FWIW You probably shouldn't realistically expect to offload large numbers of people to another vessel at sea, that is extremely hazardous. It was hazardous in 1912 and it's still dangerous in 2020.
If you're at sea and the master expects the vessel to reach a port, even if it's badly damaged, they will resist trying to evacuate passengers because they rightly expect some of the passengers would be injured or even killed in the attempt.
An uncontrolled fire, which is one of the worst problems you might have at sea short of actually capsizing†, is still not enough for a master to conclude the passengers must evacuate if it seems possible to reach a port instead. The intention will be - unless it becomes apparent this is impossible - to make for a port and keep passengers from inhaling smoke or burning to death meanwhile. Despite being unable to extinguish the fire your fire fighting teams may be able to buy you enough time to reach port.
Passengers often think of lifeboats first when anything goes wrong (perhaps partly because of the famous Titanic disaster in fact) but they are almost never the right choice, in fact Titanic probably harmed maritime safety to an extent by putting lifeboats top of mind for the general public.
† Titanic happened very slowly, but this is by no means the rule. And if a ship capsizes quickly lifeboats do you no good whatsoever. The Herald of Free Enterprise had about 90 seconds between the crew first realising there was a serious problem and the ship laying on its side - that wasn't even long enough to understand the situation and make an SOS radio call, let alone order passengers into lifeboats.