The Death Ship E-Book

Victoria Brown

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 353

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Death is a topic we often avoid talking about, but in The Death Ship Victoria Brown faces it head on, taking a deep dive into the fate of Titanic's victims: how did they die? How did their bodies decompose? Were their bodies recovered and buried? What happened to the bodies that went down with the ship? And what of Titanic's legacy? Here, Brown explores the proposed legislative changes, salvage proposals and surge of interest the wreck received shortly after the disaster, alongside the contemporary controversy surrounding the wreck as a shipwreck versus a gravesite. The Death Ship is a fascinating, at times shocking, examination of the ill-fated souls who tragically lost their lives that day – a crucial but seldom told part of Titanic's enduring story. It also gives recognition to the people of Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada, whose unwavering dedication ensured those who died were properly taken care of.

Leseprobe

Please be aware that some parts of this book may prove upsetting. Chapters Two and Three go into detail on certain aspects of death, as those on the ship may have experienced it, and body decomposition.

First published 2025

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, gl50 3qb

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Victoria Brown, 2025

The right of Victoria Brown to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 804 6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall

Contents

Foreword by Steve Hall

Introduction

PART ONE: DEATH AND DECOMPOSITION

1Titanic’s Lifeboats

2 Death

3 Decomposition

PART TWO: THE BODY RECOVERY EFFORT

4 The First Recovery Ship: Mackay-Bennett

5 Remaining Recovery Ships: Minia, Montmagny and Algerine

6 Return to Halifax: Caring for the Dead

7 Burial Services

8 Memorials and Monuments Around the World

PART THREE: THE AFTERMATH: TITANIC’S LEGACY

9 The Inquiries: Proposed Legislative Changes

10 Renewed Interest in Titanic: Cinematic Adaptations, Salvage Proposals and the Discovery of the Wreck (1912–85)

11 Contemporary Controversy: Titanic as a Shipwreck Versus Titanic as a Graveyard

Titanic’s Lost and Recovered Souls

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Foreword

With most tragedies throughout history, it’s the loss of human life that we remember most. The loss of the Titanic in 1912 remains one of the worst maritime disasters outside times of armed conflict. In this book, Victoria Brown looks into how and why so many of those aboard Titanic lost their lives.

The principal reason so many were lost that night was the insufficient provision of lifeboats carried, but as the reader will find, there are other factors that need to be considered. Not all boats were lowered away full, and there was no other ship in close proximity to render timely assistance. The bitterly cold conditions that prevailed at the time were also critical.

Titanic carried sixteen lifeboats under davits, with the additional provision of four ‘collapsible’ Engelhardt lifeboats. The total indicated capacity for all boats was 1,178 persons. When Titanic left Queenstown, there were 2,208 on board. Making up the number of souls the ship carried were 1,317 passengers and 891 crew members. This meant, in a worst-case situation, whereupon every person on board needed to be evacuated, 1,030 would have to be left behind.

On the night of 14 April, Titanic, as we know, collided with an iceberg. An assessment of the damage sustained was made by Harland & Wolff’s Thomas Andrews. His inspection revealed that the ship had been mortally wounded. For Captain Smith and his officers, their ship’s insufficient lifeboat capacity was soon to be realised. Although the Titanic carried 3,560 lifebelts, they would prove to be of limited value for those who hadn’t found a seat in a lifeboat. With a sea temperature of little more than 28°F, their immersion in water that cold would result in death from cardiac arrest, a phenomenon known as hydrocution. In the aftermath of the sinking, all these lifebelts ultimately achieved was to keep their deceased bodies afloat.

For those fortunate enough to have found room in a lifeboat, their salvation would be met by the arrival of the Cunard ship Carpathia. CS (Cable Ship) Mackay-Bennett was contracted by the White Star Line to search the wreck vicinity for bodies, departing from Halifax on 17 April. The crew recovered 306 bodies. Of that number, 116 were buried at sea and 190 returned to port.

Days later, CS Minia was likewise engaged to further search the area. Unfortunately, due to the stress of weather, her crew only recovered seventeen more bodies from the icy sea. In the following weeks, the ships CGS Montmagny and SS Algerine would further search the area, recovering an additional five bodies between them.

