As bad as the Titanic: The cruise ship disaster the world forgot

It was a night to remember – but strangely, no one seems to remember it.

On May 29, 1914, the ocean liner Empress of Ireland was steaming along the St Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, when unexpected thick fog descended and it collided with a Norwegian coal ship. It was a disaster reminiscent of the collision of the RMS Titanic with an iceberg just two years earlier, but with a major difference: while the Titanic took over two hours to sink, the Empress of Ireland went under in just 14 minutes. With more than 1000 fatalities, it was a huge disaster – but hardly anyone has heard of it today.

Why? Timing. Within a few weeks of the sinking, World War I broke out, and the world had bigger problems to worry about. So the wreck lay at rest beneath murky waters, forgotten, until 50 years later in 1964 when it was located by divers. Eventually, the Quebec government declared it a historic site and a dedicated museum was opened in 2017.

It’s that institution I’m looking at now, within the Pointe-au-Pere Maritime Historic Site near the city of Rimouski. It’s a blocky structure of silver and red, with projections that resemble ship’s funnels. Nearby is a high-and-dry submarine, the HMCS Onondaga, and an attractive lighthouse which belonged to the former pilot station here. The Empress lies offshore, 45 metres below the surface.

I’m keen to learn more about its fate, and the museum’s exhibition begins with an entertaining film. Presented in a newsreel style, it combines old clips and new materials to tell the dramatic story of the sinking – even more startling since, unlike the Titanic, the ship was equipped with sufficient lifeboats.

The pride of the exhibition is a large detailed model of the Empress lying at the bottom of the river, depicting the decay of decades. Nearby plays a video of a dive to the wreck, a ghostly vessel encrusted with sea life. Also available are short interviews with the 1964 divers, and one, Claude Villeneuve, tells of the excitement when he retrieved a bell and cleaned it to discover the ship’s name engraved on its side.

A marvellous case of artefacts from the wreck is a reminder of an age when so much was made of wood and brass. Items include a tank for boiling eggs, the barrel of a water heater, a beautifully preserved porthole, and the ship’s wheel – still intact and in place when located on a dive in 1971.