Why the Titanic didn't have enough lifeboats
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2023
- An outdated safety law may have cost hundreds of lives.
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Ever since the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, a major suspected culprit for the high death toll has been that there weren’t enough lifeboats on board. It’s a decision that's been dramatized as hubris on the part of the White Star Line - but the ship actually surpassed safety standards for the time.
The Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 required the largest-class ships, those weighing over 10,000 tons, to carry at least 16 lifeboats. Even though the Titanic, which launched in 1911, weighed 45,000 tons, that minimum was the same. The Titanic carried 20 lifeboats, with a capacity for roughly half of the people on board the night the ship sank.
Until the Titanic disaster, lifeboats weren’t seen as a substitute for an entire ship. The giant liner itself, which featured 16 compartments separated by watertight bulkheads, was supposed to stay afloat even after taking on water. Then, using a brand new piece of technology - the Marconi wireless telegraph - signal for help from a nearby ship, using lifeboats to methodically ferry passengers off the sinking ship.
This scenario played out perfectly just a couple years before the Titanic disaster, when a ship accidentally rammed RMS Republic in 1909. The Republic sank, but nearly everyone on board was safely ferried off. The prevailing thought at the time was that disasters at sea had become a thing of the past.
When the Titanic went down, that all changed. Just two years later, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) mandated all passenger ships carry lifeboats for everyone on board. Today, the SOLAS requirement is 125% of a ship’s capacity.
Further reading:
Check out Sam Halpern’s work analyzing the permissible flooding conditions on the Titanic:
www.titanicology.com/FloodingB...
Read the 1909 news articles explaining the sinking of the Republic:
www.rmsrepublic.news/
Dive into a wealth of Titanic research in “On a Sea of Glass” by J. Kent Layton, Bill Wormstedt, and Tad Fitch:
atlanticliners.com/atlantic_li...
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If you want to really get into the nitty gritty of the construction and design of the Titanic and other giant ocean liners, check out www.youtube.com/@OceanlinerDesigns - it’s a great channel with a bunch of interesting stories. Thanks for watching.
-Coleman
Thanks for the shoutout Coleman!
6:20 PLEASE explain the beepbeep for us, because I guarantee you none of "us" got that. By none I mean 1% at best. Maybe less.
@@jonslg240 huh?
@@jj-if6it most people say uNF but to each their own..
But if you're being honest instead of dishonestly rhetorical, then what do you not understand?
@@jonslg240 your entire question about beepbeep, is what I didn't understand
It's worth mentioning that the RMS Carpathia was much further out than other ships, and logically they might not have even found survivors. Still, despite having almost no chance of doing so, they pushed their own ship faster than it was rated to go (this can ruin the engine and leave you dead in the water) and found many survivors. They passed out blankets and coffee, and offered support. It's a heroic tale by normal people just doing what they thought was right.
😊
not really true. They were the second closest ship yes but they were definitely expecting survivors. In fact they were expecting to find the crippled ship in a bad state. There is no way of knowing how fast ships sink. If they capsize within an hour maybe.
If they stay upright then possibly for multiple hours or even days. They knew the Titanic was very safe so they didn't think it would be gone.
heroic yes but all within reason. They did expect survivors and logically they could be expected to find survivors.
If you want to look at a ship that had no hope to help then Frankfurt is probably a good one. It took them 11h or so and they made the old ship run faster than it ever had with little chance to help.
@@FluppiLP how did they finally know it was sinking
Yes they managed to reach about 17 knots well beyond the ships usual top speed of 12
Carpathia's wireless operator Harold Cottam was just as much a hero as Captain Rostron was. If he had turned off the wireless set instead of staying on air past his scheduled time to sign off (and he was actually changing into his pajamas to hit the sack), Carpathia would never have received Titanic's distress call and there's no telling what would have become of the survivors in the lifeboats.
Another addition to be made, Life boats were never guaranteed to be safe before 1912. When Titanic sank, the waters were perfectly calm, but this is usually not the case. Those lifeboats were commonly lost in other ship wrecks (For example, the Atlantic in the 1870s). Aside from ferrying, they were essentially added as a hail mary, incase everything went wrong and you were possibly close enough to land to row to shore.
P.S. Its weird seeing this topic being discussed in the main stream while NOT being handled poorly. Nicely done, Vox.
One of the reasons so many died on Lusitania when it sank is because half of its lifeboats just straight up failed and dumped passengers into the sea.
@@George_Wong It was worse than half; out of her 48 lifeboats, just *6* were actually launched correctly
@@George_Wong Lusitania sank in 18 minutes. Her starboard list made port side boats impossible to launch almost immediately. It's not a fault of the lifeboats.
Adding more lifeboats also wouldn't have done much by itself; the bottleneck was the launching (launching only got harder as time went on due to the list and panic).
@@George_Wong or just lifeboats can’t really be launched when your are steaming full speed ahead and have a list
The irony is that the ship is sinking because it barely hits the iceberg , so it's scrapped the ship on 5 compartments. If the ship hits the iceberg head on even with all of its momentum, then it may just destroy 1 or 2 compartments before its stop.
IIRC, that actually happened a few years before titanic. An ocean liner with (New at the time) bulkheads slammed into an iceberg head-on, and while the front was damaged it limped back to shore and didn't sink. This was one of the reasons that ships with bulkeads (Like Titanic) were considered so safe.
...and would have kille 300+ people, not to mention a new study showed that ramming would've caused the impact force to completely shatter the rivets make up the keel, and flooding every. single. compartment.
...yeeeeah.
A follow up sister ship was designed to withstand 5...it also sank
@@sirscrotum that was the britannic, it struck a mine, according to what i know, a big reason for it to have sunk and why it sunk so fast was that the crew opened the windows of the decks in the bow to make it more comfortable for the passengers, but they didn't close it when it started sinking and the water flooded in trough the windows. "🤓"
@@supertheblueoctagon that, and the captain ordered the ship forward at the highest speed possible which forced more water in through the hole blown open by the mine, which also damaged the watertight compartments so much the doors couldn't be closed.
Titanic: "We're undefeated, we can hold until 4 compartments breached!"
Iceberg: "let's try 5"
The tragedy becomes worse when you look at the damage found on the wreck. The hole in the hindmost compartment was mere centimeters long. If the angle of the collision would have been just slightly different the ship might have made it.
