As I said in my book, I believe the boats got away from the ship quite quickly to avoid being "bombed" by people jumping from the open upper decks. A 150-pound man falling 40 to 60 feet could do quite a bit of damage to a wooden lapstrake boat, let alone the person he landed on.
After Titanic disappeared there may not have been as much time to rescue "swimmers" as is generally thought. The reason was hypothermia which is the lowering of the core body temperature to the point where death occurs. From information (undocumented, but presumably reliable) in my pleasure boating files, I understand that fatal heat loss in an adult male usually occurs within 15 minutes after being submersed in 32 degree F water. Older people and children will not survive that long. Large adult women may survive as long as an adult male, but most women are 10% smaller so chill quicker.
From my water safety texts, I gather that more than half of the voices would have been stilled within the first 5 to 7 minutes after the ship foundered. Only the strongest survivor would have been calling for help after 15 minutes.
The truly sad fact is that most of the apparently lifeless victims floating in their life vests 15 minutes after the sinking were not yet dead. Many of them might have been revived with the proper knowledge and care. Today, our rescue workers have a saying that someone should never be declared "stone cold dead." Instead, they re-warm the victim who is declared dead only if "warm and still dead."
Unfortunately, it takes specialized equipment and a trained medical staff to re-warm people who are so hypothermic that they have lost consciousness. Neither was available on the morning of April 15, 1912 in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Lightoller and the men on
collapsible B did not become fatally hypothermic because they climbed out of the water and onto the overturned hull. Heat loss when submerged is much faster than in air. The men's frozen clothing may also have helped to hold in some of their body heat. Those who were wearing wool were especially lucky because it gives off a slight amount of heat when wet. (No, I don't know why.)
In the year 2000 we know about hypothermia, a subject virtually unknown outside the medical community in 1912. Thus, the lifeboat commanders could not use the quick mortality rate from hypothermia to justify not going back to rescue swimmers. I agree with most researchers who believe the shock of the sinking prevented clear thinking and quick action. Very quickly, the opportunity to rescue anyone disappeared as those voices grew quiet one by one.
-- David G. Brown
