November 6, 2023 • 35 mins
The shipwreck of the Empress of Ireland happened just before the start of World War I and was the worst maritime disaster in Canadian history to happen during peacetime.
Research:
- Blatchford, Andy. “Empress of Ireland, ‘Canada’s Titanic,’ finally getting its due after 100 years.” Globe and Mail. 5/23/2014. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/empress-of-ireland-canadas-titanic-finally-getting-its-due-after-100-years/article18819164/
- Boyd, Ellsworth. “Empress of Ireland was ‘Canada’s Titanic.’” NUMA. 10/9/2017. https://numa.net/2017/10/empress-of-ireland-was-canadas-titanic/
- Butler, Don. “Museum of Civilization finally acquires Empress of Ireland collection.” Ottawa Citizen. 10/27/2012. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/ottawa%20&%20area/museum-of-civilization-finally-acquires-empress-of-ireland-collection
- Canadian Pacific Railway Company. “Atlantic Royal Mail Service – ‘The Empresses’.” 1906. https://archive.org/details/cihm_71926/
- “Empress of Ireland.” From “Lost Liners” by Robert D. Ballard and Rick Archbold, Madison Press Books. Via PBS. https://www.pbs.org/lostliners/empress.html
- Empress of Ireland Commemoration. “The Forgotten Tragedy.” Pointe-au-Pere Site Historique Maritime. http://www.empress2014.ca/seclangen/home.html
- Fry, Krsiten. “Saving the Empress's treasures.” Beaver. Apr/May2008, Vol. 88 Issue 2, p10-11.
- Hertz, Kayla. “On this day: The Empress of Ireland, 'Canada's Titanic,' sinks in 1914.” Irish Central. 5/29/2022. https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/empress-of-ireland-sinking
- Marshall, Logan. “The tragic story of the Empress of Ireland; an authentic account of the most horrible disaster in Canadian history, constructed from the real facts obtained from those on board who survived and other great sea disasters, containing the statements of Captain Henry George Kendall, commanding the Empress of Ireland and Captain Thomas Andersen, commanding the Storstad.” Philadelphia Printed by John C. Winston. 1914. https://archive.org/details/tragicstoryofemp00marsuoft
- Mersey, John C. Bigham (John Charles Bigham). “Report of Commission of Inquiry into the casualty to the British steamship 'Empress of Ireland,' which sunk after collision with the Norwegian steamer 'Storstad' in the River St. Lawrence, on 29th May 1914.” 1914. https://archive.org/details/op1256477-1001/mode/2up
- National Museums of Liverpool. “Empress of Ireland Disaster.” https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime-museum/empress-of-ireland-disaster
- “Report and Evidence of the Commission of Inquiry into the Loss of the British Steamship ‘Empress of Irelnad.’” From “Sessional papers of the Dominion of Canada 1915.” Canadian Parliament. 1914. https://archive.org/details/n16sessionalpaper50canauoft/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We mentioned on an episode of Unearthed recently that we
have gotten listener requests for an episode on the Empress
of Ireland, and I said this recent discovery of the
ship's compass platform in the Saint Lawrence River might move
that topic up the list, and it did.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Here is the episode. This is a shipwreck that happened
just before the start of World War One and it
was the worst maritime disaster in Canadian history to happen
during peacetime. Was also one of three major disasters over
the span of just about three years involving ships that
(00:55):
were all registered in Liverpool. The other two were the
Titanic disaster, which happened in nineteen twelve, and the Lusitania,
which would be sunk by a German U boat almost
exactly a year after this in nineteen fifteen. While the
Empress of Ireland is a big part of both Canadian
history and the history of the Liverpool shipping and shipbuilding industry,
(01:18):
it does not have nearly the name recognition today, as
those other two disasters do. The RMS or Royal Mail
ship Empress of Ireland and its sister ship, the Empress
of Britain, were both owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway Line.
They were part of Canadian Pacific's growing steamship service between
Europe and North America, and they were the first ships
(01:40):
Canadian Pacific built specifically for its fast Atlantic service. The
ships were both focused primarily on passenger service, but they
both also carried mail and other cargo. The Empress of
Britain was launched on November eleventh, nineteen oh five, and
took its first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in the
south of nineteen oh six. It was requisitioned for military
(02:04):
purposes during World War One, but aside from that, the
Empress of Britain offered regular passenger service across the North
Atlantic until nineteen twenty nine. After its last scheduled Transatlantic voyage,
the Empress of Britain was taken out of service and
then scrapped. The Empress of Ireland was launched on January
twenty seventh, nineteen oh six, and also took its first
(02:26):
voyage that summer. It sailed out of Liverpool which was
a major shipping, transportation and shipbuilding center and was a
popular port of departure for people immigrating from northern and
Western Europe to North America. The trip on the Empress
of Ireland took six days in each direction, two days
on the Saint Lawrence River and four to cross the Atlantic.
(02:48):
So there were other shipping companies who were really focused
on using luxury experiences to try to stand out from
their competition, like the White Star Line, whose Olympic class
included the Titanic. And while there were people who used
words like luxury to describe various amenities aboard these two
(03:08):
sister ships, they were really meant more to be comfortable,
reliable and fast. They were nice, but they were not
like over the top fancy and their decor and their
amenities like the Titanic had been. These ships had upper
and lower promenade decks with protected spaces for deck chairs.
There was a library, a cafe, and a music room,
(03:29):
plus smoking rooms, social halls, dining saloons, that kind of thing.
Some of these were reserved for first or second class passengers.
The Empress of Ireland had cabins that could accommodate three
hundred and fifty first class passengers, three hundred and fifty
second class passengers, and one thousand third class, and to
some extent, these could be reconfigured based on passenger demand.
(03:53):
There are some accounts that describe third class as steerage,
but steerage makes it sound like a mass of people
shoved below decks with no real accommodations for their comfort
or safety. Third class was on the lower decks, and
it definitely was not as spacious or upscale as first
or second class, but there were passenger cabins along with
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a third class smoking room, a lady's salon, and a
dining room. There was a space that could be used
more like a dormitory with rows of open berths, but
still everyone in third class had a cabin or a
berth assigned to them. Every deck also had bathrooms and lavatories,
so that people did not have to go far from
their cabins to use them. The ship was.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Also built according to the safety standards of the time.
This included being built with watertight compartments, and the ship
could stay afloat if two adjacent compartments were flooded. There
were also twenty four watertight doors that could be closed
off in the event of damage to the ship.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
After the Titanic disaster in nineteen twelve, the Empress of
Ireland and its sister ship were also outfitted with additional
safety equipment. The Empress of Ireland had enough lifeboats to
accommodate eighteen hundred sixty people, and that was set as
its maximum capacity, even though the ship itself was capable
of carrying more. There were also more than two thousand
(05:16):
life belts on board, one hundred fifty of them sized
for children, and twenty four life buoys or life preservers.
The Empress of Ireland also had a Marconi wireless telegraph
for communication and an underwater iceberg detection system. The Empress
of Ireland left Liverpool for a routine trip across the
Atlantic on May fifteenth, nineteen fourteen. It arrived safely in
(05:40):
Quebec City, and on May twenty eighth it departed for
its return trip to Liverpool. On board were eighty seven
first class passengers, two hundred fifty three second class, seven
hundred seventeen third class and four hundred twenty crew. Captain
Henry Kendall was in command, and this was the first
time he had commanded a ship on the Saint Lawrence River.
