The reason Titanic only had lifeboats for less than half of the passengers and crew,is because they actually had more than they were required to have. At the time the number of lifeboats a ship had depended on gross tonnage, how big it was. Titanic was 46,000 tons, so they were only required to have 16 lifeboats. Titanic actually had 20, 14 standard lifeboats with a capacity of 65, two small cutters with a capacity of 40 and 4 collapsible boats with a capacity of 47 stored on top of the staterooms and officer quarters on the promenade deck. Titanic had a capacity of 3,327, so it could have been considerably worse than it was. All of the lifeboats were launched with the exception of collapsible D that hit the water upside down. About 20 or so men managed to crawl up on it including junior Marconi operator Harold Bride and 4th Officer Lightolier(the highest ranking officer to survive). The rest of the lifeboats were mostly women and children and 1 or 2 crew members to take charge of the boat. They were the reason none of the boats went back to pick up people. There were a few people picked up out of the water and a few froze to death on the lifeboats other than that everybody in the lifeboats survived.