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.
Plus, according to the article, even sinking relatively slowly the crew did not even manage to launch all the lifeboats they had, so more of them would probably not have made a difference.
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 :-)
It also explains more of the reluctance to get in the lifeboats. If most cases you’ve heard about end in disaster or nothing (because the big boat don’t sink) it makes it less desirable.
This reminds me of the London fire (Grenfell) where people were advised to stay in their appartment because usually that is the safest thing to do due to fire doors. It's like the counter-intuitive thing is safer until it isn't.
Not sure why they think the Titanic's boats were overcrowded - many of them werre only about half-full, as the crew thought that they couldn't be winched down when full (it was a recent innovation). Also the list of the ship made launching the boats on one side difficult, even with nobody in them.
Genuinely, why are people/culture seemingly more concerned with the 1500 lives lost on Titanic than the 15~20 MILLION lost in The Great War? Similarly airplane vs automobile casualties. Is it just about the power of the story to sell in a newspaper?
People are supposed to die in war, and automobiles are operated at the whim of the one person driving them whereas commercial airplanes are operated in strict accordance with a protocol that's supposed to prevent killing people and trashing the multimillion dollar commercial equipment. Nobody gives a crap when two guys in a float plane crash in the middle of nowhere, because the circumstances said aircraft is operated under are pretty close to that of a car.
I'm not gonna call your question silly because it was in earnest, but it does seem to indicate problems with your world view that you consider deaths under these differing circumstances fungible at a 1 for 1 rate or thereabouts.
Why are they not fungible for you? What difference is there when a drunk t-bones you two thousand times versus an iceberg t-boning fifteen hundred people one time? Also what the hell do you mean "supposed to die in a war", who decides that?
But I see the line about "multimillion dollar commercial equipment". The shareholder value must be protected after all. Conversely, a wrecked car is a potential new sale.
I can tell you haven't been a software developer or engineer long if the woes of the Titanic aren't resonating with you at some level. They built out this lux tricked out master facade to make the most high-end ocean liner in the world but built it with rivets that were high in slag (cheap). They took shortcuts that got exposed on the product launch which sent over a thousand people to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. As a dev I look at this as the worst, most historically atrocious user experience in the history of human civilization and it continues to live on in the memories of everyone in 2025. And RIP to those that gave up their seats on those shifty lifeboats so that other peoples kids could survive this debacle.
> "As a dev I look at this as the worst, most historically atrocious user experience in the history of human civilization"
Another contender: during the fire and sinking of the steamship General Slocum carrying people on a family picnic in New York, 1904, people reached for the fire hoses which were cheap and rotten and useless. The lifeboats were inaccessible. The life jackets unmaintained for a decade and had rotted to cork dust and the inspection records had been falsified. Imagine with no fire extinguishing, no lifeboats, you grab a remaining life preserver and put it on your kid and throw them overboard only to watch them sink to their death because the life preserver manufacturing company had put iron bars in them instead of cork floats because that was cheaper.
957 people died in the whole disaster. The headlines are here:
The rivets and plates were made of material that was strong enough at room temperature but brittle at freezing temperatures. This phenomenon was not known to metallurgists at the time. It was an industry-wide problem.
I don't think people are 'more concerned' - it's just that the sinking of the Titanic was (and still is) a shocking and compelling story. It was the largest ocean liner in the world, on it's maiden voyage, supposedly unsinkable, sinking in frigid waters in a single tragic night.
It's easier to relate to people on a trip than in a war, too many people died during the great war so being concerned is overwhelming, the Titanic had the perfect headline as the unsinkable ship, rich people were on the Titanic and we care about them more than poors dying in a war, etc...
An interesting podcast.
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.
Plus, according to the article, even sinking relatively slowly the crew did not even manage to launch all the lifeboats they had, so more of them would probably not have made a difference.
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 :-)
It also explains more of the reluctance to get in the lifeboats. If most cases you’ve heard about end in disaster or nothing (because the big boat don’t sink) it makes it less desirable.