(06:02):
But while he was new to this particular ship and
this route, he was an experienced captain. He had twenty
five years of experience at sea and almost twelve years
working for Canadian Pacific. About half of that time for
Canadian Pacific had been in command of one of the
company's ships. On board the Empress of Ireland were about
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one hundred and seventy members of the Salvation Army who
were going to London for a series of meetings known
as the International Congress. This was the fourth time the
Salvation Army had held such a congress, that the previous
ones being in eighteen eighty six, eighteen ninety four and
nineteen o four. There were also about three hundred workers
who had been laid off from Ford Motor Company and
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were returning to Europe. The two most well known people
on board were probably married stage actors Lawrence Irving and
Mabel Hackney, who were returning to Britain after a tour
of Australia and North America. The other ship involved with
this disaster was the Norwegian ship SS Storstid, owned by
AF Clavinus and Company and built in nineteen ten. The
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Storrestide was a cargo ship that primarily carried coal and or.
It had a maximum capacity of roughly ten thousand, eight
hundred tons of cargo. Master of the ship was Thomas Anderson,
who had taken command when the store Stid was only
a few months old, so that gave him about three
years of experience as the captain of this ship. When
(07:29):
the collision took place, though.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Anderson was asleep and first mate Alfred Toftiness was in command,
although there were standing orders that he was to wake
up the captain either when they were six miles of
quantau Peer or father Point, or if they encountered fog.
Toftanis had also been working on the ship for about
three years. On May twenty ninth, nineteen fourteen, as the
(07:54):
Empress of Ireland was traveling toward the Atlantic Ocean on
the Saint Lawrence River, the store stud was heading in
the opposite direction, carrying roughly ten four hundred tons of
coal from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Montreal. Ships traveling this
stretch of the Saint Lawrence River used a river pilot
to help navigate around Quebec City. When the two ships collided,
(08:17):
the Empress of Ireland had left Quebec City and had
just dropped its pilot off at Ponta Pere. The Storstod
was heading to Ponta Peer to pick up its pilot
before heading toward Quebec City, so both of the ships
were on the south side of the river, fairly close
to the shore. Navigating this stretch of the river could
be treacherous. The river became significantly narrower, busier, and more
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crowded the closer it got to Quebec City. Beyond that, though,
especially at this time of the year, it was prone
to sudden, dense fog as warmer air came into contact
with cold river water that was made even colder by
runoff from melting ice and snow. These conditions could change
extremely rapidly, and that is what happened on May twenty ninth,
(09:04):
nineteen fourteen, when these two ships spotted each other. The
weather was fine and clear, but just a few minutes
later Fogg completely cut off their line of sight. We'll
get to that after we take a quick sponsor break.
(09:26):
As we said before the break, at a little after
one am on May twenty ninth, nineteen fourteen, the weather
was clear and fine on the Saint Lawrence River near
Quanto Peer, which today is part of the city of Ramuski.
At one twenty am, pilot Adelard Burnier, who had guided
the Empress of Ireland out of Quebec City, disembarked onto
(09:46):
a tug to take him to shore. Not long afterward,
the crew of the Empress of Ireland spotted the masthead
lights of a steamer that was about six miles away.
That steamer was the Storstid, which was on its way
to pick up its pilot. The mass headlight is one
of the lights on a ship that lets other vessels
know where it is and where it's going. There are
(10:08):
a number of different lights and configurations, all of which
have their own meanings. The most critical ones to understanding
what happened to the Empress of Ireland are the masthead
light and the sidelights. The mass headlight is a white
light that shines from the forward part of the ship
in a two hundred and twenty five degree arc, making
the ship visible to other vessels it's traveling toward. The
(10:31):
side lights are red and green, green on the starboard
side and red on the port side. The Empress of
Ireland set a course that would take it past the
store Stod so that they would pass starboard side to starboard.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Side, i e. Green to green. But when the vessels
were about two miles apart, a heavy fog developed over
the river. Aboard the Empress of Ireland, Captain Henry Kendall
ordered the engines full of stern, basically putting them into
reverse to stop the ship. The Empress of Ireland also
sounded a signal on the ship's whistle to let the
(11:06):
other ship know that they had gone astern. The Empress
of Ireland heard the Storestod answer with a blast from
its own whistle, and based on accounts, they repeated this
set of signals. When the Empress of Ireland was fully stopped,
it sounded two blasts on the whistle to inform the
Storrestid that it was no longer moving. According to accounts
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from the crew of the Storrestod, just before the fog
obscured their view of the Empress of Ireland, the first mate,
Alfred Toftanus, saw the green navigation lights, but then they
said the Empress of Ireland changed course and that the
red lights were visible, and that only the red navigation
lights were visible. When the fog cut off their view,
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so the crew of the Storstod thought that they were
going to be passing the Empress of Ireland red to
red or port to port, not starboard to starboard, green
to green. It is not possible for both of these
accounts to be true. The report of the Commission of
Inquiry into this disaster describes them as irreconcilable, and a
(12:09):
lot of the testimony about which lights were showing, which
signals were given and heard from the ship's whistles, and
which ship had the right of way are contradictory and confusing.
But if both of the ships.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Had maintained their original headings at this point, they would
have passed by one another in the fog with no issue.
Aboard the store Stod as the fog closed in toftness,
ordered the helm hard to port, So the use of
port is a little confusing here. At the time, ship
commands were given using what's known as tiller orders, which
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were a carryover from when ships were steered by a
tiller that was connected to the rudder. Moving the tiller
hard to port caused the ship to turn starboard. In
some of the testimony before the commission, people said this
turn was to try to counteract the shift in the
and keep the ship on its original course. But during
the inquiry, C. S Hate, one of the councilors for
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the owners of the Storstad, said that Toftinus had told
him that they made the turn so that they could
give the Empress of Ireland more room. If the ships
had been passing one another port to port, as the
crew of the Storstad apparently believed that they were, this
would have given the Empress of Ireland more room. But
they were passing starboard to starboard, so when the store
(13:29):
Sad made this turn, it headed right for the Empress
of Ireland.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It was after giving this order that Tofton has woke
Thomas Anderson, the captain of the Storstod. Anderson arrived on
the bridge to see the lights of the Empress of
Ireland coming out of the fog between six hundred and
eight hundred feet away and on the Empress of Ireland.
Just after sounding the two blasts on the whistle signaling
that they had stopped. Kendall also saw the lights of
(13:56):
the Storstad approaching the Empress of Ireland at all most
a right angle.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Anderson ordered the Storrestid to go full astern to try
to slow it down. Kendall thought a collision was inevitable
and ordered the Empress of Ireland to go full speed
ahead and to try to turn away from the Storrestide.
