Empress of Ireland

[john sefton]

RMS Empress of Ireland was an ocean liner built in 1905 by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering at Govan on the Clyde in Scotland for Canadian Pacific Steamships (CP). This Empress was distinguished by the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) prefix in front of her name because the British government and Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) had decades earlier reached agreement on a mail subsidy contract between Britain and Hong Kong via Canada.
The 14,191-ton vessel was a fixed price contract of £375,000 and was to be delivered to C.P.R eighteen months from the date the contract was signed. The keel was laid for hull number 443 at Fairfields berth number 4 next to her sister ship, the Empress of Britain which was also under construction on 10th April 1905. The new Empress had a length of 570 feet (174 m), and her beam was 66 feet (20.1 m). The plumb-bowed ship had twin funnels, two masts, twin propellers and an average speed of 18 knots (33 km/h). Providing accommodation for 310 first-class passengers and for 470 second-class passengers, there was also room for up to 750 third-class passengers. This meant that she had an overall capacity of 1,580. The Empress was launched on 26 January 1906, and she set out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, she proved herself as both reliable and fast. There was one incident in 1909 where the Empress struck a sunken vessel or an unknown submerged rock at the northern end of the St Lawrence.
The Empress of Ireland departed Quebec City for Liverpool at 16:30 local time on 28 May 1914 with 1,477 passengers and crew. Henry George Kendall had just been promoted to captain of the Empress at the beginning of the month; and it was his first trip down the Saint Lawrence River in command of the vessel.
Early the next morning on 29 May 1914, the ship was proceeding down the channel near Pointe-au-Père, Quebec (eastern district of the town of Rimouski) in heavy fog. At 02:00 local time, the Norwegian collier Storstad crashed into the side of the Empress of Ireland. The Storstad did not sink, but Empress of Ireland, with severe damage to her starboard side, listed rapidly, taking on water. Most of the passengers and crew in the lower decks drowned quickly when water poured into the ship from the open portholes, some of which were only a few feet above the water line. However, many passengers and crew in the upper deck cabins, awakened by the collision, made it out onto the boat deck and into some of the lifeboats which were being loaded immediately. Within a few minutes after the collision, the Empress of Ireland has listed so far on its starboard side that it became impossible to launch any more lifeboats than the four that had already been launched. Ten or eleven minutes after the collision, the ship lurched violently on its starboard side in which as many as 700 passengers and crew crawled out of the portholes and decks onto its side. For a minute or two, the Empress of Ireland lay on its side, while it seemed to the passengers and crew that the ship had run aground. But a few minutes later, about 14 minutes after the collision, the ship's stern rose briefly out of the water, and its hull sank out of sight, throwing the hundreds of people still on its port side into the near-freezing water. Exactly 1,012 people died. Of that number, 840 were passengers, eight more than the Titanic.
There were only 465 survivors, four of whom were children (the other 134 children were lost) and 42 of whom were women (the other 279 women were lost). One of the survivors was the ship's commander, Captain Henry George Kendall, who was on the bridge at the time and quickly ordered the lifeboats to be launched. When the Empress was thrown on its side, Kendall was thrown from the bridge into the water, and was taken down with the ship as it began to go under. Swimming to the surface, Kendall clung to a wooden grating long enough for a nearby lifeboat, with crew members aboard, pulled him in. Immediately, Kendall took command of the lifeboat as well as rescue operations, as he had the lifeboat crew pull as many people from the water into the boat. When the boat was full, Kendall ordered the crewmen to row to the lights of the mysterious vessel that had rammed them to drop off the survivors. After an hour or two of making a few trips back and forth from the nearby Storstad to the wreckage to look for survivors, Kendall gave up when there was no more hope of finding survivors as most has succumbed to drowning or hypothermia.
The passengers included a large contingent of Canadian members of the Salvation Army. These travellers, all of whom died, were all members of the Canadian Salvation Army Band who were travelling to London for an international conference. At Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, Ontario, there is a monument reading "167 officers and soldiers of the Salvation Army promoted to glory" in the sinking.
Ultimately, the immense loss of life can be attributed to three factors: the location in which Storstad made contact, failure to close her watertight doors, and failure to close all portholes aboard. It was later revealed in testimony from surviving passengers and crew that nearly all of the portholes on the ship were left open by the passengers and crew who craved fresh air from the cramped and poorly ventilated staterooms. Under maritime rules, all portholes on travelling ships were to be closed, but this rule was frequently broken, especially in sheltered waters like the St. Lawrence river. When the Empress began to its list to starboard, the water poured through the open portholes, flooding parts of the ship that were not damaged by the collision, and once that water hit nearly all the decks and compartments, the ship's end was inevitable.
The fact that most passengers at the time of the sinking were asleep, most not even awakened by the collision, also contributed to the loss of life when they were drowned in their cabins, most of them from the starboard side of the ship where the collision happened..
On 16 June 1914, an inquiry was launched in Canada and the crew of Storstad was found responsible for the sinking of Empress of Ireland.
The cause of the tragedy was disputed by the surviving crew of the Empress of Ireland and the crew of Storstad. There has since been much speculation as to the circumstances of the sinking. One theory involves the positioning of the ships when both encountered the fogbank.
If the testimony of both captains is to be believed, the collision happened as both vessels were stationary with their engines stopped.
An inquiry launched by Norwegians disagreed and cleared Storstad's crew for all responsibilities. Instead, they blamed Kendall, captain of Empress of Ireland, for violating the protocol by not passing port to port.
Canadian Pacific Railway won a court case against A. F. Klaveness, owner of Storstad, for $2,000,000. Unable to afford the liabilities, A. F. Klaveness was forced to sell Storstad for $175,000 to the trust funds.

Shortly after the disaster, a salvage operation began on Empress of Ireland. The salvagers recovered bodies and valuables inside the ship. They were faced with limited visibility and strong currents from the St. Lawrence River. One of the divers was killed when he fell from near the highest point of the wreck to the riverbed below and his diving equipment was unable to adjust to the sudden pressure increase. The salvage crew resumed their operations and recovered 318 bags of mail and 212 bars of silver (silver bullion) worth about $150,000 (adjusted for inflation; $1,099,000). A hole had to be made in the hull of Empress of Ireland so the salvagers could easily retrieve a large safe. In 1964, the wreck was revisited by a group of Canadian divers who recovered a brass bell. In the 1970s, another group of divers recovered a stern telemeter, pieces of Marconi radio equipment, a brass porthole and a compass. Recently, Robert Ballard visited the wreck of Empress of Ireland and found that it was being covered by silt. He also discovered that certain artefacts from fixtures to human remains continued to be taken out by "treasure hunters". In 1998, Canadian Authorities passed restrictions and laws protecting the wreck and other shipwrecks in Canadian waters from destructive penetration. Unlike Titanic, which is only accessible with a submersible or remotely operated vehicle (ROV), the Empress of Ireland, resting in a mere 130 feet (about 40 metres) of water, can be accessed by scuba divers, albeit only highly skilled ones. Numerous recreational divers have since died on the wreck, mostly through accidents related to entering (penetrating) the wreck.
http://en.wikipedia.org
Ghana SG2679

[aukepalmhof]

Canada 2014 $2.50 sg?, scott? (The other ship on the stamp must be the STORSTAD)
Canada 2014 P sg?, scott?