>watch video on ship sinking>a lifeboat successfully launching is a near miracleWhy can't we make a lifeboat that not a total deathtrap?
Modern lifeboats can safely launch under pretty much any conditions. Lifeboats on old passenger liners like the one you've pictured weren't meant to be launched during a violent collision or sinking. The expectation was a ship would remain upright and sink slowly enough that lifeboats could be leisurely craned down alongside it, and would just make short trips back and forth to whatever ships showed up to rescue passengers. This is where the famous "not enough lifeboats for everyone on titanic" issue comes from, the expectation was the ship would take 2-3 days to fully sink, and if it started taking on water they could just call in a rescue ship and make multiple trips over. In reality it sank just 3 hours after the collision, before any help could arrive. Modern cruise ships have enough lifeboat capacity for all passengers and crew.
>>2004060I’ve been on those modern escape boats (cruise ship parked at a private island, but the cruise company didn’t want to pay to build a port) and there are multiple access points (lower and mid-level), enough lifeboats for 100% of humans on board, and they are safe underwater. They’re just really hot and stuffy when packed to max capacity
>>2004060>The expectation was a ship would remain upright and sink slowly enough-close, but no. the justification for having fewer lifeboat places than there were passengers was that another ship on the busy cross-atlantic route would respond to any signs of distress, and rescue whoever needed rescuing. the reality, of course, is that the SS Californian apparently ignored the 'help help shit's fucked' flares and radio signals until it was too late, for reasons that are unclear to this day.still, it's nice to get misty-eyed at the SS Carpathian doing the literal 'all power to the engines' thing and charging to the rescue: full speed ahead through icy waters in pitch darkness, not knowing what condition they'd find the Titanic in. filmworthy in itself imo.
>>2004082>the SS Californian apparently ignored the 'help help shit's fucked' flaresAllegedly, the guy responsible for sending those flares fucked it up
>>2004027There are lifeboats that don't suck, but many countries don't have laws or regulations that require them, so ship operators often choose the cheaper option of having 19th century wooden rafts with some orange paint and lights. Generally, the best setup is a number of modern enclosed survival craft for all crew/passengers, ideally fireproof and some unhoisted, as well as numerous automatic inflatable rafts in addition to abundant PFDs (automatically deployed) and survival suits. In reality, traveling by ship is far safer of an activity than most other activities people choose to partake in every day, so making ships safer is fairly low priority.
>it's falls too
>>2004027>Why can't we make a lifeboat that not a total deathtrap?There's no money in it.
>>2004082>another ship on the busy cross-atlantic route would respondYes anon, and how would it do that?Mostly by the ship sinking slowly. You are word for word replicating his argument, without the elaboration.
>>2004920the justification was not 'a ship will sink slowly enough that rescue will be prompt', the justification was 'a ship will undoubtedly be nearby and able to assist'. i'm sure you can tell there is a difference between these two sentences.
>>2004922NTA>i'm sure you can tell there is a difference between these two sentences.Yes. The concept linking the two sentences is time.If a boat takes 5 hours to sink and help is 6 hours away, is that preferable to a boat taking 30 minutes to sink with help 20 minutes away?The urgency of an emergency, and the time to rescue, are concepts so intertwined they LITERALLY do not make sense without the other. So the theory arguing for carrying less than 100% capacity lifeboats, from either the perspective of either the sinking or rescue being timely, is the same exact argument. It is two ways of saying exactly the same thing, and it's a failure in conceptual reasoning not to notice.
>>2004926oh fuck off if you're going to nitpick semantics.
>>2004930lol did he hurt your feelings by pointing out you're retarded?
>>2004082In the case of the Titanic, the ship sank before they could get all twenty lifeboats off the ship (Collapsibles A and B were swamped/capsized before they could be launched and floated away as the ship was sinking) so an addition twenty boats wouldn't really have made much of a difference. In fact, it might have made the disaster even worse because it would have dramatically increased loading and launch times for each individual boat.
>>2004797you're talking pure nonsense. the vast majority of cargo ships regardless of their flag are heavily regulated regarding safety and survival craft. Almost all of them already have lifeboats, rescue boats and various liferaftsthat's nowhere near the reason why lifeboats are dangerous
>>2005604Simply having regulations is not sufficient. What's important is having adequate regulations and how well they are enforced. These things are constantly improving, but they are far from the best they could be. Also, recall that I'm not only talking about cargo ships but other working vessels as well (and passenger ferries, most importantly). Nice thing about merchant ships is that they're relatively newer and more modern, whereas vessels in other industries (like fishing, for example) have a lot of old shitty boats grandfathered in and exempt from laws. Pic is a life boat from a ferry which was in service in the 90s and saved the life of only one passenger. Note that it's a wooden piece of shit and filled with water. At the time, modern enclosed survival craft were already common among other vessels (like cargo ships) but were not required for passenger ferries. When people like OP are asking "why are life boats so shitty", it's usually stuff like this that they're talking about.