6 technically
@@gamingwitharlen2267 7
Hit! You sunk my ship
Many passengers onboard refused to get into the lifeboats as they felt safer onboard the warm ship with the band playing and lights turned on. Going into a small wooden boat in the dark in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean was only a decision passengers made near the end when the ship was going under.
Add that to the fact that the crew did not have trust in the capacity of the lifeboats and only boarded them with little over half their capacity even with the-albeit limited number of-willing passengers waiting on the boat deck and by the time that people realized how rapidly the ship was going down (which was not easy to make out since it was a pitch black, moonless night), most of the boats had gone and refused to come back to the sinking ship in fear of its suction
That was certainly the case for my great great uncle Spencer silverthorne, a first class passenger traveling with several friends and business partners who survived the sinking. He was reluctant to get in a lifeboat at first, but after the rest of his group climbed into lifeboat 5 and begged him to do the same he did just as they were about to lower it, a decision that saved his life. The events of that night haunted him for the rest of his life up to his death in 1964.
also a lot of people was scared of heights cause that 3 stories high and the davit would bounce up and down as the life boats lowered
The sister-ship RMS Olympic, while not as famous as Titanic, had pretty interesting life of its own: during WW1, it served as a transport for troops and sunk a U-boat by freaking ramming into it head-on, and it also had two collisions of its own in 1911 and 1934. It would enjoy great popularity on the transatlantic route, earning the nickname 'The Ship Magnificent'/'The Old Reliable'.
Edit: I did a bit of Wikipedia browsing, and yeah it was known as the "Old Reliable" as people mention in the comments below, although I did find another Wikipedia article which mention "the Ship Magnificent" too.
The existence of RMS Olympic debunked a lot of "theories" about the construction and design of Titanic. They were built side-by-side and were practically identical and made with the same materials used.
There were three sister ships
RMS Titanic
RMS Olympic
RMS Britannic
I believe Olympic is called "The Old Reliable"
During the war she was painted in dazzle camo! I had heard the nickname was "Old Reliable" but this may be just a rumour
@@tangentcssr I think it's both. Haven't checked about it in a while.
It's worth noting that shipping lanes in April 1912 were quieter than usual because many sailings had been cancelled due to a coal strike. Many companies had their smaller liners remain in berth so their prestige ship could keep sailing. Some passengers, like the Hart family, had received tickets for Titanic as compensation for their original passage being cancelled. Under normal circumstances there would likely have been ships much closer and able to render assistance in time.
maybe, but those ships would have likely stopped, due to the dangers of the ice, so would they have actually reached Titanic in time without endangering their own passengers in the icefield?
@@mehere8038 Yes Titanic ran right into basically the first iceberg in the field so most ships where either behind her or some where indeed on the other side of the field. But anyone coming from Europe was on TItanic's side of the field. Carpathia actually did have to dodge several icebergs approaching Titanic as she was more to West and the field was drifting between them propelled by the cold Labrador current from the arctic. (Titanic had just entered the current and they registered a 5C drop in temperature. The Atlantic is cold but not as cold as it was that night for the Titanic. Around 10-14C so absolutely comfortable compared to the -2C in the current.
Frankly with all these events aligned so perfectly that night to cause such a massive loss of life, it's hard not to feel like it all happened on purpose just to teach us all a lesson in humility. Well if that's the case, the whole world certainly learned a lesson that night.
Another interesting thing to note is that the route Titanic took usually don't have icebergs in the way, as it is in the warm stream of water current from the south. However, that year in 1912, that stream was bent in a U shape resulting the fateful iceberg to appear in that area. Had Titanic not change its course to avoid icebergs, it wouldn't have hit it lol
Plus, Titanic's maiden voyage had to be rescheduled because the dock where she was being fitted out was required for urgent repairs to Olympic, after her collision with HMS Hawke. She was meant to sail on March 20th, but Olympic's accident meant the date was postponed to April 10th. Had she sailed on the original date, there would have been little, if any, ice drifting into the Atlantic sea lanes. The whole disaster was a perfect storm of bad luck meeting overconfidence; had her wireless operators not decided to repair the broken set when they did, against company policy, it could actually have been much worse!
Missed out a HUGE detail about how a common belief at the time was lifeboats were MORE deadly than staying on a sinking ship. There had been infamous sinkings and ships stranded on rocks where passengers who entered lifeboats perished in rough seas where those who stayed onboard survived by simply waiting for rescue since the invention of the wireless telegraph. Obviously this wouldn't be applicable to those on Titanic but this was a massive contributer to why the law wasn't updated with larger ships. It was seen (incorrectly) at the time that the future of sea safety was though wireless telegraph and quick rescue rather than lifeboats.
They mentioned the republic. But your right about that they could have mentioned the resulting 'lifeboatphobia'.
Why am I hearing/reading this for the first time just now. Great detail.
Still remember the story a disaster where most women and children in their lifeboats perished during the storm, while most men on sinking ship managed to survive. That's haunting
Every 90s/00s kid who went through a big enough Titanic phase in their preteen years to make it part of their literal identity thanks you for this video.
Had the same phase, def check out oceanliner designs the dudes channel is super cool
YES, CHANGED THE TRAJECTORY OF MY LIFE FOREVER! While Jack and Rose are highly fictionalized characters and heavily dramatize star crossed lovers, it sort of helped nurture my empathy knowing that real people passed away, that all of them have their own stories, that many were separated with their loved ones. then you sort of wonder how it happened, what we could do to not repeat it, and boom one is now passionate with history
@@ashmein6021 I love this perspective so much and it’s SO true! I think the word for it is “sonder”-the realization that everyone around you leads complex and intricate lives just as much as your own. Such an important part of making history come to life is realizing these weren’t just figures in old photographs but real people with feelings and memories and relationships!!
Agreed. It made me realize it's okay not to be rich and have fun with it.
Amen brother
As a Titanic enthusiast who loves to study about the Olympic class, this is legit some of the few actually decently researched videos about the Titanic. Nice job. Although you forgot to tell how people felt about lifeboats prior to the Titanic disaster
What was the perception of lifeboats then?
