why did so many people die on the titanic?

Question

why was it that 3rd class people were the most to die

Answer 1

Okay, to answer some of the things that have already been written above by people who have no knowledge of history. It should be said that there WERE regulations concerning lifeboats in place at the time of the Titanic. It was simply that nobody, at the time that the regulations were put in place years before, anticipated anything as big as the Titanic ever being built. In a technical sense she actually carried the regualtion number of lifeboats but nobody had ever thought to update the regulations or to specify that there needed to be space avaliable for every person on board in a lifeboat. The result was that there were a thousand people who could never have found space in Titanic's boats. The architect of the ship never refered to her as unsinkable, had planned for Titanic to carry enough lifeboats to accomodate everyone on board but his design was altered by Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, as a cost cutting measure. Ismay was on board the Titanic the night of her sinking and he managed to find space for himself in a lifeboat, thereby taking a space that could have been given to a woman or child, and was rightly branded a coward for the rest of his life.

Those boats that she carried weren't loaded to full capacity as they were being lowered either. The rule of women and children first was observed by Officer Lightroller and if that meant that a boat wasn't full he still wasn't allowing men in unless it weas to help steer the boat. Officer Murdock also began by placing less than capacity on his side of the ship but after a short time he began to fill them. It seems to have been assumed that the boats that weren't filled to capacity would be able to manuver back to pick up people in the water after Titanic had sunk. However only two boats went back, the others claimed that they were afraid of being swamped by the people in the water, and those two that did go back were able to save no more than a handful of people.

Preference was given to the first class passengers for loading the lifeboats but mostly, with a few cowardly exceptions such as Bruce Ismay and Lord Cosmo Duff Gordon, it was only for the women and children. Some of the richest men in the world, Strauss, Guggenheim and Astor as examples, were on board the Titanic that night, did not board lifeboats and died like men.

There WAS a lookout in the crows nest, Frederick Fleet, and he rang the alarm as soon as he saw the berg. The Titanic's boilers were coal fired so there wasn't much oil or gas on the water The SS Carpathia was the ship that drove north through the ice field at top speed in darkness and saved all of those who lived and her skipper and crew were the heros of the rescue. Carpathia got there as fast as was humanly possible and the ship that might have been closer but didn't have its radio, wireless, turned on was the SS Californian.

Finally, the greatest reason that so many more died in third class, or steerage, than first class was that there were so many more third class passengers on board. The percentages worked against them.

What was done wasn't fair or right but neither was it as extreme as it might appear at first glance. Remember this, Hollywood is never a good source of history.

Answer 2

When the Titanic was originally built, the plans included enough life boats for every passenger. However, when it became obvious that the lifeboats would ruin the view from the 1st Class cabins, they were removed. Enough were left to cover the laws at that time, and as the Titanic was advertised as 'Unsinkable', no one thought very much about it. Until it hit the iceburg!
That was when it was realised that there weren't enough life boats and those that were launched were not filled to capacity. First Class women and children were evacuated first and they refused to allow the boats to be filled to capacity because they didn't want to be crushed!
The 3rd Class passengers were literally locked below decks and had to 'escape' up to the higher decks before they could even attempt to get on a lifeboat. By that time, most of them had already been launched (half empty!).
To make matters worse, once the ship had gone down, most of the lifeboats refused to pick up the hundreds of drowning, freezing people who had jumped into the water. They were frightened of being swamped (not by water, but by the people attemping to get into the boats). By the time they did make an attempt at a rescue, it was too late and most of the people had drowned.

Answer 3

Many reasons
1. they sank in freezing water so most people that jumped died instantly. the water also had gas/oil from the engines so that water was now cold and unbreathable.
2. the way in which the titantic was hit made the break 1/3 and 2/3 part had the engines. this caused the engine part to breakway more in the center, bottom. Then the top part 1/3 stood up and sank second.
3. there was no one in the crows nest on top looking for any problems in the water. Had there been they would have spotted the iceberg and turned. This large ship would have turned very slowly.
4. witness said that the iceberg was over 100 feet above the top deck. Later (when they found the sunken ship) they found holes about 250feet down below the level of water. They say that the shorter side (10%)of an iceberg is on the top. So there is no way to say how much deeper the iceberg really was. but icebergs can be 70 miles wide and up to 150 miles long
5.liveboats there was no drill so no one knew what to do, they had room for about 1200 and only 700 were saved in the boats.
life jacket could have save some people but they provided just the ability to float not to keep warm.