In all, 209 bodies were brought back to Halifax and 128 were buried at sea. Sadly, all those other souls lost would remain unaccounted for, lost to the North Atlantic. When looking at the complete number lost in connection with Titanic, a further eight need to be added: those of the Harland and Wolff workers killed during the ship’s construction. The total now amounts to 1,504.

In The Death Ship, Victoria Brown examines in detail the fates of the 1,496 people who perished on that cold and moonless night, examining how those lost died, how their bodies were recovered and where their remains were interred. Did the initial lack of urgency contribute to earlier lifeboats being lowered not fully loaded? And could the provision of additional lifeboats have saved more? Was there anyone to blame? These questions and hundreds more were subsequently asked at post-disaster inquiries, and have fascinated the public ever since.

As for the Titanic, that marvel of the Edwardian era, today she rests over 12,000ft below those icy waters of the North Atlantic – nothing more than a rapidly collapsing and disintegrating hulk on the seafloor, and to many maritime historians, a victim herself.

Steve Hall

Titanic historian and author January 2025

Introduction

When I was a little girl, my mum and dad took me and my sisters to the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra, Northern Ireland. Certain exhibitions always stand out in my mind whenever I think of the museum – the enormous steam trains; the recreation of a rural Victorian primary school, complete with chalkboards and wooden hula hoops for playtime; the preserved heritage buildings that line the streets, including an old-fashioned sweetshop with Lime Fruit, Twisted Barley Sugar, Strawberry Drops and Lemon Drops, all weighed and placed into delicate brown paper bags – but the one I remember in the most vivid detail is its Titanic exhibition.

Before Titanic Belfast opened in 2012, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum was the place to go in Northern Ireland for information about RMS Titanic. While the Titanic museum does a wonderful job of putting the Titanic into context, looking especially at Belfast’s history and legacy as a centre for ship works in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it features few artefacts salvaged from the ship itself. The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, however, is home to several items, including a porthole, part of the ship’s hull, and part of the engine telegraph. They also have garments worn by survivors on the night of the sinking on display.

The most emotional part of the exhibition, for me as a child, lies in the centre of the room. A huge glass case houses a replica of the Titanic mid-sinking, its hull disappearing beneath the black seawater. Around the outskirts of the water, labelled and arranged by class at three of the four corners of the case, are the survivors. These mini figurines are clad in Edwardian garb, coloured in reds, yellows, greens, blues. Beneath them are those who were lost. They are not colourful – they are a ghostly grey. There were many first- and second-class survivors, as to be expected, but the discrepancy between them and the loss of third-class passengers and the ship’s crew was astounding and heartbreaking to me, even as a young child. I remember looking up at my mum, with big sad eyes, and asking her, ‘Why didn’t they save them?’

I couldn’t get over how many little grey figures stood there, lost.

Even at a young age, I was familiar with the Titanic. It’s difficult not to be when you’re from Northern Ireland. My mum adored, and still adores, James Cameron’s 1997 adaptation of the story, so she watched it a lot when we were growing up. Mum never hid the tragedy of the sinking from us, or the horrors that were part of it: she didn’t see the point in trying to shield us from it. Her efforts would have been in vain anyway, for I was a very curious and conscientious child, so I would’ve found out for myself one way or another. My mum always knew how best to answer questions we posed to her, depending on how old we were at the time, and she always did her best to give us as succinct an answer as she could to satisfy our curiosity. She did not forbid us from watching the film, but she would warn us if a potentially scary or upsetting scene was coming up so we could brace ourselves. For me, this was always the scene when the glass dome over the famous Grand Staircase explodes from the sheer force of the water, sending ice-cold waves rushing into the ship and pinning passengers to the stairs, as sparks from the electric lights fly in every direction. Even as an adult, it is a scene that pulls at my heartstrings.

