Tag: Collision

SS Columbia: The Ship That Proved Edison Right

In 1880, a passenger steamship named the SS Columbia was launched in Chester, Pennsylvania. She was built for the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and she was intended to carry passengers and freight between San Francisco and Portland. Her lasting claim to fame, however, came after the company’s president, Henry Villard, witnessed Thomas Edison’s New Year’s Eve demonstration at Menlo Park. Villard was fascinated by Edison’s new incandescent lighting system and decided to have it installed aboard his new ship. The Columbia became the first commercial installation of Edison’s system. I want to thank Jim Adams for a post about electricity that spurred me on to finish this.

In the spring of 1880, Edison’s incandescent light was still largely experimental. His team now had to install delicate glass bulbs, primitive wiring, and early dynamos aboard a ship that would constantly pitch, roll, and vibrate. Dampness and salt air presented additional problems. It was one thing to make electric bulbs glow during a demonstration at Menlo Park. It was another to keep them burning aboard a steamship traveling around South America.

Edison entrusted the shipboard installation to a team that included his associate Francis Upton. The men ran insulated wiring through the passenger spaces and connected more than one hundred lamps to dynamos below. On May 2, 1880, the system was tested in New York, and electric light filled the ship’s saloon and cabins. Passengers could not operate the cabin lights themselves; a steward controlled each one from a locked rosewood box outside the room. The system had worked at the pier. Now it had to survive a ten-week voyage around South America.

When she set sail on her maiden voyage from New York to Portland, Oregon, she was a floating wonder. The route required sailing all the way around South America, as the Panama Canal did not yet exist. During a stop in Rio de Janeiro, the Emperor of Brazil even climbed aboard just to witness the spectacle of her glowing electric interior. The voyage was a massive success; Edison’s dynamos performed flawlessly, and the ship proved to the world that electric lighting was safe and practical for everyday use.

For the next 27 years, the SS Columbia became a reliable ship of the Pacific Coast, carrying passengers and cargo between Portland and San Francisco. She braved the rough storms and even earned a reputation for heroism, rescuing survivors from the wreck of the SS Alaskan in 1889. She was a symbol of progress, smoothly bridging the gap between the old world of wooden sailing ships and the new era of steel and electricity. She was also at a dock in the 1906 San Franciso Earthquake (you can see her listing in the pictures below) but survived.

Her fate would change on a dense, foggy night on July 21, 1907. While navigating off the coast of Shelter Cove, California, the SS Columbia had a lumber schooner named the San Pedro coming at her. Both ships were going at an unsafe speed through the fog. Before Captain Peter Doran could steer clear, the San Pedro crashed directly into the Columbia’s starboard side. The San Pedro’s bow tore deeply into the Columbia’s starboard side, opening her hull to the sea. Water poured in rapidly, and the steamship began settling by the bow.

The collision jolted sleeping passengers awake and sent them rushing onto a sharply listing deck. Outside, darkness and thick fog concealed both the surrounding water and any ships that might be close enough to help. Captain Doran remained at his post while crew members and passengers tried to lower lifeboats, distribute life preservers, and throw anything that could float into the sea. Some boats were launched, but the Columbia sank too quickly for all of them to be used.

Captain Doran showed immense bravery. He stayed on the bridge, refusing to leave his post, and shouted instructions through the dark to help lower the lifeboats until the ocean rose up and carried him away. The crew and several heroic passengers worked entirely by touch. They frantically untied lifeboats, handed out life jackets, and threw anything that could float into the sea. Only a few lifeboats were successfully launched before the ship’s angle became too steep.

As the bow sank deeper, the stern of the Columbia lifted high into the air. Terrified passengers clung to the deck railings until they could no longer hold on. In roughly 8-10 minutes after the collision, the steamship slipped beneath the waves. Surviving passengers and crew were left floating in the freezing, foggy void, clinging to overturned boats, deck chairs, wooden doors, and wreckage, waiting in the dark to see if anyone would rescue them.

