Shipwrecks - Time Capsules of Human Civilization

View of an Empress - Interiors of the Empress of Ireland

The Empress of Ireland was a very beautiful ship and had many fine comforts aboard the ship. She had three classes of passenger accommodations - first, second and third. The first class cabins and furnishing on the Empress were quite grand for its rich and wealthy passengers. In many ways the decor was a small scaled-down version of another John Brown liner named Lusitania. The dining saloon was very exquisite with private tables and booths, leather upholstery, fine Minton's porcelain china etc.  The second class catered to businessmen and wealthy individuals who did not want the attention that going first class brought to the passengers. The third class were usually immigrants and less wealthy individuals that wanted a good meal and bedding for their sailing across the Atlantic. Overall the Empress of Ireland was a favorite ship of Irish immigrants and the many Canadian passengers that returned to England on business or pleasure.

The weather was normally very cool on board the transatlantic journey. Most of the time, the Empress was engulfed in fog during its excursion through the rough landscape of the Canadian terrain. Strolling the deck was a favorite pastime of the passengers and it was not uncommon to see the passengers wrapped in blankets. The ship was stocked with good food and beverage where, even in third class, one received a hearty and delicious meal. Because of the Titanic disaster two years earlier, the Empress of Ireland had more than enough space in their lifeboats for all passengers and crew. Despite this reassuring fact, what lies ahead for this once-proud liner is so disastrous that all Canadians will never forget the tragedy of the Empress of Ireland.

Dive Site Live - Welcome to Quebec

After a lively 13-hour drive from our home offices in New Jersey, we arrived in the early afternoon of Sunday, June 26th to Rimouski. Our first day of diving is scheduled for tomorrow June 27th and we spent the rest of the day meeting with the dive boat captain, Jean-Pierre Bouillion, chatting with local dive legend Dany St-Cyr and getting ourselves settled in our "new" home at the LaNavigateur Village in St. Luce with our splendid host Mark Doucet.
The seas looked fairly rough looking beyond the pier with many whitecaps. Our plan is to check the marine weather report at 3:30 am to see when we could dive. The weather is very tricky in this part of the St. Lawrence and the tides, currents and winds all conspire to determine when or if we can dive that day. If Jean Pierre does not phone us at 4:00 am then we are to meet him at the marina at 10 am.

Empress of Ireland - An Introduction to a Forgotten Beauty

The Empress of Ireland was one of the largest ships built in1906. She was made in the John Brown Shipyards up in the Clyde and was made for the upstart Canadian Pacific Railways Line. Although she did not have the prestigious Southhampton to New York route, this beautiful liner plied the North Atlantic between Liverpool and Quebec City and made countless trips without incidence.

In 1914, the new captain of the Empress of Ireland was Captain Henry Kendall. Captain Kendall had taken over the ship only four weeks earlier and he was preparing for returning to England on a mild day of May 29th, 1914. Captain Kendall had an impeccable record as a ship captain and had been a captain of several other Canadian Pacific liners before the Empress. While captaining the Montrose in 1909, he was instrumental in capturing the famed murderer Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen. It is rumored that Dr. Crippen was so inflamed over his capture that he set a curse on Captain Kendall.

The Empress of Ireland was about 550 feet long, 65 feet wide and weighed almost 15,000 tons.  She had capacity for 1860 passengers and was used primarily for new immigrants coming to Canada. Because she spent so much time within the close boundaries of Canada, it was believed that she was a very safe ship that only had 4 days of travel in open ocean sailing.

Guest Article: Noted "Forgotten Empress" Author David Zeni

The Empress of Ireland is not just another shipwreck but it is a wreck of monumental importance in the history of transatlantic travel.  In magnitude of loss, this was a big disaster.  Add the loss of passengers on Swiss Air 111, Egypt Air 990, TWA 800, and Pan Am 103 and the total is still 100 short of the 1102 lost on the Empress. Consider also that the Titanic's loss two years before the Empress "solved" the shipwreck potentiality.  Wave a shipbuilder's magic wand and lifeboats were added to the Empress as well as to all transatlantic vessels. The public's faith in safely crossing the North Atlantic was assured. Wrong!  The Empress shattered this myth. More improvements to ensure safety were needed.  One that resulted from the loss of the Empress was to design liners with a raked bow that projects forward to absorb the impact of a collision.