To this day, I remember how scared and sad I used to be while watching Titanic. I love the horror genre but I find it easy to separate myself from it, even from some of the most brutal true crime, but watching Titanic as a kid felt like I was trespassing on something I wasn’t old enough to see yet. I felt mature watching it, but Titanic scared me – not because it was especially scary in the way horror films are, but because I couldn’t help but feel how utterly terrified those people must have been. The opening shot of the film is filled with such hope, and it makes me so sad, even now, because all those smiling, waving people standing aboard the ship’s decks are sailing towards their deaths. Some would die alone, freezing, terrified and confused. Some would die with family, watching their loved ones fight for breath while they were unable to help, as they themselves struggled to stay afloat. Crew members helped passengers before themselves, many going down with their friends inside and alongside the ship. Titanic made me sad, more than anything I had ever come across, more than any other tragedy in history I had known about up to that point. I remember vividly watching television late one night from behind the sofa – my dad had no idea I was there – and he was watching a documentary about the firefighters’ experiences during 9/11. That footage spooked me and upset me a little, but it felt somehow removed from my experience: I had never flown on a plane or been in a high-rise building.

I had, however, been on a boat and set foot in the ocean. I had never felt blistering smoke fill my lungs or flames scorch my skin, but I had felt the roll of a boat deck and ice-cold waves pull the legs out from under me, leaving me powerless and terrified. I could put myself in the position of those who died on the Titanic, and because I could understand (as best as an 8-year-old could, anyway) how they must have felt, that terrified me and upset me to my very core. I used to imagine what it would be like to be on the ship, and the idea of having to leave my dad behind made me cry. Even Jack and Rose, who we know were James Cameron’s fictional creations, broke my heart because they represented so many real people. Rose, trapped in a wealthy but monotonous, depressing life of meaningless and superficial pageantry, betrothed to someone she hated and given no agency just because she was a woman, and Jack, a man whose optimism and genuine love for life brought him as far as the ship’s decks, on his way home, though he never got there. Rose’s lament of ‘he saved me in every way a person can be saved’ is one of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching lines in cinema because it is true, and it is one of the best examples of just how much a single person can alter your entire sense of humanity and experience of life. One person can save another in more ways than one, and Jack did that for Rose. The romantic in me treasures their story. I know some people roll their eyes at the love story at the centre of James Cameron’s version, but for me it makes it. Jack and Rose are two of my favourite fictional characters on screen, not just because of who they are as individuals, but because of what they come to represent for me: real people with real hopes and dreams shattered by that fateful, arguably easily avoided, collision with one block of ice in the middle of the ocean.

I can imagine myself on board the Titanic: I can feel the iron and steel of the steps through my shoes, feel the sharp wind on my cheeks, the rough texture of the ropes against the palm of my hand, the roll of the waves beneath the ship, the polite yet awkward clinking and clattering of cutlery. I can feel the pain in my back from having to sit straight in first class while wearing beautiful but uncomfortable clothing. I can taste Guinness and cigarettes, smell sweat, and hear the boisterous and uninhibited laughter in third class. The moon and stars the passengers and crew watched and died beneath are the same ones above us now. For me, Titanic represents just one of a million ways in which human beings are connected. And it breaks my heart.

There have been many worse tragedies, but the Titanic always sticks with me. The people on the ship thought they were sailing towards New York, the place where anyone could make it no matter how poor they were, where they came from or how educated they were. America represented hope to hundreds of people aboard the Titanic: people who walked the same paths as me through Belfast Harbour, past Harland & Wolff, along the River Lagan. Some may have even sat in the same spot at City Hall, where I go to drink my coffee, or maybe they sat on the very spot where the Titanic memorial to those who were lost now stands. Their determination to make their dreams come true in the Land of Opportunity was rewarded with an ice-cold watery grave.

I loved history as a child. I wanted to be the Indiana Jones of Egyptology (I know my family are laughing reading this). I was fascinated by the Egyptians’ art, their culture and their gods, but mostly I was obsessed with mummies and the preservation process. I used to go around telling everyone about how the ancient Egyptians pulled the deceased’s brain out by their nose with a long hook and separated their organs into jars. I also loved graveyards, especially a small, overgrown one in Carnmoney, Belfast, where I have family buried. My dad used to play a game with my sisters and me, where we had to find the oldest grave we could. No one ever got an actual prize – it was more a matter of pride – but it was the best part of visiting the graveyard for me. I was a bit of a macabre child, obsessed with the more tragic and sad parts of history – captivated by death as a philosophical concept and an aesthetic, as well as a concrete reality – so, in hindsight, it’s not surprising that a story such as the Titanic’s would stick with me well into adulthood.

