Tragic Sinking of the Empress of Ireland

It's early in the morning, May 29th, 1914. The coal-carrying freighter Storstad is plodding its way slowly along in the dark. A few minutes ago, the lights from another ship were spotted way ahead in the distance. But then, at the worst possible moment, a dense fog bank rolled in and shrouded the ship from view. Storstad's crew can't see more than a hundred feet in front of their ship. The two vessels signal to one another in the fog, blasting their horns. But then, Storchdard's captain spots something terrifying. Out of the murky black, he sees lights where they shouldn't be. Close by, from a ship directly in front of him. Then, the fog dissolves to reveal the still cliff face of an ocean liner's side. and his ship is about to crash straight into it. He rings down an urgent order to his engine room, full speed astern, but he doesn't even look to see if his order's followed. His eyes are fixated, wide with terror, at the massive ship that looms over him. Storstad's propeller thrashes in the water, but it's too late. Collision can't be avoided. The two ships are separated and lose each other in the fog. But ten minutes after the impact, all was still and quiet. When drifting across the water from somewhere out in the darkness, Captain Anderson and his crew began to hear something. It was the sound of screaming. The mighty St. Lawrence River. At its widest point it spans over 100 kilometers or 62 miles in width. Dive for 76 meters or 250 feet straight down in some spots and you'd still not see the riverbed. Now, like any great body of water in the world, it's a favorite haunt for pleasure craft and water sportsmen, but it's also a vital link from eastern Canada to the Atlantic. Travel 250 kilometers or 155 miles up river. You'll find something extraordinary. Here on the riverbed, encrusted in marine growth, tangled and broken, lies the wreck of a once great ship. You wouldn't know it. Very little is recognizable. It's a cold, dark, lonely place, and only the most skilled divers in the world ever visit. But what if I told you that this ship was once the pride of its owners? So renowned and beloved, it even had a popular waltz written about it. The ship had carried thousands of hopefuls to new lives in Canada from Europe. Now, scattered throughout its wreck, you can find bones. Hundreds of them. These were once people looking to visit their family and friends, starting new jobs or going to new schools. Musicians, clerks, engineers, performers, children. 110 years ago, this tangle of wreckage looked very different. In May 1914, in the uneasy few months before the First World War erupted, a ship was preparing to leave for Britain. She was big, luxurious, and smartly painted, a beautifully proportioned and beloved ocean liner. She'd been a familiar sight on the St Lawrence River having sailed between Britain and Canada, For the better part of a decade, she was reliable and trusty, but also glamorous and comfortable. If you'd stood on the dock as passengers swarmed aboard that morning, you might have gazed up in admiring wonder at her gleaming nameplate. The golden letters proudly spelled out the name which made her a favourite of so many Irish immigrants. She was called the Empress of Ireland. The Empress of Ireland was the brainchild of the Canadian Pacific Railway, an incredible company with a vast, sprawling network of transport that circled the globe. It had started in the 1880s as an effort to expand the Canadian railway network out of Ontario. By 1886, the company had spanned the North American continent, meaning you could haul goods and passengers from one coast to another in just six days. A journey that once would have taken weeks on horseback, or by ox train. To complement this network, The company negotiated with the British government to establish a steamship service operating between Canada, Britain and the Far East. By the early 1900s, this profitable service had grown to include a simply massive fleet of hundreds of ships. It was possible to travel from Japan to Canada and then to keep on going back to Japan without once stepping foot from off of a Canadian Pacific Railway ship or train. The world's biggest and best-known ships operated the glamorous transatlantic route from Liverpool or Southampton in Britain to New York in America. Not only did this caught millionaires and the famous, but it also carried hundreds of thousands of hopeful immigrants from Europe to start new lives in America. But Canada offered plenty of opportunities to migrants as well, so ships plied the Atlantic from Britain to Quebec or Montreal. In 1903 the Canadian Pacific Railway rushed to capitalize on this bustling trade. But this was not the glamorous New York service, and it showed. The Canadian Pacific's early ships were secondhand, having been bought from other lines at a bargain. That, and they were mostly combination cargo passenger ships with just as much focus on the freight that they carried as the people. So to get a leg up on the competition and truly cement their transatlantic dominance, Canadian Pacific Line set out to invest in their future. They would order two brand new, huge ocean liners to be built to an exacting standard. They would be every bit as glamorous and comfortable as their bigger rivals on the millionaire's route to New York, and hopefully attract a clientele because of it. The pair of identical sister ships would take turns operating between Liverpool and Quebec in the summer season, and they need to run at high speeds, 18 knots, to ensure a regular weekly service from both sides of the Atlantic. Their speed would be complemented by their size. Passengers wanted safety and comfort, and Canadian Pacific would give it to them. The pair of sister ships would be by far the biggest in the Canadian Pacific's fleet, with 14,191 gross registered tons and 570 feet in length. The order was placed in 1905 with Fairfield Shipbuilding at Govan in Scotland. It was a great choice. Fairfield was a renowned builder of warships for the Admiralty. The two ships were built side by side to the most modern specifications being 14,000 odd gross registered tons their bulk meant that they could comfortably carry 1,500 people across four classes. By 1906, 14,000 tons wasn't a monumental volume. But it wasn't tiny either. Just a decade earlier the two new ships would have been considered the largest in the world. Such was the rapid rate of technological development. In January 1906 the second of the two sisters thundered down the slipway on her launching day. The first ship had been named Empress of Britain and the second liner was called the Empress of Ireland. On introduction the two ships had caused quite a stir. They elevated the experience for passengers crossing to Canada by a huge margin. Not just because of their comfort, the ships were safe. They'd been built with all the modern technological developments. Double-bottomed hulls would prevent sinking from grounding on rocks. Tall steel walls, called bulkheads, divided the ships into 11 individual self-contained sections called compartments. These could be sealed off from each other by heavy cast iron doors, which would be hand-cranked down, creating a watertight seal. The Emperor Sisters could remain afloat with any two of their compartments flooded. Safety tests were run to see how quickly the doors could be shut in the event of an emergency. The captain rang down an order from the bridge on a telegraph signaling the crew to close all doors. The men below rushed into action. Stewards ran to cupboards to fetch heavy brass keys that could slot over the winding shafts and then bodily hand crank the heavy doors shut. A well-drilled crew could have all 24 watertight doors closed in just three minutes. None of it was automatic or electric. The system relied on good training and a quick reaction. For six years, the Empress Sisters had proved hugely popular and were a massive success for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Then, in 1912, something happened that shocked the shipping world as a whole. White Star Line's Titanic, which was far more modern and over three times larger than the Empress Sisters, had sunk on its maiden voyage with a huge loss of life. Public confidence in shipping technology was badly shaken, and lines rushed to fill their ships with lifeboats and promote their safety features. Canadian Pacific were at pains to proudly point out that their Emperor Sisters had lifeboat and raft capacity for 1,800 860 people. As long as the watertight doors could be shut in an emergency, the ships would stay afloat and all the lifeboats could be launched safely. Eight years after her introduction, the Empress of Ireland was tied up at the port of Quebec. It was May 28th, 1914, and an excited stream of passengers steadily made their way up the ship's gangways and poured inside what would be their new home for the next four days. Just last month the St Lawrence River, which freezes over in winter, had its ice break in Thor. Now the Empress was about to depart on its first round voyage for the season. She was headed for Liverpool, and up the gangways trod a variety of characters from all walks of life. 1914 was a monumental year for modern world history. We know now that in May, the outbreak of the First World War was just three months away. Tensions in Europe were high. People could feel it. For those who'd made the trip out to Canada in years prior from mainland Europe, Britain or Ireland, the temptation to get home and see family, maybe even to try persuading them to go back to Canada with them to safety, must have been great. Of the two sister ships, it was the Empress of Ireland who had attracted considerable interest and affection from Irish migrants. On special occasions, she flew the green flag of Erin And every year at St. Patrick's Day a huge gala dinner was held on board with lots of singing and dancing. That Thursday morning some 700 third-class passengers boarded the ship. Many were going home to see family. Some had made the migration effort out to Canada but had not found their success and were returning home disappointed. They came from all over and not just Canada. The American Midwest and the Great Lakes was well represented by the third-class contingent. It included some 300 Detroit Ford factory workers who'd been laid off in the summer. There were Poles, New Zealanders, Italians, Swedes, and of course, Irish. A mass of people from across the globe who must have stared up at their big ship with a sense of pride. They knew they were travelling on the best. Up other gangways strode the second class passengers, clerks, businessmen, bankers. Many mothers were travelling with their children to meet husbands who were away on business trips abroad. For many young ones, this would be their first overseas trip. 138 children in total boarded the Empress of Ireland that day, wide-eyed at the size of their ship and the bustling scenes that were happening around them. Then there were men in uniforms with shiny silver buttons. On their collars and caps they proudly showed the red emblem of the Salvation Army. The army was a church and humanitarian organization which had been formed in the 1800s to reform societies down and out and bring them closer to God and salvation. This had been done in an era where wealth disparity was monumental and few cared for the plights of society's discards, the homeless, the drunk or the downtrodden. The Salvation Army had fed mouths and given shelter to thousands across the globe and in 1914 a massive conference was being held in London. This was an opportunity for members of the organisation to come together for world peace and to showcase what their own little chapter of the Salvation Army looked like. They were noted for their staff bands. It had started as a quirky tradition in 1879, but by 1914, the sight of Salvationist musicians was familiar and well-loved. That day, 167 members of Canada's Salvation Army boarded the Empress of Ireland in second class. They were headed by their beloved Commissioner David Rees, a kindly bearded man of 57, and joining him was his wife Ruth. They'd actually met in the Salvation Army and fallen for one another, and up the ship's gangway she must have anxiously corralled the couple's three young children. Across Canada, 500 delegates were making the trip across the ocean, with many booked on other ships in the coming days. In early June, there'd be a huge reception at the Royal Albert Hall. and the expected turnout was 5,000 people. The Salvationists gazed down excitedly from the decks of the ship, and their comrades had turned out to see them off from the dockside. First class was underbooked for this voyage, which was unusual for that time of year, but what the class lacked in number it more than made up for in personality. Calmly