This reminds me of the London fire (Grenfell) where people were advised to stay in their appartment because usually that is the safest thing to do due to fire doors. It's like the counter-intuitive thing is safer until it isn't.
This is a podcast first, the article is a nice to have.
The podcast came up in my feed and I listened to it.
That is indeed a rough two-sentence summary of the featured article.
We're all about efficiency here on HN.
tl;dr
HN values efficiency
Not sure why they think the Titanic's boats were overcrowded - many of them werre only about half-full, as the crew thought that they couldn't be winched down when full (it was a recent innovation). Also the list of the ship made launching the boats on one side difficult, even with nobody in them.
[flagged]
Genuinely, why are people/culture seemingly more concerned with the 1500 lives lost on Titanic than the 15~20 MILLION lost in The Great War? Similarly airplane vs automobile casualties. Is it just about the power of the story to sell in a newspaper?
People are supposed to die in war, and automobiles are operated at the whim of the one person driving them whereas commercial airplanes are operated in strict accordance with a protocol that's supposed to prevent killing people and trashing the multimillion dollar commercial equipment. Nobody gives a crap when two guys in a float plane crash in the middle of nowhere, because the circumstances said aircraft is operated under are pretty close to that of a car.
I'm not gonna call your question silly because it was in earnest, but it does seem to indicate problems with your world view that you consider deaths under these differing circumstances fungible at a 1 for 1 rate or thereabouts.
Why are they not fungible for you? What difference is there when a drunk t-bones you two thousand times versus an iceberg t-boning fifteen hundred people one time? Also what the hell do you mean "supposed to die in a war", who decides that?
But I see the line about "multimillion dollar commercial equipment". The shareholder value must be protected after all. Conversely, a wrecked car is a potential new sale.
I can tell you haven't been a software developer or engineer long if the woes of the Titanic aren't resonating with you at some level. They built out this lux tricked out master facade to make the most high-end ocean liner in the world but built it with rivets that were high in slag (cheap). They took shortcuts that got exposed on the product launch which sent over a thousand people to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. As a dev I look at this as the worst, most historically atrocious user experience in the history of human civilization and it continues to live on in the memories of everyone in 2025. And RIP to those that gave up their seats on those shifty lifeboats so that other peoples kids could survive this debacle.
> "As a dev I look at this as the worst, most historically atrocious user experience in the history of human civilization"
Another contender: during the fire and sinking of the steamship General Slocum carrying people on a family picnic in New York, 1904, people reached for the fire hoses which were cheap and rotten and useless. The lifeboats were inaccessible. The life jackets unmaintained for a decade and had rotted to cork dust and the inspection records had been falsified. Imagine with no fire extinguishing, no lifeboats, you grab a remaining life preserver and put it on your kid and throw them overboard only to watch them sink to their death because the life preserver manufacturing company had put iron bars in them instead of cork floats because that was cheaper.
957 people died in the whole disaster. The headlines are here:
https://www.nytimes.com/1904/10/02/archives/put-iron-bars-in...
https://www.nytimes.com/1905/05/25/archives/for-life-preserv...
and the story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38NfsPVC6m8
The rivets and plates were made of material that was strong enough at room temperature but brittle at freezing temperatures. This phenomenon was not known to metallurgists at the time. It was an industry-wide problem.
> who decides that
The people that sent them to war and the people trying to kill them. It's a collaboration.
I don't think people are 'more concerned' - it's just that the sinking of the Titanic was (and still is) a shocking and compelling story. It was the largest ocean liner in the world, on it's maiden voyage, supposedly unsinkable, sinking in frigid waters in a single tragic night.
I think it's because the massive death of men in war is "priced in" to people's mental model and things like a huge cruise ship sinking aren't
How many lives would be lost by not fighting?
They were rich and white!
It's easier to relate to people on a trip than in a war, too many people died during the great war so being concerned is overwhelming, the Titanic had the perfect headline as the unsinkable ship, rich people were on the Titanic and we care about them more than poors dying in a war, etc...
lots of rich people died during the war too, noblesse oblige saw to that.