Would more lifeboats have actually helped?

moot point
it had so few lifeboats by design
the federal reserve act was too big in the plan to let certain peepole on board that boat survive

>>17834486
>some britbong company that would have far more to lose from losing one of their very prised and expensive ships (which they did lose out hard on) was all in on some plan by some americans thats only affect on them would be due to the USA becoming a more major power several decades in the future due to a series of events even the biggest giga brai would be unable to accurately predict for such a plan

No.
James Cameron built replicas during the filming of his Titanic movie and found out that it took like 20 minutes to launch each boat.
You also have real-time simulations of the sinking that confirms the long time to release the boats:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN4m1_S-vJk
They dont get the last boat off its holdings until its already almost submerged.

They could probably have saved an extra 400 lives if they actually filled the boats. Most of them were not even half full.
Ultimately probably every soul would have been rescued if the SS Californian had responded.

>>17834568
>20 minutes
sorry, 10 minutes

>>17834475 (OP)
in reality it was a bad ship, a prime example of British decline. they should've give the contract to German engineers.

>>17834486

The ship was literally designed to accommodate as many as 64 lifeboats. The number actually to be fitted on the ship was reduced to 32 during construction and then to 16 (the legally required absolute minimum for a ship of Titanic's weight classification) to increase space on the First-Class promenade, then bumped up again to 20 with the addition of four collapsible boats. So Titanic was actually carrying more boats than was legally required to at the time.

>>17834568

They weren't even able to actually launch all 20 boats that they had, Collapsibles A and B were were both swamped and floated free of the ship as it began its final plunge. If anything, additional lifeboats might have actually increased the number of fatalities as each launch would have taken substantially longer.

>Ultimately probably every soul would have been rescued if the SS Californian had responded.

Nah, SS Californian

1. Was too small to accommodate everyone, having less than half of the displacement of the Carpathia (which had struggled to accommodate all 700 survivors) and 1/10th of the Titanic's.

2. Had already powered down its boilers at the time of the collision with the iceberg (hint: steam engines are not like diesel-electric ones which you can cold start in an instant).

3. Would have been hindered in its efforts by Titanic accidentally misreporting its own position (this actually caused an hour-long delay in Carpathia reaching the scene, not that it mattered).

In short, even if Cyril Evans had been on the wireless another hour and heard the first distress call, and Stanley Lord had immediately sprung into action the same way Rostron did and restarted the boilers and engines, and managed to not get thrown off by Titanic's misreporting its position, it's still doubtful whether the Californian could have actually reached the ship before she sunk. At best, they might have reached Titanic just in time to watch the ship split in two and go under.

>>17834475 (OP)
better training and emergency preparedness would have helped, since the crew mislaunched several lifeboats, and ones near the first class cabins launched at less than half capacity since there were so few passengers nearby, other passengers didn't know to go there, and the crew didn't announce it. If people had set muster stations and the crews were better trained there would likely have been 100+ more survivors. But the real problem was incompetence from the captain and officer of the watch that allowed the collision to happen in the first place. At night icebergs are basically invisible, but they knew there was ice there so they should have been further south. They just didn't want to divert from the optimal course that would have allowed them to set a speed record.

>>17834693
>They just didn't want to divert from the optimal course that would have allowed them to set a speed record.

Titanic was neither designed to be a Blue Ribband contender nor was that actually attempted (White Star's entire business model was making their ships more luxurious than Cunard's, which were designed to be record-breakers). The whole "they were trying to set a speed record" meme comes from one-out-of-context conversation J. Bruce Ismay had with Captain Smith regarding doing a speed test since the ship had its sea trials accelerated and had certain checks skipped as redundancies. If they were going to do such a test though, it would have most certainly been done in the day.

Fair enough that Captain Smith and 1st Officer Murdoch both made the incredibly ill-advised decision not alter their speed or course after receiving news of icebergs, although I would call it "normalization of deviance" (to quote the Columbia disaster) rather than negligence.

>>17834693
>>17834722
this is what I've gathered
titanic disaster wasn't a single crisis. It was years of complacency, outdated procedures and lack of awareness/training all around, that all came together in spectacular fashion.
much of the industry was examined and reorganized in the aftermath
i've also heard that proper damage and flooding control could have kept the ship the ship afloat for hours longer but idk if thats just wishful hindsight

>trusting the irish to make a vessel sufficiently seaworthy to cross the atlantic

>>17834752
>titanic disaster wasn't a single crisis. It was years of complacency, outdated procedures and lack of awareness/training all around, that all came together in spectacular fashion.

Exactly, it was a bunch of smaller lapses in judgement and regulation, and misreading of the results of previous accidents (such as the sinking of the RMS Republic in 1909), that coalesced at a single point in time to create one of the most spectacular tragedies of the 20th Century.

>i've also heard that proper damage and flooding control could have kept the ship the ship afloat for hours longer but idk if thats just wishful hindsight

If aggressive damage control measures had been taken in the first five minutes and been kept up, maybe it could have bought the ship a few extra hours. But realistically, that wasn't going to happen with an unexpected collision in the middle of the night when half of the crew were sound asleep and the other half were half-asleep. 1st Officer Murdoch to his credit shut the watertight doors within seconds of the collision (and likely prevented the ship from sinking within minutes), it just wasn't enough.

>>17834722
a disaster like that would not have happened in the absence of negligence, res ipsa loquitur

>>17834777

I'm not saying that Captain Smith didn't error in failing to slow down in an ice field, he objectively did or else we wouldn't be having this conversation. What I'm saying that it was an error that any one of his peers could have made in the same circumstances. No doubt such normalized deviance was utterly rampant in the industry at the time (and probably still is to some extent), especially at Cunard where the ships were being built specifically with breaking speed records in mind and shaving a few hours off the trip could get you the Blue Ribband.