The hope was that the two ships, if they did this,
would glance off of each other. Instead, the Storestid hit
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the Empress of Ireland toward the middle of the ship,
almost head on, roughly thirty seconds after Anderson had seen
the ship through the fog. Kendall hailed the Storrestod by
megaphone and ordered them to go full speed ahead with
the hope of keeping both ships together and beaching the
Empress of Ireland on the southern shore of the Saint
Lawrence River. Anderson answered that he was going ahead full speed,
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but the two ships did not stay together as Kendall
had hoped. Anderson believed this was because of the speed
at which the Empress of Ireland was moving. By that point,
the Storstod just could not keep up, and its bow
fell away from the hole it had made in the
side of the Empress of Ireland. It had not felt
like that heart of a collision when it happened, but
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the Storstad had a very pointed bow that made an
enormous hole in the side of the Empress of Ireland
at least fourteen feet wide, and a lot of that
was below the waterline, so water immediately started filling the
lower decks of the ship and rushing through open portholes
that fell below the waterline. As the ship started to tilt,
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Anderson was afraid the momentum and direction of the two
vessels would cause them to collide a second time, so
he turned away and essentially made a circle. The Storstod
sounded several signals on its whistle, but did not get
a response from the Empress of Ireland. The Storstod was
once again completely enveloped in fog and briefly could not
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figure out where the Empress of Ireland was. That changed
when the crew started hearing people calling for help in
the water. In addition to hailing the store stide, Kendall
had taken other emergency measures. As soon as he saw
the other ship through the fog, he ordered the telegraph
operators to send a distress call, and they were able
to do so before the ship lost power. He sounded
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an emergency siren to order the crew to close the
water type doors and prepare to abandon ship, and he
ordered the stewards to start waking up the passengers and
distributing life belts, but the ship sank so quickly that
there was almost no time to do any of this,
and once the power was out, people were trying to
evacuate in total darkness. Many passengers in the lower decks
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drowned in their cabins. The ship started listing so sharply
that many of the watertight doors could not be closed,
and only five or six of the forty lifeboats were launched,
and one of those was crushed when the ship fell
onto its side. The ship fell onto its side within
ten minutes of the collision. For a few minutes after that,
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surviving passengers tried to stand on the exposed hull of
the ship, but the Empress of Ireland sank about fourteen
minutes after being struck by the store stead.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
We'll talk about rescue efforts and the impact of this
disaster after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
When the crew of the Storestid started hearing people in
the water, Captain Thomas Anderson moved toward those sounds and
then lowered four lifeboats. Those boats went back and forth
between the store Stid and the survivors, bringing people back
with them. The station at puantal Peer also sent two
government steamers, the Lady Evelyn and the Eureka, to rescue survivors.
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Survivors were all taken to Ramuski, where they were fed
and sheltered and given medical treatment in addition to any
injuries that people might have sustained while trying to evacuate,
The water was extremely cold, so a lot of people
had developed typothermia. There had been one thousand, four hundred
seventy seven people on board the Empress of Ireland and
only four hundred sixty five survived its sinking, including only
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four of the one hundred thirty eight children aboard. Of
the one thy twelve people who died when the ship sank,
eight hundred forty were passengers, which is more than the
number of passenger deaths aboard the Titanic or the Lusitania.
One hundred and seventy two of the crew died. Many
of those crew were from Liverpool and many had Irish ancestry.
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One hundred and twenty four members of the Salvation Army died,
including much of its leadership. Of Salvation Army in Canada,
and twenty nine of the forty one member Salvation Army staff,
band actor Lawrence Irving, died after diving back into the
water to try to find his wife, Mabel Hackney. Neither
of their bodies was ever found.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
About half of the survivors were members of the crew,
people who were more familiar with the layout of the
ship than the passengers who had only been aboard for
about ten hours. First and second class passengers, whose cabins
were higher up on the ship were more likely to
survive than the third class passengers, whose cabins were below
Many in areas of the ship that flooded almost instantly.
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One of the survivors of this disaster was a crew
member named William Clark, who had also survived the sinking
of the Titanic. He had actually worked as a fireman
on both ships. The youngest person known to have survived
and the last known survivor, was Grace Hannigan, who was
seven and whose parents had been part of the Salvation
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Army group. Her parents were both killed and Grace died
in nineteen ninety five. Despite the damage to its bow,
the Storstodd was still mostly seaworthy after assisting with the
rescue effort, it continued on to Montreal. Canadian Pacific Line
later filed a two million dollar lawsuit against the Storstod's
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owners and the ship was forfeited to Canadian Passion as compensation.
It was later sunk by a German submarine off the
coast of Ireland during World War One. The fact that
it continued on to Montreal sounds kind of I don't know, uh,
callous callous, but like during the investigations, it was remarked
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that like the store Stid had acted admirably during the
rescue effort, and it like there wasn't a reason for
them to stay there. At that point.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Canadian Pacific Salvage Company to retrieve the first class mail
from the wreck of the Empress of Ireland, as well
as the purser's safe and about one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars worth of silver bullion that was aboard. They
also recovered about two hundred and fifty bodies. To access
the interior of the ship, divers actually had to blast
another hole into its side because the hole made by
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the store Stide was on the side of the ship
that was resting on the bottom of the Saint Lawrence
River that was not a hole.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
They could get to. An attempt was made to refloat
the vessel in June, but it could not be lifted
from the river. Because this collision had happened so suddenly
and the ship sank so quickly, it wasn't obvious at
first what had happened and who, if anyone, should be
considered at fault, although Kendall, who was picked up by
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one of the Storstadd's lifeboats, reportedly shouted quote, you have
sunk my ship at Anderson as soon as he was
brought aboard. A commission of inquiry was convened from June
sixteenth to June twenty seventh, nineteen fourteen. John Charles Bigham,
Lord Mercy, presided over this inquiry, which he had also
done for the inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic
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and would later do for the sinking of the Lusitania.
As we mentioned earlier, the testimonies that were given by
crew members from each of these ships just did not
match up, and there were also no living witnesses who
had actually seen the damage to the ship before the
Empress of Ireland sank. Wasn't Some divers had been able
to investigate because the ship had come to rest on
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the damaged side. And then beyond all that, a number
of people who testified before the Commission speculated on various
equipment that might have malfunctioned or steps that might have
been taken. But a lot of this was contradictory and
the Commission didn't really find any of it to be valid.
After weighing the evidence, the Commission found that the officers
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in charge of both ships had committed navigational errors, and
that first Mate, Alfred Toftans, should have summoned the Store
Studd's captain earlier because of the fog. Toftinis had said
that he had not done so because he just didn't
think there was any danger. The Commission also believed that
Toftonis had been mistaken in his assessment that the Empress
of Ireland was intending to pass the Store Stud port
(22:47):
to port, and that if each ship had maintained its
original set course, they would not have collided. In the
words of the Commission's final report, quote, we regret to
have to impute blame to anyone in connection with this
lamentsable disaster, and we should not do so if we
felt that any reasonable alternative was left to us. We can, however,
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come to no other conclusion than that mister Toftiness was
wrong and negligent in altering his course in the fog,
as he undoubtedly did, and that he was wrong and
negligent in keeping the navigation of the vessel in his
own hands, and in failing to call the captain when
he saw the fog coming in. We don't really know
what happened to tofton Is after this. We do know
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that he died in New York on April nineteenth, nineteen eighteen,
at the age of thirty six. In later interviews, family
members said that he believed he had been unfairly blamed
for the tragedy. Unlike some of the other shipwrecks we've
talked about on the show, this wasn't the case where
major changes were made to try to prevent a similar
disaster in the future, like requirements for safety drills and
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lifeboat capacity that were established after the sinking of the Titanic.
