I am basing this entirely on what I saw in James Cameron's Titanic. Google has not helped.
In Titanic, we see that there were so few people near Murdoch's lifeboats that he launched them half full and even let men on board.
Meanwhile, at the other lifeboats, wee see that the situation was totally reversed, with men pushing towards the lifeboats and Second Officer Lightoller yelling at the men to stay back.
Why was that? Why were there so few people near Murdoch's lifeboats, and so many near Lightoller's?
Why didn't Murdoch send some crewmembers to Lightoller's side or anywhere else to bring more people to his lifeboats? Why did he send them down half-full?
I can't recall the exact sequence of the movie, but I do recall Murdoch shooting a passenger because they were crowing the lifeboats. This happened later on in the night. Murdoch's family took exception to this as there is no evidence he did so, though there is evidence they were armed and fired shots.
The numbers between the lifeboats were largely even at the same time. There are a few anomalies, though.
Both Murdoch and Lightoller launched lifeboats half full. They got progressively more occupied as the night progressed.
There wasn't much of a panic until about 1:30. This is because the passengers were never told what was going on and the ship wasn't in obvious peril until around that time. They were sent down half-full due to a serious time constraint. They didn't assess the damage to the ship and launch the first lifeboat until 12:40 in the morning, an hour after the collision. This meant they had 5 minutes to load and launch each lifeboat until the ship was gone at 2:20.
They really didn't have time or the resources to round up passengers and get them in the lifeboats, so they decided to launch them and order them back to pick up passengers alongside the ship. I can't recall a single lifeboat following this order. 2 lifeboats came back, but they picked people out of the water after the ship was gone and the screaming had died down.
Out of 20 lifeboats, they launched 18. Two collabsible lifeboats were stored atop the officer's quarters. All the other lifeboats were in the davits, so it added time they just didn't have. So they floated off the ship, Collabsible B upside-down (which had many notable names on board including Lightoller). For this reason, I doubt that more lifeboats would make a difference, even if they were in the davits. By the time they were getting the boats down off the roof, the water had reached the bridge and they had 7 minutes before the ship would be gone.