"Home Guy" wrote in message ...
"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?


Unless you stay warm AND DRY, which is very hard to do on ANY kind of raft,
your odds of survival are low.


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.


The problem is not to be sitting, it's how you get to be sitting without
being immersed or soaked in arctic waters.

The Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 pm, and the stern went under at
2:20 am. The first survivors were picked up at 4:10 am, and the last at
8:30 am.


That's nice.
But not really relevant.
Many that made it into the boats, didn't survive those few hours.
How do you think that people sitting soaking wet on a raft would do ?


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???