@@skyflaks6380 well back then lifeboats are small wooden boats, that are not spark lot of comfort. There are sadly even incident were all people have been killed in rough see while how stayin back aon the ship surived the incident.
@@skyflaks6380 Fun fact, people back then viewed lifeboats as more of a death sentence rather than you know, a rescue method. This was due to the fact that in many sinkings or ships stranded on rocks prior to the Titanic, people who boarded lifeboats were perished with it, hence why some passengers refused to board them.
@@miahomes thx for the info!
As another Titanic enthusiast I can say the same
Possibly the best outlining of the reasoning behind Titanic's lifeboats I've seen in public discourse. Good job Vox!
Thanks Mike! I’m a fan of your Titanic videos. Coleman
@@Vox That's awesome Coleman! Cheers :)
Also read that designers @ that time felt that adding more lifeboats was an eyesore to the ship's exterior appearance
I never cried watching Titanic for God knows how many times. But I teared up to the last messages before the boat sunk, you can read how desperate they are for help.
There is also a video about the Titanic's communications and the desparation is felt when the operator is asking for help from any nearby ship
@@orangelake2268 id love to watch it, do u have a link?
it's cuz of the violinists bro. They get me every time
Weirdly enough, I found myself teary eyed on this video too.
@@vikingthedudeexactly
About the "CQD" message that was sent out: this was used before SOS and had the same meaning. The initials C.Q. are pronounced like the start of the French word _sécurité_ (safety), and D is for distress. SOS was adopted in 1906 but it took a little while for it to supplant CQD. SOS is simpler to send out as ... --- ... (compare to -.-. --.- -..). During the disaster, Titanic radio operator Jack Phillips initially sent CQD. Harold Bride, a junior radio operator, suggested using SOS joking that it might be their last chance to use the new code. They alternated between both while the radio was still operating. Bride survived to tell the story, while Philips died in the sinking. Check out their Wikipedia articles for more details.
Another reason the SOS was adopted is because almost anyone can hear it and understand. The cadence is easily recognized. Also it's easy to transmit if one isn't real familiar with Morse Code.
I learned back in the day that CQD was "Come Quick, Distress."
I will start dancing to that CQD morse groove
@@AWPtical800 Some people also find it easy to remember it as "Seek[ing] You, Distress/Drowning", but both are mnemonic devices that someone came up with later, also called backronyms. CQD was standardized by the Marconi Company for maritime use with Circular 57 in 1904: "the call to be given by ships in distress or in any way requiring assistance shall be 'C Q D'", after CQ alone had been in use with land-based telegraphs to mean "general call"/"all stations". There was no general emergency signal on land, so operators understood CQD as "All stations: distress".
@@desmond-hawkins I have read somewhere that CQD wasn't favored by wireless regulators, because a bad reception at the end of the receiver would receive a plain CQ transmission, missing out the D, which would turn a distress call into a non-distress call, potentially turning out to be fatal. On the other hand, there were no half-transmission possibilities for SOS, as the SO term had no meaning in the telegraph. Thus, a bad reception would also make the receiver realize that the ship intended to send an SOS code.
This is the same reason why airlines have to triple-repeat distress callsigns, such as the disaster callsign, "Mayday-Mayday-Mayday", or the danger callsign "Pan-Pan-Pan", to avoid being confused with the regular radio communication.
5:38 - One of the big reasons why some lifeboats were put into the water not all the way full is because they could see the lights of the Californian, and thought they would just be ferrying back and forth.
The Californian never "sailed off" since she had stopped for the night due to the ice field. It wasn't until 4am that her captain woke up her wireless operator to find that Titanic had sunk; she made way to the disaster scene to find Carpathia picking up the last few survivors.
I didnt think Californian sailed off, wasnt she stuck in the ice field until morning? Just asking.
@@JShips46 yeah you’re right, I was just oversimplifying to avoid getting into those weeds, made an edit.
@@WanukeX oh ok. You didn't have to make an edit though. I was just asking
The only thing I got from this video that the operator on Californian should had been convicted but since there were no laws on 24/7 bit since the communicator was relatively new, I could only react to it as literal, TRAGIC. The ship's story is informative but the reason why the Titanic got more popularity then it should because of an old lady😅
It still boggles my mind that there hasn’t been a drama about the legal repercussions. Would make for a dramatic and emotional film
I know Downton Abbey briefly touched on the aftermath of the disaster, but I would love to see a story about the immediate aftermath of the Titanic disaster. T
The public inquiry was pretty intense.
look into the conspiracy behind the titanic and you'll understand why
@@mattvdh Oh no not that hogwash
I remember the stories of the White Star Line sending bills to the families of their crew that died. Imagine sending a bill to a grieving family...when it was your fault they died!
One interesting side note the Marconi operators were employees of the Marconi wireless company that shipping lines would rent out their services. Titanic's Marconi operators were officially second class passengers and there machine broke halfway though the voyage. Per company policy they should have not attempted to repair it instead wait until the next port of call but they fixed it themselves and prevented an even worse disaster from happening.
That's interesting. We all know about how they abused the nearby ship & that that might have helped cause the lack of response, but I've never heard about the broken wireless before. Kinda changes how they should be viewed doesn't it!
@@mehere8038 Abused is a strong word, considering Philips and Bride had been working throughout the day and late into the night sending messages back and forth for 1st Class passengers on the maiden voyage, only to be interrupted by the strong and extremely loud warnings from the nearby Californian.
EDIT: As pointed out by another reply, the pair also had to repair the wireless earlier that day (despite Marconi’s policy being not to until arrival in port, their violation of this policy saving 700 lives), which delayed their ability to convey the many messages sent to and from the ship.
@@mehere8038 they didn’t not “abuse” the other ship? after repairing the wireless and there was pressure on them to send out a bunch of personal messages from first class passengers + receiving more as they were trying to catch up. it’s very understandable that they were stressed and gave the californian attitude. your comment kinda gives off vibes that jack& harold were at fault and they most definitely were not
It was the same for the musicians and the Guarantee Group.
Another thing, while the Titanic did sink, it took a very long time to do so. Most ships of the time would sink within 20 minutes of being struck. The compartmentalised Titanic held on for over 2 hours, which in and of itself is a triumph of the design.
no, ships of that size did not sink in 20 minutes, some would hold out for 24 hours. If others of that size sank in 20 minutes, we'd all know about it!