This really seems to have been a case of tragic
human error rather than evidence of like a big systemic
problem that needed to be corrected. But the commission did
recommend that ships.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Closed all their watertight doors and portholes at night and
in the fog and other hazardous weather as a preventive measure.
Because so few of the Empress of Ireland's lifeboats had
successfully deployed, and some of the ones that did deploy
had injured people as they kind of careemed around the
listing ship, the Commission also recommended lifeboats be placed on
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upper decks in a way that they could just float
free in the event that the ship sank. The Commission
also recommended that changes be made to how ships picked
up and dropped off their pilots on the Saint Lawrence
River to reduce the need for them to cross paths
so close to one another. This ship wreck had similarities
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to another one that took place decades later in nineteen
fifty six, the Andrea Doria, which has also been on
Tracy shortlist for a while, but that one's actually on
the list because it's not a story of a massive tragedy.
The Andrea Dooria collided with the Stockholm in the fog
off the coast of Nantucket, and like the Empress of Ireland,
it listed in a way that prevented many of its
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lifeboats from being deployed. But more than sixteen hundred of
the Andrea Doria's seventeen hundred six passengers and crew were rescued.
The forty six passengers from the Andrea Doria and five
crew from the Stockholm who were killed all died as
a result of the collision itself. Today, the Wreck of
the Empress of Ireland is in water that's only about
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one hundred and thirty feet or forty meters deep, and
that's right at the maximum recommended depth for recreational scuba divers.
It's really only appropriate for experienced divers. The water is
very cold, currents are variable, and visibility can be difficult.
The interior of the wreck can also be treacherous, and
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the conditions inside it can change as silt deposited in
there by the river. No one has known to have
dived to the wreck of the Empress of Ireland between
the end of the salvage operation in nineteen fourteen and
nineteen sixty four. I think a big reason for this
was just more accessible diving technology, but at least six
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people have died on attempted dives to the wreck since
nineteen sixty four. For decades, the wreck wasn't protected in
any way, and a lot of divers brought back objects
with them, some who were basically collecting souvenirs for themselves,
but others who were hoping to preserve them. Philippe Baudry,
not to be confused at the Canadian Olympic fencer of
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the same name, a masked a collection of about five
hundred items from the wreck and made headlines in the
early two thousands when he obtained a permit to sell
this collection outside of Canada. At that point, he had
been looking for a Canadian buyer for some time, but
with no success. Alberta resident Marian Kelch established the Empress
of Ireland Artifacts Committee to buy individual objects from Boudry's collection,
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as it raised the funds to do so, and eventually
Edmonton's Royal Alberta Museum started accepting the purchased items to
add to its collections. Then, in twenty twelve, it was
announced that the Canadian Museum of Civilization would be renamed
the Canadian Museum of History and that it was buying
the entire remaining collection. The museum had an exhibition called
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Canada's Titanic the Empress of Ireland and that ran from
May of twenty fourteen to April of twenty fifteen, alongside
the disaster's one hundredth anniversary, and that exhibit displayed many
of these objects. Since nineteen ninety nine, the wreck site
of the Empress of Ireland has been designated as a
historical and archaeological property. That designation was made to try
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to protect it. Removing items from the wreck is now prohibited.
The site is marked with a white buoy with a
sign about its protected status, and divers are still permitted
to go there as long as they follow all the
applicable regulations. There is also an Empress of Ireland Museum
at Ponta Peer Maritime Historic Site, which is also home
(28:14):
to an Empress of Ireland monument and a mass grave
of some of the rex victims. There is also a
monument at Mount Vermand Cemetery in Quebec City. Both monuments
commemorate both named and unidentified victims of the tragedy. The
Salvation Army erected a monument at Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery,
and there is also a memorial at Thurston Gardens in Suva, Fiji,
(28:38):
commemorating Gabriel J. Mark's first mayor of Suva, who was
one of the people who died in the wreck. There
are other markers and monuments to the wreck and other
burial sites as well, and a display about the Empress
of Ireland at the Maritime Museum at National Museum's Liverpool.
As we said at the top of the show, this
tragedy happened within just a year or two of the
(28:59):
same of the Titanic and of the Lusitania, and more
than a thousand people died in each of these disasters,
But those other two are way more widely known than
the Empress of Ireland is. One reason is that World
War One started on July twenty eighth, nineteen fourteen, when
Austria Hungary declared war on Serbia, so that was just
(29:20):
a couple of months after the Empress of Ireland sank,
and it really overshadowed anything about the tragedy. Another is that,
unlike the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland wasn't carrying just
an inordinate number of wealthy and famous passengers. Most of
them were just like regular middle class and working class people,
and unlike the Lusitania, its sinking did not spark international
(29:43):
outrage or eventually contribute to the United States becoming directly
involved in World War One. Canadian history also often doesn't
get as much attention as that of other nations, in
part because of its relative size and power. For example,
when the Empress of Ireland sank, Canada's total population was
about eight million people, compared to more than ninety eight
(30:05):
million people in the US or more than seven million
people just in the city of London, England. That said,
Canada's relatively smaller population meant that this tragedy was an
enormous loss, and that it had a direct impact on
a lot of families and communities all across the country
and to communities in Liverpool and in parts of Ireland
(30:25):
where a lot of members of the crew were from
before its sinking. The ship also carried roughly one hundred
and seventeen thousand immigrants from Europe to Canada. It's estimated
that about a million Canadians living today are descended from
someone who arrived aboard the Empress of Ireland. Yeah, I
will say the Canadian history not getting as much attention
(30:48):
as other parts of the world is also too of
our podcast.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
We are aware.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
It is for many of these same reasons that, plus
you know, our own listener demographic es people ask for
things a lot of the time that are connected to
where they are from.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
This has been a downer week. Do you have a
listener mail that's not so depressing? I did not pick
sad mail at all. This is from Jamie.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Jamie wrote after our most recent Unearthed episodes, which of
course also inspired this episode. Jamie wrote, Hello, Holly and Tracy.
I just listened to the latest Unearthed episodes and found
a small way I could be helpful. I am a
former German translator, and when Tracy mentioned reading English articles
that said that the coin had been found in a sandbox,
(31:37):
but the videos in German seemed to indicate otherwise, I
knew this was my time to shine. I watched a
couple of German language videos about the find, and the
boy found the coin on school grounds, but not in
a sandbox. As he was walking on a sidewalk nearing
an entrance to the school, something shiny in the dirt
next to the sidewalk caught his eye. This is the
(31:59):
third such coin to be found in Bremen, which is
really interesting because Marcus Aurelius's empire never extended that far north,
but people would travel to or resettle there and use
the coins.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
To trade with. There was also a silver shortage at
the time this coin was made, which makes it even
more rare and special. I'm here for all your German needs.
Thank you for keeping me entertained and educated during my
many long drives for work. Jamie talks about being on
the road quite a bit and then says, I have
two horses. I hope they are acceptable as pet tax.
(32:30):
The brown one is an off the track there are
bread named Roger. The white one is my now retired
draft cross named Vanity. Let me say I'm excited about
some horse pictures. I love a horse picture. We got it.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I don't remember who sent an email recently, but we
got an email from someone recently who.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Was like, what's pet tax? I feel bad.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I don't have any That's just a thing that we
on the internet say about sending pet pictures. It's not
a real time. You're not required to send us pet pictures,
but you know we do love them. I will also say,
and I'm scared to say this because you might be like, no,
thank you. You can send me anything for pet tax.
