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It is less than 100 years since it was first thought necessary to provide lifeboats for everyone on board passenger ships. Yet hundreds of people had died each year in disasters around British coasts, many of them caused by storms; other vessels were wrecked in calm but foggy weather, when steamships collided in busy shipping lanes.
The sinking of the Titanic in 1912, which struck an iceberg in calm seas, was the spur for this rudimentary health and safety provision. Even then, after 1,517 people died in the tragedy, the Board of Trade tried to defend its regulations, which had specified only enough lifeboats to take half of the liner's passengers.
The board's Sir Alfred Chalmers gave several reasons for this. Only months after the Titanic disaster, he claimed that modern ships had watertight compartments and were unlikely to sink. He said that the latest ships were fitted with wireless technology, and so could appeal to other vessels for aid; at the same time he argued that if ships carried more lifeboats, the crew would not have time to load all the passengers and launch them before the ship sank.
He also said it was for ship owners to decide whether to clutter their liners with lifeboats. However, in the years before the first world war there came to be many other reasons, besides the weather, for ships to founder, and public opinion forced politicians to issue new regulations.
