Eighteen lifeboats had been launched from the foundering ship, but only two would go back to attempt to pick up those still in the water. Lifeboat 4 rescued five people, two of whom died. More than an hour after the sinking, Lifeboat 14 also ventured back to the site and retrieved four people, one of whom died. A few survivors in the water managed to clamber into other boats as they moved away from the wreck. A question that has never been answered, is whether any of the people who survived, where actually on the deck when the boat went down. It has always been assumed that the suction of the sinking sections would have taken down any swimmers, with it. Still, there were people in the water, close to the ship after it had disappeared.

The consequence would be further reaching than many media ever covered. In the town of Southampton, from which the ship had set sail, the deaths affected some 1,000 households. Approximately 500 families lost at least one member, which meant that on almost every street in the town, there had been a death.

Many of them were the Titanic's engineers, forced to stay at their posts by Captain Smith, who at midnight on April 14th, ordered that armed guards go down to make sure they did. No engineers survived to testify to what went wrong.