There were 251 aboard the ship. Tragically, 88 people lost their lives in the disaster. 163 people survived the sinking and were successfully pulled from the ocean. Three ships helped to rescue the Columbia’s passengers. Three ships took part in the rescue. The San Pedro, the vessel that had struck the Columbia, became an unexpected refuge. Her large cargo of redwood lumber helped keep her damaged hull afloat, and approximately eighty survivors reached or were pulled aboard her. The steamships George W. Elder and Roanoke also arrived and assisted at the scene. The George W. Elder took survivors aboard and later helped tow the damaged San Pedro toward shore.

A ship famous for bringing light to the sea was ultimately lost in darkness and fog.

The San Pedro after the collision… I don’t know how she made it, but she survived the collision. I can’t believe she was floating at this point!

The SS Columbia lying on her starboard side at the Union Iron Works after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Bear Photo Company.

SS Princess Alice: Tragedy on the Thames

Yes, this is another sinking, but what the passengers found themselves in after the ship went down is something no one should ever experience. I said it in my Mark Twain post, and I can’t say it enough: maritime regulations are written in blood. The sinking of the SS Princess Alice is another painful reminder of that truth. It also reminds us that some disasters are made worse not just by what happens on the water, but by conditions that should have been addressed long before tragedy struck.

On September 3, 1878, the crowded passenger paddle steamer was returning to London after a day excursion along the Kent coast. Some children were asleep, and a band was still playing as the ship rounded Tripcock Point near dusk. Then the Princess Alice and the much larger collier Bywell Castle suddenly found themselves on a collision course.

The iron bow of the Bywell Castle struck the Princess Alice near her starboard paddle box. The smaller ship broke apart and sank in about four minutes. Passengers were in the water before many of them understood what had happened.

The investigations did not produce one simple answer. The coroner’s jury found that both vessels had contributed to the collision. The Board of Trade blamed the Princess Alice for failing to follow the proper navigation rule, while the High Court later held both ships responsible.

Although the Bywell Castle survived the collision, her crew immediately turned their attention to rescuing survivors from the Thames. They were joined by police, watermen, dock workers, and ordinary citizens who rushed to help. In disasters like this, history often remembers the ships, but it should also remember those who risked their own lives trying to save people they had never met.

The ship went down at the point where enormous amounts of untreated sewage and industrial waste from London entered the Thames. About an hour before the collision, nearby outfalls had released an estimated 75 million imperial gallons of untreated sewage, about 90 million U.S. gallons, into the Thames.

Survivors found themselves struggling not only in the water but in what contemporary accounts described as foul, polluted sludge. Some survivors who were pulled from the river later died after swallowing the polluted water. Several survivors who were pulled from the river later died from swallowing the sewage water. Between 600 and 700 people died. They didn’t keep a correct ship manifest, so the exact number is not known.

That tragedy had consequences far beyond the sinking itself. It shocked Victorian Britain and added urgency to efforts to improve London’s sewage and public health systems. In other words, the Princess Alice wasn’t just a maritime disaster; it became part of the story of modern sanitation.

The collision put hundreds of passengers into the Thames. Years of neglect made the river itself part of the disaster. After this, things started to change and raw waste would not go into the river. London built purification and treatment facilities directly at the existing Barking (Northern Outfall) and Crossness (Southern Outfall) pumping stations.

SS Princess Alice sinking after colliding with the SS Bywell Castle on the River Thames, United Kingdom, drawing by Q Michetti, engraving by Francesco Canedi from L’Illustrazione Italiana, Year 5, No 39, September 29, 1878.
unknown artist; The Wreck of the ‘Princess Alice’; The Stroud District (Cowle) Museum Trust Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/the-wreck-of-the-princess-alice-62554

RMS Olympic: Old Reliable

If I could snap my fingers and have any ship alive and well today? The RMS Olympic would be it! There was a reason my first real post was The Three Sisters. The ship survived and served passengers and the WWI effort for 24 years.

Before the Titanic’s maiden voyage, it was actually the RMS Olympic that was White Star Line’s best-known and most celebrated liner. She had already established her reputation with passengers and the public. Only after the Titanic disaster did history forever shift the spotlight to her younger sister. While Titanic became the legend, Olympic became the ship that proved the design could succeed.