onto the ship strode Mr. Lawrence Irving and his wife Mabel Hackney, renowned actors, the two of them. Lawrence was the son of legendary actor and manager Sir Henry Irving. From a young age, he must have known he had big shoes to fill. The young man had wowed audiences on the stage and turned his hand to writing hit plays, but it was in 1901 that a young actress joined his theatre company and his life was to change forever. Mabel Hackney was a talented actress from Wales and she enchanted audiences across the Atlantic. For Lawrence, it was like love at first sight. The two were married in 1903 and they were practically inseparable, co-starring in plays that Lawrence would often write himself and they were described as the best suited couple imaginable. Lawrence was famously defensive of his wife. Once he had publicly sought out and lambasted a critic for daring to denounce Mabel's acting talents, he had a good sense of humour too. If he was on stage and an audience member coughed, he'd pause the play and offer the theatregoer a cough lozenge. Lawrence and Mabel were at the height of their careers, and they'd just led their theatre troupe on a highly successful tour of Canada where they'd generated rave reviews. And they were at last heading for home, proud of their success, but then there'd been a small hold up. Their agent had switched their booking, originally the whole theatre troupe was supposed to travel on the Empress of Ireland, but they were moved onto White Star Line's Teutonic, which was due to sail three days later. Lawrence was annoyed. He was eager to get back to London as soon as possible to get started on his newest play. He had his tickets switched back to the Empress along with his wife, and the rest of the troupe wouldn't be ready in time. But the Irvings also booked their juvenile lead Harold Neville and his wife actress Nelsie Vron. The two are anxious to get home and see their three young children as soon as possible. The party said goodbye to their friends and left them in Canada. They thought they'd be reunited within the week. The Irving's presence aboard the ship attracted the most attention, but another noted member of society boarded that day, Sir Henry Setton Carr, a legendary sportsman and adventurer. At 61 years of age, the man had a voracious appetite for activity. He swam, hunted, hiked, rowed, golfed. He was at last headed for home after a series of business trips abroad, but there's no doubt, once on board the ship, he must have been planning for his next big adventure. The time of departure was drawing near, and the dockside well-wishers gathered to see the big ship off. Some waved to loved ones on board, but others were just strangers excited to see the first departure of the Empress for this season. Gazing down from the bridge at all of the hubbub of activity was the Empress's master, Captain Henry Kendall. Kendall was a young up-and-comer in the Canadian Pacific Railways service, at a sprightly 40 years of age. But even by 1914 he'd made quite a name for himself. In 1900 he'd survived a shipwreck off Newfoundland, and then two years later he'd worked with none other than Mr. Guglielmo Marconi himself in helping to develop ship-to-shore wireless radio. He joined Canadian Pacific in 1910, and then became something of a celebrity for the most bizarre of reasons. He was in command of the older Canadian Pacific ship Montrose when a suspicious passenger caught his attention. Leaving from Britain, Kendall suspected the man of being a notorious wanted fugitive and radioed back. Scotland Yard was hunting a dangerous murderer and they suspected him of fleeing the country. Thanks to Kendall's radio message, a police presence was waiting for the Montrose in Canada and on boarding, the party was glad to discover that the suspicious passenger was none other than Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, who'd murdered his wife and fled with his accomplice and lover, who'd disguised herself on board as a young boy. The disguise hadn't worked. The keen-eyed Kendall had figured them both out immediately for who they truly were. It was the first time that radio had helped apprehend criminals. To top it all off, as captain of the Lake Champlain, Kendall had sped to the rescue of the Allenliner Corsican. after it had struck an iceberg. Kendall was Canadian Pacific Line's rising star. It seemed natural to put him in charge of one of their two most treasured and glamorous ships. This would be his first voyage captaining the Empress of Ireland down the St Lawrence River. At around 4 30 pm all were at last aboard and the ship was set to leave. Tugs came to her assistance and the lines that connected the ship to shore were at last cast off. The big ship slowly pulled away from the quay where a dense crowd of people waved and cheered. Then in the warm summer air the strains of music began to float. The Salvation Army band had quickly assembled on deck unexpectedly. They held their instruments and played a final song. A farewell to their friends and families and a promise. It was the hymn, God Be With You, Till We Meet Again. Oh Afternoon the Empress had cleared the channel and Captain Kendall had opened her engines up The ship thundered along slowly leaving Quebec behind For many this would be their last ever sight of home Oh As the Empress slipped away into the evening, the gathered crowd dispersed and the ship's passengers began to get settled into their new home. A few hundred miles down river, another ship was underway and this was a very different vessel to the Empress of Ireland. Where the Empress was elegant and luxurious, this other ship was utilitarian and basic. It was a cargo ship, a bulk freighter loaded deep into the water with its hulls straining under the bulk of 10,000 tons of coal. But to the small crew on board, their cargo ship was also a home. And this was a happy one. The ship was named Storstad. Only four years at sea, and extremely modern. When she'd first arrived at Philadelphia on her maiden voyage in 1911, she'd disembarked the largest single load of iron ore ever carried by a single ship until that point. It might sound now like a dubious honour, but her crew and owners must have been extremely proud. On the bridge stood Captain Thomas Anderson, a gruff old sea dog, broad-chested and with a huge moustache. He'd been at sea for 30 years and he knew his business well. But aside from his 30 odd crew, there was another important person on board who even kept the captain in check. His wife, Mrs. Anderson, had cheerfully joined her husband on many voyages and turned the captain's Spartan cabin into a home with soft furnishings and even new curtains. The ship below Anderson's feet was tough. Very tough. She'd been built using a system of construction that was designed specifically to reinforce her against... ice flows and other obstacles in her path during winter and other tough crossings. With a dead straight front end and heavily reinforced framing that ran the entire length of the ship's hull, the Storchstart was a rugged, formidable thing. Laden with over 10,000 tons of coal, the ship would take miles to stop. Good navigation and seamanship was crucial because ships like Storchstart had been involved in dozens of collisions before. In 1895 a German ship had been sunk in minutes after being rammed by a freighter that was just like Storstad. The icebreaker Bauer turned out to be perfectly adept at breaking other ships too. All of this can't have been far out of Captain Anderson's mind as his vessel plotted its way up the St. Lawrence River. But with an experienced crew and years of his own life spent before the mast, he was confident they'd reach Montreal the next day and Mrs. Anderson might even do some more shopping. He smoked his pipe and watched the river in front of him. As the sunset and the early summer air developed a chill, passengers aboard the Empress of Ireland began to retire for dinner. They'd already spent a few hours exploring the ship, but no doubt many were just exhausted after traveling only to arrive at the Quebec docks. Many of them had come from all over Canada, the Great Lakes and the American Midwest. Going through the rigmarole of boarding a liner, passing through inspection, customs and baggage was all extremely tiring. Many went to bed early. The tradition was that on the first night of a steamer's voyage, first class passengers didn't even need to dress in their finery for dinner. Everybody was just too tired. It'd be time to explore the ship more tomorrow. Down in the first class dining saloon, silverware and crockery gently clinked as hungry passengers happily ate their meals and chatted to their new shipboard companions. The Irvings were there, Henry set in the car too. Ever the rake, he had ignored tradition and dressed in his best for dinner. The Ship String Orchestra plucked and sawed out the popular tunes of the day. The dining saloon was a gorgeous space with a huge glass baroque dome that towered over it. As the passengers dispersed from dinner, many would have enjoyed the other spaces at their leisure. The gorgeous music room, richly decorated salons centred on the top of the dining saloon's dome. Up here, passengers could sink into sofas and listen to strains from the grand piano. Elsewhere they converged in the library or the smoking room. The Empress wasn't as big or glamorous as the larger transatlantic liners of the day, but she was pretty darn close. In second class diners chatted away happily. They had a similar array of comfortable rooms to enjoy like a smoking room and library. The Salvation Army members were excited. The mood on board was festive. Many had never left Canada before. After dinner The band formed up again and gave an impromptu concert for third class. As dusk turned to night and the temperature dropped even more, only the hardiest passengers stayed up playing cards or smoking. The ship was well on its way now, approaching Rimouski where it would drop off the pilot. Up on the bridge, Captain Kendall stood in the darkness with his officers and that pilot, Adelaide Laurier. His job was to help guide the Empress out of the treacherous St Lawrence as far as Father Point, just past Rimouski. He was a local, and he knew the waters like the back of his hand. The bridge was always kept in darkness to preserve night vision, but that night there was a more dangerous menace to visibility. Fog. As the competing air currents converge on the cold river water in early summer, St. Lawrence is a place where the sun is shining. Lawrence is notorious for generating impenetrable banks of fog seemingly at random. As the Empress of Ireland passed little towns that dotted the riverbanks, fog banks crept in and the ship would have to be slowed right down. It was a tiring process, but it had to be done. Safety was paramount. Captain Kendall led a veritable floating townsworth of staff and crew with dozens of skills and specialities. bakers and cooks, sailors and engineers, stewards and nurses, they all combined to create an army of people some 400 strong who kept their ship running. As the young moon shone overhead the ship's night stewards were on duty Manning the corridors in all three classes Their job was varied from ensuring passengers shoes were shined to reporting on the half-hour that all was well In the event of an emergency they were also trained in lowering the ship's watertight doors. Without automatic lowering it would be down to them to save the ship. But as the hours crept on in the deserted corridors disaster must have been the last thing on their minds. At 1.30 a.m. the ship had reached farther point and it was time for the pilot Laurier to hop off. He shook Kendall's hand and as the Empress of Ireland came to a halt the tiny pilot Carter Eureka came alongside. A ladder was laid over the side and Laurier nimbly stepped off and onto the cutter. Then some sacks were tossed down, the last of the mail to leave the ship. It included letters from the Salvationists who were already writing home to friends about the fun they'd had on board. They promised they'd write more when they got to Britain. Eureka set out for home at Father Point and the Empress's engines started up again. She was still beautifully lit in the night sky, but as the Eureka sailed away... It's unlikely that the Little Steamers crew, the Laurier, even looked back. They were just so used to seeing her. They couldn't know it yet, but this would be their last chance to see the ship afloat. The Empress's engines rumbled faithfully. Dining saloon tables had been set for breakfast the next morning by white-gloved stewards, and all the lights were turned out. Passengers slept soundly in their beds. And all was well. Captain Kendall stayed on the bridge that night. It had been a long day, but the passage out from Canada through the St. Lawrence was