Conclusions
Why is there such a large discrepancy at critical points between the WBF timeline and Gleicher's? It may be due to the differing ways in which the timelines were developed. When the present authors started researching the lifeboat launching in 1999, they discarded the findings of existing timelines completely, and decided to reexamine the testimony and survivor accounts objectively and from scratch, so that previous mistakes or assumptions as to times wouldn't be carried over into the findings. The timelines that existed at this point would have been the timeline from the British Inquiry, published in 1912, George Behe's 1991 timeline outlined in Titanic Tidbits #1: The Launching of the Lifeboats: A New Chronology, and Paul Quinn's just published Dusk to Dawn . We went back to the original testimonies contained in the both the American and British Inquiries, supplemented by both Gracie's and Beesley's books published shortly after the disaster, and also numerous reliable survivor accounts to which we had access. The authors first worked out a sequence of events, based on the testimonies and the preponderance of evidence therein, and then went back over the sequence and testimonies to work out what specific times fit that sequence.
It appears that Gleicher started with the launch list published by the British Inquiry in 1912, although Gleicher's sequence does differ from the British timeline in several key respects: He pushes the launch time for the first lifeboat from 12:45 to 12:25 a.m., he shuffles #1 from between #3 and #9 to after #9, but before #11. Gleicher does assign times to many of the boats a bit differently than the British Inquiry, but these timing changes are minor details.
Though Gleicher does specify details for his timings on certain boats, mainly the aft boats, he does not present any logic on where he got the sequence and times for others, such as the sequence of #6 vs. #8 on the port side, or #7, #5, and #3 on the starboard side, and does not get into the interrelationships of events between these boats. He gives no evidence in support of his alternate times for these boats, except for #7. He appears to have just accepted the sequence given in the British Inquiry, or he may have worked out the details on these boats, and chose not to present them in his book, as the book's main premise is the treatment of the Third Class Passengers, and none of these boats had a significant number of Third Class passengers in them. To date (May 2009), Gleicher has not presented any reasoning on his times for these boats.
In the present authors' opinion, one of Gleicher's critical errors is his willing, wholesale rejection of all non-inquiry testimony. The importance of this critical decision cannot be emphasized enough. Without taking the *entire* body of evidence into account, how can any researcher claim to present accurate findings?
The contrasting ways in which the WBF and Gleicher timelines were developed helps to explain the differences. The present authors' main concern was the sequence of events and, upon examining all of the evidence, being internally consistent, while Gleicher's was trying to fit his timings into his premise. The present authors differ drastically from Gleicher in their interpretation of several events - when the first boats were launched, the sequence of #10 in relation to the other aft port boats, and when Collapsible C was loaded and launched. These points and differences have been described and debated in a number of places - Gleicher's book, articles and commentary in The Titanic Commutator , and now this article.
The present authors are continuing research into the events of the sinking of the Titanic, and with the help of respected researchers Sam Halpern and J. Kent Layton, have further refined our conclusions and timeline. The 2009 expansion and revision of their work keeps the same sequence of events that was originally published in 2001, but some of the times have been adjusted slightly in order to reflect newly examined evidence. An extensive look at the launch time of the first lifeboat has also been added. The present authors will continue examining new evidence objectively as it is discovered, and will revise our findings and article accordingly if the new evidence proves to be compelling.
Though Gleicher's book makes some very good points regarding how the Third Class passengers were treated during the sinking of the Titanic, his lifeboat launching timeline contains many discrepancies, errors, and suppositions that cause his analysis to diverge widely from the eyewitness testimonies contained in both Inquiries. This, coupled with his willful rejection of dozens of additional survivor accounts, makes many parts of his timeline shaky at best, and the entire timeline itself unsupportable.