I’ve grown to love this ship even more than her almost twin younger sister, Titanic. Olympic never sank. She survived World War I and returned to passenger service afterward, sailing for nearly twenty-four years. In many ways, she became everything the Olympic-class ships were meant to be. She carried thousands of American and Canadian troops during the war and quietly earned the nickname “Old Reliable.” The press had called Titanic “unsinkable,” but Olympic was the ship that truly lived up to that reputation.

She didn’t become famous because she sank. She became famous because she didn’t. To me, she is the most beautiful ocean liner ever built. She isn’t flashy. She is simply regal and timeless. Others like the Normandie and the SS United States were beautiful, but Olympic’s outward appearance was hard to beat.

The White Star Line built the RMS Olympic because they were locked in a battle with the Cunard Line in the early 1900s. Cunard had shocked the shipping world with the fast and luxurious RMS Lusitania and RMS Mauretania. Those ships held the speed records of the Atlantic and became symbols of British pride. White Star knew they could not win by building the fastest ships. They would create huge liners built around comfort, size, and luxury instead of outright speed. That idea became the Olympic-class ships, Olympic, Titanic, and later Britannic.

When Olympic entered service in 1911, people were stunned by her size. She had grand staircases, elevators, electric lights, Turkish baths, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, and first-class rooms that looked more like expensive hotels. Even second-class accommodations were considered better than first-class on many older ships. White Star advertised her as a steady and comfortable ship for wealthy travelers and immigrants alike. She was not designed to break speed records. She was designed to make passengers feel safe and relaxed crossing the Atlantic. That was her selling point. While Lusitania and Mauretania were faster, they were also known for rolling in rough seas. Olympic was built for comfort, and passengers appreciated the smoother ride. She had quite a few captains in her career. Captain Edward John Smith was the first captain and later would go to captain the Titanic.

After the loss of the RMS Titanic in 1912, Olympic suddenly carried a heavy burden. Many people feared that the Olympic-class ships were cursed or unsafe. But Olympic slowly rebuilt public confidence. She returned to service with major safety improvements, including more lifeboats and a strengthened double hull. She then became a war hero. Olympic was converted into a troopship during World War I. If you’d like to learn how passenger liners were transformed for military service, see our companion page: From Luxury to War: How Ocean Liners Became Troopships.

During World War I, she served as a troopship and carried thousands of soldiers across dangerous waters. In 1914, she spotted HMS Audacious, a battleship that was sinking. She stopped and risked being hit by a U-boat to rescue over 200 sailors. For a more complete story, go to the companion page. She even rammed and sank a German U-boat in 1918, something almost unheard of for a passenger liner. A reconstructed animation of this event is at the bottom of the page. She was also dressed up in her Dazzle Paint (She looked like a sixties rock band logo).

She kept sailing while many famous ships disappeared through war, accidents, or financial trouble. Passengers trusted her. Crews respected her. She crossed the Atlantic hundreds of times and carried everyone from immigrants to celebrities. In many ways, Olympic became the ship White Star had hoped for from the beginning: dependable, elegant, and respected. She even became something of a movie star, appearing in several films that can still be seen today. Among her passengers were Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Prince Edward, Cary Grant, Marie Curie, and many others. The Olympic ended up completing 257 round trips across the Atlantic (not counting the war) and traveled over 1.8 million miles.

On November 18, 1929, while crossing the North Atlantic near the resting place of her sister, the Titanic, Olympic experienced an unusual vibration that ran through the entire ship. At the time, no one knew why. The answer came later: she had been near one of the largest undersea earthquakes ever recorded in the North Atlantic. It was a strange coincidence that forever linked the two sisters once again, not through tragedy this time, but through one of nature’s most powerful events.

Among Olympic’s crew was stewardess Violet Jessop, who was aboard during the 1911 collision with HMS Hawke. She later survived the sinking of Titanic as a stewardess and Britannic as a wartime nurse. Depending on how you look at it, Jessop was either the unluckiest woman ever to work at sea, or the luckiest.