I think a big part of my fascination with the Titanic also comes from it being connected to the country where I was born. Northern Ireland has a troubled and turbulent history, and to be honest it’s not one I’m particularly drawn to, but the Titanic always pulled me towards it. Perhaps part of it was growing up by the sea, in a small village called Groomsport, where the vast ocean was literally on my doorstep. Having the ocean at my fingertips was a great inspiration for imagination for me as a child. In primary school, one of my favourite craft activities was making a replica of the Titanic using an empty cereal box and old toilet rolls for the funnels (young Victoria usually only gave her little ship three funnels, but I think we can forgive her). Groomsport’s play park is right on the seafront and its biggest climbing frame looks straight out on to the ocean. My sisters and I, along with my childhood best friend Nicola, used to pretend that we were sailors adventuring on the high seas (though, if memory serves me, we more often pretended to be pirates because I think we considered that more exciting).

Perhaps it’s the knowledge that anyone with family from Belfast likely knew and/or is directly related to someone who worked on the ship in Harland & Wolff ’s world-famous shipyard. In my case, I know for certain that my great-great-grandfather Thompson worked on it and my great-great granny McVeigh watched it travel down Belfast Lough when it left Belfast for the last time. She also watched the sea trials from the top of Belfast’s Cavehill. Whenever my great-granny Bash spoke about Titanic, she always prefaced it with ‘she was doomed from the start’, based on what her father, my great-great-grandfather Thompson, told her. He also spoke of a woman in black, who was supposedly seen in the ship’s interior during the fit-out. He said that the ship never had any rats inside or outside when it was being fitted out – a bad omen, for rats are known to flee sinking ships. Maybe it’s just some good ol’ Belfast superstition, but it’s compelling, isn’t it?

The story of the Titanic stayed with me as I grew up. The first short story I ever had published in my university newspaper, The Piano, was a Titanic-inspired ghost story about a young girl who helps reunite the lost spirit of a third-class passenger with his fiancée, who survived the sinking. Looking back, it was not very good – and was maybe a little more sentimental that I’d like to admit – but I like knowing that my first ever published piece of fiction is directly connected to Northern Ireland and to something I loved as a child. The Titanic has a wealth of possibilities for storytellers for numerous reasons, but Sam Willis, author of Shipwreck: A History of Disaster at Sea, puts it best: ‘tales of shipwreck are attractive as straightforward descriptions of human tragedy, in which heroism, sacrifice, and villainy all bubble to the surface in conditions of extreme physical and emotional suffering.’1 He also reflected on the attractiveness of the Titanic’s story. It has endured so long in our popular imagination, he said, because it has ‘such socially and politically charged undercurrents’. Few stories within history so ‘magically captured the essence of their age as did the Titanic’.2 My story was certainly tragic, but it also had a cathartic element: my ghostly passenger got to reunite with his lost love. But the families of many of those who died never got that chance. I think my story was a way for me to explore the part of me that was always heartbroken by that fact.

About halfway through university, when I got into the death positivity movement, spearheaded by US mortician Caitlin Doughty, I started thinking about it in the context of the Titanic. What happened to the Titanic’s dead – those little grey ghostly figures I saw represented at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum? Were their bodies recovered and buried? Where were they buried – Belfast? Maybe New York, the Titanic’s intended destination? Were they buried at sea? How many? Did people want to help retrieve the bodies? How many were recovered from the water? How did the victims actually die – drowning, injuries from falling into the water, hypothermia? What happened to the bodies that sank with the ship? Are they still down there?

Most research into and documentaries about the ship tend to focus on Harland & Wolff and the building of the ship, the actual sinking (the timeline between hitting the iceberg and the final submersion in particular), the rescue effort, the subsequent inquiries into the sinking, and the discovery of the wreck. But what happened to the dead is usually either glossed over or missing altogether. Then Caitlin Doughty answered my (atheist) prayers and released a video conveniently titled ‘What Happened to Titanic’s Dead?’3 She had the same concern I did. In her video, she says, ‘Dead bodies don’t just disappear. Where did they go?’ Thank you, Caitlin – that is exactly what I want to know.

