In article , Home Guy wrote:

"Attila.Iskander" wrote:

I always found it strange that there wasn't enough wood or other
light-weight materials onboard that could have been scavanged to
make ad-hoc rafts or other floatation aids.

The ship was carrying lots of cargo, so I'm sure there would have
been lots of wood crates, etc.

The only problem is that survival in arctic waters is a matter of a
couple of minutes

What part of "finding enough wood or other junk to use as a raft" don't
you understand?

I can't believe the number of people that don't understand the concept
of assembling a pile of floating junk to sit on during the 3 to 6 hours
that the survivors in lifeboats had to wait until they were picked up
I can't believe that you would think that would work given the fact
that it isn't fact that people were killed by drowning, but rather by
the cold. How is one supposed to get to the floating junk but swim to
it? Even if it was right next to the ship, how do you traverse the space
between the top deck (or any other deck you could get out of) and stuff
in the water? You think you could rappel maybe?
Then if you could get past that hurdle, if you are sitting on a
whole bunch of flotsam and jetsam, how do you keep it from sinking from
just the addition of your weight?


For the others here that claimed that "people stayed on the ship -
believing it wouldn't sink" - ya, well, when the bow is so low and about
to go under, and you've got maybe an hour to make a crude raft, do you
still think that people on the ship are still thinking that the ship
won't sink???
The timelines don't indicate anywhere near enough to time to do that
after it became that apparent.

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