(33:11):
If you have a pet spider, send it over.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
But I don't know if Tracy VI so that's fine. Sure, sure,
pet snake, I'm in. I want all the animals also good.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yeah, you know I cannot think of an animal I
would be upset, you know, as long as we're talking
about living cared for animals. Please do not send us
like horrific animal death pictures that would be very upsetting,
but like any animal totally fine. Also craft projects, art projects,
(33:43):
pretty sunsets, you know whatever. If you want to send
us a picture something that brought you some joy, that's great.
Thank you so much, Jamie. This was indeed your time
to shine. This aligns with what I was watching in
this newspapert w or. I was like, this does not
look like this child was digging in like a constructed sandbox.
(34:03):
That just looks like the dirt. So I'm glad to
know that all of the English language news reporting. I'm
assuming somebody like there was maybe a Google Translate problem
or like one person came up with sandbox and it
just spread from there. So thank you so much Jamie
for this, and I mean just great great horse pictures.
(34:25):
If you'd like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast or a history podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com or on social media at Missed in History.
You can subscribe to our show also on the iHeartRadio app,
or wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff
(34:48):
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
We mentioned on an episode of Unearthed recently that we
have gotten listener requests for an episode on the Empress
of Ireland, and I said this recent discovery of the
ship's compass platform in the Saint Lawrence River might move
that topic up the list, and it did.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Here is the episode. This is a shipwreck that happened
just before the start of World War One and it
was the worst maritime disaster in Canadian history to happen
during peacetime. Was also one of three major disasters over
the span of just about three years involving ships that
(00:55):
were all registered in Liverpool. The other two were the
Titanic disaster, which happened in nineteen twelve, and the Lusitania,
which would be sunk by a German U boat almost
exactly a year after this in nineteen fifteen. While the
Empress of Ireland is a big part of both Canadian
history and the history of the Liverpool shipping and shipbuilding industry,
(01:18):
it does not have nearly the name recognition today, as
those other two disasters do. The RMS or Royal Mail
ship Empress of Ireland and its sister ship, the Empress
of Britain, were both owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway Line.
They were part of Canadian Pacific's growing steamship service between
Europe and North America, and they were the first ships
(01:40):
Canadian Pacific built specifically for its fast Atlantic service. The
ships were both focused primarily on passenger service, but they
both also carried mail and other cargo. The Empress of
Britain was launched on November eleventh, nineteen oh five, and
took its first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in the
south of nineteen oh six. It was requisitioned for military
(02:04):
purposes during World War One, but aside from that, the
Empress of Britain offered regular passenger service across the North
Atlantic until nineteen twenty nine. After its last scheduled Transatlantic voyage,
the Empress of Britain was taken out of service and
then scrapped. The Empress of Ireland was launched on January
twenty seventh, nineteen oh six, and also took its first
(02:26):
voyage that summer. It sailed out of Liverpool which was
a major shipping, transportation and shipbuilding center and was a
popular port of departure for people immigrating from northern and
Western Europe to North America. The trip on the Empress
of Ireland took six days in each direction, two days
on the Saint Lawrence River and four to cross the Atlantic.
(02:48):
So there were other shipping companies who were really focused
on using luxury experiences to try to stand out from
their competition, like the White Star Line, whose Olympic class
included the Titanic. And while there were people who used
words like luxury to describe various amenities aboard these two
(03:08):
sister ships, they were really meant more to be comfortable,
reliable and fast. They were nice, but they were not
like over the top fancy and their decor and their
amenities like the Titanic had been. These ships had upper
and lower promenade decks with protected spaces for deck chairs.
There was a library, a cafe, and a music room,
(03:29):
plus smoking rooms, social halls, dining saloons, that kind of thing.
Some of these were reserved for first or second class passengers.
The Empress of Ireland had cabins that could accommodate three
hundred and fifty first class passengers, three hundred and fifty
second class passengers, and one thousand third class, and to
some extent, these could be reconfigured based on passenger demand.
(03:53):
There are some accounts that describe third class as steerage,
but steerage makes it sound like a mass of people
shoved below decks with no real accommodations for their comfort
or safety. Third class was on the lower decks, and
it definitely was not as spacious or upscale as first
or second class, but there were passenger cabins along with
(04:14):
a third class smoking room, a lady's salon, and a
dining room. There was a space that could be used
more like a dormitory with rows of open berths, but
still everyone in third class had a cabin or a
berth assigned to them. Every deck also had bathrooms and lavatories,
so that people did not have to go far from
their cabins to use them. The ship was.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Also built according to the safety standards of the time.
This included being built with watertight compartments, and the ship
could stay afloat if two adjacent compartments were flooded. There
were also twenty four watertight doors that could be closed
off in the event of damage to the ship.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
After the Titanic disaster in nineteen twelve, the Empress of
Ireland and its sister ship were also outfitted with additional
safety equipment. The Empress of Ireland had enough lifeboats to
accommodate eighteen hundred sixty people, and that was set as
its maximum capacity, even though the ship itself was capable
of carrying more. There were also more than two thousand
(05:16):
life belts on board, one hundred fifty of them sized
for children, and twenty four life buoys or life preservers.
The Empress of Ireland also had a Marconi wireless telegraph
for communication and an underwater iceberg detection system. The Empress
of Ireland left Liverpool for a routine trip across the
Atlantic on May fifteenth, nineteen fourteen. It arrived safely in
(05:40):
Quebec City, and on May twenty eighth it departed for
its return trip to Liverpool. On board were eighty seven
first class passengers, two hundred fifty three second class, seven
hundred seventeen third class and four hundred twenty crew. Captain
Henry Kendall was in command, and this was the first
time he had commanded a ship on the Saint Lawrence River.
(06:02):
But while he was new to this particular ship and
this route, he was an experienced captain. He had twenty
five years of experience at sea and almost twelve years
working for Canadian Pacific. About half of that time for
Canadian Pacific had been in command of one of the
company's ships. On board the Empress of Ireland were about
(06:22):
one hundred and seventy members of the Salvation Army who
were going to London for a series of meetings known
as the International Congress. This was the fourth time the
Salvation Army had held such a congress, that the previous
ones being in eighteen eighty six, eighteen ninety four and
nineteen o four. There were also about three hundred workers
who had been laid off from Ford Motor Company and
(06:44):
were returning to Europe. The two most well known people
on board were probably married stage actors Lawrence Irving and
Mabel Hackney, who were returning to Britain after a tour
of Australia and North America. The other ship involved with
this disaster was the Norwegian ship SS Storstid, owned by
AF Clavinus and Company and built in nineteen ten. The
(07:08):
Storrestide was a cargo ship that primarily carried coal and or.
It had a maximum capacity of roughly ten thousand, eight
hundred tons of cargo. Master of the ship was Thomas Anderson,
who had taken command when the store Stid was only
a few months old, so that gave him about three
years of experience as the captain of this ship. When
(07:29):
the collision took place, though.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Anderson was asleep and first mate Alfred Toftiness was in command,
although there were standing orders that he was to wake
up the captain either when they were six miles of
quantau Peer or father Point, or if they encountered fog.
