The sinking of the Empress of Ireland

The Empress of Ireland sank in the St. Lawrence River the night of May 29, 1914, after colliding with the Norwegian collier S/S Storstad. The accident took 1012 lives. The Empress of Ireland is the world's second worst sinking, in peacetime, after the Titanic.

The Empress of Ireland, a Canadian Pacific Railway ocean liner, was built in the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Yards in Govan, Scotland. This luxurious CPR pride of the Atlantic set out on her maiden voyage to Canada on June 29, 1906. The Empress was 549 feet long, 66 feet wide, and had a gross tonnage of 14,191 tons, with twin propellers, and an average speed of 20 knots. The capacity was 1536 passengers: 310 in first class, 468 in 2nd class, and 758 in 3rd class. In winter she sailed between Liverpool and St. John, NB or Halifax, NS. In summer she docked in Quebec City.

On May 28, 1914, 1057 passengers boarded the Empress of Ireland at the harbour in Quebec City, for the first of the summer voyages from this city to Liverpool. First class was filled with 87 passenger. In Second class, there were 167 members of the Salvation Army on their way to the third Salvation Army International Congress in London. Third class was comprised of many ethnic groups: Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Italians and Latvians. Most of these passengers were returning to their former homes in Europe to visit their relatives and, in many cases, to bring them over to Canada. This was the first east-bound trip Captain Henry George Kendall, the 39 year old rising star with Canadian Pacific Railway, had been in command of the liner.

On May 28th, 1914 at 4.27 p.m. the Empress began its 96th transatlantic crossing. The Salvation Army Band struck up “God be With You till we Meet Again” as the liner pulled away from the pier. 

The next morning, May 29th, around 1:30 a.m. the pilot departed the ship, now near Rimouski, Quebec. Then the Empress gathered up speed, and headed for open water on the wide St. Lawrence River. Captain Kendall had just arrived on the bridge when he observed a ship low in the water off the starboard side about six miles east. What Kendall saw was a 6,000 ton vessel heading up river from Sydney, Nova Scotia. It was the Norwegian collier, the Storstad, fully loaded with coal. The Empress altered course slightly, planning to pass green to green, or starboard to starboard. At this moment, a huge thick fog bank rolled in. Captain Kendall, certain that he had seen the green light of the other ship, ordered the Empress full astern and gave three short blasts indicating he was reversing. Then he stopped the ship and gave two more blasts, informing the oncoming vessel that the Empress was dead in the water.

At 1:55 a.m., Kendall was shocked to see the Storstad appearing out of the fog and heading straight toward the Empress. The crew of the Storstad was equally surprised to see the starboard side of a big liner looming towards them. Kendall quickly ordered the Empress full speed ahead. However, the Storstad, with its hull reinforced to protect against ice, plowed into the Empress right between the two funnels inflicting a mortal wound where the liner was extremely vulnerable due to the vastness of the compartments. Kendall shouted through a megaphone for the Storstad to keep going ahead so as to plug the hole. The Storstad remained close to 5 seconds in the hole but the two ships slowly disengaged and 60,000 gallons of water per second poured in to the Empress.

Within three minutes the raging waters reached the dynamos and knocked out power, plunging the passengers, most of whom were asleep, and the crew into total darkness. Passengers, in their night clothes, attempted to make their way to the upper deck on slanting stairs. Some jumped into the water which was almost at freezing temperature. Others tried to escape through the open portholes on the port side but hundreds more remained trapped inside. Because of the list to starboard, the lifeboats on the port side could not be launched. A total of only five lifeboats made it into the water.

One interesting person, William Clarke, a coal stoker in the boiler room, knew exactly what to do when he felt the ship’s reaction to the impact. He immediately scrambled up a special ladder leading directly from the boiler room to the deck and there he helped launch a life boat. Perhaps he had an advantage. Two years before, he had survived a similar experience. He was a coal stoker on the Titanic.

Only 14 minutes after having being struck by the Storstad, the Empress keeled over. Captain Kendall was thrown from the bridge and was eventually hauled into one of the lifeboats. The crew of the Storstad lowered their lifeboats and set about rescuing more than 400 people. When morning broke, the final count was 465 saved and 1012 passengers and crew lost. After the Storstad took aboard nearly all the survivors, they were later transferred to two smaller ships, the "Eureka" and the "Lady Evelyn", which then took the survivors to Rimouski. More passengers perished on the Empress (840) than on the Titanic (829) but the Titanic had a much greater loss of crew members.