# Titanic & the berg **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 8, 2003, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titanic-the-berg/147247 "2003-01-08T03:58:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2003, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titanic-the-berg/147247/21 "2003-02-09T17:23:14Z")
Actually, it was kind of that they were left to find their way up. They were told, but no one was as helpful as they were towards the First Class. Typical of the day. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2003, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titanic-the-berg/147247/22 "2003-02-09T17:35:29Z")
FYI, Californian and Carpathia were as unlucky as Titanic both were sunk a few years later by U-boats in WW1. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2003, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titanic-the-berg/147247/23 "2003-02-09T18:04:22Z")
Yep-although in the case of the _Carpathia_, only five didn’t make it. Her captain from the time of the _Titanic_ rescue, Arthur Rostron, would go on to command the _Mauritania_, IIRC. And it’s interesting-they only found the location of _Carpathia_ a few years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2003, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titanic-the-berg/147247/24 "2003-02-09T18:34:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by David Simmons \* > **That fact makes me wonder what the designers thought processes were. If the ship was thought to be unsinkable why put lifeboats on at all?** Life boats were required by law. Unfortunately the required number was an anachronism from when the biggest ships were a fraction of the size of the Titanic. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2003, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titanic-the-berg/147247/25 "2003-02-09T19:04:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Wendell Wagner \* > \*\*No, the lower-priced passengers were not prevented from coming on deck. A significant proportion of them made it to the lifeboats and were saved. The reason that a smaller proportion of them made it to the boats was that by the time that everyone was told to abandon the ship, it took longer for those passengers (whose cabins were deeper in the ship) to reach the lifeboats. \*\* I don’t think that the lower deck passengers were intentionally locked down. I need to check out _A night To Remember_ and reread it. I think I recall that the cheap seat passengers were given practically no information or crew assistance in getting topside. In trying to get there they found a lot of locked and blocked passageways resulting in a lot of lost time stumbling around looking for ways up. As far as off-loading the passengers onto an iceberg. In addition to being useless, there just wasn’t time. The ship sank in about 2-1/2 hours. According the _Britannica_: “Shortly before midnight on April 14, the ship collided with an iceberg … [and] The ship sank at 2:20 AM April 15.” _Britannica_ further states that there were “… only 1,178 lifeboat spaces for the 2,224 persons aboard” and a number of the lifeboads couldn’t be launched or capsized on launching. To conceive, organize and carry out an emergency evacuation of over a thousand people by small boat transfer from a 46000 ton ocean liner in the time available just doesn’t seem reasonable. ---
**Author:** ![aahala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e4f/32.png) [@aahala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aahala)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2003, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titanic-the-berg/147247/26 "2003-02-09T21:24:33Z")
Here’s link to a chart showing a breakdown of survivors by class and gender: [http://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm](http://www.anesi.com/titanic.htm) An interesting thing is that the save rate for third class men was twice that of second class men, but many more were lost as there were three times as many as in second class. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titanic-the-berg/147247.md?page=1)