Before we get all wispy and sympathetic for the White Star Line and their efforts to rescue passengers, we should stipulate that
- the ship sailed with lifeboat capacity for barely half of the passengers and crew: if the Titanic had sailed full, it would have had capacity for only one third.
- the crew were inadequately trained to conduct an evacuation of the ship. For instance, they didn't know how many to put in the lifeboats, so many boats launched partially full.
- of the 3 classes of passengers, third class passengers were left largely on their own during evacuation: only first and to some extent second class passengers received any organized assistance at abandoning ship......
My understanding is that many of the international regulations regarding numbers of lifeboats relative to passengers, crew training, etc came about as a
result of the Titanic disaster. At the time there were few if any international regulations, and White Star was in complience with British regulations of the era for passenger liners. See, for example,
"Changes in safety practices following the Titanic disaster".
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