Empress of Ireland

Empress of Ireland sank on May 29, 1914 after being struck by Norwegian collier Storstad. She sank in 14 minutes with a total loss of life of 1,012. Today Empress of Ireland lies in about 145 feet of water, well within the reach of scuba divers. But because the St. Lawrence River is a frigid 34 degrees Fahrenheit even in summer and has tidal currents that run up to five knots and can limit visibility, this is a dive for experts. Nevertheless, Empress has been visited hundreds of times since she was "rediscovered" in the mid-1980's. Modern divers follow a highway that was blasted into the heart of the ship in the summer of 1914, mere weeks after the disaster. Canadian Pacific hired a salvage company to retrieve the first-class mail, the purser's safe and $150,000 in silver bullion (more than $2 million today.) Descending through the explosion hole down to the first-class baggage and mail room, one will encounter a dangerous tangle of wire and an interior debris field of shattered suitcases and their decaying contents. Although the ship rests on a gravel, sediment-free river bottom, the insides of the Empress of Ireland are half-hidden by the silt steadily deposited by the St. Lawrence River over the years. Because the ship rests at so sharp an angle, the starboard side of every interior room is buried, along with all the items set loose as the ship sank. In the mail room, one diver discovered a whole box of neatly bundled and tied newspapers, the paper still white, the type still readable, dated May 27, 1914, the day before the ship left port. The next time he returned, the silt had shifted, burying the evidence. In the ship's dining saloon, oak chairs and tables appear to float in the silt like flotsam and the remains of light fixtures dangle from the steeply angled ceiling. In the adjoining pantry, most of the first-class china that was still in its racks as late as the early 1980's is now gone, as are most other moveable objects in the accessible regions of the wreck, including the ship's bell, one of its propellers, the main bridge telegraph and the telemeter. Sadly, some divers have taken the bones of the more than 1,000 people who died when Empress of Ireland went down.