The Empress's contribution to the colonization of North America is yet another example of her legacy. While Titanic failed to complete a single crossing...the Empress made 191 successful crossings.  She delivered over 200,000 people many of whom settled in Canada and the border states of America.  Many people are unaware that a Canadian Pacific ship would have many Americans on board but any crossing would find a handful to several hundred Americans sailing.

Sadly, the Empress is the forgotten of the "big three" liner losses beginning in 1912 with Titanic and ending with Lusitania in 1915. Many historians say the Empress faded overnight with the outbreak of hostilities in World War I.  A thousand lives lost at sea in peacetime pales in comparison to the public's rising threshold for wartime deaths.

As an author and student of transportation disasters, I believe the travelling public wanted to erase the legacy of the Empress.  She reminded people that travel is a lottery at a time when everyone thought that danger had been mastered.  A confident, Edwardian-era public did not want to contemplate their vulnerability so they allowed the Empress to fade from contemporary memory and hence from history.       ---  David Zeni, Author, FORGOTTEN EMPRESS, Available through Amazon Canada ( in stock) or Amazon (4-9 days) in the United States.

Live from the Dive Reports from the Lost Liners Empress of Ireland and Titanic

Nautical Research Group, Inc. will be reporting LIVE from our diving expeditions to two of the "Lost Liners" this summer. Daily reports on our dive, augmented with history and video clips will be included from both of the dive sites.  From June 27th - July 3rd, we will be diving to the Empress of Ireland, which is sometimes referred to as Canada's Titanic. The Empress sank on May 29, 1914 in fourteen minutes and claimed over 1100 passenger lives - more than Titanic and Lusitania. Our second Lost Liner will be the famous RMS Titanic and we will be broadcasting via satellite from the Russian research vessel, Akademik Keldysh, which will be stationed over the wrecksite of the Titanic. Every other day, the two MIR submersibles will descend over 12, 600 feet of cold North Atlantic waters to the remains of this once-proud liner. We will be commencing our live reports from the Titanic expedition on July 6th - 18th. Since this expedition is a scientific research venture, at NO time will any items be salvaged nor recovered. Additionally, the submersible will take close-up shots of various areas of the ship without ever coming in contact with Titanic. By close-up examination of Titanic, we can observe its rate of decay and provide vital information that the scientific community can use to protect and preserve the ship. This weblog can be syndicated using RSS or by direct bookmark access from your browser.

The Titanic of Canada - the CPR Liner Empress of Ireland

Within the month, Nautical Research Group will be doing some research diving on the Lost Liner - the Canadian Pacific Railways (CPR) ocean liner Empress of Ireland. This beautiful ship sank on May 29th, 1914 following its collision with the coal collier Storstad in only 14 minutes with the loss of more passenger lives than both Titanic and Lusitania. The ship lies in the St. Lawrence River north of the town of Rimouski. Our corporation will be broadcasting 'live from the dive' with daily webcasts that will give you the feeling of being on our dive team. We invite you to syndicate our blog as we have already reported live from Bismarck; and will be globally syndicated LIVE for our dives out to the Empress of Ireland and the White Star Liner, RMS Titanic in mid-July.

To provide you a feel for the diving down to the Empress of Ireland, we are providing you a video stroll across the port-side promenade of the Empress. The teak decking is in great shape although has been uprooted in many spots (due to salvage operations in the 1990's). Please observe all the wonderful marine life that call the Empress their home. On the day of this filming, the waters were very clear and the visibility was fantastic.

The slightly brackish waters in this area of the St. Lawrence River are very cold with strong currents and normally quite dark. A good book to read that describes the diving history on the Empress of Ireland is Kevin McMurray's book, Dark Descent, which we have provided a link for on the left panel of this blog. In order to view this video (as well as all our videos) you need to load the FREE Macromedia Flash 7 plug-in.