u would be dragging the
whole side of the boat away if you tried to lower the boats with a
15-degree list."

That some boats were and others would have been seriously damaged is
evidenced by the fact that two port boats were lowered to the water and
got away, (though one afterward filled,) and not one boat reached
Queenstown.

Each boat has its own history, (except possibly Boats 2 and 4,) although
it is naturally difficult, in each case, to allocate all the testimony
to a particular boat.

[Sidenote: Accidents in lowering.]

There is some testimony, given in undoubted good faith, that painted or
rusted davits stuck out, but the weight of the testimony is to the
contrary. There were some lamentable occurrences on the port side, which
resulted in spilling passengers, some of whom thus thrown out or injured
went to their death. These unfortunate accidents, however, were due
either to lack of strength of the seaman who was lowering, or possibly,
at worst, to an occasional instance of incompetency due to the personal
equation so often illustrated, where one man of many may not be equal to
the emergency. But the problem was of the most vexatious character. In
addition to the crowding of passengers in some instances was this
extremely hazardous feat of lowering boats swung inboard from a tilted
height, heavily weighted by human beings, with the ship still under way.
It cannot be said that it was negligent to attempt this, because,
obviously, all the passengers could not be accommodated in the starboard
boats.

[Sidenote: Six boats get away from starboard.]

On the starboard side, the problem, in some respects, was not so
difficult, while, in others, troublesome conditions existed quite
different from those occurring on the port side. Here the boats swung so
far out as to add to the difficulty of passengers getting in them, a
difficulty intensified by the fact that many more passengers went to the
starboard side than to the port side and, also that the ship maintained
her way. Six boats successfully got away. In the case of the remaining
boats, some were successfully lowered but later met with some
unavoidable accident, and some were not successfully launched (such as
Nos. 1, 5, and 17) for entirely explainable reasons which should not be
charged to inefficiency on the part of the officers or crew.

[Sidenote: Collapsible boats cut loose.]

The collapsible boats were on the deck under the open lifeboats, and
were in