Sonja, I'm afraid nobody was working with a stopwatch that night, so trying to figure out how long it took for anyone to go back is a bit of a problem. Anything you're likely to encounter at best will be a guess-timate which may well have little to do with reality.
I'm sure that if all the boats had gone back, a few more lives could have been saved. The thing is, how does one get a group of cold, frightened and ill-trained passengers and crew to either organize an effort or exercise some initiative? Especially when there was a very real fear at the time that any boats going back could be swamped by people trying to get aboard.