Toftanis had also been working on the ship for about
three years. On May twenty ninth, nineteen fourteen, as the
(07:54):
Empress of Ireland was traveling toward the Atlantic Ocean on
the Saint Lawrence River, the store stud was heading in
the opposite direction, carrying roughly ten four hundred tons of
coal from Sydney, Nova Scotia to Montreal. Ships traveling this
stretch of the Saint Lawrence River used a river pilot
to help navigate around Quebec City. When the two ships collided,
(08:17):
the Empress of Ireland had left Quebec City and had
just dropped its pilot off at Ponta Pere. The Storstod
was heading to Ponta Peer to pick up its pilot
before heading toward Quebec City, so both of the ships
were on the south side of the river, fairly close
to the shore. Navigating this stretch of the river could
be treacherous. The river became significantly narrower, busier, and more
(08:41):
crowded the closer it got to Quebec City. Beyond that, though,
especially at this time of the year, it was prone
to sudden, dense fog as warmer air came into contact
with cold river water that was made even colder by
runoff from melting ice and snow. These conditions could change
extremely rapidly, and that is what happened on May twenty ninth,
(09:04):
nineteen fourteen, when these two ships spotted each other. The
weather was fine and clear, but just a few minutes
later Fogg completely cut off their line of sight. We'll
get to that after we take a quick sponsor break.
(09:26):
As we said before the break, at a little after
one am on May twenty ninth, nineteen fourteen, the weather
was clear and fine on the Saint Lawrence River near
Quanto Peer, which today is part of the city of Ramuski.
At one twenty am, pilot Adelard Burnier, who had guided
the Empress of Ireland out of Quebec City, disembarked onto
(09:46):
a tug to take him to shore. Not long afterward,
the crew of the Empress of Ireland spotted the masthead
lights of a steamer that was about six miles away.
That steamer was the Storstid, which was on its way
to pick up its pilot. The mass headlight is one
of the lights on a ship that lets other vessels
know where it is and where it's going. There are
(10:08):
a number of different lights and configurations, all of which
have their own meanings. The most critical ones to understanding
what happened to the Empress of Ireland are the masthead
light and the sidelights. The mass headlight is a white
light that shines from the forward part of the ship
in a two hundred and twenty five degree arc, making
the ship visible to other vessels it's traveling toward. The
(10:31):
side lights are red and green, green on the starboard
side and red on the port side. The Empress of
Ireland set a course that would take it past the
store Stod so that they would pass starboard side to starboard.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Side, i e. Green to green. But when the vessels
were about two miles apart, a heavy fog developed over
the river. Aboard the Empress of Ireland, Captain Henry Kendall
ordered the engines full of stern, basically putting them into
reverse to stop the ship. The Empress of Ireland also
sounded a signal on the ship's whistle to let the
(11:06):
other ship know that they had gone astern. The Empress
of Ireland heard the Storestod answer with a blast from
its own whistle, and based on accounts, they repeated this
set of signals. When the Empress of Ireland was fully stopped,
it sounded two blasts on the whistle to inform the
Storrestid that it was no longer moving. According to accounts
(11:28):
from the crew of the Storrestod, just before the fog
obscured their view of the Empress of Ireland, the first mate,
Alfred Toftanus, saw the green navigation lights, but then they
said the Empress of Ireland changed course and that the
red lights were visible, and that only the red navigation
lights were visible. When the fog cut off their view,
(11:48):
so the crew of the Storstod thought that they were
going to be passing the Empress of Ireland red to
red or port to port, not starboard to starboard, green
to green. It is not possible for both of these
accounts to be true. The report of the Commission of
Inquiry into this disaster describes them as irreconcilable, and a
(12:09):
lot of the testimony about which lights were showing, which
signals were given and heard from the ship's whistles, and
which ship had the right of way are contradictory and confusing.
But if both of the ships.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Had maintained their original headings at this point, they would
have passed by one another in the fog with no issue.
Aboard the store Stod as the fog closed in toftness,
ordered the helm hard to port, So the use of
port is a little confusing here. At the time, ship
commands were given using what's known as tiller orders, which
(12:44):
were a carryover from when ships were steered by a
tiller that was connected to the rudder. Moving the tiller
hard to port caused the ship to turn starboard. In
some of the testimony before the commission, people said this
turn was to try to counteract the shift in the
and keep the ship on its original course. But during
the inquiry, C. S Hate, one of the councilors for
(13:07):
the owners of the Storstad, said that Toftinus had told
him that they made the turn so that they could
give the Empress of Ireland more room. If the ships
had been passing one another port to port, as the
crew of the Storstad apparently believed that they were, this
would have given the Empress of Ireland more room. But
they were passing starboard to starboard, so when the store
(13:29):
Sad made this turn, it headed right for the Empress
of Ireland.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It was after giving this order that Tofton has woke
Thomas Anderson, the captain of the Storstod. Anderson arrived on
the bridge to see the lights of the Empress of
Ireland coming out of the fog between six hundred and
eight hundred feet away and on the Empress of Ireland.
Just after sounding the two blasts on the whistle signaling
that they had stopped. Kendall also saw the lights of
(13:56):
the Storstad approaching the Empress of Ireland at all most
a right angle.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Anderson ordered the Storrestid to go full astern to try
to slow it down. Kendall thought a collision was inevitable
and ordered the Empress of Ireland to go full speed
ahead and to try to turn away from the Storrestide.
The hope was that the two ships, if they did this,
would glance off of each other. Instead, the Storestid hit
(14:22):
the Empress of Ireland toward the middle of the ship,
almost head on, roughly thirty seconds after Anderson had seen
the ship through the fog. Kendall hailed the Storrestod by
megaphone and ordered them to go full speed ahead with
the hope of keeping both ships together and beaching the
Empress of Ireland on the southern shore of the Saint
Lawrence River. Anderson answered that he was going ahead full speed,
(14:46):
but the two ships did not stay together as Kendall
had hoped. Anderson believed this was because of the speed
at which the Empress of Ireland was moving. By that point,
the Storstod just could not keep up, and its bow
fell away from the hole it had made in the
side of the Empress of Ireland. It had not felt
like that heart of a collision when it happened, but
(15:08):
the Storstad had a very pointed bow that made an
enormous hole in the side of the Empress of Ireland
at least fourteen feet wide, and a lot of that
was below the waterline, so water immediately started filling the
lower decks of the ship and rushing through open portholes
that fell below the waterline. As the ship started to tilt,
(15:30):
Anderson was afraid the momentum and direction of the two
vessels would cause them to collide a second time, so
he turned away and essentially made a circle. The Storstod
sounded several signals on its whistle, but did not get
a response from the Empress of Ireland. The Storstod was
once again completely enveloped in fog and briefly could not
(15:51):
figure out where the Empress of Ireland was. That changed
when the crew started hearing people calling for help in
the water. In addition to hailing the store stide, Kendall
had taken other emergency measures. As soon as he saw
the other ship through the fog, he ordered the telegraph
operators to send a distress call, and they were able
to do so before the ship lost power. He sounded
(16:13):
an emergency siren to order the crew to close the
water type doors and prepare to abandon ship, and he
ordered the stewards to start waking up the passengers and
distributing life belts, but the ship sank so quickly that
there was almost no time to do any of this,
and once the power was out, people were trying to
evacuate in total darkness. Many passengers in the lower decks
(16:36):
drowned in their cabins. The ship started listing so sharply
that many of the watertight doors could not be closed,
and only five or six of the forty lifeboats were launched,
and one of those was crushed when the ship fell
onto its side. The ship fell onto its side within
ten minutes of the collision. For a few minutes after that,
(16:57):
surviving passengers tried to stand on the exposed hull of
the ship, but the Empress of Ireland sank about fourteen
minutes after being struck by the store stead.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
We'll talk about rescue efforts and the impact of this
disaster after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
When the crew of the Storestid started hearing people in
the water, Captain Thomas Anderson moved toward those sounds and
then lowered four lifeboats. Those boats went back and forth
between the store Stid and the survivors, bringing people back
with them. The station at puantal Peer also sent two
government steamers, the Lady Evelyn and the Eureka, to rescue survivors.
