Other crew members (like Hurst if I remember right) who worked at that boat reported that boat B landed overturned on the boat deck and was then washed off. Lightoller stated the same in 1912.
After the emergency cutters were launched, how did the crew/officers attach the collapsible boats to the davits? Did the pull the falls back up to deck level, then crank the davits back in, raise the canvas sides on the boats, and then attach the falls to the boat and hoist it over the ships side again? Or did they do it another way?
In multiple books I have read that the collapsible boats on the boat deck were stowed upside down. Does anybody why they were upside down? How did the crew flip the boat back over to attach it to the davits?
Many Titanic books, notably the quickly-written potboilers knocked out by non-specialist journalists, involve little research and simply repeat the errors of earlier and equally unreliable books, and this is a case in point. The collapsibles were NOT stowed upside down. I don't think any book has ever suggested that was so except in the case of the pair on the roof of the officers' quarters. The delusion of thinking they were inverted might be partly due to Lightoller's comment about collapsible B: "We just had time to tip the boat over" - by which he meant tip it over the edge of the roof. It was the right way up at that time, but as we all know it was upside down by the time it hit the deck.
Was it pushed upside down? My understanding is the boat was too big and heavy to be pushed upside down, but when it was pushed towards the davits, one side was hooked up and in the process of being winched over before the other side was attached, the wave came, and twirled the boat upside down as one end was attached and as it washed over into the sea it landed upside down with Harold Bride falling into the water with it as it twirled over with him temporarily trapped underneath.
I have often read emergency lifeboats #1 & #2 being referred to as "cutters". Apart from their smaller capacity and the fact that they were kept swung out ready for emergency use, were there any other constructional or nautical differences between those two and the standard lifeboats #3 to #16? I mean in the way they handled etc.
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