I was having an argument with a buddy of mine about when lifeboats were first used. I assumed that as long as large ships have sailed the seas they've been equipped with lifeboats. He asserted there was no concept of a "life boat" until even the 20th century, attributing the disastrous implementation of life boats on the Titanic to its being early on in their use.
Limited google-fu proved us both incorrect as ehow.com claims the first lifeboat was built in the late 18th century (unsure of accuracy - here's the link.
This came as a surprise to me, because before lifeboats, sailors or passengers would have no option but to either drown, jump overboard, or cling to debris or something in the event of a wreck - and if there truly were no lifeboats until the 1700s then this was a problem that existed since the ancient seafaring Egyptians and Minoans all the way until after the American Revolution. How did no one think of the idea of an escape vessel over all that time? If they had, were the lives of the crew not valued enough to implement it?
Anyway, my first question is at what time did lifeboats become standard for large sea vessels, and why weren't they invented sooner? Modern ships now carry enough lifeboats to get everyone off board in an emergency. Why wasn't this law for ships such as the Titanic?
In a somewhat related vein, while Hollywood would have us believe "a captain goes down with his ship" is a tradition that dates back to piracy in the Caribbean, it appears as though the practice began in the mid 1800s (well after the "Golden Age" of piracy, if you can call it that). The earliest mention of the phrase is at the turn of the 20th century, which, interestingly enough, is the same year Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad was first published.
In any case the tradition persists to this day as it is a part of current maritime law. Recently, [Captain Lee Joon-seok is in trouble for abandoning hundreds of passengers on the MV Sewol] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_South_Korean_ferry_capsizing). (I hope mentioning this isn't against the rules... just citing it as the most recent example).
So how old is "a captain goes down with his ship" and how is it related to the advent of lifeboats? Obviously, without them, the captain would be just as screwed as everyone else if his vessel were to capsize or wreck somewhere. It's starting to seem as if shipwrecks were essentially a death sentence for everyone on board until the mid-late 1800s. Is that an accurate assessment?
Sorry if my questions are too long and if I'm asking too many... this is my first post to this subreddit.
For the Age of Sail from roughly 1600-1800 in the western world - yea, I can verify that there were no real concept of "life boats" at that point. Ships had boats. For English ships of war, according to W.E. May in The Boats of Men-of-War, the first recorded instances of larger ships carrying any additional boats can at least be recorded back to the 14th century. Considering the size of ships before 1820, I'm not surprised that the idea of having enough extra boats to take everyone off the ship wasn't common. Or, at least it wasn't talked about much. If you're dealing with a common merchant vessel of the 1600-1820 period, with a crew of around a dozen or less, having one boat might just do it - and that boat will probably serve more likely for other purposes. In men-of-war, with the amount of men on them, I imagine the number of boats needed to contain the entire crew would not be possible to fit on the top deck of the vessel where boats are stored (usually in the waist of the ship). You don't want the boats to be in the way of ship operations or during combat. I also can't imagine towing that many boats during combat (if they had the chance to put the boats out for towing).
So what was the purpose of ships to have boats in the first place? For one, if a ship wasn't in dock, it was a means to get people to and from the ship, or move supplies, or to go between vessels, or amphibious operation, or help handling anchors, or possibly try and tow the ship. So, as stated previously, civilian vessels of a non-military nature probably had enough boats to do the above tasks, and also by chance probably could fit all their men in the boats.
But, then you have the military vessels. The English Navy in 1618 laid out regulations on how many boats a vessel could carry. The three largest ranks of ships (The 1st through 3rd rates) could carry three a piece. The largest of these were longboats of over 50 feet. Eventually the dimensions of these boats had to be regulated too, since the ones over 50 feet often made them really hard (or impossible) to pull onto the ships and ended up being towed behind (and sometimes left behind for short voyages).
I think the biggest issues for lifeboats are cost of boats, speed by which boats can be deployed, convenient locations, and ship purpose. It appears that the shore was expected to provide life-saving boats - the point of a specifically designed lifeboat with cork built into it so as to make it almost unsinkable in the late 18th century (it's the ones referred to in the links by the original poster). But, boats costs money, so having enough boats for men-of-war would cost the Navy a huge amount of money. They declined the idea of having a handful of the new lifeboats with cork used in them during the Napoleonic wars because of how much they would cost, and figured that if they were going to get new boats, they might as well just buy more of the normal ones if they were going to do so at all. Also, finding room and deploying them quickly was an issue. It was not until sometime in the 1790s that davits came about for quickly taking in and lowering boats into the water from a ship. Before that, a slower and more difficult process involving the yardarms were employed. But in the late 1790s, the Navy started installing them on ships, with smaller boats of usually 25 feet in length at the most having a davit on each of the ship's stern quarters. (For those asking "what's a davit?" You know those things they lowered boats from in movies where ships are sinking like the Titanic movies? Those things) You couldn't put davits all over the vessel, since that would get in the way during combat, so that's why they got pushed to the quarters (basically, near the back of the ship). Without the davits, depending on the ship's size, you might not be able to deploy boats before the thing sinks anyways. If there is that kind of time, with the larger ships of war, it took a long time for a wooden vessel of such size to sink - so since so many vessels had trouble within sight of land, besides local boats coming to help, it was thought that the ship's boats could drop people off on land and return to pick up others before it sank.
I'm not going to comment on people's mindset on what people thought of the value of a Navy sailor's life back then (and what was expected), nor the whole "most sailors didn't know how to swim thing". Different issues that are hard to come up with a solid conclusion on.
I suspect the big change came in the late 19th century (when tropical environments were pitched to European-descended middle/upper class people in America and Europe as a reward for hard work and wealth rather than "the white man's death sentence" or as a place of negative moral influence on white people) when the concept of tour ships (or cruise liners) came along. This is where ship's purpose comes into play. It's a civilian vessel that is supposed to cater to a customer's comfort. With so many people onboard, of course they are going to have some more boats. At least enough boats to make people not used to ocean travel feel safe. And with the davit system in place, there was room enough to store them and a quick and easy enough way to deploy them.
So, I hope that helps to answer at least the first half of your questions. I feel like I don't have the sources to say what people thought about Navy ships being death traps in terms of escaping a wreck, but there was at least hope for merchant sailors. Then again - life at sea was just dangerous overall. It another dimension to why it took a particular kind of person to go across the ocean in a ship to settle in the New World (that trip over was uncomfortable to begin with - but then add in deadly if something goes wrong if you're on a ship with a large amount of people on it).