By the mid-1930s, Olympic was still a wonderful ship, but the world around her had changed. The Great Depression hurt the shipping business badly. Fewer people could afford ocean travel. Newer ships were also coming along that were faster and more modern. White Star Line was struggling for money and merged with Cunard in 1934. Olympic was already over 20 years old by then. Even though she was still running well, she cost a lot to operate and still had steam engines. In the end, the company decided to scrap her in 1935. It shocked many people because she had survived collisions, wartime service, bad storms, and decades at sea. To many, she still seemed full of life. Even in retirement, Olympic continued to serve. Her dismantling at Thomas W. Ward’s scrapyard in Jarrow provided nearly two years of employment during the depths of the Great Depression.

It’s easy to imagine what might have been. Had Olympic been preserved like the Queen Mary, millions of people could have walked her decks and experienced the closest thing to sailing on the Titanic. But forget the Titanic; it’s the friggin Olympic! But those were the years of the Great Depression, and preserving a ship wasn’t a realistic option. You cannot look at things like that with presentism. Even so, Olympic still lives on. Parts of her survive today! She is in the White Swan Hotel, where her beautiful wood paneling, windows, and fixtures continue to be admired. In a small way, the ship still welcomes guests and is not a museum piece. Parts of her are still working after over 100 years.

If I could travel back in time and sail on any ocean liner, Olympic would be my choice. Others were faster. Some were even more luxurious. But I would choose the ship that quietly did her job for nearly a quarter of a century and earned the nickname Old Reliable. I can’t think of a finer legacy than that.

Olympic wearing her World War I DAZZLE paint camouflage. The bold geometric patterns weren’t meant to hide the ship. They were designed to make it more difficult for German U-boat commanders to judge her speed, course, and heading through a submarine periscope.

A 30-minute short documentary of Olympic

SS Andrea Doria: The Last Great Ocean Liner Disaster

This is one ocean liner I had heard of long before I started this blog. She was another beauty that didn’t last as long as she should have. She had all the latest innovations of her day, including radar, a double hull, and watertight compartments. Yet, like the Titanic before her, one night in 1956 changed everything. The crash was eerily close to what happened to the Empress of Ireland except it took a lot longer to sink. There are so many stories connected to this ship. The “miracle girl,” the concept car that was in the cargo hold, the hero ship, Ile de France, and many more.

I also want to recommend the book The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria: The Sinking of the World’s Most Glamorous Ship by Greg King and Penny Wilson. It helped me immensely while writing this post. The same authors wrote one I read on the Lusitania.

Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember (about the Titanic) had been published the previous year, and several passengers were reading the bestselling account of the Titanic during the crossing from 44 years before. For at least one passenger, the story offered reassurance rather than fear. Remembering how the Carpathia had answered Titanic’s distress calls, she believed that other ships would come for them as well. She was right. Before the night was over, the Andrea Doria would have her own rescue fleet, most famously the brightly lit Île de France.

She was built by the Italian Line as a symbol of Italy’s recovery after World War II. Named for the famous sixteenth-century admiral Andrea Doria, she was launched in 1951 and entered service in January 1953. Elegant inside and out, she quickly earned a reputation as one of the most beautiful ocean liners in the world.

The Andrea Doria was also considered one of the safest ships in the world at the time, thanks to an advanced system of watertight compartments and double hull construction. She was built to remain afloat even if two of her compartments flooded, a design that gave her operators and passengers great confidence in her seaworthiness. For several years she sailed the transatlantic route between Genoa and New York.

On the night of July 25, 1956, her fate would change. She was approaching the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, in dense fog. Traveling in the opposite direction was the Swedish ocean liner MS Stockholm. Through a combination of navigational misjudgments, radar misinterpretation, and the fog, the two ships collided. The reinforced icebreaker bow of the Stockholm struck the starboard side of the Andrea Doria, tearing a huge gash into her hull and opening several compartments to the sea. The Stockholm’s bow didn’t merely puncture the Andrea Doria’s outer hull. It drove roughly 30 feet into the ship, cutting through passenger cabins (as we will tragically see) and tanks before the two vessels separated.

Linda Morgan was fourteen years old, traveling on the Andrea Doria’s final crossing with her mother, stepfather, and younger half-sister, eight-year-old Joan Cianfarra. Linda and Joan shared cabin 52, while their mother and stepfather were next door in cabin 54. Both cabins sat almost directly in the path of the Stockholm’s bow.

