Canada’s Titanic: Empress of Ireland tragedy remembered 100 years later

CTV National News: The forgotten Empress A tragic sinking leaving over a thousand dead, lost and overlooked by history, Genevieve Beauchemin reports on a call to remember.

The Empress of Ireland disaster is what some call Canada’s forgotten tragedy, but 100 years later, people are remembering.

More than 1,000 people perished on this day exactly 100 years ago, in a tragic tale of two ships doomed on the Saint Lawrence River.

It took only 14 minutes for ocean liner Empress of Ireland, often referred to as “Canada’s Titanic,” to sink in the early morning hours of May 29, 1914.

The Empress and its legacy has been left behind, some say, because it exists only in the shadows of the Titanic catastrophe that took place in 1912, two years prior.

“It was sort of blotted out from history by two things,” Dr. John Willis, a curator at the Canadian Museum of History, said in an interview on CTV’s Power Play.

“One, the memory of the Titanic itself. It was a big American and English memory… WWI sort of rubbed it out, and yet that’s a terrible irony because this is Canada’s greatest maritime disaster in its entire history.”

The Empress of Ireland, which was headed for Liverpool after departing from Quebec City the previous day, was travelling along the Saint Lawrence River when it encountered heavy fog. Approaching the ocean liner was Norwegian collier Storstad, a coal ship.

“There was a terrible comedy of errors, misunderstandings, and the collier ripped into the side of the empress,” Willis said.

Roughly 300 people survived the wreck. There were 138 children on board, but only five survived.

“The water was at four degrees, it was the middle of the night, everyone was sleeping,” said Alberic Gallant, from the maritime museum.

Rescue efforts were nearly impossible because of how rapidly water rushed into the vessel.

“Our ship went down in 14 minutes,” Willis said. “So there was no time to process rescuing from aboard the ship in the case of the Empress. It was really a terrible disaster.”

The wreckage lies 40 metres below the surface near the town of Rimouski, Que.

The Point-au-Pere Maritime Historic Site organized a number of events this week to mark the anniversary of the sinking.

Michael Ross Bullock travelled to Quebec from England to make sure his great uncle Thomas, who died on the Empress, is not forgotten.

“I wanted to come over, just to really remember him,” he said. “He is literally out (in the water).”

The underwater archeology team of Parks Canada will perform two expeditions this summer as part of the 100-year commemoration, Willis said.

With a report by CTV’s Genevieve Beauchemin