If you want a better example of unambiguous negligence, Captain Schettino was negligent on so many levels that it constituted outright criminality (such as ignoring the Italian Coast Guard's orders to return to the ship after boarding a lifeboat with hundreds of terrified passengers and crew still aboard).

>>17834669
>1. Was too small to accommodate everyone
Idk, I refuse to believe this to be an argument. 2000 people on deck cold in blankets is better than 2000 people dead in the water. Only food would be an issue but could probably be rationed.

>2. Had already powered down its boilers at the time
Probably the only valid argument

>3. Would have been hindered in its efforts by Titanic accidentally misreporting its own position
Sure, but SS Californian was within visual contact already. They saw the flares and could see the lights. The crew even said among themselves that "she looks queer" when they were observing the Titanic. So being within visual contact already makes false coordinates less of a problem.

>At best, they might have reached Titanic just in time to watch the ship split in two and go under.
There are still odds that more people could have been saved even in this scenario, even if they would have to be fished out of the water, tho the average survival time was 15-20 minutes.

>>17835114
>2000 people on deck cold in blankets is better than 2000 people dead in the water

It wasn't just a matter of deck space, Californian was only built to accommodate 35 passengers. That means that everything from bathrooms to the galley would have been completely overwhelmed. They definitely wouldn't have enough blankets to go around so you would have had people dying of exposure on the deck. Moreover the ship was carrying a full load of cotton at the time so sheltering people in the cargo hold wouldn't have been an option (good luck jettisoning any of it with hundreds of struggling people on the deck and no dockside crane). Moreover, assuming the average weight of a passenger on the Titanic was around 150lbs, that means that accommodating all 2000 passengers would have made the ship 15 tons heavier. Now this normally wouldn't be that much of an issue except that those 15 tons are not in the cargo hold, but all over the ship.

>They saw the flares and could see the lights.

Yes but they would have required Lord and the crew to put two and two together and figure out that ship in the distance was Titanic, especially since the rockets were not being fired at the appropriate intervals (once every 60 seconds was the standard at the time, Titanic was firing them every 6 minutes to preserve rockets).

Now could they have figured it out? They almost certainly would have, but that could easily have taken another 10-20 minutes in a situation where seconds counted.

cont.

>>17835732

>There are still odds that more people could have been saved even in this scenario, even if they would have to be fished out of the water, tho the average survival time was 15-20 minutes.

Steaming a ship directly into a mass of struggling humanity is generally very ill-advised. The normal procedure would be to launch your own boats and pluck people out of the water that way, but Californian only had six. Even if Lord had decided to risk it by steaming into the victims (and just accepting that he was to run a few of them over). How many could they have realistically have pulled out of the water in those 10-15 minutes (I know you said 20, but most people really wouldn't have lasted any longer than 10, 15 if they were in good shape)? Say you haul up a survivor every ten seconds, that's 90 people at the most before you're just pulling up dead bodies.

In conclusion, would SS Californian's timely arrival have saved more people? Absolutely, but it wouldn't have been that many people. Certainly not all 2,000.

>>17835732
>It wasn't just a matter of deck space, Californian was only built to accommodate 35 passengers.

I still don't think it's a valid argument. Other ships were on their way to the scene and all Californian is required to do is to harbor these people for a couple of hours (even if they have to continue to use Titanic lifeboats) until the other ships arrive on the scene, with Carpathia being the first to arrive before sunrise.

I get your point but I still find it unconvincing to say that Californian wouldn't make a difference. Would everyone be saved? Probably not. But we're still talking a potential extra couple of hundred souls.

>>17835743
This heavily relies on assumption tho, and the assumption being that Californian cannot power up and reach Titanic before she sinks, even though they were within visual contact with Titanic.

>>17835766
>This heavily relies on assumption tho, and the assumption being that Californian cannot power up and reach Titanic before she sinks, even though they were within visual contact with Titanic.

Alright, well let's assume that you're right and the California manages to reach Titanic 60 minutes before it sank, how much they really have done? Obviously they could have taken all the passengers from the lifeboats that had already launched and allowed them to go back empty to pick up more people from the water, but emptying out the boats alone would have probably taken several hours. RMS Carpathia required nearly five to transfer all 700 of the actual survivors onboard in an orderly fashion. Theoretically, the Californian could have come directly alongside the ailing ship and transferred people directly aboard via an improvise gangway (i.e. ripping up 20-30 feet of floorboards and having everyone literally walk across them), that would have allowed Californian to recover a more optimal number of people (likely in the hundreds) but Lord could have only stayed alongside for so long before he would have had to pull away as Titanic final plunge began and the ship became too unstable to safely be alongside.

>>17835793
I dont really want to assume that I am right either. You bring up good points and this is likely what was discussed in the early 1990s enquiry as well.
I just don't accept an answer to be completely definitive because we can't know for certain how things would have played out because we can't assume for certain that Californian wouldn't immediately locate Titanic despite wrong coordinates since she was within visual contact, or how fast she could reach the Titanic within the hour window of beong able to pull up alongside the Titanic, or pulling survivors up from the water by a climbing net on her side (assuming she had one).
I dont think her limited size amd space is a valid argument because survivors could remain on the lifeboats until the larger ships arrive withing the few hours. 500 people crowded on her deck for a few hours is still better than dead in the water.

Idk maybe my wishful thinking isn't practically realistic.