What if Lightoller had the Watch

[Michael H. Standart]

Inger asked; "Is there any vaguely comparable instance where, with an uncertain time frame, large number of passengers, small number of deck crew and an inadequate lifeboat supply, the theoretical ideal was met?"

Not that I'm personally aware of. Any accident I've even so much as glanced at in which the vessel sank or was rendered a constructive total loss seemed to happen one of two ways
a)The ship was overwhelmed so quickly that nobody had time to worry about it(They were too busy trying to stay alive and the plans either were never implemented or never had a chance to be implemented) or,
b)There was time for help to arrive and evacuate most of the passengers and crew, (Like the RMS Republic.)

Examples of overwhelmed quickly would include such as the Lusitania, the RMS Atlantic, General Slocum, Yarmouth Castle, and the Morro Castle.

The Titanic stands as unusual IMO insofar as they actually had some time to think some things through. That doesn't happen to often.

Cordially,
Michael H. Standart

 

[Dave Gittins]

The Titanic incident was certainly highly unusual, as Mike says. I can't think of a wreck in which a really large number of passengers, say 1,000+, were saved by means of the ship's own lifeboats.

There have been recent instances of large numbers of passengers taking to the boats safely to escape a fire on board but in these cases the ship survived. Maybe Captain Wood can recall such a case.

 

[Charmaine Sia]

Inger,

>There wasn't time to institute a uniformly fair selection process - let Astor go because his wife was pregant (not because of his class), but does one then let in every man who claims his wife is similiarly 'in a delicate condition'?

We'll never know what kind of selection process there was, if there was one in the first place to begin with. Astor's wife got onto a lifeboat on the port side with Lightoller on duty, not on Murdoch's side. One wonders what would have happened if they were on the other side, though.

Erik,

>Is it possible that perhaps Lightoller stuck to the rules of Women and Children first or misunderstood them as Women and Children ONLY.

We'll never know if it was either one of them - I don't suppose Lightoller ever made this public knowledge. My personal guess would be that he interpreted it as "Women and Children (strictly) first" and while the women and children were loading no men were allowed at all until the all the women and children had all got on board - which would end up being roughly equivalent to "Women and Children ONLY" because there weren't enough lifeboats to load the men later on.

Murdoch on the other hand probably interpreted it as "Women and Children first" for every lifeboat, then whatever empty spaces there are the men could take.

Regards,
Charmaine

 

[Inger Sheil]

The other factor to consider is that Lightoller did not intend those places to remain permanently unfilled - he was hoping to load more passengers from the gangway doors.

As we know - now - that plan was doomed to failure. But it must have seemed preferable to Lightoller to load people from two points rather than attempt to assemble them all on the boat deck and 'A' deck.

The officers had misjudged the feasibility of loading from the gangway doors, but given the distance from the boat deck to the water at least initially (a factor in the reluctance of some to enter the boats, no doubt) and practical considerations such as milling crowds getting foul of the falls and equipment, it must have seemed an attractive option rather than lowering full boats the entire distance from the boat deck.

 

[Erik Wood]

The only examples that I can think of that are recent is when one of the Princess boats ran aground and they flooded a majority of the tanks and the Captain had the passengers abandon ship. But not by lifeboat. He used the tenders. The QE2 was abandoned some years ago when she lost steam pressure. I believe it was the Sea Venture that came to her rescue and I believe that Tenders and Tenders only were used.

About 6 years ago the Holiday was abandoned off Grand Cayman a evolution that I was a part of as staff Captain. The captain had the made the decision to evcuate and then in the middle of the process changed his mind. I think I wrote in more detail about this in the New Age thread a while back.

During the Ectasy fire it was decided by the Captain that it was safer for the passengers to be aboard rather then attempt to abandon ship. The Coast Guard disagreed but the Captain did what he wanted.

Erik

 

[Michael H. Standart]

We mentioned the QE2 incident in our Californian article three months ago. What happened there is that the QE2 suffered the loss of all three boilers because of the feed water being contaminated with fuel, and the engineers were unable to correct the problem. The emergency generators were not up to the task of supporting a ship full of passengers so the Sea Venture was sent out to fetch them up and bring them ashore. (The QE2's crew remained aboard their ship.)

The transfer was made with four of the Sea Venture's tenders which made six round trips each. It was literally a day long operation.

Cordially,
Michael H. Standart