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An aft view of the portside boat deck, taken from an unknown 1913 encyclopaedia:

One of the major criticisms of James Cameron's 1997 Titanic is that the boat deck of the ship is too brightly lit. This was for purely cinematc reasons: the film wouldn't be much of a spectacle if the audience couldn't see what was happening (the same reason that 5th Officer Lowe was given a flashlight as he looked for survivors in the water). Looking at this annotated version of the Olympic's boat deck, one can see how, from the area of the second funnel looking aft, there are only a few point sources of light, and the ones further aft would be obscured by intervening deck houses. The aft lifeboats, some 200 feet away, would be nearly invisible in the gloom.

Thanks to fascinating data relating to light levels on the Olympic in 1927, we now know how gloomy the interior of these ships would be; and they were dark! Many of the first class areas had light levels of no more than 2 foot-candles; this is the equivalent illumination you well get from 2 candles at a distance of one foot. From a greater distance, the light level would drop accordingly. The Titanic certainly wasn't a ship of light...

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