“...the TItanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 pm and sank at 2:20 am” (Lord 173). April 12, 1912 marked the night the RMS Titanic went down in the big Atlantic Ocean. The Titanic only had enough lifeboats for ⅓ of the people on board. This was because the appearance of the Titanic was more important than its passengers’ safety. Captain Edward Smith thought all the lifeboats would look “cluttered” on deck. The titanic had the title of “unsinkable ship” because of that, the captain thought lifeboats wouldn’t be needed but indeed they were. The impact of lifeboat shortage on the Titanic forced the captain to call the BirkenHead drill, caused men to dress as women, and brought passengers to participate in bribery. As Captain Smith became more aware …show more content…
Two in particular, Lucille and Cosmo Duff-Gordon were one of the 325 first class passengers. ”Lucy 's husband bribed crew members to speed away without letting the boat fill, won Titanic lifeboat No. 1 the nickname Money boat in the press” (Mailonline). “...they lowered No. 1-capacity 40 persons-with exactly 12 people” (Lord 71). “In no. 1 Fireman Charles Hendrickson sang out, ‘It’s up to us to go back and pick up any one in the water’ ” (Lord 121). Cosmo Gordon promised 5 euros for the rowers to row faster and farther away from the sinking ship. This statement just shows what little humanity people come too. “ ‘Cosmo was in no position to give orders, he was not in charge of the boat’ ”, says Sir Andrew (MailOnline). People in the boat wanted to row back to save others, but the greediness of the Gordon came over their hospitality. This act of bribery was given a lot of shame when the Gordons came back. Not having enough lifeboats caused people to do things they didn’t want to but thought they had no choice to do. In this case, the act was bribery, which people showed shame upon. All caused because there weren’t a sufficient amount lifeboats on the TItanic. In conclusion, only having ⅓ of the lifeboats needed to let all the people on the Titanic to survive impacted their actions. This caused more than 66% of people on board to die Captain Smith had to call the Birkenhead Drill, men decided to dress as women because they couldn’t respect the drill and the act of bribery occurred as well. The foolishness of not holding enough lifeboats on deck created impacts