nerve-wracking, especially since he'd only just assumed command of the big ship. He'd see to a safe navigation himself and then rest later. With him were five men. Jones, the first officer, Moore, the third, and then two quartermasters who ensured the officers'steering orders were carried out and actually turned the ship's wheel. It was quiet. The only sound that might have interrupted their concentration was the deep rumble of the engines. Then, another sound. A single ring from the ship's bell. High up in the mast, lookout John Carroll had spotted something out ahead. A single- The single ring meant something ahead on the right. The other officers must have seen it too. The lights of another ship, maybe 8 miles distant. From estimates on the other ship's bearing, the direction it was heading in, this meant that the Empress would have to cut across its course to get out of the river. Kendall was taking the Empress diagonally out across the river to exit onto the Atlantic. There was no cause for alarm. The other ship had right of way, technically. The Empress was fast and would easily clear the other ships course within eight miles. He watched the other ship carefully to ensure there would be no problem. The two approached and all was fine But then something caught Kendall's eye. St. Lawrence was pulling its old tricks again. A thick blanket of fog was creeping out across the river. This normally wouldn't be a problem. There were simple rules for dealing with fog at sea born of years of trial and error and disaster. For big steamers the best thing to do was to post additional lookouts, sound the ships of whistles at a regular interval and grope ahead slowly without changing course. You might think that it'd be safest to stop but a big ship stopped has no way of turning or controlling its movements. In a river with a strong current like the St. Lawrence, you might drift directly into disaster with no way of getting out of it. A ship like the Empress takes time to build up speed. With no water rushing over its rudder, there was just no way of turning. Kendall took one long last look at the stranger before it was finally obscured from view. He judged it to be now just over a mile and a half away. Close. Too close. Maybe he was just being extra cautious. The Canadian Pacific Railway urged caution of its captains and this was of course his first time captaining the Empress down the river. At sea the master's decision is final and Kendall had a choice to make. The fog had come at exactly the time and place the ships would be passing close by one another. It was almost like somebody had designed it that way on purpose. Kendall second guessed himself. With his ship moving slow ahead, he rang down an order on the telegraph, full astern. He'd set his engines in reverse, and slowly bring his ship to a stop, until the fog had passed. He blasted his ship's whistles, three short blasts, meaning, I'm going astern. He figured that the other ship would understand, and maybe do the same. If both ships stopped, then the fog would drift, and they could resume passage. Fog swirled in and hid the Empress from the outside world. It was still and silent. The stars were gone. So was the moon. It was hidden by a thick cloud of mist. With this ship coming to a slow stop, Kendall rang down to stop the engines and blasted the whistles again twice. I am stopped. The fog, there came a response, but from where? It sounded much louder than it should have been, and it seemed to come from every direction. The fog was playing tricks. All was still, quiet, and Kendall stood on the right bridge wing and waited. Then, out of the murk, there appeared a light. Kendall's eyes strained in the dark and out of the fog the lights materialized into the front end of a huge freighter and it was bearing down on his ship with speed. It sounded its whistles three times in warning. There wasn't any time to lose. Kendall sprang into action. If Kendall could get the Empress's nose around quickly enough into the path of the other ship, then the impact might just be a glancing blow. He had ordered the engines full ahead and the wheel hard around, but his ship was stopped. There could be no escape. The freighter buried its reinforced bow deep into the side of the Empress's hull, but the impact was slight. It was like stabbing a knife into the side of a chocolate cake. There was no resistance because the Empress of Ireland's hull wasn't reinforced. But the bow of the freighter sure was. It plunged through cabins and corridors, maybe as far as 20 feet. Anybody asleep in its path was instantly crushed. Kendall shouted through his megaphone, Keep your engines full ahead. He'd amassed a lot of energy. immediately surmised the situation his ship was in. A blow like that, dead in the middle of the ship, could only have plunged deep into the Empress's beating heart, opening its critical boiler and engine rooms up to the river. If the other ship could keep its engines going ahead, then the hull might just be plugged. He rang down for his own engines to stop, but to his horror and his frustration the other ship began to drift away. With the grinding of steel they were separated, and the freighter passed behind. As quickly as it had appeared, it had vanished into the fog, and the Empress was all alone. Kendall raced to his telegraph and signalled for all the watertight doors to be shut. But beneath his feet, even as he did so, his passengers were already fighting for their lives and dying. The freighter's bow had left a gaping wound as much as 25 feet deep and 14 feet wide, around 8 by 5 meters. The bow was the height of a three story building. It had crushed through the hull from the bottom of the boiler rooms and up into the passenger cabins high above the waterline. Those in the immediate vicinity who weren't crushed would have found themselves drowned in their bunks because some 60,000 gallons, 227,000 litres of river water began to roar into the Empress every second. Many of those that ran out into the corridors on that side of the ship were confronted with a tsunami of river water that surged in and flattened everything in its path. Below, in the boiler rooms, men on duty were horrified to see a steel mountain burst through the side of the space they'd been working in, but then that had been followed by an absolute torrent of water. They did their best just to run up the escape ladders and get out, and they didn't have time to close the watertight doors. The ship immediately began to roll under the weight of the surging river water, but the Empress's meticulous watertight door plan was put into action. The night stewards rushed to their positions to fetch the keys and shut the doors, but those on the right hand side of the ship where the collision had been were drowned where they stood by the cascade of water. On the left hand side the men had to struggle already against the ship as it leaned in the water. Some of the doors were shut, but many, many more remained open. Not a single night steward from third class survived the night. The plan had failed. The Empress was sinking. Kendall knew already that his ship was in bad shape. He didn't need an inspection to confirm it. He ordered the lifeboats uncovered and loaded with passengers almost immediately, and his crew faithfully got to work. Below their feet, hundreds of passengers, mostly migrants and third class, were awoken simply by rushing water, and blindly groped their way through the unfamiliar winding corridors, looking for a way out. The corridors they were clambering through began to lean heavily under their feet. The collision had been subtle. Too subtle. Most of the passengers weren't even woken by it. Some had been woken instead by the loud booming of the ship's horns in the fog. They stepped curiously out on deck. The lucky ones stayed and got into a lifeboat, but the less fortunate thought everything was in hand, just went back to their rooms, never to be seen again. In the short few minutes after the collision, as hundreds fought for life trapped down below, there was an unmistakably ominous sign of danger. The ship's lights began to fade to a dull red. Kendall knew he couldn't be far from the southern bank of the river. He planned to run the Empress full speed into the soft mud and beach his ship, stopping it from sinking. He picked up a telephone on the bridge and asked the chief engineer down below to run the engines full speed. ahead, but the chief's response was despondent. There was no steam left. The freighter's bow had smashed through both boiler rooms and flooded them. The steam, the very lifeblood that the Empress had operated on, that it relied on for running its engines and machinery, was gone. Crucially, the steam also ran the ship's dynamos and created electricity. With a snap, the light switched off for good, and the ship was plunged into darkness. For those still down below, it was a death sentence. Never mind already dealing with river water at their heels, the deck slanting below their feet, and the unfamiliarity. This was their first night at sea, nobody knew their way around yet, they hadn't explored enough. When the lights died, there must have been absolute despair beyond words. Some may have lit matches to try and find a way out, but close at hand always was the rising water. Inevitably, it caught up with them. The Empress listed hard onto her starboard side. It made walking across the ship's width a task in itself because now passengers, many of them elderly or just too young, now had to walk steeply uphill to get out. The glamorous first-class grand staircase and others like it became death traps, leaning at so sharp an angle it was almost impossible to hold on and climb your way out. Up on deck, the starboard lifeboats were hurriedly uncovered and loaded. Anybody at hand was quickly ushered in. Clearly there wasn't much time left. Water was already roaring into the open promenades that had once stood 30 feet above the water. line. Crew members had been assigned to lifeboat stations with many on the port side. They rushed to their posts and tried to load the lifeboats there but now the ship was listing and creating new problems. proving difficult, if not impossible, to fill and lower the portside boats because the crews now had to struggle against gravity to manhandle the heavy steel boats out over the side it was lifting higher and higher into the air with every second. At least one lifeboat launch was attempted on the port side, the boat caught on the rising hull and flipped, scattered its occupants screaming into the water and bashed them into the side of the ship. Many crew there simply abandon their posts to help on the other side instead. Kendall was still on the bridge bellowing orders through his speaking trumpet. He ordered crew below to fetch people from cabins, breaking down doors if they had to. He urged hurry, saying there wasn't much time to lose. Sadly, if anybody actually obeyed his orders, it would have been a death sentence. Kendall was right. It had only been just five minutes or so since the impact, and the Empress didn't have long to live. The crews at the lifeboat stations worked with incredible calm and efficiency considering the panic and mayhem that was happening around them. Despite their care mistakes still occurred. It was all happening too quickly. Boat 1 broke free from its chocks and swung heavily out over the side throwing many of its passengers out. Boat 15 at the very stern of the ship was lowered away but capsized before it hit the water. Other boats got stuck in place. The heavy and clunky rigging jamming was simply being nearly impossible to move against the rolling of the ship. Boat 5 was loaded, and then swung out, but then it didn't even need to be lowered at all, it just floated freely away. Usually it would need to be dropped some 40 feet or more into the ocean, but by now, the river had risen to meet it where it sat on the boat deck. Down below the fight for life continued, people. clawed their way up staircase banisters and corridors in the blackness, hoping to find a way out. On deck, Kendall was still shouting orders, but the screams of his passengers had drowned him out. He held onto the bridge and watched the chaos unfold helplessly. BOOM His passengers were in a fight for their lives, but so was his ship. It had sat there for nearing 10 minutes, filling quickly with tons and tons of water. It was all a matter of buoyancy, stability and mathematics. A fight against gravity. But then, the Empress lost her fight, and Gravity won. She rolled over. The Empress's 14,191 tonne bulk rolled onto the heads of its passengers, and as it did, tonnes and tonnes of deck equipment broke free and crushed them. Things that had been designed to save them, rafts and lifeboats, boats. They all weighed tonnes, and they all came crashing down with a thunderous