On Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:12:44 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:07:49 -0500, Caesar Romano wrote:

... because there were not enough escape pods!

But there was plenty of room for Bruce Ismay. He was on one of the
first lifeboats launched.

After the disaster, Ismay was savaged by both the American and the
British press for deserting the ship while women and children were still
on board. Some papers called him the "Coward Of The Titanic" or "J.
Brute Ismay" and suggested that the White Star flag be changed to a
white liver. Some ran negative cartoons depicting him deserting the
ship. The writer Ben Hecht, then a young newspaperman in Chicago, wrote
a scathing poem contrasting the actions of Capt. Smith and Ismay. The
final verse reads: "To hold your place in the ghastly face of death on
the sea at night is a seaman's job, but to flee with the mob, is an
owner's noble right."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Bruce_Ismay

Not knowing the exact circumstances, he may or may not have done the
right thing by getting off the ship. As a businessman, he may have save
lives by getting the hell out of the way and letting the heroic crew do
their jobs without his hindrance.

What he was guilty of was reducing the number of lifeboats.

"To accommodate the luxurious features Ismay ordered the number of
lifeboats reduced from 48 to 16, the latter being the minimum allowed by
the Board of Trade, based on the Titanic's projected tonnage."

Hmm, didn't the Olympic (Titanic's sister[1] ship) have a similar
(possibly identical) number of lifeboats? As far as I know, nobody kicked
up a stink then; people weren't particularly worried about it until after
Titanic went down.

[1] IIRC, some of the "Titanic" footage from newsreels and the like
immediately after the Titanic disaster is actually of Olympic; the ships
appeared more or less identical.

cheers

Jules