(17:47):
Survivors were all taken to Ramuski, where they were fed
and sheltered and given medical treatment in addition to any
injuries that people might have sustained while trying to evacuate,
The water was extremely cold, so a lot of people
had developed typothermia. There had been one thousand, four hundred
seventy seven people on board the Empress of Ireland and
only four hundred sixty five survived its sinking, including only
(18:11):
four of the one hundred thirty eight children aboard. Of
the one thy twelve people who died when the ship sank,
eight hundred forty were passengers, which is more than the
number of passenger deaths aboard the Titanic or the Lusitania.
One hundred and seventy two of the crew died. Many
of those crew were from Liverpool and many had Irish ancestry.
(18:33):
One hundred and twenty four members of the Salvation Army died,
including much of its leadership. Of Salvation Army in Canada,
and twenty nine of the forty one member Salvation Army staff,
band actor Lawrence Irving, died after diving back into the
water to try to find his wife, Mabel Hackney. Neither
of their bodies was ever found.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
About half of the survivors were members of the crew,
people who were more familiar with the layout of the
ship than the passengers who had only been aboard for
about ten hours. First and second class passengers, whose cabins
were higher up on the ship were more likely to
survive than the third class passengers, whose cabins were below
Many in areas of the ship that flooded almost instantly.
(19:16):
One of the survivors of this disaster was a crew
member named William Clark, who had also survived the sinking
of the Titanic. He had actually worked as a fireman
on both ships. The youngest person known to have survived
and the last known survivor, was Grace Hannigan, who was
seven and whose parents had been part of the Salvation
(19:36):
Army group. Her parents were both killed and Grace died
in nineteen ninety five. Despite the damage to its bow,
the Storstodd was still mostly seaworthy after assisting with the
rescue effort, it continued on to Montreal. Canadian Pacific Line
later filed a two million dollar lawsuit against the Storstod's
(19:57):
owners and the ship was forfeited to Canadian Passion as compensation.
It was later sunk by a German submarine off the
coast of Ireland during World War One. The fact that
it continued on to Montreal sounds kind of I don't know, uh,
callous callous, but like during the investigations, it was remarked
(20:20):
that like the store Stid had acted admirably during the
rescue effort, and it like there wasn't a reason for
them to stay there. At that point.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Canadian Pacific Salvage Company to retrieve the first class mail
from the wreck of the Empress of Ireland, as well
as the purser's safe and about one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars worth of silver bullion that was aboard. They
also recovered about two hundred and fifty bodies. To access
the interior of the ship, divers actually had to blast
another hole into its side because the hole made by
(20:53):
the store Stide was on the side of the ship
that was resting on the bottom of the Saint Lawrence
River that was not a hole.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
They could get to. An attempt was made to refloat
the vessel in June, but it could not be lifted
from the river. Because this collision had happened so suddenly
and the ship sank so quickly, it wasn't obvious at
first what had happened and who, if anyone, should be
considered at fault, although Kendall, who was picked up by
(21:19):
one of the Storstadd's lifeboats, reportedly shouted quote, you have
sunk my ship at Anderson as soon as he was
brought aboard. A commission of inquiry was convened from June
sixteenth to June twenty seventh, nineteen fourteen. John Charles Bigham,
Lord Mercy, presided over this inquiry, which he had also
done for the inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic
(21:42):
and would later do for the sinking of the Lusitania.
As we mentioned earlier, the testimonies that were given by
crew members from each of these ships just did not
match up, and there were also no living witnesses who
had actually seen the damage to the ship before the
Empress of Ireland sank. Wasn't Some divers had been able
to investigate because the ship had come to rest on
(22:03):
the damaged side. And then beyond all that, a number
of people who testified before the Commission speculated on various
equipment that might have malfunctioned or steps that might have
been taken. But a lot of this was contradictory and
the Commission didn't really find any of it to be valid.
After weighing the evidence, the Commission found that the officers
(22:24):
in charge of both ships had committed navigational errors, and
that first Mate, Alfred Toftans, should have summoned the Store
Studd's captain earlier because of the fog. Toftinis had said
that he had not done so because he just didn't
think there was any danger. The Commission also believed that
Toftonis had been mistaken in his assessment that the Empress
of Ireland was intending to pass the Store Stud port
(22:47):
to port, and that if each ship had maintained its
original set course, they would not have collided. In the
words of the Commission's final report, quote, we regret to
have to impute blame to anyone in connection with this
lamentsable disaster, and we should not do so if we
felt that any reasonable alternative was left to us. We can, however,
(23:09):
come to no other conclusion than that mister Toftiness was
wrong and negligent in altering his course in the fog,
as he undoubtedly did, and that he was wrong and
negligent in keeping the navigation of the vessel in his
own hands, and in failing to call the captain when
he saw the fog coming in. We don't really know
what happened to tofton Is after this. We do know
(23:30):
that he died in New York on April nineteenth, nineteen eighteen,
at the age of thirty six. In later interviews, family
members said that he believed he had been unfairly blamed
for the tragedy. Unlike some of the other shipwrecks we've
talked about on the show, this wasn't the case where
major changes were made to try to prevent a similar
disaster in the future, like requirements for safety drills and
(23:54):
lifeboat capacity that were established after the sinking of the Titanic.
This really seems to have been a case of tragic
human error rather than evidence of like a big systemic
problem that needed to be corrected. But the commission did
recommend that ships.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Closed all their watertight doors and portholes at night and
in the fog and other hazardous weather as a preventive measure.
Because so few of the Empress of Ireland's lifeboats had
successfully deployed, and some of the ones that did deploy
had injured people as they kind of careemed around the
listing ship, the Commission also recommended lifeboats be placed on
(24:32):
upper decks in a way that they could just float
free in the event that the ship sank. The Commission
also recommended that changes be made to how ships picked
up and dropped off their pilots on the Saint Lawrence
River to reduce the need for them to cross paths
so close to one another. This ship wreck had similarities
(24:53):
to another one that took place decades later in nineteen
fifty six, the Andrea Doria, which has also been on
Tracy shortlist for a while, but that one's actually on
the list because it's not a story of a massive tragedy.
The Andrea Dooria collided with the Stockholm in the fog
off the coast of Nantucket, and like the Empress of Ireland,
it listed in a way that prevented many of its
(25:14):
lifeboats from being deployed. But more than sixteen hundred of
the Andrea Doria's seventeen hundred six passengers and crew were rescued.
The forty six passengers from the Andrea Doria and five
crew from the Stockholm who were killed all died as
a result of the collision itself. Today, the Wreck of
the Empress of Ireland is in water that's only about
(25:36):
one hundred and thirty feet or forty meters deep, and
that's right at the maximum recommended depth for recreational scuba divers.