The video is just under six minutes long, but it gives curious researchers such as myself a great starting point for exploring the topic in more depth. Through Caitlin’s video, I learned that over 300 bodies were recovered by several smaller ships, including the Mackay-Bennett – which was nicknamed ‘The Death Ship’ by the local papers, hence the title of this book – and taken to Halifax in Nova Scotia, a place I had never heard of, where they were stored at a makeshift morgue pending identification and burial. I learned how the bodies that stayed in the ocean would have decomposed and how the Atlantic’s underwater climate means there are likely no recognisable bodies on the sea floor, or even trapped within the ship (unlike other sinkings, which will be discussed later in this book). Caitlin also briefly touches on the now infamous photograph of the leather shoes taken at the wreck, and the tension between treasure hunters and marine archaeologists regarding the wreck as a gravesite.

Caitlin’s video is fantastic, but it wasn’t enough for me: I wanted to know more. I wanted every tiny detail I could find. With this idea firmly in mind, I contacted the Titanic Society in Belfast to see if they would be interested in me presenting a talk on the subject. I liaised with the wonderfully enthusiastic Aidan McMichael, who was keen for me to get involved with the society because he shared my interest in a part of the Titanic’s story that is seldom told. I figured that if I’m fascinated by this element of the story, there are bound to be other people who are interested too, but who don’t want to say so because it’s seen as morbid or creepy. Even now, I find myself censoring myself so as not to offend or trigger someone who isn’t as interested in this kind of thing as I am.

But we must remember that part of the Titanic’s enduring legacy is its tragic loss of life. The Titanic’s sinking wouldn’t be nearly as famous had the loss of life been significantly lower; and, on a personal note, I think it’s disrespectful to avoid talking about the victims altogether and what happened to them after they died. The dead body is not a thing to be feared or to shy away from; after all, if the wonderful people of Halifax had turned their backs on the Titanic’s dead, very few of them would have been recovered.

The only things every single human being on this planet have in common are that we are born and we die. We’re happy to discuss birth, but talking about death and dying is avoided at all costs, much to our detriment. Not only are death and dying genuinely interesting things to learn about, but they are something each one of us will have to face, whether we want to or not. That makes it one of the most important things we can talk about while we’re here on earth.

This book is split into three parts:

Part One is about death: the infamous and contentious lifeboat issue that surrounds almost every piece of Titanic scholarship, how those on board the Titanic likely perished, and how their bodies would have decayed.

Part Two is about the body recovery effort. It explores the ways in which the various recovery ships found, identified, and took care of the bodies before bringing them to Halifax. It looks at how the people of Halifax bonded together to care for the dead, including by organising their memorial services and burials. It concludes with an overview of some key Titanic memorials around the world. At the end of this book, I have compiled a list of the souls lost. Even if you don’t read every single name, please take a second to really think about them as individuals. They were people with hopes and dreams for a better life, and the least we can do for them is to think of them, even for a moment. They deserve that.

Part Three explores the proposed legislative changes that came about as a result of the inquiries into the sinking, the cultural interest in the wreck and the numerous proposals to salvage it, and, finally, the contemporary controversy of Titanic as a shipwreck versus a graveyard. It considers the ethics specific to maritime archaeology, the efforts to protect Titanic and its dead, and the concept of dark tourism in light of the recent Titan submarine tragedy. It concludes, for what it’s worth, with my own opinion on what to do with the wreck.

It is important to acknowledge, before diving into this book, that the statements and testimonies of the passengers and crew who survived are not the most reliable. Any seasoned historian knows this, but for those of us who are starting out on our journeys, it’s crucial to address this from the outset. It’s also important to know that this book does not intend to give definitive answers to the questions it explores. There are much more intelligent people out there who have done, and will do, a much better job than I at tackling the enormity of them. And there are many more Titanic historians and scholars who have explored the stories I have included in The Death Ship in much more depth. Many of them are listed within the bibliography and I highly recommend seeking them out. I, like many readers of this book, am at the beginning of my Titanic scholarship journey and a big part of writing this book has been deciding what to include, where to hold back and when to redirect you to the true experts.