@@mehere8038 I said ships of the _time_ . Even more recent ships have sunk very fast: Lusitania in 18 minutes in 1915, and in 1945 the USS Indianapolis sank in 12 minutes.
@@mehere8038 Yeah Lusitania in 18 minutes, she was the largest ship before Olympic and the Empress of Ireland also a large ocean liner sank in 14 minutes. Some say Titanic could have lasterd 4 hours if the D deck gangway door would have been closed. It had as much surface area as the original damage on starboard. Once it submerged the sinking accelerated.
Britannic, her direct sister ship who was modified extensively after the Titanic disaster, sank in 55 minutes after hitting a mine. Besides the massive mechanical davits for lifeboats so they would be launch even in a list pretty much every major bulk head was raised up to B deck (previously lowest point was E deck).
@@user-lv7ph7hs7l, the Empress sunk quickly because her watertight doors had to be manually closed, while the Lusitania undoubtedly had her sinking hastened by the second explosion.
Let's not forget, those are not modern lifeboats. There was a case where a ship was beached in rough sea, where women and children boarded lifeboats, only for them being smashed into pieces or overturned in the rough sea. Only men survived because the captain didn't launch more lifeboats.
What ship was that?
@@grapefruitrunning SS Clallam sunk 1904
@@grapefruitrunning the SS Atlantic, also a White Star Line ship
I assume you mean the Atlantic?
@@tangentcssr I was talking about another ship but you just proven my point: At the time life boats really aren't as lifesaving as we think today.
Even passenger on Titanic agreed and relented to get on lifeboats.
Titanic was lucky it sank in relatively claim seas, and the wireless operator fixed the wireless set even though they are not supposed to fix them when broken.
4:33 - Yes, because they had tried and failed to avoid it. No one on the bridge was going to be the guy to go, “hey let’s ram an iceberg head on”, even though in hindsight that probably would have saved the ship.
It is a common problem in product design. The user does not fully understand their products and use it on a way the designer does not expect.
A head on collision would have been manslaughter as the front of the ship housed many 3rd class passengers that would have been killed instantly
@@maxonite pfft yeah right breaking the ships bow and killing third class passengers is worse than the entire ship sinking and 1.5k people dying. Tbf, they couldn't have known
@@ron3557 Assuming they even had the wherewithall to realise a head-on collision would have saved the ship (which it's unlikely they did, especially given the lack of time to react), it's the classic trolley problem. I can't see they'd ever be able to come to any other decision than to try and avoid the iceberg. Imagine the aftermath when it was revealed they rammed it head-on deliberately. No one would have believed that trying to avoid it would cause more deaths.
@@WS12658 yeah, they did nothing wrong, they didn't know
The captain of the Carpathia is buried in my village, thank god they were still operating their communications that night, or a great tragedy would have been even more tragic.
In fact it almost wasn't. The Second Officer of the Carpathia was an enthusiast of the Marconi Wireless and shadowed their operator during his off-times. Wireless operators were contracted out exclusively through the Marconi Wireless Company back then. He had come down after his shift at midnight to the wireless room and asked if the set could be turned on so he could amuse himself and listen to the late night traffic. Thankfully the operator, who was still awake and had been listening to Titanic send messages to Cape Race (a shore relay station for passenger messages) obliged the personal request turning the set on to hear the distress call and jumped into action.
@@kc2rxo I did not know that! Thanks for the knowledge
Captain Rostron could not have handled the situation better. He turned the ship around, ordered much of the crew to stoking and turned off the heat, the hot water and most of the lights. An RL example of "all power to the engines". The Carpathia was designed to go 15.5kt. During sea trials her top speed was declared to be 14.5kt but that morning she made almost 17kt, getting them there 30min faster that they would have at the ship's usual top speed.
Great video! The discussion of why people refused life boats, I think, makes more sense when you consider the SS Claham disaster happened less than 10 years prior to Titanic. In that case everyone who boarded life boats drowned while the men who stayed aboard realized they were sinking slower than they thought and were rescued. That was undoubtedly fresh in people's minds.
It's logical that many thought they'd be safer onboard than in a tiny boat being lowered 10 stories down to the freezing, wide ocean.
I'm glad you covered the changes made to safety at sea in the wake of the Titanic's sinking. So often, documentaries focus on the tragedy, the mistakes and the deaths. They rarely include the positive changes that were made.
"hope you've got the headlines you wanted, Mr ismay."
- Captain Smith (Titanic (1997)).
God I hate that line
Not even close to the line
Mr Ismay was actually a hero...but William Randolph Hearst hated him and assassinated his character in the papers. Unfortunately it was included in the film as well.
I think it’s worth it to note too that even if she did have enough lifeboats, would Titanic actually had enough time to deploy all of them? Her last lifeboat was a collapsible, improperly deployed as the bow took its final plunge just minutes before the entire ship was gone. It’s possible that even with plenty of lifeboats, many would have gone down with the ship
They also could have come detached as she sank and shot up and killed people in the water or lifeboats
Back in 1912, lifeboats weren't seen as lifesavers, but rather to transport people from a distressed ship to a rescue ship. This is why they didn't think it was necessary to have enough lifeboats for everyone aboard the ship. J Bruce Ismay had ordered extra lfieboats be removed because he though the deck look to cluttered
Just the opposite. The British Board of Trade instructed to install 16 lifeboats, but Bruce Ismay did not comply with this instruction, and installed 20 lifeboats. Therefore, there were more boats on the Titanic than envisaged by the project.
@@format2000channel also correct
@@format2000channel That’s also 4 more boats than initially designed for the ship, contrary to popular legend.
There isn't any evidence Ismay ordered anything related to lifeboat numbers.
@@jeanscuissiato135 I wasn't sure about that, but a documentary showed him approving the removal of extra lifeboats
Because "I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that." -Captain Smith
“Hubris? What’s that?”
