"It would not be that unusual for all or most of the boats and launches on a ship to get badly holed and smashed up by gunfire in a battle before the ship itself ever sank and before the boats were ever launched. That's one reason why you have other forms of life rafts on the ship as well as boats and launches."

From my limited study of earlier period 'wooden ships and iron men' sailing ships, the small boats (which were not really thought of as 'life boats') were often let go with a minimum rowing crew to fall behind the battle and catch up later, as it was well known that the boats would be shot to pieces, and thus useless, when they would be needed in a long campaign. The boats were needed for regular tasks, such as resupplying the ship, water, etc, as well as getting people to and from the ship. A sailing ship 'man of war' without small boats was pretty well isolated. As far as I can tell, once the steel hulled ships came on the scene, this practice fell into abeyance. Perhaps it had something to do with the massively longer gun ranges, as well as the much faster speed of steam ships.