roar. Lifeboat 11 had been launched too late, its occupants were struggling to get clear when they and their boat were crushed. The left side now pointed to the heavens. The Empress sat still in the water and the lucky few in the boats looked on in horror. From the water, hundreds of mouths screamed for help. Perversely, the whole scene was lit dimly by two dozen lifebuoys which bobbed to the surface and fired off a chemical flare each. It cast a ghostly blue light over the whole scene. With her whole starboard side in the water, the Empress seemed to stay in place. Some even thought the ship had been grounded on the riverbank, and might stay afloat. On the exposed port side of the ship, dozens of people clung together. It was a bizarre sight. Some likened it to being at the beach, but instead of sand there was just sheer black metal. There was a disturbing sight here, many on this side of the ship had slept through the whole ordeal or didn't have time to escape. They opened their portholes and tried to squeeze through, but the portholes were only 9 inches or 22cm wide. Try as they might, even with help from others, there was just no way of getting through. They struggled, and hurt themselves in the process. One man calmly walked to the back of the ship, stood below one of the massive bronze propellers, and dived into the water. Others sat in place, unsure of what to do. The Empress didn't move. Or at least, it didn't seem to. One observant passenger noticed that every wave that seemed to lap on the hull seemed higher up than the last one that had come before it. Below them was 40 feet of ship, and 100 feet of river water. The Empress was going down. Slowly, very slowly, the ship began to disappear into the Black River. People who'd been struggling to help free those from their portholes had to turn away, because the water began to swirl around their feet. From the portholes, they were waving arms, but there was nothing they could do. Like a slowly rising tide, more and more of the ship's side was covered. Until finally, with a sigh and a dull boom, the ship disappeared beneath the waves and hundreds of struggling people were left behind. Once there had been a proud and strong ocean liner, there were clumps of wreckage and passengers wrestling for life cruisers. Captain Kendall was there too. He'd been thrown from the bridge of his ship. He was still alive, but cold. The water that night was just above freezing. I could see your breath in the air. Just like it had appeared at the most critical moment, the fog disappeared around the time that the Empress sank. Maybe it was even driven away by air as it escaped from the inside of the rapidly sinking ship. There, for the first time, people in the lifeboats and the water could see the ship which had hit them. It was the Storstad, and already its lifeboats were in the water heading towards them. Immediately after the impact, Captain Anderson had tried to keep his ship in the Empress's side, but the two ships had drifted apart. As the liner disappeared into the darkness, his primary concern had been his own ship. Loaded with all that coal, she could just drop to the riverbed like a stone. He had his lifeboat swung out, and the damage checked. But his ship was still afloat. When his crew heard the awful screams drifting over the water, they knew that something terrible was happening, but they just didn't know where. They mounted a rescue operation to grope their way through the fog and help. But then the fog had lifted, and instead of a sinking ocean liner, they were confronted by the sight of hundreds of people, alive and dead, choking the water's surface. Through the night, they ferried survivors to safety and the Empress's own boats plucked people from the water too. Captain Kendall was picked up by a boat, he had spotted the Storstad's lights and after picking up struggling people from the water, he and his lifeboat had rowed out towards it. The exhausted frozen passengers were put on board and Kendall and his crew rowed out again for more. He and his crew worked tirelessly like this for the next three hours, saving as many as 75 lives. At last... Dead tired and beleaguered, he clambered aboard the Storchstadt and sought out the captain. Are you the master of this ship? He had asked of Anderson. You have sunk my ship, he had shouted. Anderson strongly disagreed. They had a brief argument, but then no more was said. There would have to be an intense investigation over this, and the less said now, the better. All night, people were pulled from the water, alive or not. By morning the steamer Lady Evelyn and the pilot cutter Eureka had arrived. Eureka had last seen the Empress alive, but now it would deal with its survivors and its dead. The Irvings had been lost. A first-class passenger had seen them inside the ship, Lawrence's face bloodied from a fall. He was trying his best to comfort his wife. Last seen clinging to each other on the ship's decks as it sank around them. Sir Henry Seton Carr, the adventurer, had died as well. He was found two days later, 40 miles downriver, still in his evening dress. He had died after helping another passenger with their life vest. The Empress of Ireland had sunk in just 14 minutes. There was no time at all for the gallantry and romance of other disasters from history. It was just the quick... The lucky and the dead. The Nevels, the young acting couple who traveled with the Irvings, they were lost too. Hundreds were. The Salvation Army contingent had acted heroically and professionally but the speed with which their ship was lost allowed for little gallantry without the ultimate sacrifice. There had been nearly 170 on board and only eight survived. The band was gone, So too was Commissioner David Rees. He'd given away his life jacket, and stayed with his family. They were all lost. 1,012 people died with the Empress of Ireland that night. There had been 138 children on board. Only four survived. It had all happened so fast, but there had still been time for some heroics, made all the more impressive because of the limited amount of time. They weren't as widely reported or famous as those from the likes of Titanic, but it just wasn't time enough for grand gestures of chivalry. In fact, most of the bravery that night will go forever unrecorded, lost to all eternity in the flooding hull. Stepping aside here so somebody else could get through a door first. Giving up a life jacket there so somebody else might live. We'll never know what happened down there, but we do know what happened elsewhere. Like in the radio office. Wireless operator Ronald Ferguson had been dozing off with his junior working the station when he heard the ship's whistles and felt the jolt. He'd taken over and hurriedly sent out distress calls. With the ship listing underneath him and having to brace himself from falling out of his chair, Ferguson contacted Father P... Point wireless station with a series of messages that weren't frantic, but the exact opposite. He knew that this late at night only the junior wireless operators would be at work on the shore stations, so he tapped out his message slower than usual so they'd understand. Within eight minutes from the time of the collision to the sinking, he had tapped out the ship's position and the situation and rescue ships were already on the way. He burst out of the wireless office at the last minute. Then the Empress rolled and threw him into the water. He was saved by a lifeboat and then, when the Lady Evelyn arrived to the rescue, he had clambered aboard and found out the ship had no radio operator of its own. Despite being exhausted, wet and nearly frozen, he rushed to the wireless room and began coordinating relief for hours. Ferguson was only 20 years old. Little Florence Lorraine Barber The eight years old, was sailing back to England with her mother and sister. The family had moved with her father to Canada but he'd been killed in a mining accident in 1913, so a year later Sabina, her mother, decided in her sorrow to move back home and booked on the Empress of Ireland, joined by two family friends, Robert Crellin and William Barry. Crellin had actually wanted to marry Sabina but in the sinking the party was separated. Crellin found Florence and he saved her. Sabina and her other daughter were lost, but Crellin and Florence stayed together as he tried desperately to keep her afloat on a piece of debris all night. The pair were eventually rescued and Florence lived her life, forever fondly remembering her beloved Uncle Robert, the man who had rescued her. The following day, bodies arrived at Rimouski in their dozens. There was no provision for this volume of dead. No precedent. The Lady Evelyn had rescued the Empress's passengers and now it retrieved the dead. A makeshift morgue was established and the victims were lined up as coffins were embarked en masse onto trains from Quebec. Bystanders and reporters were moved by the sight of so many little children and mothers who still clutched their babies in their arms. The government cutter, Lady Grey, embarked the bodies after they were put into their coffins. and sailed for Quebec where they could be identified by loved ones and relatives. It was a tragic sight. 188 remains of the Empress's passengers were carefully carried off the ship to sheds on the quay. Just a day earlier those same people had set out excitedly to new beginnings and chapters in their lives, but now their stories ended here. It was impossible not to be touched by the sight of dozens of short Child-sized coffins as they were unloaded. As bereaved families worked to pick out their loved ones from the lines of coffins, serious questions were asked. How could such a disaster occur? Who was at fault? It led inevitably to an inquiry and a British whitewash. Presiding over the whole thing was John Biggum, the Viscount Lord Mersey, who had also presided over the inquiry for the sinking of the Titanic. Mersey likely had an agenda. It was a matter of national pride. The Commonwealth ship had been sunk and there was an easy scapegoat in the Norwegian Storstad. What exactly happened that night in the fog is hard to say. say for certain. The inquiry reports make for interesting reading. From the outset it's clear that almost everybody blamed the Storch Stud, but that's not an entirely fair assessment. One man, one of the quartermasters from the Empress of Ireland, had come forward and disclosed that he remembered the ship had issues with her steering. This was almost universally refuted by Captain Kendall, his officers and then other quartermasters, except one of the latter Let's slip on oath that the ocean liner did in fact have some quirky steering habits that required a deft hand to resolve. The facts remained that Kendall had stopped the Empress in the fog instead of maintaining headway and providing his ship the momentum it needed to turn or evade an impact. But there was far worse. The watertight doors. Kendall could have telegraphed down for them to be closed the second the fog bank rolled in. It would have been a prudent measure. But he didn't. Perhaps the nerves naturally surrounding his first command down the St. Lawrence had got the better of him. But in the end, the inquiry found the Storstad, predictably, completely to blame. Some minor recommendations were made, and the case was closed. Then, just weeks later, the Great War erupted, and the world had bigger issues. The impact of the Empress of Ireland disaster was felt all over the world. A great pall hung over the Salvation Army Congress of 1914. Canada's contingent was so hurt by the loss that they wouldn't form another staff band for 50 years. London had lost its two brightest theatre stars, but a short couple of months after the sinking, thousands were dying every day on the Western Front. The Empress of Ireland faded into obscurity and was almost forgotten, except for those that had been through it. Little Florence Barber never forgot. Her dying wish was to be buried next to Robert Crellin, the man who'd saved her, as an older woman. Fifty years after the disaster in 1964, she visited Canada again and met with Crellin's son, who gave her his father's watch, the one he'd worn on the night of the sinking. She visited Crellin's grave, who was buried in the same cemetery that her father had been. Today, on the bottom of the St. Lawrence River, you'll find the remains of the Empress of Ireland. She is encrusted with thick, underwater growth, and very little is recognisable. It's hard to believe that she was once so beautiful. Only one fifth of the victims were ever recovered. Those that remain... This wreck is their headstone. Today, all we can do is cast our mind's eye back to that gleaming golden summer afternoon when thousands of people were excited to travel on what was then one of the most beautiful ships in the world.