Consider this book more of a prompt – an easy way into this extremely detailed and complicated historical topic. I do also hope that this book teaches you a little about the kind and heroic people of Halifax and that it prompts you to learn more about the Titanic. I hope you will even come away with the knowledge and reassurance that talking about death doesn’t have to be quite so scary.

PART ONE

Death and Decomposition

1

Titanic’s Lifeboats

One of the biggest issues people have with Titanic is its lifeboats: were there enough? If not, why? If they had been filled to capacity, how many people would have been saved? Were the crew adequately trained to evacuate the ship? Did the crew dispatch them quickly enough? It is often the first issue people turn to when discussing the sheer number of fatalities during the sinking.

Many of the questions surrounding the lifeboats come from the idea that the ship was unsinkable. A publicity brochure from White Star Line in 1910 for Titanic and Olympic stated that they were designed to be practically unsinkable, though White Star Line stuck to its assertion that the ship had been designed to be unsinkable, not that it was actually unsinkable. There isn’t much of a difference between those two, if you ask me, but White Star Line was always quick to cover its own back. Other publications supported this notion of the ship being unsinkable: the Irish News and Belfast Morning News reported in June 1911 that the hull’s watertight compartments and tried-and-tested watertight doors – which would fall by gravity via hydraulic cataracts when the electric magnet that held them open was deactivated on the bridge – meant that the ship was practically incapable of sinking. The Shipbuilder magazine’s article on Titanic and Olympic agreed.1

Supposedly, a deckhand stated that ‘God himself could not sink this ship’ when asked about it,2 inspiring the famous line in the 1997 film. This notion of the ship’s unsinkability also reached the ears of passengers: Thomson Beattie wrote in a letter to his mother in Fergus, Ontario, that he was ‘coming home in a new, unsinkable boat’;3 and Margaret Devaney said that she boarded the Titanic because she ‘thought it would be a safe steamship’ and ‘had heard it could not sink’.4 It was not that passengers had an almost religious belief that the ship was unsinkable, but that they believed it had been built so well that it could only sink in the most unlikely, nigh-on impossible, of circumstances.

In 1912, the Board of Trade was trying to make ships watertight and become lifeboats in themselves. The Board of Trade rewarded shipbuilders with having to carry fewer lifeboats if their ship was properly sub-divided, which the Titanic was. The ship’s eventual lifeboats numbered twenty – fourteen traditional, two emergency and four collapsible – but the boats could not accommodate everyone; in fact, they could only fit 1,178 of the 2,208 passengers and crew on board. But the ship was unsinkable, a lifeboat in itself, so surely it did not need to fit all those people? This view was supported by Archibald Campbell Holms, a shipbuilding expert (and spiritualist) from Scotland whose 1904 work Practical Shipbuilding: A Treatise on the Structural Design and Building of Modern Steel Vessels became a go-to for industry professionals. In a second edition of the book published in 1918, Holms stated:

The fact that Titanic carried boats for little more than half the people on board was not a deliberate oversight, but was in accordance with a deliberate policy that, when the subdivision of a vessel into watertight compartments exceeds what is considered necessary to ensure that she shall remain afloat after the worst conceivable accident, the need for lifeboats practically ceased to exist, and consequently a large number may be dispensed with.5

This was not an unfair assessment to make and was, in fact, backed up by evidence. In 1909, White Star Line’s ship RMS Republic was sailing from New York to the Mediterranean when it encountered dense fog off the coast of Massachusetts. Despite precautions, it collided with SS Florida of the Lloyd Italiano Line. SS Florida’s bow was crushed, killing three crewmen, while RMS Republic was sliced open on its portside. Two passengers who were asleep in their cabins – William J. Mooney and Mary Lynch – were killed instantly, while a third, Mary’s husband Eugene, would later succumb to his injuries at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. The ship began to list as its boiler and engine rooms flooded with water, thanks to a rip in its side not dissimilar to the damage Titanic later fell victim to. Like Titanic, it did not have enough lifeboats to accommodate all its passengers, but it stayed afloat long enough to transfer everyone via the lifeboats it did have to SS Florida and the Greshem, a cruising cutter and auxiliary gunboat that answered RMS Republic’s distress call. RMS Republic did sink, despite efforts to tow it to New York for repairs as SS Florida was, but the evidence, in White Star Line’s eyes, was clear: in the event of a major accident and / or disaster, its ships could stay afloat long enough to avoid loss of life, and it provided the number of lifeboats accordingly.

