Empress of Ireland: 14 Minutes in the St. Lawrence and a Chisel Bow

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The RMS Empress of Ireland, launched in 1906 for Canadian Pacific Steamships, carried immigrants between Liverpool and Quebec City and offered new steerage cabins with doors that closed. After the Titanic she was refitted in 1912 with lifeboat room for 1,686 people, more than she was licensed to carry, yet her 24 watertight doors still had to be shut by hand. On her 96th voyage, under Captain Henry George Kendall on his first St. Lawrence run in command, she left Quebec with 1,057 passengers, including actor Laurence Irving and 170 Salvation Army members with their Canadian staff band. At 1:56 a.m. on May 29, 1914, after a fog bank swallowed the river, the Norwegian collier Storstad rammed her starboard side.

Kendall shouted for the Storstad to keep her engines ahead and plug the hole, but the current pulled the ships apart in seconds. Water poured in at 60,000 imperial gallons per second, open portholes dipped under as she listed, and longitudinal bulkheads beside the coal bunkers trapped the flood on one side. The power failed, only five lifeboats got away, and 14 minutes after impact she sank, killing 1,012 people. Lord Mersey, fresh from the Titanic hearings, blamed the Storstad's chief officer, but a 2005 investigation suggested Kendall may have changed course. A month later Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and the war buried the story.

• Only 41 of 310 women and 3 of 138 children survived, among them seven year old Grace Hannigan, who lost both parents.
• Thrown from the bridge, Kendall clung to a wooden grate, then boarded the Storstad and told her captain, "You have sunk my ship."
• The Storstad's reverse slanting prow acted like an underwater chisel, and designers later moved to raked bows.
• Canadian Pacific won a $2 million judgment, the same value as the silver bullion the Empress carried.
• A hardhat diver died during the 1914 salvage, and Canada protected the 132 foot deep wreck in 1999.