The responses on this subject are forgivable in that I do not think any of you have ever lowered a wooden lifeboat in the manner in which they were lowered that morning. If you had done so, you would know that these men performed magnificently given the tools they had to work with.
The story about the 'race' between Lowe and Murdoch was either misinterpreted or downright nonsense. I know for an absolute fact that experienced sailormen working at each end of the same boat would attempt to lower evenly. If they did not, the officer in charge would have bawled 7 bells of the nasty stuff out of them.
Next time any of your are near a ship's lifeboat station, have a look at the gear. You will see that the development of life boat launching from the days of
Titanic is, among other things
, as follows:
1. The wind out system for the davits remained but the method of lowering was the simultaneous slacking-off of falls by a single action.
2. Improvement continued. As well as simultaneous single handed deployment of the falls. The deployment of the davits was made whereby they could be wound out simultaneously by the activation of a single lever by a single sailor.
The lifeboat falsl from each davit are led to a central drum where they are slackened off simultaneously by the activation of a single lever either outside or within the boat. The speed of lowering is governed by a weight. Here is a couple of photographs which hopefully show the progress.