The two vessels signal to one another in the fog, blasting their horns. But then, Storchdard's captain spots something terrifying. Out of the murky black, he sees lights where they shouldn't be.

Close by, from a ship directly in front of him. Then, the fog dissolves to reveal the still cliff face of an ocean liner's side. and his ship is about to crash straight into it.

He rings down an urgent order to his engine room, full speed astern, but he doesn't even look to see if his order's followed. His eyes are fixated, wide with terror, at the massive ship that looms over him. Storstad's propeller thrashes in the water, but it's too late.

Collision can't be avoided. The two ships are separated and lose each other in the fog. But ten minutes after the impact, all was still and quiet.

When drifting across the water from somewhere out in the darkness, Captain Anderson and his crew began to hear something. It was the sound of screaming. The mighty St. Lawrence River.

At its widest point it spans over 100 kilometers or 62 miles in width. Dive for 76 meters or 250 feet straight down in some spots and you'd still not see the riverbed. Now, like any great body of water in the world, it's a favorite haunt for pleasure craft and water sportsmen, but it's also a vital link from eastern Canada to the Atlantic. Travel 250 kilometers or 155 miles up river.

You'll find something extraordinary. Here on the riverbed, encrusted in marine growth, tangled and broken, lies the wreck of a once great ship. You wouldn't know it.

Very little is recognizable. It's a cold, dark, lonely place, and only the most skilled divers in the world ever visit. But what if I told you that this ship was once the pride of its owners? So renowned and beloved, it even had a popular waltz written about it.

The ship had carried thousands of hopefuls to new lives in Canada from Europe. Now, scattered throughout its wreck, you can find bones. Hundreds of them. These were once people looking to visit their family and friends, starting new jobs or going to new schools.

Musicians, clerks, engineers, performers, children. 110 years ago, this tangle of wreckage looked very different. In May 1914, in the uneasy few months before the First World War erupted, a ship was preparing to leave for Britain. She was big, luxurious, and smartly painted, a beautifully proportioned and beloved ocean liner. She'd been a familiar sight on the St Lawrence River having sailed between Britain and Canada, For the better part of a decade, she was reliable and trusty, but also glamorous and comfortable.

If you'd stood on the dock as passengers swarmed aboard that morning, you might have gazed up in admiring wonder at her gleaming nameplate. The golden letters proudly spelled out the name which made her a favourite of so many Irish immigrants. She was called the Empress of Ireland.

The Empress of Ireland was the brainchild of the Canadian Pacific Railway, an incredible company with a vast, sprawling network of transport that circled the globe. It had started in the 1880s as an effort to expand the Canadian railway network out of Ontario. By 1886, the company had spanned the North American continent, meaning you could haul goods and passengers from one coast to another in just six days.

A journey that once would have taken weeks on horseback, or by ox train. To complement this network, The company negotiated with the British government to establish a steamship service operating between Canada, Britain and the Far East. By the early 1900s, this profitable service had grown to include a simply massive fleet of hundreds of ships.

It was possible to travel from Japan to Canada and then to keep on going back to Japan without once stepping foot from off of a Canadian Pacific Railway ship or train. The world's biggest and best-known ships operated the glamorous transatlantic route from Liverpool or Southampton in Britain to New York in America. Not only did this caught millionaires and the famous, but it also carried hundreds of thousands of hopeful immigrants from Europe to start new lives in America. But Canada offered plenty of opportunities to migrants as well, so ships plied the Atlantic from Britain to Quebec or Montreal.

In 1903 the Canadian Pacific Railway rushed to capitalize on this bustling trade. But this was not the glamorous New York service, and it showed. The Canadian Pacific's early ships were secondhand, having been bought from other lines at a bargain. That, and they were mostly combination cargo passenger ships with just as much focus on the freight that they carried as the people.

So to get a leg up on the competition and truly cement their transatlantic dominance, Canadian Pacific Line set out to invest in their future. They would order two brand new, huge ocean liners to be built to an exacting standard. They would be every bit as glamorous and comfortable as their bigger rivals on the millionaire's route to New York, and hopefully attract a clientele because of it. The pair of identical sister ships would take turns operating between Liverpool and Quebec in the summer season, and they need to run at high speeds, 18 knots, to ensure a regular weekly service from both sides of the Atlantic.

Their speed would be complemented by their size. Passengers wanted safety and comfort, and Canadian Pacific would give it to them. The pair of sister ships would be by far the biggest in the Canadian Pacific's fleet, with 14,191 gross registered tons and 570 feet in length.

The order was placed in 1905 with Fairfield Shipbuilding at Govan in Scotland. It was a great choice. Fairfield was a renowned builder of warships for the Admiralty.

The two ships were built side by side to the most modern specifications being 14,000 odd gross registered tons their bulk meant that they could comfortably carry 1,500 people across four classes. By 1906, 14,000 tons wasn't a monumental volume. But it wasn't tiny either.

Just a decade earlier the two new ships would have been considered the largest in the world. Such was the rapid rate of technological development. In January 1906 the second of the two sisters thundered down the slipway on her launching day.

The first ship had been named Empress of Britain and the second liner was called the Empress of Ireland. On introduction the two ships had caused quite a stir. They elevated the experience for passengers crossing to Canada by a huge margin.

Not just because of their comfort, the ships were safe. They'd been built with all the modern technological developments. Double-bottomed hulls would prevent sinking from grounding on rocks. Tall steel walls, called bulkheads, divided the ships into 11 individual self-contained sections called compartments. These could be sealed off from each other by heavy cast iron doors, which would be hand-cranked down, creating a watertight seal.

The Emperor Sisters could remain afloat with any two of their compartments flooded. Safety tests were run to see how quickly the doors could be shut in the event of an emergency. The captain rang down an order from the bridge on a telegraph signaling the crew to close all doors. The men below rushed into action.

Stewards ran to cupboards to fetch heavy brass keys that could slot over the winding shafts and then bodily hand crank the heavy doors shut. A well-drilled crew could have all 24 watertight doors closed in just three minutes. None of it was automatic or electric.

The system relied on good training and a quick reaction. For six years, the Empress Sisters had proved hugely popular and were a massive success for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Then, in 1912, something happened that shocked the shipping world as a whole. White Star Line's Titanic, which was far more modern and over three times larger than the Empress Sisters, had sunk on its maiden voyage with a huge loss of life. Public confidence in shipping technology was badly shaken, and lines rushed to fill their ships with lifeboats and promote their safety features.

Canadian Pacific were at pains to proudly point out that their Emperor Sisters had lifeboat and raft capacity for 1,800 860 people. As long as the watertight doors could be shut in an emergency, the ships would stay afloat and all the lifeboats could be launched safely. Eight years after her introduction, the Empress of Ireland was tied up at the port of Quebec.

It was May 28th, 1914, and an excited stream of passengers steadily made their way up the ship's gangways and poured inside what would be their new home for the next four days. Just last month the St Lawrence River, which freezes over in winter, had its ice break in Thor. Now the Empress was about to depart on its first round voyage for the season. She was headed for Liverpool, and up the gangways trod a variety of characters from all walks of life.

1914 was a monumental year for modern world history. We know now that in May, the outbreak of the First World War was just three months away. Tensions in Europe were high. People could feel it. For those who'd made the trip out to Canada in years prior from mainland Europe, Britain or Ireland, the temptation to get home and see family, maybe even to try persuading them to go back to Canada with them to safety, must have been great.

Of the two sister ships, it was the Empress of Ireland who had attracted considerable interest and affection from Irish migrants. On special occasions, she flew the green flag of Erin And every year at St. Patrick's Day a huge gala dinner was held on board with lots of singing and dancing. That Thursday morning some 700 third-class passengers boarded the ship.

Many were going home to see family. Some had made the migration effort out to Canada but had not found their success and were returning home disappointed. They came from all over and not just Canada. The American Midwest and the Great Lakes was well represented by the third-class contingent. It included some 300 Detroit Ford factory workers who'd been laid off in the summer.

There were Poles, New Zealanders, Italians, Swedes, and of course, Irish. A mass of people from across the globe who must have stared up at their big ship with a sense of pride. They knew they were travelling on the best.

Up other gangways strode the second class passengers, clerks, businessmen, bankers. Many mothers were travelling with their children to meet husbands who were away on business trips abroad. For many young ones, this would be their first overseas trip.

138 children in total boarded the Empress of Ireland that day, wide-eyed at the size of their ship and the bustling scenes that were happening around them. Then there were men in uniforms with shiny silver buttons. On their collars and caps they proudly showed the red emblem of the Salvation Army.

The army was a church and humanitarian organization which had been formed in the 1800s to reform societies down and out and bring them closer to God and salvation. This had been done in an era where wealth disparity was monumental and few cared for the plights of society's discards, the homeless, the drunk or the downtrodden. The Salvation Army had fed mouths and given shelter to thousands across the globe and in 1914 a massive conference was being held in London. This was an opportunity for members of the organisation to come together for world peace and to showcase what their own little chapter of the Salvation Army looked like.

They were noted for their staff bands. It had started as a quirky tradition in 1879, but by 1914, the sight of Salvationist musicians was familiar and well-loved. That day, 167 members of Canada's Salvation Army boarded the Empress of Ireland in second class.

They were headed by their beloved Commissioner David Rees, a kindly bearded man of 57, and joining him was his wife Ruth. They'd actually met in the Salvation Army and fallen for one another, and up the ship's gangway she must have anxiously corralled the couple's three young children. Across Canada, 500 delegates were making the trip across the ocean, with many booked on other ships in the coming days. In early June, there'd be a huge reception at the Royal Albert Hall. and the expected turnout was 5,000 people.

The Salvationists gazed down excitedly from the decks of the ship, and their comrades had turned out to see them off from the dockside. First class was underbooked for this voyage, which was unusual for that time of year, but what the class lacked in number it more than made up for in personality. Calmly onto the ship strode Mr. Lawrence Irving and his wife Mabel Hackney, renowned actors, the two of them.

Lawrence was the son of legendary actor and manager Sir Henry Irving. From a young age, he must have known he had big shoes to fill. The young man had wowed audiences on the stage and turned his hand to writing hit plays, but it was in 1901 that a young actress joined his theatre company and his life was to change forever. Mabel Hackney was a talented actress from Wales and she enchanted audiences across the Atlantic. For Lawrence, it was like love at first sight.

