The Titanic's Best Lifeboat

Summary

Everyone grows up learning the same story about the RMS Titanic, that when the ship set out on its maiden voyage in 1912, the owners and authorities, confident that the ship was unsinkable, did not require it to carry a full complement of lifeboats. So when the Titanic sank in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic, more than half of the people on board died for lack of lifeboat space. But the more you learn about the history of lifeboats and how they worked, the more you realize that the standard story about the Titanic’s lifeboats isn’t entirely correct. One Crew: The RNLI’s Official 200 Year History Helen Doe is a maritime historian and author of the book One Crew, a history of the first ever nation-wide lifeboat service, Britain’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Doe says that for most of human history, the onboard lifeboat you are likely picturing in your head right now did not exist. Even as late as the 18th century, on a typical wooden sailing ship, what few boats were on board were mostly for taking cargo and crew to and from shore. There were no boats designed for the crew to get on just in case the ship sank. So if your ship did sink, there wasn’t much you could do except signal for help, by firing a cannon or lighting a fire, and hope that someone came to your rescue. Then, in 1785, a British carriage-builder named Lionel Lukin filed a patent for an “unimmergable boat”, the first known craft designed with the specific purpose of saving lives at sea. The patent by Lionel Lukin for an “unimmergable boat” Lukin’s key innovation was to line the boat’s hull with sealed air pockets and cork to help keep it buoyant, even in the most difficult conditions. Less than a decade later, the Englishmen William Woudhave and Henry Greathead improved on Lukin’s design. Their boat’s hull rose steeply upward at both ends, so that only the middle of the boat would ever take on water, while the bow and stern stayed above the waterline, making it even more difficult to sin...