In his defense, Captain Smith was referring to the RMS Adriatic in that quote, which actually had a very long, successful, and mostly accident-free career (with the exception of a gas explosion in 1922 that killed 5 crewmen). Honestly, all of the big four were absolute beasts of ships; for example, the first ship RMS Celtic took both a mine *and* a torpedo (on separate voyages) and shrugged them off. One can only imagine if Andrews was actually allowed to build the Olympics how he wanted to (with bulkheads going all the way to C deck and a full double hull)
I wont lie... I came into this video expecting it to be a crudely thrown together, borderline clickbait-y title packed full of wrong information and conspiracy theories... Only to be absolutely 1000% proven wrong, this is easily one of the best videos outlining the disaster I've seen in a long while, what an absolute delight!
I am actually in the middle of reading Violet Jessop's book - the stewardess who survived both the sinking of Titanic and the Britannic - and it's one thing to read transcripts from the official Titanic inquiries that happened afterward, where they give a rather dry account of the event, it's another thing to read "Nobody, John, was taking the seriousness of anything," from an old plucky Irish immigrant.
Also, modern bulkheads are fully enclosed boxes with a “roof” on them that is also watertight. This protects against the spillover shown on the titanic (although the shear weight of fully flooded bulkheads can still pull a ship down). Early bulkheads had open tops, so… not good.
Titanic still would've sank with higher bulkheads as 5 compartments would still not give her enough reserve buoyancy to stay afloat.
Surprised to see an actual good Titanic related video. I can see the creator of this video actually made some research and isn't talking non-sense. Good job Vox!! Subscriber earned
Very surprising...coming from Vox.
Fantastic video! I've always had a deep interest of everything Titanic-related, and you made a video that scratched that itch I've had for a while for something *new* that I haven't already seen 3157 times :) *Thank you for always keeping us informed, Vox!*
Honestly, I completely forgot that Rose and Andrews scene after I watched the movie. It’s wild how tragic that one line really is.
If any ship was unsinkable it was Titanic's sister RMS Olympic. She had a secondary career as a demolition derby player and survived a torpedo attack.
DEMOLITION DERBY?!
@@crissydee3487, rammed and sank a U-Boat during the war, and then rammed and sank a light boat in 1934.
@@crissydee3487 What can I say. Olympic loved hitting other ships 🤷🏻♂️ Collided with three ships in her career plus sank a U-Boat in WW1
If it can float it can sink
@@Emma_madison not the Olympic
Just to let everyone know ..there were actually there sister ships nearly identical except for some interior changes
RMS Titanic
RMS Olympic
RMS Britannic
Which were the reason why lot a of theories were made claiming "Titanic never sank", "they lied about Titanic" etc etc
“Some interior changes” is a bit of an understatement. Each of the Olympics was larger than the last, and they all had major differences (Britannic was different enough that she could almost be considered half-sister to Titanic and Olympic imo)
It was HMHS 'Britannic'. It never went into mail service.
Titanic had a completely different B deck configuration compared to the Olympic. The Olympic's B deck was mainly a 2nd passenger promenade that was barely even used as passengers preferred the one on A deck anyways. So when Titanic was being constructed they got rid of the mid deck promenade and instead filled the majority of the deck with extra luxury first class suites that extended to the full widths of B deck. They also installed the Cafe Parisian which was exclusive to Titanic at the time as the Olympic didn't have one at first. They eventually added one to the Olympic years later and in a completely different location more towards the forward part of B Deck. And of course enclosing half of the A deck promenade because it provided more shelter from high winds and sea overspray to keep the passengers more comfortable.
I read somewhere that, considering the time it takes for a ship of this size to sink, and the time it takes for a crew to service and deploy a life boat, adding more boats wouldn't really change anything, since you could only deploy so many boats in the time it takes the ship to sink
By the time they were getting the collapsibles ready water was rushing up onto the boat deck and they just floated away (as seen in the movie)
yeh, launching lifeboats from closer to the water, so less time to launch, or using life rafts were the options to genuinely save more lives. If they had had a pile of cheap life rafts stacked up next to the 20 lifeboats, people could have ridden them off the ship, without capsising, like one of the unlaunched lifeboats did
One vital thing a lot of people forget with the Titanic is that more lifeboats probably wouldn't have saved any more lives. By the time the last real lifeboats had been lowered and it was only the collapsible boats left, the Titanic had less than ten minutes left before it sunk. Those additional lifeboats would have gone down with the ship.
If they had the electric davits they installed on Britannic and Olympic, they would have been able to launch them much faster.
@@wyatt1648 which were only installed on those two in direct response to the Titanic's sinking, as that event fundamentally changed how people thought of sinking ships.
@@DominionSorcerer Only Britannic received gantry davits - Olympic would have required an even more extensive refit to reinforce the Boat Deck and A Deck below to support said gantry davits, hence the decision to only fit additional welin davits
Depends... Titanic had the new Davits, they had the feature that they could swing backwards into the deck and easily pick up a boat on a second row, launch that and then launch the outer boat. It took time setting up each davit so by having one set of davits to rig up for two boats would have saved some time and improved efficiency. Especially at first when the deck is level, they launched the boats in fast intervalls. And also one crew can prepare two boats, you stand between the two and you can quickly take the covers off, through in some bread.
And since both boats are on deck level they are easy to get into, so loading the passengers is the same process, just one boat width further in on the second boat. So I think they could gotten quite a few boats off. You gotta remember those 4 collapsibles especially A and B up on the roof took a long time to launch and prep. So instead of wasting time on those they could have easily launched several boats by davity earlier on before it got as bad as when the collapsibles where being dealt with.
Also having enough boats the panic could have been controlled better, so people could have boarded more orderly, especially towards the last boats aft and instead of wasting time sorting passengers you just through anyone in there because it doesn't matter.
So I think it's plausible they could have maybe launched 25-30 boats and filled them up more. Lightoller had hundreds of men on his side he refused to let in a boat.
@@user-lv7ph7hs7l most people didn't really panic until the Titanic was about ten minutes into its final plunge, by which point all lifeboats had already been launched. The Titanic had 16 lifeboats and it took them 12:45 am and went down under at 2:20 am, so with the davits they had, it's unlikely they would have been able to launch more. Instead of doing anything with the collapsible they would have continued launching more lifeboats.
Remember, the Titanic developed a significant list to the port, so significant in fact that the crew working on Collapsible A were in the process of attaching the ship to the davits even as the port side of the bridge deck was beginning to go underwater because they didn't fully realise how much the ship had already sunk.
