Why were boats 2 4 & D only half filled when they were the last boats to leave the titanic

[jonathan mall]

I am very disgusted on the nessessary loss of life in how the last 3 boats left the Titanic only half filled, WHY WAS IT WOMEN & CHILDREN ONLY ON THE PORT SIDE? Do you all know how many men died because if this. Boat 2 capacity 40 left with 18, Boat 4 capacity 65 left with about 30, John Jacob Astor was refused entry to this boat and there were about 35 empty spaces BUT HE WAS LEFT TO DIE!, EVEN A 13 YEAR OLD BOY WAS ALMOST REFUSED TO ENTER THIS BOAT! Collasible D left with only 22 and this was the last boat launched. DO YOU ALL KNOW THAT SO MANY MEN DIED THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE IF THE BOATS WERE FILLED TO CAPACITY. AFTER THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN ENTERED THE BOATS THE MEN SHOULD HAVE FILLED THE VACANT SEATS LIKE THEY WERE ALLOWED ON THE STARBOARD SIDE.

Jonathan Mall

 

[Delia Mahoney]

Jonathan,
1. None of the loading officers knew that there were not enough lifeboats.
2. They afraid that boats crashed out if they allowed get in too many people.
3. It was very bad organization... many men tried get in to the boats before women and children. They thought they must lowered lifeboats quickly because the men could attacked boats. Lifeboat 15 is good example.

All the best,

Delia

 

[Jeremy Lee]

>>1. None of the loading officers knew that there were not enough lifeboats.<<

Only idiots could have known there enough lifeboats for all on board the Titanic!

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Jonathan, is there some reason why you're being so passionate about this in the here and now? Not that you don't have the right to feel as you will, but it won't really change anything.

There was a lot in the way of miscommunication and misunderstanding that night and each officer had to make some very tough judgement calls to keep a really bad situation from becoming a lot worse. Could they have done better?

Yes.

I don't think anybody would question that.

However, we need to be wary of making judgement calls which can only be seen through the prism of our understanding of the situation. They didn't know the whole of what we know now. They had to make do with whatever information, instructions and understanding they had of the situation at the time. That situation being a sinking ship with more bodies then there were lifeboats to stuff them all into and a very real fear of panic that could only have cost them more lives.

If you want to understand the situation from the perspective of those who had to live through it and explain themselves afterwards, you really need to study the testimony of the officers themselves. Fortunately, this is easily accomplished by going to The Titanic Inquiry Project which has the complete transcripts available on line. Being mindful of the fact that what they said may not always be reliable, you'll at least have the advantage of getting your information streight from the source.

 

[jonathan mall]

Michael. Sorry if i am too passonate it is just how many lives were lost on the night that should have not been

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Michael. Sorry if i am too passonate it is just how many lives were lost on the night that should have not been.<<

And being passionate about it changes....what?

92 years ex post facto is a little too late to get worked up about things and rightly or wrongly, the events were what they were. That makes any little crusade pointless as anyone who might have possibly benefited from same is either long dead, long past caring, or have long ago gotten over it.

Of course, if you choose to get worked up about it, that's certainly your perogative, but you can't change any of it and neither can the rest of us. The most you can hope to do is understand it, and imposing our own highly subjective value judgements on the matter only gets in the way of that.

 

[Christian J Cody]

Well, those officers did their best to launch those boats. Most of the passengers and crew not rescued yet were either back at the stern or still lost below decks. Lifeboat 2, Launched at 1:45 AM, contained 13 Passengers; 7 First Class and 6 Third Class, plus four crew, total of 17. Not much for a boat that could have held 23 More. They were ordered by Lightoller to row aft to the Gangway door on E-Deck to take on more, but the doors were locked shut. During the movie, a Lifeboat is seen rowing away as the propellers begin rising up out of the water, that was Lifeboat 2.
Lifeboat 4, the last of the big boats, had been lowered even with A-Deck, and should have been the first away, but was forgotten after being blocked by the windows enclosing A-Deck. It took them an hour to take down the windows, I would have just used a sledgehammer. At that time, about 40 First Class women and Children were still on the ship. 25 of them boarded Lifeboat 4, along with 8 second class passengers. 16 Crewmen also boarded, making its capacity just around 50, the highest number any of those forward boats carried. Collapsible C proudly contained 38 Third Class passengers to safety, 5 Men, 18 Women, and 15 Children, the highest amount of Third class Passengers out of all the boats. Along with 2 First Class Passengers and 6 crew members, Collapsible C was launched with only one empty seat. J. Bruce Ismay helped Mariana Assaf and the Moubarek Family into the Lifeboat before taking a seat himself.
Collapsible D, the last of the boats launched, contained only 21 people, about half its capacity, 5 Men, 13 Women, and 3 Children were rescued.
Total, 133 People were rescued in these boats,
41 First Class, 10 Second Class, 53 Third Class, and 29 crew. About 20% of the survivors.

 

[Holly Peterson]

Jonathan, you have EVERY RIGHT to be passionate about the Titanic, and EVERY RIGHT to be angry about the lives that were carelessly lost! I ask you, Michael, what's the point of having an interest in something if you don't allow yourself to get passionate over it? The reason why so many died on the Titanic was and still is a topic of much interest, and I believe much of it was due to sheer human error. Everybody on this site thinks too highly of the officers and captain to even consider that they made mistakes in loading the lifeboats. But I am with you, Jonathan, I think that the last boats shoudl have been filled to capacity, with men, women and children.

