I've been doing a little more research and it seems that Bruce Ismay (ever the villian it seems deserved or not) was the lead voice for "not cluttering up" the sun deck with extra lifeboats. Although there were several other factors involved also. Of course the bottom line always revolves back to that the had more than the number of boats actually required by the unfortunately badly outdated regulations that determined the requirement based on the size of the ship and not the number of passengers and crew.