The Empress of Ireland

On her maiden summer voyage
The Empress set sail that morn
the 28th day of May, in 1914,
bound across the Atlantic
from Quebec City to Liverpool.

Only hours out of port,
its passengers all safe in bed,
tragedy struck the liner
at the village of St. Luce,
eight miles east of Rimouski.

Designed for optimum safety
with a crew diligently trained,
still she lies beneath the salty waters
one hundred fifty feet deep,
Canada’s Most Tragic Marine Disaster.

In a thick and murky fog
the Empress upriver,
Norwegien collier Storstad, down,
the ships caught sight of each other
a mere three miles apart.

Laden to her brink with coal
and built icebreaker tough,
the Storstad dealt a heavy blow
when it struck the Empress broadside
tearing apart the families of those on board.

The dynamos were flooded
in only three minutes flat,
as she listed heavy starboard.
Power and lights both gone,
frightened passengers fumbled in the dark.

The water rushed in in torrents
the Empress sank in fourteen minutes.
Captain Kendall remained upon the bridge
as the cold St Lawrence rose around him,
but survived to tell his tale.

The collier’s Captain Andersen
had not been present at the helm,
his first officer had not informed him
of the fog that rolled across the water
like a blanket, choking thick.

So fast the Empress disappeared
only one SOS cry was ever heard
at nearby Pointe-au-Pére,
but the Lady Evelyn and Eureka
arrived upon the scene too late.

The Storstad’s crew attempting rescue,
pulled four hundred sixty-five survivers
from the icy waters of the St Lawrence.
One thousand seventy-eight were lost;
less than three hundred dead were ever found.

More lives were lost to tragedy
on the Empress of Ireland that day
than the Lusitania or Titanic 
and there stands on shore at Rimouski
a pillar marking their mass grave.




june 2003