In the Wake of the Empress of Ireland

‘The masterful, compelling story of salvaging RMS Empress of Ireland, as told by one of the liner’s foremost historians.’ – J. Kent Layton, co-author of On a Sea of Glass and Recreating Titanic and Her Sisters

It started with two photographs.

These old prints, up for online auction, showed Royal Navy sailors carrying a buoy on a wharf on a Canadian river, with the Pointe-au-Père lighthouse in the background. David Saint-Pierre knew that this had only happened once – when the crew of HMS Essex helped salvage RMS Empress of Ireland. Her sinking at the mouth of the St Lawrence river remains the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history, with a death toll of over 1,000 people. More passengers died on the Empress of Ireland than on Titanic two years prior.

But these images were just the beginning. When Saint-Pierre made contact with the seller, he discovered that they were part of an album of over 500 pictures that told a story that history had largely forgotten: the diving and salvage on the wreck in the summer of 1914, by an international team that featured North American divers working alongside Royal Navy sailors. In the Wake of the Empress of Ireland is that story and more, exploring the aftermath of the Empress disaster.