8:06 I'm glad you gave a quick explanation at the end as to how you generated these visuals. I hadn't thought about it or appreciated it before but I did think they were really well done. Great video!
This video was so beautifully done, I teared up thinking about the desperate signalmen tapping all night long. So terrifying to put yourself in their shoes.
Love this a lot! From the wonderfully voiced narration to the use of graphics, what an amazingly informative & engaging piece. Great job!
One addition:
Not only could the watertight doors be lowered from the bridge, they also automatically closed once a compartment began filling with water due to a mechanism inside the bulkhead itself.
An interesting side note - more lifeboats would not have made a difference. Only 18 of the 20 boats (14 wooden lifeboats, 2 wooden emergency cutters, and 2 collapsibles) were properly launched. More lifeboats in this scenario would have remained in there davits as the ship went down.
I just posted the same thing. (except I wrote it was 1 not launched, but you're right, 1 was ridden off the deck & the other capsized). Problem was launching from the top of the ship, not lifeboat numbers!
Additionally, lets remember the purpose of the life boats was to transfer to another ship, so that means in theory, those boats were going to be hoisted back UP the side of the ship, refilled & relaunched, so how much extra time was that going to take? It took something like 3 hours to get the people up into the rescue boat from the life boats as it was! In theory, Titanic could have moved the people in the half full boats, then hoisted the empty one/s back up & refilled, but they didn't have time, which again tells us the number of lifeboats was not the issue
It also didn't help that there was an hour delay before the first boat was launched. Even then, passengers were reluctant to get in the lifeboats.
Collapsible A and B weren’t launched because of their hard to access location. If they had the electric davits Britannic and Olympic later installed, they’d have no problem launching every boat in 2 hours.
@@wyatt1648 And more training/organization. The first boat was not launched until 12:40am, and at that point Titanic had less than two hours to live. Time was firmly against them.
@@XmalD73 more training for command staff, but those on the ropes did a super human job. How they achieved what they did is akin to parents lifting a car off their child trapped under it. Shouldn't have been physically possible to do as they did & no additional training of those people would have helped
That was just brilliantly done. Thank you for putting this together.
excellent content as always vox. I'm really glad you're here on youtube.
Nowadays, the term "unsinkable" comes off as sarcasm. One ship they believe that would never sink, had already sank, and that was probably it.
Except when speaking of Cyprus. When that place is called the unsinkable aircraft carrier, they mean it.
Back then it would have probably sounded more ridiculous than it does today. Shipwrecks were very common before and at the beginning of the 20th century. People knew that boarding a ship came with a risk. If anything, we overestimate our safety at the hands of nature today
@@maxonite you should see the level of paranoia around plane crashes
Interestingly though, several ships were still being called unsinkable after the Titanic’s sinking, oddly enough. Olympic was claimed to be unsinkable after receiving modifications as a result of the Titanic disaster, there were multiple warships that were claimed to be unsinkable, and I think there was even an oil rig that was called unsinkable.
It always seems impossible until it happens.
Similar to how 9/11 changed aviation
5:24 - for anybody wondering, the MGY was Titanic's wireless signal, so the translation would be :
Seek You Distress, Seek You Distress, Seek You Distress, Seek you distress, Seek You Distress, White Star Line RMS Titanic, Position 41.44 North 50.24 West
This is - without a doubt - the best and most succinct explanation of why exactly the Titanic sank...and (per the title) why there weren't enough lifeboats. Thank you!
THAT'S FIVE COMPARTMENTS!... I think of that whenever I fill an ice cube tray.
LMAO SAME
We need to appreciate the effort put in by the editors to create such an amazing visual illustrations for this video! Always love Vox's videos
Man I have been obsessed with the Titanic since the early 90s. Great well researched video Vox! Thank you for making this :D
The story of Titanic is a timeless tragedy. Iceberg. Maiden voyage. The band plays on as the ship goes down. RIP to those that lost lost their lives
Thank you for this video!! I always roll my eyes at the myth that the titanics lifeboat capacity was just sheer negligence or disregard for 3rd class passengers. Yes health and safety were not nearly what they are today in 1912 but the idea that White Star Line would straight up commit manslaughter is ridiculous - and James Camerons movie didn’t exactly help with debunking that
It’s also even more ridiculous when considering that the ship had 4 more boats that what it was initially designed with.
The 3 ships were designed to have additional life boats to meet a proposed changes to the British regulations.
But the requirements were delayed, and so shipping company decided not to install them, probably because they didn't have to and they were expensive, although they did of course to the other two, after the Titanic sank.
Ya there were no locked gates preventing the 3rd Class passengers from getting to the boats. It was mostly a lot of non english speakers unfamiliar with the boat and unable to navigate the corridors to reach safety.
Also at the time the lifeboats weren't made to accommodate the entire passenger capacity of the ships, they were meant as ferry's to transfer passengers from the sinking ship to rescue ships
And even that was a very risky operation. Even modern, bigger and enclosed lifeboats can still capsize in the middle of the ocean in rough seas. So spending hours in one from 1912 wasn’t a viable option. The Titanic actually got lucky, the atlantic was eerily calm that night
@@maxonite To be clear though, Titanic's life jackets were made of Kapok fibre enclosed in canvas. This same technique was used at the time to make life rafts, that were effectively unsinkable & if they capsised, that just means flipping over & people can sit on the other side just as easily as the first side
@@mehere8038, indeed - and in fact, Collapsible A was found a few months later still floating in the water, even though it had been swamped the night of the sinking.
@@jodij2366 what was collapsible A/all the collapsibles made of? I've never actually looked into that. Did it have kapok or other highly buoyant fibres as part of it's make up?
@@mehere8038, kapok and cork according to Wiki.
CQD, the early distress call stands for “Come Quick Dudes”
fun fact : Back than, lifeboats were also mainly built to ferry passengers to nearby aiding vessels should a ship run into any troubles on its voyage as ship builders thought that the actual ship would stay afloat long enough to be salvaged and/or brought back to port for repairs.
Who else is on a submarine, Ocean Gate, Titanic, James Cameron binge?
🙋♂️
Me :D
Meee
To think that the Titanic could've survived had it rammed head-on to that iceberg instead of heeding that emergency manoeuvre.