It's really only appropriate for experienced divers. The water is
very cold, currents are variable, and visibility can be difficult.
The interior of the wreck can also be treacherous, and
(25:57):
the conditions inside it can change as silt deposited in
there by the river. No one has known to have
dived to the wreck of the Empress of Ireland between
the end of the salvage operation in nineteen fourteen and
nineteen sixty four. I think a big reason for this
was just more accessible diving technology, but at least six
(26:20):
people have died on attempted dives to the wreck since
nineteen sixty four. For decades, the wreck wasn't protected in
any way, and a lot of divers brought back objects
with them, some who were basically collecting souvenirs for themselves,
but others who were hoping to preserve them. Philippe Baudry,
not to be confused at the Canadian Olympic fencer of
(26:42):
the same name, a masked a collection of about five
hundred items from the wreck and made headlines in the
early two thousands when he obtained a permit to sell
this collection outside of Canada. At that point, he had
been looking for a Canadian buyer for some time, but
with no success. Alberta resident Marian Kelch established the Empress
of Ireland Artifacts Committee to buy individual objects from Boudry's collection,
(27:07):
as it raised the funds to do so, and eventually
Edmonton's Royal Alberta Museum started accepting the purchased items to
add to its collections. Then, in twenty twelve, it was
announced that the Canadian Museum of Civilization would be renamed
the Canadian Museum of History and that it was buying
the entire remaining collection. The museum had an exhibition called
(27:29):
Canada's Titanic the Empress of Ireland and that ran from
May of twenty fourteen to April of twenty fifteen, alongside
the disaster's one hundredth anniversary, and that exhibit displayed many
of these objects. Since nineteen ninety nine, the wreck site
of the Empress of Ireland has been designated as a
historical and archaeological property. That designation was made to try
(27:53):
to protect it. Removing items from the wreck is now prohibited.
The site is marked with a white buoy with a
sign about its protected status, and divers are still permitted
to go there as long as they follow all the
applicable regulations. There is also an Empress of Ireland Museum
at Ponta Peer Maritime Historic Site, which is also home
(28:14):
to an Empress of Ireland monument and a mass grave
of some of the rex victims. There is also a
monument at Mount Vermand Cemetery in Quebec City. Both monuments
commemorate both named and unidentified victims of the tragedy. The
Salvation Army erected a monument at Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery,
and there is also a memorial at Thurston Gardens in Suva, Fiji,
(28:38):
commemorating Gabriel J. Mark's first mayor of Suva, who was
one of the people who died in the wreck. There
are other markers and monuments to the wreck and other
burial sites as well, and a display about the Empress
of Ireland at the Maritime Museum at National Museum's Liverpool.
As we said at the top of the show, this
tragedy happened within just a year or two of the
(28:59):
same of the Titanic and of the Lusitania, and more
than a thousand people died in each of these disasters,
But those other two are way more widely known than
the Empress of Ireland is. One reason is that World
War One started on July twenty eighth, nineteen fourteen, when
Austria Hungary declared war on Serbia, so that was just
(29:20):
a couple of months after the Empress of Ireland sank,
and it really overshadowed anything about the tragedy. Another is that,
unlike the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland wasn't carrying just
an inordinate number of wealthy and famous passengers. Most of
them were just like regular middle class and working class people,
and unlike the Lusitania, its sinking did not spark international
(29:43):
outrage or eventually contribute to the United States becoming directly
involved in World War One. Canadian history also often doesn't
get as much attention as that of other nations, in
part because of its relative size and power. For example,
when the Empress of Ireland sank, Canada's total population was
about eight million people, compared to more than ninety eight
(30:05):
million people in the US or more than seven million
people just in the city of London, England. That said,
Canada's relatively smaller population meant that this tragedy was an
enormous loss, and that it had a direct impact on
a lot of families and communities all across the country
and to communities in Liverpool and in parts of Ireland
(30:25):
where a lot of members of the crew were from
before its sinking. The ship also carried roughly one hundred
and seventeen thousand immigrants from Europe to Canada. It's estimated
that about a million Canadians living today are descended from
someone who arrived aboard the Empress of Ireland. Yeah, I
will say the Canadian history not getting as much attention
(30:48):
as other parts of the world is also too of
our podcast.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
We are aware.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
It is for many of these same reasons that, plus
you know, our own listener demographic es people ask for
things a lot of the time that are connected to
where they are from.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
This has been a downer week. Do you have a
listener mail that's not so depressing? I did not pick
sad mail at all. This is from Jamie.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Jamie wrote after our most recent Unearthed episodes, which of
course also inspired this episode. Jamie wrote, Hello, Holly and Tracy.
I just listened to the latest Unearthed episodes and found
a small way I could be helpful. I am a
former German translator, and when Tracy mentioned reading English articles
that said that the coin had been found in a sandbox,
(31:37):
but the videos in German seemed to indicate otherwise, I
knew this was my time to shine. I watched a
couple of German language videos about the find, and the
boy found the coin on school grounds, but not in
a sandbox. As he was walking on a sidewalk nearing
an entrance to the school, something shiny in the dirt
next to the sidewalk caught his eye. This is the
(31:59):
third such coin to be found in Bremen, which is
really interesting because Marcus Aurelius's empire never extended that far north,
but people would travel to or resettle there and use
the coins.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
To trade with. There was also a silver shortage at
the time this coin was made, which makes it even
more rare and special. I'm here for all your German needs.
Thank you for keeping me entertained and educated during my
many long drives for work. Jamie talks about being on
the road quite a bit and then says, I have
two horses. I hope they are acceptable as pet tax.
(32:30):
The brown one is an off the track there are
bread named Roger. The white one is my now retired
draft cross named Vanity. Let me say I'm excited about
some horse pictures. I love a horse picture. We got it.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I don't remember who sent an email recently, but we
got an email from someone recently who.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Was like, what's pet tax? I feel bad.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I don't have any That's just a thing that we
on the internet say about sending pet pictures. It's not
a real time. You're not required to send us pet pictures,
but you know we do love them. I will also say,
and I'm scared to say this because you might be like, no,
thank you. You can send me anything for pet tax.
(33:11):
If you have a pet spider, send it over.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
But I don't know if Tracy VI so that's fine. Sure, sure,
pet snake, I'm in. I want all the animals also good.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yeah, you know I cannot think of an animal I
would be upset, you know, as long as we're talking
about living cared for animals. Please do not send us
like horrific animal death pictures that would be very upsetting,
but like any animal totally fine. Also craft projects, art projects,
(33:43):
pretty sunsets, you know whatever. If you want to send
us a picture something that brought you some joy, that's great.
Thank you so much, Jamie. This was indeed your time
to shine. This aligns with what I was watching in
this newspapert w or. I was like, this does not
look like this child was digging in like a constructed sandbox.
(34:03):
That just looks like the dirt. So I'm glad to
know that all of the English language news reporting. I'm
assuming somebody like there was maybe a Google Translate problem
or like one person came up with sandbox and it
just spread from there. So thank you so much Jamie
for this, and I mean just great great horse pictures.
(34:25):
If you'd like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast or a history podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com or on social media at Missed in History.
You can subscribe to our show also on the iHeartRadio app,
or wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts. Stuff
(34:48):
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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