The mind set was that life boats were dangerous, only with the Titanic’s sinking did occur on a tranquil sea, otherwise many others would have died.
That and the California’s radio operator having just turned in for the night missing the distress call, which the ship could have transferred the passengers to.
They also based the decision for the number of lifeboats on empiric data. According to the article, until then lifeboats launched from ships out at sea had a very bad track record. Rarely did anyone survive, they just died from lack of food and water.
Instead, they started to making the actual ships much more survivable. The main purpose of those lifeboats then was to ferry passengers to rescue ships, so a full set for every single person on board was not needed.
It is a very interesting article. Every time I hear some simple story, as soon as someone more knowledgeable has a look it begins to look very different from the little snippet known and spread by the public. I never trust simple stories any more, so I am glad I heard a different version of the simple "The Titanic did not have enough lifeboats".
Reading the whole still short article is worth it! I'm summarizing a few additional points because I am definitely not complaining about common habits of readers who are more likely to read the comments :-)
The podcast came up in my feed and I listened to it.
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