Exactly, she would be badly damage but at least she wouldn't have sunk.
Of course, had Titanic never turned and hit the iceberg head on, then Murdoch would have been arrested and court martialed for not trying to avoid the iceberg and getting potentially hundreds of passengers in the bow killed.
@@sirboomsalot4902
That's the problem. 20-20 hindsight. People never think of the alternatives and maybe things aren't as bad as they could be. Even as bad as it was, it could have been worse. The ship could have lost power and no messages sent. The Titanic would have just been another ship that disappeared in the Atlantic. Lifeboats would have been found eventually. Maybe a few dozen could be saved if discovered in time.
At least they had the psychological advantage of knowing they tried their best to miss the berg.
@@Iconoclasher ”People never think of the alternatives” No captain in their right mind would favor a head on collision over a potential near miss, a hit the ship would survive or a hit with a successful evacuation. Before Titanic, no oceanliner had ever hit an iceberg in such a way. You can be conceited as much as you like now, after the fact but Smith made the right call, especially given what little time he had to act.
@@maxonite
I wasn't being conceited. Wasn't my intention. I agree with you. I also agreed with the one I was responding to.
I think the question of Jack fitting on the door is a more important one.
Because the plot demands it. End of story.
If the Titanic had sailed smoothly, Patrick Crawley would be the true heir of Downton but the question remains: Would Lady Mary acknowledge the relationship?
Mary was engaged to her cousin, who died on the Titanic (I think his name was Patrick). Patrick's dad died on the ship too, which is why they were so desperate for a new heir (Matthew).
Oh that makes so much more sense... the titanic book I read as a kid gave me the impression that there were 16 hulls layered over each other or something. I was like "why would you have 16 hulls if breaking to the 11th would sink you? Wouldn't it make more sense to have it only sink when the last hull is breached?" Lol
Really nice video, well done.
I have been following up Titanic story for about 20 years, you did your research well.
Thank you for your video. Titanic was always a mystery for me. Your video was concise and elaborate. It's such a pity that the milestone happened and such a few amount of people was rescued
James Cameron didn't put enough on board. Leo DiCaprio died for that mistake.
It wasn't the lack lifeboats that killed Leo, it was the criminally undersized doors. And for what? Just to save a few bucks on set building? Smh.
Leo DiCaprio Jr. got the Oscar Leo DiCaprio Sr. always wanted. I hope Leo DiCaprio is proud of Leo DiCaprio.
@@Cimlite The object they used to remain afloat was actually not a door, but a door frame.
There was enough space for leo to be on that wooden object but kate did not wanted him to live.
Jack died because Rose climbed back on to the board of Titanic from the lifeboat she was in, making Jack responsible for more than one person. And well, he was too much of a simp.
There's a japanese dude that survived only to be shunned by his community for not dying on the ship.
Great timing with this upload. Literally watched this movie for the first time ever a couple of days ago. It was awesome.
Loved every bit of this documentary. Didn't want it to end.
Even if they had enough lifeboats, they probably wouldn't have had enough time to deploy them all. Lifeboats 19 and 20 weren't deployed in time when the Titanic went down so survivors clinged to the overturned lifeboat
exactly!
The reason Collapsible A and B weren’t able to be launched quickly was because they were placed on top of the officer’s quarters and there was no easy way to get them down.
Thank you for this historical content. Was thinking if more lifeboats would’ve made the difference
no, it actually wouldn't have, launch time was the issue - it took too long to launch, cause of their location on the top deck. Rafts that could be thrown into the ocean/ridden off the sinking ship would have made a big difference, as would storing the lifeboats lower on the ship
Good job on this presentation. Thanks for sharing
I love how you guys are doing investigative journalism on other topics other than politics, it's makes stuff new and interesting to watch.
I dont think it was truly tragic arrogance. Note that the year before Titanic’s sister ship Olympic survived a impact with a British Warship HMS Hawk and that she was theoretically unsinkable. The iceberg swipe she had would of sank anything at her time and even some modern ships. It cant be overstated how devastating of a hit that iceberg had and just how unpredictable that is in that time period. It was basically theorized that she would never have more than 4 compartments flooded at any given time and the iceberg opened 6.
This misconception has gone on for too long.
Titanic could've had twice as many lifeboats and half the people on that ship still would have died.
Having double the lifeboats and the same amount of crew members means you're going to run into a lot of logistical problems around prepping, filling and launching the boats in a timely manner. Also the decks will be more crowded due to the extra boats which might have slowed down evacuations.
The first lifeboat didn't lower until 12:40 am, a full hour after the Titanic had struck the iceberg.
The crew of the Titanic was very minimally trained on evacuation procedures and lifeboat prep because it was the ships maiden voyage and as it was one of the great engineering feats of its day, nobody actually thought going to sink. This means it took extra time to prep and launch lifeboats as the crew was basically learning to do this as they did it aside from a dry run on a lifeboat lowering test in Belfast before Titanic set sail.
Even if boats had started getting prepped and lowered by midnight; assume the boats are still being launched in a slapdash manner and not being filled properly. Also take into account the amount of physical work involved in getting the boats ready to launch and then lowering them.
The last boats to leave the Titanic were collapsible lifeboats A and B which floated off of the superstructure just after 2 am. The crew wasn't even able to lower all the boats Titanic had in the time available. Starting earlier and having more boats would not have changed anything.
Even if all the evacuation procedures go perfectly, 2 am rolls around and you're still in a scenario where at least 1,000 people are trapped on a sinking ship. Lifeboats available but unable to be lowered in time, the crew becomes desperate, detaches them hoping they'll float off. The steep list of the Titanic causes these boats to crash over the sides or slide down the decks crushing people just like the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915.
There is no scenario where everyone survives the sinking.
that was super interesting! thank you for sharing :)
I really enjoyed the video. Thanks 🙏🏼
To summarize: Titanic complied with the rules in force at the time.
They briefly touch on the incredibly interesting involvement of the Californian, and the story about it's captain, his potential negligence and/or laziness, the stigma and ruined reputation that followed him for the rest of his life, and just how differently things might've have gone for the people on Titanic if the Californian had behaved differently.
A great video, thanks for your work!
Love this video. Great work!