It is worth noting, however, that it took almost half a day for RMS Republic’s passengers to be transferred to a rescue ship, and the ship sank at a much slower rate than the Titanic. White Star Line could not accurately predict how fast or slow Titanic would sink (two hours, forty minutes in the end) in the event of a collision, be it an iceberg, rocks or another ship. Even if Titanic had had additional lifeboats, it’s unlikely that they would have saved more lives, unless Titanic had stayed afloat longer, allowing Carpathia to reach more survivors. This was addressed in a speech by Lord Charles Beresford, Chief of the British Channel Fleet, a few weeks after the disaster, in which he lamented that ‘it might be fairly supposed that had the Titanic floated for twelve hours, all might have been saved’.6

The Titanic carried the number of lifeboats – twenty – it was legally required to. At the time of its launch, Titanic was subject to the requirements of section 427 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1894 and the Merchant Shipping Act 1906. These outlined the rules and regulations ships were required to follow to keep their passengers safe. At the time, the number of lifeboats required was based on the tonnage of a ship, not on the number of passengers and crew it could carry. The highest requirement, applied to ships over 10,000 tonnes – Titanic was 46,328 – was to have at least sixteen lifeboats able to accommodate a total of 990 people. The ship’s design would have enabled it to carry over sixty lifeboats, but as these weren’t required within the current regulations, they weren’t incorporated into its construction.

These regulations were wildly outdated. When the regulations were outlined in the 1880s, the largest liners at the time – Etruria and Umbira, sister ships of the Cunard Line, one of White Star Line and Harland & Wolff ’s biggest competitors – had a tonnage of 8,000grt (gross registered tonnes). By the time the legislation came into effect, White Star Line’s own Oceanic surpassed the 10,000-tonnage mark at 17,272 gross tonnes, so the legislation was practically outdated as soon as it was passed. Shipbuilding had advanced unexpectedly quickly in less than twenty years and ships had become much larger than anyone could have predicted. RMS Carmania, another Cunard Line ship, had berths for 2,650 passengers but only enough lifeboats for 29 per cent. In fact, only six of the thirty-nine British liners at the time had enough lifeboats to accommodate all their passengers, and these were the ones that were registered as over 10,000 tonnes.

Ships from companies across the water did not fare much better. SS Amerika (recommissioned USS America during the First World War), launched in 1905 by Harland & Wolff for the Hamburg America Line of Germany, for example, was a 22,225-tonne passenger liner with only enough lifeboats for about 55 per cent of its crew. (Interestingly, SS Amerika also reported icebergs on 14 April 1912, not far from where Titanic struck hers). The legislation had not been updated to reflect any of this, so while White Star Line’s decision not to include more lifeboats did result in a loss of life that could have been avoided, it was covered legally. When asked during the British inquiry why the regulations had not been updated since they had been drawn up, Sir Alfred Chalmers of the Board of Trade stated:

Due to advancements that had been made in shipbuilding it was not necessary for boats to carry more lifeboats. The latest boats were stronger than ever and had watertight compartments making them unlikely to require lifeboats at all. Sea routes used were well-travelled meaning that the likelihood of a collision was minimal. The latest boats were fitted with wireless technology.7

The ship’s lifeboats had the capacity for 1,178 people – far more than what was required in line with the Table and Rules within the Merchant Shipping Acts of 1894 and 1906. So White Star Line, technically, acted within the requirements of the legislation placed upon it and actually provided more lifeboats than legally required. It was only in hindsight, following investigations and inquiries into the sinking, that the British Commissioner recommended that the appropriate number of lifeboats and rafts on board ships such as Titanic should be based on the number of people the ship could carry, not on its tonnage. Many of these recommendations were incorporated into the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, just two years later.

