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RMS Empress of Ireland was a British-built ocean liner that sank near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River in Canada following a collision in thick fog with the Norwegian collier Storstad in the early hours of 29 May 1914, en route to Liverpool.
RMS Empress of Ireland sank near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River in Canada following a collision in thick fog with the Norwegian collier Storstad in the early hours of 29 May 1914. It had just begun its 96th voyage, departing Quebec City and heading to Liverpool. [1]
The RMS Empress of Ireland was a transatlantic passenger ship that sank early in the morning of 29 May 1914 on the St. Lawrence River killing 1,012 of the 1,477 people on board. It is considered Canada’s worst maritime disaster and one of the most tragic in history.
The sinking of the Empress of Ireland, from the Life at Sea gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum. Part of the National Museums Liverpool group. Two years after the Titanic disaster, Liverpool suffered another major shipping tragedy when the Empress of Ireland sank in May 1914 on the St Lawrence River in Canada.
The wreck of the Empress of Ireland is very large. However, years of strong currents, salvaging and deterioration have taken their toll. The twin funnels have long since rusted away, as has the ship's superstructure. The wreck is covered in marine life and many of the passages and decks of the vessel beg for exploration.
On 28 May 1914, the Empress of Ireland collided with a Norwegian coal freighter, SS Storstad causing the Empress of Ireland to sink. 1012 people lost their lives. An Inquiry like the Titanic and Lusitania was held to apportion blame.
From the 1,057 passengers on board the Empress, 840 passengers were lost, being more passengers having died than on the Titanic just two years earlier, which was then the worst passenger death toll in peacetime history, but now tragically the Empress of Ireland held that sad record.
With her 14,191 tons and 17-knot service speed, the Empress of Ireland was one of the largest and fastest ships operating on the Canadian run. Yet she was not very famous, at least not if you compare her with some of her more fashionable contemporaries on the more southerly Liverpool-New York route.
The Empress of Ireland was not a particularly famous or fashionable ship, and she sank so soon before the outbreak of the war that attention soon shifted to graver matters.
With a loss of 1,012 lives, the sinking of this majestic ship on May 29, 1914, stands as the worst maritime disaster in Canadian history. Lying off Sainte-Luce, the wreck is the most structurally complete example of an early 20th-century ocean liner in the country.