rlkitterman on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/rlkitterman/art/RMS-Empress-of-Ireland-Postcard-569755557rlkitterman

Deviation Actions

rlkitterman's avatar

RMS Empress of Ireland Postcard

By
Published:
2.2K Views

Description

This vintage postcard of Canadian Pacific Railway ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland is on display at the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool.  The 14,500-ton ship was built by Fairfield of Govan, Scotland in 1906 and assigned to the Quebec-Liverpool trans-Atlantic route.  On May 28, 1914, it began its 96th voyage, sailing out of Quebec City and down the Saint Lawrence River under the command of the newly-appointed Captain Henry G. Kendall.  Early next morning in the fog off Pointe-au-Pere near Rimouski, it was struck by the Norwegian collier SS Storstad, which pierced the starboard side.  As the damage was extensive, the watertight doors were not closed, the bulkheads kept all the water on one side, and many lower-deck portholes were open to invite the springtime breeze into the ship, RMS Empress of Ireland capsized and sank to the bottom of the river in only 14 minutes. 

Of the 1477 passengers and crew, 1012 perished in the disaster, which was the worst shipwreck in Canadian history.  The president of the official inquiry, Lord Mersey, had already investigated the 1912 sinking of RMS Titanic and would later investigate the 1915 sinking of RMS Lusitania.  Lord Mersey's official conclusion was that SS Storstad was responsible, which resulted in Canadian Pacific suing the collier's owner A.F. Klaveness & Co. for 2 million dollars, the value of the silver bullion aboard RMS Empress of Ireland.  Though this disaster is less famous than the Titanic or Lusitania disasters, it is worth remembering, and is responsible for ships' bows being redesigned with a forward rake to minimize damage below the waterline, as well as longitudinal bulkheads being replaced with transverse bulkheads to prevent water concentrating on one side of the ship.
Image size
2377x1545px 828.72 KB
Make
NIKON
Model
COOLPIX S9700
Shutter Speed
10/300 second
Aperture
F/3.7
Focal Length
5 mm
ISO Speed
250
Date Taken
Aug 9, 2015, 6:15:04 AM
© 2015 - 2024 rlkitterman
Comments5
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
RD-DD1843's avatar
In actuality, more PASSENGERS (rather than total passengers and crew) were lost on the "Empress" than on the "Titanic" and "Lusitania" (over 900 of the 1,012 casualties) because the collision occurred on the St. Lawrence at night time, and most of the passengers had gone to bed in their cabins.  Due to the rapidity of the sinking (fourteen minutes - faster than the "Lusitania" in 1915 or "Titanic") most of the passengers were caught below deck, and soon the lights there were out, making any rapid movements up the stairs almost impossible.