Anniversary of a Lost Liner

(May 29, 2009 - DTN) - Coming as it did so soon after the sinking of the Titanic, the loss of the Empress of Ireland on May 29, 1914, underlined the difficulty of building a ship that couldn't sink, even of building a ship guaranteed to sink so slowly that rescue was inevitable. 

The Empress of Ireland had a new captain, and it was his first voyage on the Saint Lawrence River in command of the ship carrying 1,477 passengers and crew. The Empress departed Quebec City the afternoon of May 28 on its way for the transatlantic trip to Liverpool. At 2:00 am on May 29th, a heavy fog had settled over the water. Suddenly, the Empress was struck broadside by another ship, the Storstad. Most of the passengers were asleep. The Empress quickly took on water and began to sink, near Pointe-au-Pere, Quebec. The ship rolled onto its side and 14 minutes later was gone with 1012 of its passengers and crew. 

According to Robert Ballard, who discovered the Titanic and who knows this particular liner well: "Today the Empress of Ireland lies in about 130 feet of water, well within the reach of scuba divers. But because the St. Lawrence is a frigid 34 degrees Fahrenheit even in summer and has tidal currents up to 5 knots and can limit visibility, this is a dive for experts. Nevertheless, the Empress has been visited hundreds of times since it was "rediscovered" in the mid-1980s. Some divers have treated the wreck with respect and increased our knowledge of her tragedy; others have left a trail of senseless damage. 

Modern divers follow a highway that was blasted into the heart of the ship in the summer of 1914, mere weeks after the disaster. Canadian Pacific hired a salvage company to retrieve the first-class mail, the purser's safe and $150,000 in silver bullion (more than $2 million today). Descending through the explosion hole down to the first-class baggage and mail room, one will encounter a dangerous tangle of wire and an interior debris field of shattered suitcases and their decaying contents".  

More helpful links about diving the Empress of Ireland can be found at: http://www.northernatlanticdive.com/emp_report_mainbody.htm 
Excerpts courtesy of: 
www.pbs.org/lostliners/empress.html
www.voyagertravelguides.com/ 

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