Titanic's Lifeboats

Foot by foot Titanic’s lifeboat No.11 slowly jerked its way down the sides of the great ocean liner as it slipped beneath the cold, dark waters of the Atlantic. For the fifty or so men, women and children crammed into the lifeboat, survival was all that mattered. Even then, though, the American fashion designer Edith Rosenbaum Russell ferociously clung to her pig-shaped music box until she was rescued, its tunes helping to quell the fears of the frightened children onboard. Unlike so many of those onboard Titanic that fateful night in April 1912, everyone in lifeboat No.11 would be rescued.Bridget McDermott had brought a new hat before she set off for America. Bridget climbed into one of the lifeboats, believed to be No.13, before realising she had left her precious purchase behind. She climbed out of the lifeboat, retrieved her hat from her cabin, ran back to the open deck and jumped fifteen feet from a rope ladder onto the lifeboat. Other garments played an important part in the survival of one of the lifeboats which sprung a leak, with the people onboard using clothes to plug the hole.Charles Joughin, the head baker aboard Titanic, floated in the near-freezing ocean for around two hours before being pulled out of the water onto one of the lifeboats. He had not succumbed to the cold due to the amount of alcohol he had drunk.Masabumi Hosono, a civil servant from Tokyo, was the only Japanese passenger onboard Titanic and, being a man, he accepted that the women and children first policy had sealed his fate. However, when a crew member shouted that there were two spaces left in a lifeboat, No.10, Hosono jumped in. As Japanese honour considered it far better for a man to suffer an honourable death than to survive in a shameful manner, when he reached his homeland he was ostracized by his family and lost his job.When it sailed, Titanic carried twenty lifeboats that, between them, could accommodate 1,178 people, a little over half of the 2,209 on board the night the liner sank. Eighteen of these life-saving craft were used that night, but tragically only 706 people found a space in them. This is the dramatic and moving story of the men, women and children who made it into the lifeboats that fateful night in April 1912.

JAMES BANCROFT has produced more than 100 books and articles, the subjects of which reflect his varied interests. He has contributed a number of articles for The New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and his book Rorke’s Drift: The Zulu War, 1879 has been re-printed seven times. His JWB Historical Library, compiled over four decades, is one of the largest private collections of its kind in the world. When he is not writing, James enjoys singing and playing and listening to music, and being with his growing family.