Would've taken quite a bold call on the bridge to say "Nup, too late to turn, let's absolutely smash that mountain of ice head on" and yet probably would have been the right decision - hindsight makes it so easy
Of course it would. Can you imagine any naval officer at all deliberately bringing about such a collision?
@@dovetonsturdee7033 with the information they had it would have been ludicrous. The ship could have narrowly missed, hit without 5 compartments flooding or hit with a rescue ship making it in time. All of those options are much better than killing a hundred or so passengers in their bunks by smashing up the bow like a soda can.
Even though it had full number of lifeboats it wasn't enough time to save all passengers at same time it took a lot of time and effort
Even still, filling the boats the capacity at least would have saved a lot more people
@@linkspeaks No reason they couldn't have transferred people to fill the lifeboats after launch & then sent the empty ones back to Titanic to be hoisted up again & filled again to capacity & relaunched
I love the graphics and the little sounds in your videos so much!
this video was very interesting!! congrats
Reality is, it wouldn't have mattered if they had more lifeboats, if anything more lifeboats might have cost more lives. The issue was where the lifeboats were stowed & launched from. The time & labour to lower them from the top of the ship to the water was too much. The last lifeboat on the Titanic wasn't even launched, they ran out of time, so no more lifeboats would have been launched from titanic, even if they were available.
Stowing the lifeboats lower/closer to the water level was what would have made a difference. Plan with lifeboats was always to use them to ferry people to the rescue ship, so with this in mind, the same could have been done with the half empty boats to save more people, transfer people from one lifeboat to another to fill, then return empty lifeboat to the titanic, hoist it up again, refill & relaunch, but again, there wasn't even time to launch all available boats, let alone try to hoist up empty ones to fill again once all available boats were launched.
LIfeboat numbers wasn't the issue, where they were stowed & launched from was!
& best option to save more lives if stowing on the top deck, would have been additional rafts, not boats. Rafts would have floated off, or have been able to have been thrown off or ridden off by people as the ship sank, without capsizing, like that last lifeboat they attempted to launch & ran out of time was.
Simply boards or tarps, holding together a layer of the same kapok fibre the life jackets onboard were made of. Rafts were seen as being for the poor & natives of their colonies though, so not something they'd want to be seen on a luxury ship like the Titanic, but even unlaunched, they would have floated & been low enough for people to easily climb out of the water onto
A wise man once said: "Having too much confidence can often be just as bad as having none at all."
I love how you narrate these stories and history in your videos. Please make more of Darkroom. 🙏
Excellent analysis of issues surrounding the Titanic disaster and its insufficient lifeboats.
God, I would NOT want to be the telegraph operator of the SS Californian. To have been within range to have received lifeboats so they could go back for more, but have slept through it... Even if it's not your fault, that'd be a hard thing to let go.
Even if she carried enough lifeboats, they would not have had enough time to lower them safely.
Titanic sank in 2 hours and 40 minutes. Britannic sank in under an hour and launched 35 out of 48 lifeboats. They would have had plenty of time. Convincing enough people to leave a ship like Titanic for a flimsy wooden boat in the middle of the Atlantic is a different story.
@@wyatt1648 Britannic also had massive, automated gantry davits and the benefit of lifeboat drills due to both Titanic’s loss and the fact that Britannic was already 2 years old by the time of her sinking. Titanic’s last lifeboats were floated off the deck during the first few minutes of her final plunge. They would not have had enough time.
@@wyatt1648 that’s not the same… as Brittanic has faster electric and gantry davits, where Titanic only had manual wellin davits, which took a lot longer to prepare.
@@wyatt1648 also, Britannic sank in wartime and everyone aboard knew that the ship was doomed the moment they were hit. Titanic went through an entire damage inspection before the necessity of launching lifeboats was even considered
Even if you're right, they'd have had time to lower some of them, saving several hundred people. That's not something to be dismissive of.
Excellent video, one of your best!!
Absolutely amazing video, if would be great if you made even more videos on the Titanic.
One important thing about the lifeboat: if the ship had enough lifeboats for everyone, possibly even MORE people would've been killed. That's because the crew didn't even have enough time to launch all of the lifeboats that were there, and if the ship had even more they would just get in the way of the crew.
To be honest, even today, “your ship is your best lifeboat”.
Yup. I'd be reluctant to abandon shp unless it was clearly going down right now. Or was seriously on fire.
I like how SOLAS is the irish word for light it had a bit of irony in it
It is interesting how relevant this disaster even after hundred years is, i have seen many videos on that topic and still new ones are popping up, it just shows how it affected safety on boats and ships
Outstanding writing, graphics, and production!
There was another, often unspoken aspect with the rules of wireless communication at the time that played a part. Messages from one ship to another, specifically ones intended for the Captain of the ship, such as weather warnings, had to be prefixed with the code "MSG", short for "Master Service Gram". Crucially, while the wireless operator on the Californian, Cyril Evens, did broadcast an ice warning, he didn't prefix his warning with that code, leading to Titanic's operator, John Phillips, to fire back an angry response:
"Shut up! You're jamming the frequency, I'm working Cape Race [Newfoundland, Canada],"
It was Evens mistake, but he seemed to have faced no consequences for his mistake (as far as I've seen, having visited Titanic Experience, Belfast, Northern Ireland)
Not a single crew member on board Californian was ever held fully accountable.
Their testimony in the inquiry is quite confusing and downright perjurious. When you put their testimony into action alongside Titanic's crew testimony, you'll find very quickly that it makes zero sense. They were covering their rears, no doubt.
I'm sure he felt it for the rest of his life..... and by that admission wouldn't that have been partially Phillps mistake too
@@joywolf83 because Evens' message didn't have the requisite prefix before his ice warning, Phillips was under no obligation to take the message to Captain Edward Smith
His snapping back was also largely in part to his sleep-deprivation with the passenger message backlog.
Evans also had no blame for the crew being so inactive that they didn't even bothered to wake him up to at least hear what was going on. While I don't think Californian could have reached Titanic anyway because she was surrounded by ice, the lack of action has no excuses on that situation.
Imagine knowing it was all your fault because you turned off your ship’s radio for the night
These vids are fire,so interesting
Nice Video mate! Hope it was looonger.