The two were married in 1903 and they were practically inseparable, co-starring in plays that Lawrence would often write himself and they were described as the best suited couple imaginable. Lawrence was famously defensive of his wife. Once he had publicly sought out and lambasted a critic for daring to denounce Mabel's acting talents, he had a good sense of humour too. If he was on stage and an audience member coughed, he'd pause the play and offer the theatregoer a cough lozenge. Lawrence and Mabel were at the height of their careers, and they'd just led their theatre troupe on a highly successful tour of Canada where they'd generated rave reviews.

And they were at last heading for home, proud of their success, but then there'd been a small hold up. Their agent had switched their booking, originally the whole theatre troupe was supposed to travel on the Empress of Ireland, but they were moved onto White Star Line's Teutonic, which was due to sail three days later. Lawrence was annoyed.

He was eager to get back to London as soon as possible to get started on his newest play. He had his tickets switched back to the Empress along with his wife, and the rest of the troupe wouldn't be ready in time. But the Irvings also booked their juvenile lead Harold Neville and his wife actress Nelsie Vron. The two are anxious to get home and see their three young children as soon as possible. The party said goodbye to their friends and left them in Canada.

They thought they'd be reunited within the week. The Irving's presence aboard the ship attracted the most attention, but another noted member of society boarded that day, Sir Henry Setton Carr, a legendary sportsman and adventurer. At 61 years of age, the man had a voracious appetite for activity.

He swam, hunted, hiked, rowed, golfed. He was at last headed for home after a series of business trips abroad, but there's no doubt, once on board the ship, he must have been planning for his next big adventure. The time of departure was drawing near, and the dockside well-wishers gathered to see the big ship off.

Some waved to loved ones on board, but others were just strangers excited to see the first departure of the Empress for this season. Gazing down from the bridge at all of the hubbub of activity was the Empress's master, Captain Henry Kendall. Kendall was a young up-and-comer in the Canadian Pacific Railways service, at a sprightly 40 years of age.

But even by 1914 he'd made quite a name for himself. In 1900 he'd survived a shipwreck off Newfoundland, and then two years later he'd worked with none other than Mr. Guglielmo Marconi himself in helping to develop ship-to-shore wireless radio. He joined Canadian Pacific in 1910, and then became something of a celebrity for the most bizarre of reasons. He was in command of the older Canadian Pacific ship Montrose when a suspicious passenger caught his attention. Leaving from Britain, Kendall suspected the man of being a notorious wanted fugitive and radioed back.

Scotland Yard was hunting a dangerous murderer and they suspected him of fleeing the country. Thanks to Kendall's radio message, a police presence was waiting for the Montrose in Canada and on boarding, the party was glad to discover that the suspicious passenger was none other than Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, who'd murdered his wife and fled with his accomplice and lover, who'd disguised herself on board as a young boy. The disguise hadn't worked. The keen-eyed Kendall had figured them both out immediately for who they truly were.

It was the first time that radio had helped apprehend criminals. To top it all off, as captain of the Lake Champlain, Kendall had sped to the rescue of the Allenliner Corsican. after it had struck an iceberg.

Kendall was Canadian Pacific Line's rising star. It seemed natural to put him in charge of one of their two most treasured and glamorous ships. This would be his first voyage captaining the Empress of Ireland down the St Lawrence River.

At around 4 30 pm all were at last aboard and the ship was set to leave. Tugs came to her assistance and the lines that connected the ship to shore were at last cast off. The big ship slowly pulled away from the quay where a dense crowd of people waved and cheered. Then in the warm summer air the strains of music began to float. The Salvation Army band had quickly assembled on deck unexpectedly.

They held their instruments and played a final song. A farewell to their friends and families and a promise. It was the hymn, God Be With You, Till We Meet Again.

Oh Afternoon the Empress had cleared the channel and Captain Kendall had opened her engines up The ship thundered along slowly leaving Quebec behind For many this would be their last ever sight of home Oh As the Empress slipped away into the evening, the gathered crowd dispersed and the ship's passengers began to get settled into their new home. A few hundred miles down river, another ship was underway and this was a very different vessel to the Empress of Ireland. Where the Empress was elegant and luxurious, this other ship was utilitarian and basic.

It was a cargo ship, a bulk freighter loaded deep into the water with its hulls straining under the bulk of 10,000 tons of coal. But to the small crew on board, their cargo ship was also a home. And this was a happy one. The ship was named Storstad. Only four years at sea, and extremely modern.

When she'd first arrived at Philadelphia on her maiden voyage in 1911, she'd disembarked the largest single load of iron ore ever carried by a single ship until that point. It might sound now like a dubious honour, but her crew and owners must have been extremely proud. On the bridge stood Captain Thomas Anderson, a gruff old sea dog, broad-chested and with a huge moustache.

He'd been at sea for 30 years and he knew his business well. But aside from his 30 odd crew, there was another important person on board who even kept the captain in check. His wife, Mrs. Anderson, had cheerfully joined her husband on many voyages and turned the captain's Spartan cabin into a home with soft furnishings and even new curtains. The ship below Anderson's feet was tough.

Very tough. She'd been built using a system of construction that was designed specifically to reinforce her against... ice flows and other obstacles in her path during winter and other tough crossings. With a dead straight front end and heavily reinforced framing that ran the entire length of the ship's hull, the Storchstart was a rugged, formidable thing.

Laden with over 10,000 tons of coal, the ship would take miles to stop. Good navigation and seamanship was crucial because ships like Storchstart had been involved in dozens of collisions before. In 1895 a German ship had been sunk in minutes after being rammed by a freighter that was just like Storstad.

The icebreaker Bauer turned out to be perfectly adept at breaking other ships too. All of this can't have been far out of Captain Anderson's mind as his vessel plotted its way up the St. Lawrence River. But with an experienced crew and years of his own life spent before the mast, he was confident they'd reach Montreal the next day and Mrs. Anderson might even do some more shopping.

He smoked his pipe and watched the river in front of him. As the sunset and the early summer air developed a chill, passengers aboard the Empress of Ireland began to retire for dinner. They'd already spent a few hours exploring the ship, but no doubt many were just exhausted after traveling only to arrive at the Quebec docks.

Many of them had come from all over Canada, the Great Lakes and the American Midwest. Going through the rigmarole of boarding a liner, passing through inspection, customs and baggage was all extremely tiring. Many went to bed early.

The tradition was that on the first night of a steamer's voyage, first class passengers didn't even need to dress in their finery for dinner. Everybody was just too tired. It'd be time to explore the ship more tomorrow. Down in the first class dining saloon, silverware and crockery gently clinked as hungry passengers happily ate their meals and chatted to their new shipboard companions. The Irvings were there, Henry set in the car too.

Ever the rake, he had ignored tradition and dressed in his best for dinner. The Ship String Orchestra plucked and sawed out the popular tunes of the day. The dining saloon was a gorgeous space with a huge glass baroque dome that towered over it. As the passengers dispersed from dinner, many would have enjoyed the other spaces at their leisure. The gorgeous music room, richly decorated salons centred on the top of the dining saloon's dome.

Up here, passengers could sink into sofas and listen to strains from the grand piano. Elsewhere they converged in the library or the smoking room. The Empress wasn't as big or glamorous as the larger transatlantic liners of the day, but she was pretty darn close.

In second class diners chatted away happily. They had a similar array of comfortable rooms to enjoy like a smoking room and library. The Salvation Army members were excited.

The mood on board was festive. Many had never left Canada before. After dinner The band formed up again and gave an impromptu concert for third class.

As dusk turned to night and the temperature dropped even more, only the hardiest passengers stayed up playing cards or smoking. The ship was well on its way now, approaching Rimouski where it would drop off the pilot. Up on the bridge, Captain Kendall stood in the darkness with his officers and that pilot, Adelaide Laurier.

His job was to help guide the Empress out of the treacherous St Lawrence as far as Father Point, just past Rimouski. He was a local, and he knew the waters like the back of his hand. The bridge was always kept in darkness to preserve night vision, but that night there was a more dangerous menace to visibility. Fog.

As the competing air currents converge on the cold river water in early summer, St. Lawrence is a place where the sun is shining. Lawrence is notorious for generating impenetrable banks of fog seemingly at random. As the Empress of Ireland passed little towns that dotted the riverbanks, fog banks crept in and the ship would have to be slowed right down. It was a tiring process, but it had to be done. Safety was paramount.

Captain Kendall led a veritable floating townsworth of staff and crew with dozens of skills and specialities. bakers and cooks, sailors and engineers, stewards and nurses, they all combined to create an army of people some 400 strong who kept their ship running. As the young moon shone overhead the ship's night stewards were on duty Manning the corridors in all three classes Their job was varied from ensuring passengers shoes were shined to reporting on the half-hour that all was well In the event of an emergency they were also trained in lowering the ship's watertight doors. Without automatic lowering it would be down to them to save the ship. But as the hours crept on in the deserted corridors disaster must have been the last thing on their minds.

At 1.30 a.m. the ship had reached farther point and it was time for the pilot Laurier to hop off. He shook Kendall's hand and as the Empress of Ireland came to a halt the tiny pilot Carter Eureka came alongside.

A ladder was laid over the side and Laurier nimbly stepped off and onto the cutter. Then some sacks were tossed down, the last of the mail to leave the ship. It included letters from the Salvationists who were already writing home to friends about the fun they'd had on board.

They promised they'd write more when they got to Britain. Eureka set out for home at Father Point and the Empress's engines started up again. She was still beautifully lit in the night sky, but as the Eureka sailed away...

It's unlikely that the Little Steamers crew, the Laurier, even looked back. They were just so used to seeing her. They couldn't know it yet, but this would be their last chance to see the ship afloat.

The Empress's engines rumbled faithfully. Dining saloon tables had been set for breakfast the next morning by white-gloved stewards, and all the lights were turned out. Passengers slept soundly in their beds. And all was well.

Captain Kendall stayed on the bridge that night. It had been a long day, but the passage out from Canada through the St. Lawrence was nerve-wracking, especially since he'd only just assumed command of the big ship. He'd see to a safe navigation himself and then rest later.