When the two ships collided just after 11 p.m. on July 25, 1956, the Stockholm’s reinforced bow tore through the area where Linda was sleeping. What happened next remains one of the most incredible survival stories in maritime history. Somehow, the collision carried Linda from her bed and deposited her among the wreckage on the crushed bow of the Stockholm. She had literally gone from one ship to the other during the collision.

In the darkness and fog, a Stockholm crewman heard a voice calling from the bow wreckage in Spanish, crying for her mother. A Spanish-speaking crew member went to investigate and found Linda there, confused but alive. She reportedly asked him, “I was on the Andrea Doria. Where am I now?” Linda suffered a broken arm and other injuries but had survived something almost impossible to imagine. Sadly, her stepfather and younger stepsister did not survive. Her mother was badly injured but lived. The newspapers soon gave Linda a name that would follow her afterward: “the Miracle Girl.” Read more about this incredible girl. Read about the other heroes here.

The collision caused the Andrea Doria to list severely to starboard almost immediately, which tragically rendered many of her lifeboats on the port side unusable. Among the ships that answered the distress call was the French ocean liner SS Île de France. Her captain immediately turned his ship around and raced toward the scene. The Île de France would take hundreds of survivors aboard and become one of the heroes of the disaster. The disaster claimed 46 lives, most of whom died in the initial impact rather than in the sinking itself.

A severe list is more than just a ship leaning to one side. As the angle increases, openings that normally sit safely above the waterline can become submerged, allowing even more water inside. Lifeboats can also become difficult or impossible to launch, and simply moving through corridors and stairways becomes dangerous. Most frightening of all, if a ship loses enough stability, the list can continue until she capsizes. For most of the 11 hours she was listing, that was a constant worry.

For about eleven hours after the collision, the Andrea Doria remained afloat, slowly listing further as spectators, journalists, and rescue vessels gathered nearby, and photographs and film footage of her final hours became iconic images of the era. Early on the morning of July 26, 1956, she finally capsized and sank beneath the waters off Nantucket, coming to rest on her starboard side at a depth of roughly 240 feet. For three years, she represented Italy’s return to the world’s oceans after the devastation of World War II. It was caught on film for national television at the time.

The wreck of the Andrea Doria remains a very popular, though very dangerous, site for experienced scuba divers. It is sometimes referred to as the “Mount Everest of diving” due to strong currents and deteriorating structure that have claimed the lives of several divers over the decades. The disaster also prompted significant changes in maritime safety regulations, particularly regarding radar use and navigational protocols in low-visibility conditions. Even today, the Andrea Doria is remembered as a symbol of the golden age of ocean liner travel. She was a ship whose beauty and promise were cut short by one foggy night off the New England coast.

There was one remarkable survivor of the Andrea Doria disaster that remained with us until very recently: the MS Stockholm herself. Repaired after the collision, she went on to have an extraordinary career under several owners and names, eventually sailing as the cruise ship Astoria. Her final passenger service came in 2020, an incredible 72 years after she entered service. After several years laid up in Rotterdam, the former Stockholm was finally sold for recycling in 2025. The ship whose bow had disappeared deep inside the Andrea Doria had survived her by nearly seventy years.

For all of you CAR FANS…the Andrea Doria was carrying a cool concept car, and it is still down there, part of the Doria now.

SS Pacific (1875): The Fatal Collision

This is the SS Pacific that sank in 1875. There was also another SS Pacific that sank in 1856 (I’ll cover it later). That one had no survivors, but this one did.

Reading about this ship reminds me how life can change in an instant. This story really got to me because only two people survived, and just one of them was a crew member. That leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how a collision with a wooden sailing ship could sink a steamship so quickly. More than 150 years later, the SS Pacific remains one of the great maritime mysteries.