The confidence in Titanic’s unsinkability is arguably evident in the ship’s owners and builders rebuffing plans early on that called for additional lifeboats in the early stages of the ship’s design. At the British inquiry after the sinking, Harold Sanderson of Harland & Wolff argued that more lifeboats than legally required wasn’t feasible. He stated that the proposal was ridiculous and that there were positions on board ‘where only ignorant persons would put boats’.8 Alexander Carlisle, the brother-in-law of Harland & Wolff ’s managing director William James Pirrie, had expected the Board of Trade’s regulations regarding the number of lifeboats legally required to be increased by the time Titanic was launched, but they weren’t, so it is unsurprising that a proposal for more lifeboats was rejected. Following a meeting with Harold Sanderson and the chairman and managing director of White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, Pirrie suggested bringing this number down to forty-eight with the innovative use of a new type of davit, the small crane used for suspending or lowering a lifeboat. It would have provided enough seats for everyone on board, should an emergency occur. It would ‘be a good thing to make reparations for supplying the larger number of boats’,9 Pirrie had said, and Ismay agreed. This was rejected. It was implied at the British inquiry that the real reason for this rejection was that White Star Line objected to ‘depriving the boat deck of space for promenading’,10 but this was staunchly denied by Sanderson.

It is worth noting, too, that it was found at the American inquiry that a new type of davit was fitted ‘throughout in view of coming changes in official regulations. It was considered wise by the owners that these changes should be thus anticipated, and so make it possible to double, or even treble, the number of boats without any structural alterations, should such increase ultimately prove to be necessary.’11 When questioned about this at the British inquiry, Sanderson claimed that his firm had not authorised the production of these davits, that he was unaware that the ships he was working on should have a larger capacity of lifeboats, and that the davits were not installed, as far as they were concerned, with the anticipation of expected changes to the legislation.

A final proposal for thirty-two lifeboats was put forward later, but it was also rejected, as it was not required by the Board of Trade. At the British inquiry, Sanderson was asked, ‘With your experience, which is a very extensive shipping experience, and also in the light of this recent calamity, do you not think now that some of this space which is devoted to millionaires’ suites and extra deck promenades could not possibly be better utilised for the purpose of ensuring the safety of all the passengers?’ He responded simply, ‘If there was anything we could do to ensure the safety of the passengers the question of millionaires’ suites would disappear in a moment.’12

The final agreed number of lifeboats was twenty. Sanderson stated during the British inquiry that the ‘additional boats were put on, to be on the safe side’.13 Carlisle was not happy with the decision, firmly believing that Titanic did not have enough lifeboats, but he signed off on the lifeboats anyway. When questioned about signing off the report after the sinking, he said, ‘I do not know why I did. I am not generally soft … but I must say, I was very soft the day I signed that.’14

Walter Lord, author of one of the most famous books about Titanic, A Night to Remember, argued in his later work, The Night Lives On: Thoughts, Theories and Revelations about the Sinking of the ‘Unsinkable’ Ship – Titanic, that money was a factor in White Star Line’s decision to cut the number of lifeboats originally proposed. He believed that equipping Titanic with enough lifeboats to accommodate all passengers and crew would have drawn attention from the press, who would put two and two together and realise that many, if not all, modern ships did not have enough lifeboats for everyone on board. This would have led to a review of the regulations, which would, in turn, cost White Star Line and shipbuilders money they were not willing to part with. This is supported by the testimony of Alexander Carlisle, who noted that changing the number of lifeboats would have meant that White Star Line would have had to ‘consider their other fleet and their own steamers’.15 Reverting to the previous proposal of thirty-six lifeboats would have cost under £1,300, a fraction of the £1.5 million (the equivalent of £170 million today) it spent on Titanic. This is likely speculation on Lord’s part, but given what we know about White Star Line’s attitude, it would not be surprising to find out that this concern influenced its decision.

Contrary to the argument that more lifeboats would have saved more lives, Sir Alfred Chalmers of the British Board of Trade believed if there had been fewer lifeboats, there would have been more of a rush to fill the boats and more people would have been saved. We’ll never know if this would have been the case, but it is an interesting point to note. In fact, in a documentary for National Geographic, Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron,16 it was argued that more lifeboats may have been a hindrance to the people on board, as the lifeboats that were there were coming down on top of each other and they would have got in the way of people trying to make it to higher ground. In the end, around 1,496 people perished, so even if the lifeboats had been filled to capacity, many passengers and crew still wouldn’t have survived.

In the end, while Titanic