With him were five men. Jones, the first officer, Moore, the third, and then two quartermasters who ensured the officers'steering orders were carried out and actually turned the ship's wheel. It was quiet. The only sound that might have interrupted their concentration was the deep rumble of the engines. Then, another sound.

A single ring from the ship's bell. High up in the mast, lookout John Carroll had spotted something out ahead. A single- The single ring meant something ahead on the right. The other officers must have seen it too. The lights of another ship, maybe 8 miles distant.

From estimates on the other ship's bearing, the direction it was heading in, this meant that the Empress would have to cut across its course to get out of the river. Kendall was taking the Empress diagonally out across the river to exit onto the Atlantic. There was no cause for alarm. The other ship had right of way, technically.

The Empress was fast and would easily clear the other ships course within eight miles. He watched the other ship carefully to ensure there would be no problem. The two approached and all was fine But then something caught Kendall's eye. St. Lawrence was pulling its old tricks again. A thick blanket of fog was creeping out across the river.

This normally wouldn't be a problem. There were simple rules for dealing with fog at sea born of years of trial and error and disaster. For big steamers the best thing to do was to post additional lookouts, sound the ships of whistles at a regular interval and grope ahead slowly without changing course. You might think that it'd be safest to stop but a big ship stopped has no way of turning or controlling its movements. In a river with a strong current like the St. Lawrence, you might drift directly into disaster with no way of getting out of it.

A ship like the Empress takes time to build up speed. With no water rushing over its rudder, there was just no way of turning. Kendall took one long last look at the stranger before it was finally obscured from view. He judged it to be now just over a mile and a half away. Close.

Too close. Maybe he was just being extra cautious. The Canadian Pacific Railway urged caution of its captains and this was of course his first time captaining the Empress down the river. At sea the master's decision is final and Kendall had a choice to make.

The fog had come at exactly the time and place the ships would be passing close by one another. It was almost like somebody had designed it that way on purpose. Kendall second guessed himself. With his ship moving slow ahead, he rang down an order on the telegraph, full astern.

He'd set his engines in reverse, and slowly bring his ship to a stop, until the fog had passed. He blasted his ship's whistles, three short blasts, meaning, I'm going astern. He figured that the other ship would understand, and maybe do the same. If both ships stopped, then the fog would drift, and they could resume passage. Fog swirled in and hid the Empress from the outside world.

It was still and silent. The stars were gone. So was the moon. It was hidden by a thick cloud of mist.

With this ship coming to a slow stop, Kendall rang down to stop the engines and blasted the whistles again twice. I am stopped. The fog, there came a response, but from where? It sounded much louder than it should have been, and it seemed to come from every direction. The fog was playing tricks.

All was still, quiet, and Kendall stood on the right bridge wing and waited. Then, out of the murk, there appeared a light. Kendall's eyes strained in the dark and out of the fog the lights materialized into the front end of a huge freighter and it was bearing down on his ship with speed. It sounded its whistles three times in warning.

There wasn't any time to lose. Kendall sprang into action. If Kendall could get the Empress's nose around quickly enough into the path of the other ship, then the impact might just be a glancing blow. He had ordered the engines full ahead and the wheel hard around, but his ship was stopped.

There could be no escape. The freighter buried its reinforced bow deep into the side of the Empress's hull, but the impact was slight. It was like stabbing a knife into the side of a chocolate cake.

There was no resistance because the Empress of Ireland's hull wasn't reinforced. But the bow of the freighter sure was. It plunged through cabins and corridors, maybe as far as 20 feet. Anybody asleep in its path was instantly crushed.

Kendall shouted through his megaphone, Keep your engines full ahead. He'd amassed a lot of energy. immediately surmised the situation his ship was in.

A blow like that, dead in the middle of the ship, could only have plunged deep into the Empress's beating heart, opening its critical boiler and engine rooms up to the river. If the other ship could keep its engines going ahead, then the hull might just be plugged. He rang down for his own engines to stop, but to his horror and his frustration the other ship began to drift away.

With the grinding of steel they were separated, and the freighter passed behind. As quickly as it had appeared, it had vanished into the fog, and the Empress was all alone. Kendall raced to his telegraph and signalled for all the watertight doors to be shut. But beneath his feet, even as he did so, his passengers were already fighting for their lives and dying.

The freighter's bow had left a gaping wound as much as 25 feet deep and 14 feet wide, around 8 by 5 meters. The bow was the height of a three story building. It had crushed through the hull from the bottom of the boiler rooms and up into the passenger cabins high above the waterline. Those in the immediate vicinity who weren't crushed would have found themselves drowned in their bunks because some 60,000 gallons, 227,000 litres of river water began to roar into the Empress every second. Many of those that ran out into the corridors on that side of the ship were confronted with a tsunami of river water that surged in and flattened everything in its path.

Below, in the boiler rooms, men on duty were horrified to see a steel mountain burst through the side of the space they'd been working in, but then that had been followed by an absolute torrent of water. They did their best just to run up the escape ladders and get out, and they didn't have time to close the watertight doors. The ship immediately began to roll under the weight of the surging river water, but the Empress's meticulous watertight door plan was put into action. The night stewards rushed to their positions to fetch the keys and shut the doors, but those on the right hand side of the ship where the collision had been were drowned where they stood by the cascade of water.

On the left hand side the men had to struggle already against the ship as it leaned in the water. Some of the doors were shut, but many, many more remained open. Not a single night steward from third class survived the night. The plan had failed.

The Empress was sinking. Kendall knew already that his ship was in bad shape. He didn't need an inspection to confirm it.

He ordered the lifeboats uncovered and loaded with passengers almost immediately, and his crew faithfully got to work. Below their feet, hundreds of passengers, mostly migrants and third class, were awoken simply by rushing water, and blindly groped their way through the unfamiliar winding corridors, looking for a way out. The corridors they were clambering through began to lean heavily under their feet. The collision had been subtle. Too subtle.

Most of the passengers weren't even woken by it. Some had been woken instead by the loud booming of the ship's horns in the fog. They stepped curiously out on deck.

The lucky ones stayed and got into a lifeboat, but the less fortunate thought everything was in hand, just went back to their rooms, never to be seen again. In the short few minutes after the collision, as hundreds fought for life trapped down below, there was an unmistakably ominous sign of danger. The ship's lights began to fade to a dull red. Kendall knew he couldn't be far from the southern bank of the river.

He planned to run the Empress full speed into the soft mud and beach his ship, stopping it from sinking. He picked up a telephone on the bridge and asked the chief engineer down below to run the engines full speed. ahead, but the chief's response was despondent.

There was no steam left. The freighter's bow had smashed through both boiler rooms and flooded them. The steam, the very lifeblood that the Empress had operated on, that it relied on for running its engines and machinery, was gone.

Crucially, the steam also ran the ship's dynamos and created electricity. With a snap, the light switched off for good, and the ship was plunged into darkness. For those still down below, it was a death sentence.

Never mind already dealing with river water at their heels, the deck slanting below their feet, and the unfamiliarity. This was their first night at sea, nobody knew their way around yet, they hadn't explored enough. When the lights died, there must have been absolute despair beyond words.

Some may have lit matches to try and find a way out, but close at hand always was the rising water. Inevitably, it caught up with them. The Empress listed hard onto her starboard side. It made walking across the ship's width a task in itself because now passengers, many of them elderly or just too young, now had to walk steeply uphill to get out.

The glamorous first-class grand staircase and others like it became death traps, leaning at so sharp an angle it was almost impossible to hold on and climb your way out. Up on deck, the starboard lifeboats were hurriedly uncovered and loaded. Anybody at hand was quickly ushered in. Clearly there wasn't much time left. Water was already roaring into the open promenades that had once stood 30 feet above the water.

line. Crew members had been assigned to lifeboat stations with many on the port side. They rushed to their posts and tried to load the lifeboats there but now the ship was listing and creating new problems.

proving difficult, if not impossible, to fill and lower the portside boats because the crews now had to struggle against gravity to manhandle the heavy steel boats out over the side it was lifting higher and higher into the air with every second. At least one lifeboat launch was attempted on the port side, the boat caught on the rising hull and flipped, scattered its occupants screaming into the water and bashed them into the side of the ship. Many crew there simply abandon their posts to help on the other side instead. Kendall was still on the bridge bellowing orders through his speaking trumpet. He ordered crew below to fetch people from cabins, breaking down doors if they had to.

He urged hurry, saying there wasn't much time to lose. Sadly, if anybody actually obeyed his orders, it would have been a death sentence. Kendall was right. It had only been just five minutes or so since the impact, and the Empress didn't have long to live.

The crews at the lifeboat stations worked with incredible calm and efficiency considering the panic and mayhem that was happening around them. Despite their care mistakes still occurred. It was all happening too quickly.

Boat 1 broke free from its chocks and swung heavily out over the side throwing many of its passengers out. Boat 15 at the very stern of the ship was lowered away but capsized before it hit the water. Other boats got stuck in place. The heavy and clunky rigging jamming was simply being nearly impossible to move against the rolling of the ship. Boat 5 was loaded, and then swung out, but then it didn't even need to be lowered at all, it just floated freely away.

Usually it would need to be dropped some 40 feet or more into the ocean, but by now, the river had risen to meet it where it sat on the boat deck. Down below the fight for life continued, people. clawed their way up staircase banisters and corridors in the blackness, hoping to find a way out.

On deck, Kendall was still shouting orders, but the screams of his passengers had drowned him out. He held onto the bridge and watched the chaos unfold helplessly. BOOM His passengers were in a fight for their lives, but so was his ship. It had sat there for nearing 10 minutes, filling quickly with tons and tons of water. It was all a matter of buoyancy, stability and mathematics.

A fight against gravity. But then, the Empress lost her fight, and Gravity won. She rolled over. The Empress's 14,191 tonne bulk rolled onto the heads of its passengers, and as it did, tonnes and tonnes of deck equipment broke free and crushed them.

Things that had been designed to save them, rafts and lifeboats, boats. They all weighed tonnes, and they all came crashing down with a thunderous roar. Lifeboat 11 had been launched too late, its occupants were struggling to get clear when they and their boat were crushed.

The left side now pointed to the heavens. The Empress sat still in the water and the lucky few in the boats looked on in horror. From the water, hundreds of mouths screamed for help.