Answer 4

Many people have correctly stated that there were not enough life boats. Another factor was that the crew were poorly trained in their deployment, leading to boats being launched when they could of held a lot more people.

Other people have mentioned hypothermia. This is what caused the death of the majority of the victims. But we only know this with the benefit of hindsight. At the time the deaths were reported as drownings. Hypothermia was not recognised as a cause of death until after the Second World War, following research by the Royal Navy and tainted knowledge gained from the Nazi concentration camp experiments.

The point is that at the time of the disaster, neither the crew nor anybody else realised that the people in the water wearing life jackets would die so quickly.

Answer 5

Because there were insufficient lifeboats and lack of organisation leading to total chaos. It was also the fact that the boat turned therefore hitting the iceberg side on. It would have been better to have had a head on collision as this would have reduced the chance of sinking. The third class people were right down below with I believe some even in the hold i.e. servants etc.

Answer 6

Several reasons - it was billed as the 'unsinkable ship', but the walls that were supposed to contain water if the hull was breeched didn't go all the way up, so the water was able to spill over into the other sections. The impact with the iceberg happened a little before midnight on April 14 1914 (not positive about the year) and most folks were asleep. There were only enough lifeboats for about a quarter of the people on board. The ship went completely under a bit before 3am on April 15th - it was freezing.

Answer 7

The Titanic was a well designed ship, and carried more lifeboats than she was legally required to! the problem was that, whilst no one had actually claimed she was unsinkable, the concept was that her watertight compartments would keep her afloat long enough for help, summoned by her state of the art radio, to arrive. So the function of the life boats was seen as ferrying passengers to the rescue ship, rather than the complete evacuation of all the ships company at once! No one envisaged the scenario that actually unfolded.
As for the third class thing, it seems to me that there was no actuall policy to keep them till last, but the stewards were ill-informed as to the actual situation and there was a fear, based on the class distinctions of the time, that the plebs would panic unnecessarily, unlike the stiff-upper-lip women and children first sang froid of their social betters!

Answer 8

Bad design.
Money saving over safety.
Each vessel should have watertight compartments,which can be sealed in an emergency, Titanic didn't. Each compartment was open at the top, so a slight dip in the bow would let water over into the next compartment. Like a domino line toppling, once it had started nothing would stop it.
Still White Star probably made a packet on the insurance.
Third class? Who cares!

Answer 9

These people would have been on the lower deck of the ship, which was generally left locked to keep them from mingling with the upper class. The upper class didn't want to catch all the nice little diseases and illnesses that the poor could not afford to have treated. Therefore, when the ship began to sink, it took them longer to get up on deck, and by this time, the too few of boats were already filled to less than capacity.

Answer 10

The main reason for so many deaths was the lack of life boats!
The British Government's Board of Trade allowed Titanic to sail with insufficient lifeboat accommodation. The government simply had not kept up with advances in marine engineering and based all lifesaving regulations on ships up to 10,000 grt (gross registered tons) that were required to carry 16 lifeboats. The Merchant Shipping Act of 1864 was the first comprehensive set of rules and regulations governing ships that companies were required to follow. They had been updated in 1902 and 1906 but, typical of government even to this day, they were hopelessly always behind the curve.
Titanic was 46,329 grt. A ship designed to accommodate 3,511 passengers and crew was only required to provide lifeboat accommodation for 962. In fact, White Star provided her with four extra collapsible boats, increasing capacity to 1,178. Unfortunately the crew failed in their duty, all these lifeboats could have been loaded to their stated capacity in time, or even with many more, for the numbered capacity reflected shipyard workers, not women and children and, in the flat calm conditions that night, the first boat to leave Titanic's side, with a capacity of 40, contained just 12 people!
Of course the 3rd class passengers were the last ones who started to enter the boats.
Therefore there was little room left for them!