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different countries of very different sizes and capabilities were near the incidents.

the US and Canadian coast guards don't operate in the Mediterranean, and (presumably) couldn't have gotten ships there fast enough to do anything about it, anyways.

Splitting hairs here but the US Navy has several bases in the Mediterranean. Though I don’t know where vessels were related to the refugee boat or how quickly that tragedy began and ended.

> How many rescue ships were deployed to the med incident? How many to the titanic?

I don't know. Do you ?

From wikipedia: "Immediately following the sinking, the Greek Coast Guard and the military initiated a massive search and rescue operation."

> one garnered exponentially more government attention

It wouldn't be surprising that some of those rescue ships were funded by the families of the victims, considering the size of their bank accounts.