension of the Tables below constitutes the times at which the various lifeboats were launched. We connect the Encyclopedia Titanica and Findlay data, respectively, to each of two time-tables of the departures of the lifeboats. One is the conventional, and still widely accepted time-table put forward by the Parliamentary Inquiry (Report, 1990: 38). The other is articulated by Paul Quinn in his Dusk to Dawn (1999). It can be seen that Quinn parts from the conventional view when it comes to the order of several boats launched from the port side of the ship.[18] In the front, the launchings of Lifeboats 6 and 8 are reversed from that of the Parliamentary Inquiry, and in the rear, the launching of Lifeboat 10 is placed after that of Lifeboats 12, 14 and 16 rather than before. Lastly, Quinn argues (1997: 26) that Collapsible C did not leave the ship at 1:40AM as stated by the Parliamentary Inquiry, but rather at 2:00AM.

Table 1

Parliamentary Inquiry Departure Times/ Encyclopedia Titanica Lifeboat Occupancy Data