Hi Dudly,

First you need to understand that many times only some of the lifeboats even got away. For example a ship with a bad list to one side couldn’t launch any of the lifeboats from the other side. The lifeboats located just above the point where the torpedo hit were frequently completely destroyed when the torpedo exploded.

Of those that did get away many were damaged by shrapnel during the attack and some weren’t properly maintained in the first place and had leaks etc. The survivors in them had to continuously bail them out. With nobody alive to bail them out they eventually sank.

Once those in a lifeboat had succumbed it was easy for the lifeboat to simply sink from leaks or from a bit of weather. What’s more if empty lifeboats were found at sea by an Allied warship they were usually sunk to keep others from wasting their time investigating them and most of the time they couldn’t or just didn’t try to identify the ship that they came from.

The men in the lifeboats usually didn’t last very long if they weren’t picked up within a few days of the attack either. Many were inured or burned during the attack and there wasn’t medicine or a doctor to properly take care of really bad medical problems. They just had to suffer until they died or were rescued. They were frequently overcrowded and under provisioned especially with water. You can only live for about 3 days without water. Rationing could stretch that out a bit but remember that many of these boats had way more people aboard that they were provisioned for. Rain or snow could provide more water but could also help sink the boats. The conditions in an overcrowded lifeboat were horrible too and made survival much harder. At best you had to sit (& try to sleep sitting up) on a hard wooden plank 24/7 for days on end without being able to stand up, move around and stretch and there might just be standing room only. At the worst they had to stay in the water & hang on to the side of the lifeboat until someone in the boat swapped places with them or died & there was room for them in the boat. You were exposed to the elements the whole time, day & night too and you probably weren’t dressed properly for the occasion either, especially if you were asleep in your bunk when the torpedo hit though many slept in their clothes with their lifejacket as their pillow.

Some guys survived for an incredible length of time despite these conditions but most died fairly quickly. Many lifeboats that were picked up only had a few of those that set out in them still alive.

On top of all this unless a ship traveling independently got off a radio message with their position (which was sometimes inaccurate) there may have been nobody even looking for the survivors until the ship was overdue at its destination for several days and by then there may not have been any survivors still alive. During the war ships didn’t use the normal peacetime shipping lanes so it wasn’t as likely anyone would come across the lifeboat by accident. In addition, ships traveling together in convoys instead of being dispersed over a larger area of the ocean were less likely to come across the lifeboat.

The merchant seamen of the day knew all this and still they went to sea and did their duty. The ones that did survive time in a lifeboat almost always went right back to sea too

Regards,

Ken Dunn