 

[Inger Sheil]

Hallo Holly -

I note that the posts you address are over five years old - I appreciate that you evidently feel strongly on this point, but I'm not sure that reviving this particular thread and taking Michael to task will serve much of a purpose. Passion is one thing - I think we're all passionate about the subject to some degree or another, or we wouldn't be posting here - but posting entire sentences in all-caps indicates shouting and is not terribly helpful in a reasoned discussion, and I can understand why Michael responded as he did.

I'd tend to disagree that "Everybody on this site thinks too highly of the officers and captain to even consider that they made mistakes in loading the lifeboats." There are some individuals who would adhere to the idea that no errors were committed and the officers performed flawlessly, but they are few and far between. Michael himself says explicitly that the officers could have done better. I agree with him. I think that the surviving officers themselves were self-critical on some matters in analysing their own performances, and had they been armed with the knowledge we have today, or had they the ability to revisit they experience, they would have handled the evacuation differently. I've come across a sense of a sometimes contradictory response to how they viewed their own performance - on the one hand, they seem to have genuinely believed that overall they did the best they could under the circumstances. On the other hand, there were instances in which they seem to have felt that they did not perform as they would have wished. Pitman and the return of the lifeboats is one instance. Harold Lowe, too - while he always insisted in his legal evidence that he had to wait as long as he did to return, his son told me that he believed he father wished he had returned earlier. I think these contradictions are not unexpected - on the one hand, they no doubt had been trying to do their best with the knowledge they were armed with and the resources at their disposal. On the other hand, they were intelligent men who would have known without doubt that they had made mistaken judgement calls and just outright errors (the lowering of Boat 4 springs to mind, for example).

I'm interested in viewing the event in the context of what passengers and crew did know, what they didn't know, and what they thought they knew. I'm angry that anyone at all had to die - and that includes the officers who perished. But before condemning men who were experienced professionals chosen for their talent and expertise, I'd like to know why they made the decisions they did - what they got right, where they made mistakes, and why they made them.

I've spoken to families who lost loved ones in the Titanic sinking, and know of the grief that was felt through successive generations due to the events of that night. I can understand anger - in many instances, it's justified - but I do think we should look at events in context and use our emotions and empathy with care in historical analysis. Both have their place, but they can also cloud our perceptions of what happened, and why.

 

[Jason D. Tiller]

Well said, Ing.

 

[Holly Peterson]

I'm sorry I made such an aggressive and confrontational remark. I don't know what I was thinking. I didn't intend to get Michael into a fight, and I was aware that the posts were several years old; I just felt angry that Jonathan wasn't getting much support, especially since I feel like Jonathan a lot of the time, getting very passionate/frustrated/depressed over things that happened so long ago and cannot be fixed. Please understand that I am not the sort of person who goes out of their way to cause trouble, and I am sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings.

 

[Kat Komorowski]

I wouldn't worry about it too much if I were you, Holly. We all have those days (me especially!!!). I've done a lot worse then just state an opinion on this forum and (hopefully!) I have not been shunned as of yet!

I'm also glad to see I'm not the only one who gets worked up about things long past doing anything about! There are definitely worse things in the world, and I have always been a stickler for 'those who forget their pasts are destined to repeat it'. The Titanic was an unfortunately harsh but necessary lesson to the world, and it's a sad man who doesn't learn from his mistakes; (not to mention d*mned fool who doesn't learn from other peoples! )

Have a great day!

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>I ask you, Michael, what's the point of having an interest in something if you don't allow yourself to get passionate over it?<<


Mmmmmmm...Holly, passion is one thing and not always a bad thing but the trick is to not allow it to cloud one's judgement. As I indicated, it doesn't change what happened but as Inger pointed out, it can mess up one's objectivity, and in any historical studies, I believe that objectivity is what is most needed if you really wish to understand what happened and why it all went down as it did.

Could the Titanic's officers have done better that night?

Damned right they could have and if any of them were available to interview today, I think they would be the first to admit it. These men were a lot of things both good and not so good, but they were niether foolish nor blind.

The thing is, they had to work things out as they went armed only with the flawed knowladge and incomplete understanding of the situation they had at the time! They didn't have the advantage of knowing any of what we know in the present day by virtue of pure hindsight.

Shucks, I'd like to think I could have done better, but had I only known what they had known as the events unfolded before them, I wouldn't bet my beer money on it!

 

[Inger Sheil]

No worries, Holly - as Kat says, I think we've all been there. I'd be a hypocrite if I claimed my own strong feelings on certain subjects aren't very evident in some of my posts, particularly in my early posting history. I believe you're channelling passion for this subject into positive and productive directions, exploring this tragic event.

 

[Tad G. Fitch]

Going back to the title of this thread (this is probably beating a dead horse since this thread was started years ago), where did the information that Collapsible D left only half-full come from?

I would have to double-check my notes, but I believe the capacity of the collapsibles was 47 passengers, and somewhere around 44 ended up in Collapsible D, and somewhere between 38-44 in Collapsible C. Although we can't be sure of the exact number, it was closer to capacity than it was to being half-full.

Kind regards,
Tad