Perversely, the whole scene was lit dimly by two dozen lifebuoys which bobbed to the surface and fired off a chemical flare each. It cast a ghostly blue light over the whole scene. With her whole starboard side in the water, the Empress seemed to stay in place.

Some even thought the ship had been grounded on the riverbank, and might stay afloat. On the exposed port side of the ship, dozens of people clung together. It was a bizarre sight.

Some likened it to being at the beach, but instead of sand there was just sheer black metal. There was a disturbing sight here, many on this side of the ship had slept through the whole ordeal or didn't have time to escape. They opened their portholes and tried to squeeze through, but the portholes were only 9 inches or 22cm wide.

Try as they might, even with help from others, there was just no way of getting through. They struggled, and hurt themselves in the process. One man calmly walked to the back of the ship, stood below one of the massive bronze propellers, and dived into the water. Others sat in place, unsure of what to do.

The Empress didn't move. Or at least, it didn't seem to. One observant passenger noticed that every wave that seemed to lap on the hull seemed higher up than the last one that had come before it. Below them was 40 feet of ship, and 100 feet of river water.

The Empress was going down. Slowly, very slowly, the ship began to disappear into the Black River. People who'd been struggling to help free those from their portholes had to turn away, because the water began to swirl around their feet.

From the portholes, they were waving arms, but there was nothing they could do. Like a slowly rising tide, more and more of the ship's side was covered. Until finally, with a sigh and a dull boom, the ship disappeared beneath the waves and hundreds of struggling people were left behind.

Once there had been a proud and strong ocean liner, there were clumps of wreckage and passengers wrestling for life cruisers. Captain Kendall was there too. He'd been thrown from the bridge of his ship.

He was still alive, but cold. The water that night was just above freezing. I could see your breath in the air. Just like it had appeared at the most critical moment, the fog disappeared around the time that the Empress sank.

Maybe it was even driven away by air as it escaped from the inside of the rapidly sinking ship. There, for the first time, people in the lifeboats and the water could see the ship which had hit them. It was the Storstad, and already its lifeboats were in the water heading towards them. Immediately after the impact, Captain Anderson had tried to keep his ship in the Empress's side, but the two ships had drifted apart.

As the liner disappeared into the darkness, his primary concern had been his own ship. Loaded with all that coal, she could just drop to the riverbed like a stone. He had his lifeboat swung out, and the damage checked.

But his ship was still afloat. When his crew heard the awful screams drifting over the water, they knew that something terrible was happening, but they just didn't know where. They mounted a rescue operation to grope their way through the fog and help.

But then the fog had lifted, and instead of a sinking ocean liner, they were confronted by the sight of hundreds of people, alive and dead, choking the water's surface. Through the night, they ferried survivors to safety and the Empress's own boats plucked people from the water too. Captain Kendall was picked up by a boat, he had spotted the Storstad's lights and after picking up struggling people from the water, he and his lifeboat had rowed out towards it. The exhausted frozen passengers were put on board and Kendall and his crew rowed out again for more.

He and his crew worked tirelessly like this for the next three hours, saving as many as 75 lives. At last... Dead tired and beleaguered, he clambered aboard the Storchstadt and sought out the captain.

Are you the master of this ship? He had asked of Anderson. You have sunk my ship, he had shouted.

Anderson strongly disagreed. They had a brief argument, but then no more was said. There would have to be an intense investigation over this, and the less said now, the better.

All night, people were pulled from the water, alive or not. By morning the steamer Lady Evelyn and the pilot cutter Eureka had arrived. Eureka had last seen the Empress alive, but now it would deal with its survivors and its dead.

The Irvings had been lost. A first-class passenger had seen them inside the ship, Lawrence's face bloodied from a fall. He was trying his best to comfort his wife.

Last seen clinging to each other on the ship's decks as it sank around them. Sir Henry Seton Carr, the adventurer, had died as well. He was found two days later, 40 miles downriver, still in his evening dress. He had died after helping another passenger with their life vest.

The Empress of Ireland had sunk in just 14 minutes. There was no time at all for the gallantry and romance of other disasters from history. It was just the quick...

The lucky and the dead. The Nevels, the young acting couple who traveled with the Irvings, they were lost too. Hundreds were.

The Salvation Army contingent had acted heroically and professionally but the speed with which their ship was lost allowed for little gallantry without the ultimate sacrifice. There had been nearly 170 on board and only eight survived. The band was gone, So too was Commissioner David Rees.

He'd given away his life jacket, and stayed with his family. They were all lost. 1,012 people died with the Empress of Ireland that night.

There had been 138 children on board. Only four survived. It had all happened so fast, but there had still been time for some heroics, made all the more impressive because of the limited amount of time.

They weren't as widely reported or famous as those from the likes of Titanic, but it just wasn't time enough for grand gestures of chivalry. In fact, most of the bravery that night will go forever unrecorded, lost to all eternity in the flooding hull. Stepping aside here so somebody else could get through a door first.

Giving up a life jacket there so somebody else might live. We'll never know what happened down there, but we do know what happened elsewhere. Like in the radio office.

Wireless operator Ronald Ferguson had been dozing off with his junior working the station when he heard the ship's whistles and felt the jolt. He'd taken over and hurriedly sent out distress calls. With the ship listing underneath him and having to brace himself from falling out of his chair, Ferguson contacted Father P... Point wireless station with a series of messages that weren't frantic, but the exact opposite.

He knew that this late at night only the junior wireless operators would be at work on the shore stations, so he tapped out his message slower than usual so they'd understand. Within eight minutes from the time of the collision to the sinking, he had tapped out the ship's position and the situation and rescue ships were already on the way. He burst out of the wireless office at the last minute.

Then the Empress rolled and threw him into the water. He was saved by a lifeboat and then, when the Lady Evelyn arrived to the rescue, he had clambered aboard and found out the ship had no radio operator of its own. Despite being exhausted, wet and nearly frozen, he rushed to the wireless room and began coordinating relief for hours. Ferguson was only 20 years old. Little Florence Lorraine Barber The eight years old, was sailing back to England with her mother and sister.

The family had moved with her father to Canada but he'd been killed in a mining accident in 1913, so a year later Sabina, her mother, decided in her sorrow to move back home and booked on the Empress of Ireland, joined by two family friends, Robert Crellin and William Barry. Crellin had actually wanted to marry Sabina but in the sinking the party was separated. Crellin found Florence and he saved her.

Sabina and her other daughter were lost, but Crellin and Florence stayed together as he tried desperately to keep her afloat on a piece of debris all night. The pair were eventually rescued and Florence lived her life, forever fondly remembering her beloved Uncle Robert, the man who had rescued her. The following day, bodies arrived at Rimouski in their dozens. There was no provision for this volume of dead.

No precedent. The Lady Evelyn had rescued the Empress's passengers and now it retrieved the dead. A makeshift morgue was established and the victims were lined up as coffins were embarked en masse onto trains from Quebec. Bystanders and reporters were moved by the sight of so many little children and mothers who still clutched their babies in their arms.

The government cutter, Lady Grey, embarked the bodies after they were put into their coffins. and sailed for Quebec where they could be identified by loved ones and relatives. It was a tragic sight. 188 remains of the Empress's passengers were carefully carried off the ship to sheds on the quay. Just a day earlier those same people had set out excitedly to new beginnings and chapters in their lives, but now their stories ended here.

It was impossible not to be touched by the sight of dozens of short Child-sized coffins as they were unloaded. As bereaved families worked to pick out their loved ones from the lines of coffins, serious questions were asked. How could such a disaster occur?

Who was at fault? It led inevitably to an inquiry and a British whitewash. Presiding over the whole thing was John Biggum, the Viscount Lord Mersey, who had also presided over the inquiry for the sinking of the Titanic. Mersey likely had an agenda.

It was a matter of national pride. The Commonwealth ship had been sunk and there was an easy scapegoat in the Norwegian Storstad. What exactly happened that night in the fog is hard to say.

say for certain. The inquiry reports make for interesting reading. From the outset it's clear that almost everybody blamed the Storch Stud, but that's not an entirely fair assessment. One man, one of the quartermasters from the Empress of Ireland, had come forward and disclosed that he remembered the ship had issues with her steering. This was almost universally refuted by Captain Kendall, his officers and then other quartermasters, except one of the latter Let's slip on oath that the ocean liner did in fact have some quirky steering habits that required a deft hand to resolve.

The facts remained that Kendall had stopped the Empress in the fog instead of maintaining headway and providing his ship the momentum it needed to turn or evade an impact. But there was far worse. The watertight doors.

Kendall could have telegraphed down for them to be closed the second the fog bank rolled in. It would have been a prudent measure. But he didn't.

Perhaps the nerves naturally surrounding his first command down the St. Lawrence had got the better of him. But in the end, the inquiry found the Storstad, predictably, completely to blame. Some minor recommendations were made, and the case was closed.

Then, just weeks later, the Great War erupted, and the world had bigger issues. The impact of the Empress of Ireland disaster was felt all over the world. A great pall hung over the Salvation Army Congress of 1914. Canada's contingent was so hurt by the loss that they wouldn't form another staff band for 50 years. London had lost its two brightest theatre stars, but a short couple of months after the sinking, thousands were dying every day on the Western Front. The Empress of Ireland faded into obscurity and was almost forgotten, except for those that had been through it.

Little Florence Barber never forgot. Her dying wish was to be buried next to Robert Crellin, the man who'd saved her, as an older woman. Fifty years after the disaster in 1964, she visited Canada again and met with Crellin's son, who gave her his father's watch, the one he'd worn on the night of the sinking. She visited Crellin's grave, who was buried in the same cemetery that her father had been. Today, on the bottom of the St. Lawrence River, you'll find the remains of the Empress of Ireland.

She is encrusted with thick, underwater growth, and very little is recognisable. It's hard to believe that she was once so beautiful. Only one fifth of the victims were ever recovered.

Those that remain... This wreck is their headstone. Today, all we can do is cast our mind's eye back to that gleaming golden summer afternoon when thousands of people were excited to travel on what was then one of the most beautiful ships in the world.

Transcript for:Tragic Sinking of the Empress of Ireland

Transcript for:
Tragic Sinking of the Empress of Ireland