I'm not sure at what point the ship listed too far to make the lifeboats/rafts on the "top" side of the side inoperable. I don't know if any passengers escaped in lifeboats from the "top" side of the ship.
This is one of the worst things about how the incident was handled -- if the captain had ordered abandon ship in a timely fashion, they would have had hours to use all the lifeboats before the ship was listing too much for one side to not work.
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