Do we know who was in which lifeboat and which lifeboats collapsed

[Martin Owen Cahill]

"you don't bother keeping a logbook noting what time each boat is launched. You have much more important concerns...like just staying alive!"

"However, this issue was less pertinent in the case of the Lusitania and, in consequence, the questions were not asked in such detail."

Yes I agree with both of you.
Michael,
It gets worse the faster they sink.
I think 18 minutes is bad enough. The film I see in my mind when I read it is horrific. The chaos wouldn't help any attempt to note what was going on in detail. How many never made it to the open decks?

Stanley,
both the Titanic and lusitnia inquiries were politcal. The Titanic was about safety standards in the maritime industry while the Lusitania is investigated within the context of a nation at war and trying not to give its enemies and advantage over the event hence in camera session and the selection of witnesses and the nulification of Joseph Marichel.

Oliver Bernard was not called because he was adament there was only one torpedo. Seen against the allegations that the Lusi was carring ammunition and war materials were witnesses selected in a way to deflect attention from the question of the second explosion. It was a second torpedo and no arms in the hold. I found Lauriat's thoughts on it interesting. He was highly critical of the verdict especially in the area of boat maintainace and the competency of the boat crew. I think Turner could have done more in the in this regard. The boats in my view should have been lowered to the rails and left snubbed and also ensuring that all falls release gear is readilly avaliable to anyone at the falls.
In fairness to the crew many things were very much against them. men who should have worked the boats, many of them were apparently lost in the baggagee hold.


regards

Martin

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

Every enquiry is, to some extent "political", but in a free country with a free press it is very difficult hide the facts - even in wartime.

Reading "between the lines", the truth (or something approaching it) is clear even in the case of Lord Mersey's WWI enquiry. It seems obvious, for example, that the wartime crew were not particularly efficient because many of the best men were in the Navy, and this must have had an impact on their struggle to launch the boats in difficult conditions. Similarly, wartime economies meant that not all of the Lusitania's boilers were in use, and she had thereby lost much of her high-speed advantage.

The vessel was almost certainly carrying war supplies of one kind or another, but I think this was regarded by Lord Mersey as a red herring. The fact is, the Germans had "crossed a line" and escalated the war by sinking a merchant vessel. This was an act of "wilful and wholesale murder" - not my words, not Lord Mersey's words but those of the Kinsale Coroner, a Sinn Fein supporter and no particular friend of the British state.

 

[Geoff Whitfield]

Staff Capt. Anderson's body was recovered and interred in Kirkdale Cemetery, Fazakerely, Liverpool.
The headstone reads:

Capt.J.C.Anderson
SS Lusitania
7th May 1915
Aged 48 years
A Perfect Manly Life
Completed Justly
& Well Spent.

Geoff

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Every enquiry is, to some extent "political", but in a free country with a free press it is very difficult hide the facts - even in wartime. <<

Wanna bet?

In the U.K. at least, the laws were a bit different and in wartime, one only need invoke the contemporary version of The Official Secrets Act to keep some things from coming out. Even in the U.S. the government was able to censor the hell out of things as late as World War Two and get away with it.

In any event, some portions of the Inquiry were held In Camera, which is to say behind closed doors. Further, even if certain embarrassing facts were to come out, an official inquiry offers wonderful opportunities for putting a spin on things so that the people who sare running it can use the facts to lie through their teeth. They did that with Titanic, and the Lusitania was no different.

 

[Tarn Stephanos]

This thread is getting interesting!

Does anyone know the name of the style of davit used on Lusitania? What were the advantages-or disadvantages of Lucy's davits over the wellin style davits?

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Does anyone know the name of the style of davit used on Lusitania?<<

Not offhand.

The Welin type davits on the whole were reletively easier to use, and quicker to swing out. All you needed to do to deploy them was to swing them out with a handcrank and they would tilt over into the proper position. The reason I say "reletively" is because I've done this with the set on the Willis B. Boyer and it's still pretty hard on your back, but at least you didn't have to try to twist them around.

 

[Martin Owen Cahill]

I know them as Quadrant or Radial davits and they date as far back to the Great Eastern to my reading. I am familiar with the Welin davit deployment having seen ANTR and Titanic but the older style davits are a different story. At least they had been swung out the day before.

cheers

Martin

 

[Tarn Stephanos]

I'm curious, did Cunard switch to the Welin style davits on their later liners, such as Aquitania?

 

[Jim Kalafus]

The US Limitation of Liability testimony is far better than the gormless Mersey material, if one wants to find useful Lusitania material. However, even there one hits the proverbial wall, because every time a question was asked that might have established Cunard's liability, the company's lawyer objected to it, and the court sustained the objection. (It was 1917, and there was no way that anything other than exhonoration was going to happen) What is fortunate is that although the objections were sustained, the questions that raised them, and the answers to same, were not stricken from the record. So, although these tangents were not pursued in depth, at least a partial record remains of them.

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

I cannot, at the present time, find any details about the davits, but would suggest that in the context of the Lusitania the 26 collapsible boats would have played a major part in the rescue - it was very difficult to launch the conventional boats, whereas the collapsibles acted as life rafts when they were washed into the sea.

 

[Martin Owen Cahill]

Hi Jim,

I'd love to get my hands of the transcripts of that Limitation of Liability testimony . Maybe if it comes online. I have heard so many bits and pieces that I haven't seen in the Mersey hearings,

rgards

Martin

 

[J Kent Layton]

Tarn,

As Martin pointed out, they were round-bar radial davits. They were common installations on liners of the period - the Germans used them, the "Big Four," etc.; the now-infamous Welin davits used on TITANIC were much newer and less commonly seen. The AQUITANIA also used the round-bar radial davits.

There are some details on the lifeboat setup and on the davits in my book.