The SS Pacific was built in 1850, and by 1875, she was already showing her age. She had even sunk once before, in 1861, before being repaired and returned to service. On November 4, 1875, she departed Victoria, British Columbia, bound for San Francisco with an estimated 275 to 300 passengers aboard. Among them were wealthy gold miners returning home, families, and several prominent citizens. In addition to her passengers, she carried valuable cargo, including an estimated 200 pounds of gold dust and coins, worth millions of dollars today. She was commanded by Captain Jefferson Davis Howell, a Confederate Civil War veteran and the brother-in-law of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

At around 10:00 that evening, the Pacific encountered the sailing ship Orpheus, which was heading north. According to later testimony, the crew of the Orpheus mistook the Pacific’s single masthead light for the Cape Flattery lighthouse and unknowingly crossed into the steamer’s path. The crew aboard the Orpheus heard the Pacific sound her whistle, but in the darkness and poor visibility, the two ships were unable to avoid each other.

According to Captain Charles Sawyer of the Orpheus, the Pacific struck his ship with a glancing blow. The heavily built Orpheus was damaged, but her hull remained watertight. After checking his vessel and finding no serious leakage, Sawyer believed the Pacific had continued safely on her voyage. He had no idea what was happening behind him.

Sawyer later recalled: “I made up my mind that she would hit us, and shortly afterward, she blew her whistle and immediately struck us; the blow was a light one. She had evidently stopped her engines and was backing [up] and gave us a glancing blow. When, after I found I was not seriously damaged, I looked for the steamer. I just saw a light on our starboard quarter, and when I looked again, it was gone.”

Fog was one of the greatest dangers faced by ships before modern navigation equipment and still afterward to a degree. A captain could know exactly where his ship was supposed to be and still have no idea what was a few hundred yards ahead. Ships relied heavily on lookouts, whistles, bells, and careful estimates of their position. The safest answer was usually to slow down, but schedules and confidence sometimes worked against caution. In heavy fog, two ships could be dangerously close before either crew ever saw the other.

One detail that surprised me was learning that the Pacific’s crew had reportedly filled several lifeboats with water to help counter the ship’s list caused by the uneven weight of her paddlewheels. It was an inventive (really genius) idea that may have temporarily stabilized the vessel, but it also left those lifeboats far too heavy to launch in an emergency. Whether that decision made any difference will never be known. Within minutes of the collision, the Pacific was overwhelmed by the sea and disappeared beneath the waves. Almost everyone aboard was lost, taking with them the answers to what really happened during those final moments.

Only two people survived the disaster. One was passenger Henry F. Jelley; he was awakened by the noise and commotion. He went on deck, where the crew told him an accident had occurred, but that the ship had sustained no damage. Reassured, Jelley went below again, but just as he climbed into bed, the vessel shuddered under his feet, and he heard the roar of water. He got off the ship and managed to cling to a section of the pilothouse until he was rescued the following morning.

The other survivor was Neil O. Henley, Pacific’s quartermaster, who was asleep in his bunk around 10 p.m. when he heard the crash and woke to find water rushing into the ship “at a furious rate.” He threw on a jacket and hurried up the companionway. “On reaching the deck, all was confusion,” he later recalled. Henley survived for several days on floating wreckage before finally being rescued by a passing vessel.

Unfortunately, neither man witnessed the actual collision. Both were below deck when the ships struck, so neither could explain why the Pacific failed to avoid the Orpheus or exactly what happened on the bridge during those final moments. The officers, helmsman, and Captain Howell all went down with the ship, taking the answers with them.

By now, the Pacific was sinking fast. The cranes holding the lifeboat would not release, but as the ship rolled, the smaller vessel touched the water. Someone on deck cut the fastenings with an ax, freeing the lifeboat. But the craft, overloaded with people and still half-full of water from the earlier attempt to balance the Pacific, capsized, losing women, children, and men. Exactly how quickly the Pacific sank will probably never be known. With only two survivors and no surviving account from her bridge, much of what happened during her final minutes disappeared with the ship.

All the ships I’ve covered that involved collisions have one thing in common. 9 times out of 10, the ship that rams into the other ship usually survives, except with the SS Pacific. At the Canadian coroner’s inquiry, witnesses testified that Pacific’s hull was rotten and leaked badly. Even more, a piece of Pacific’s bow was reportedly found caught in Orpheus’s rigging. The jury concluded that the relatively light collision should not have caused such catastrophic damage if Pacific had been sound and substantial.

For nearly 150 years, the Pacific rested undisturbed beneath more than 1,000 feet of water, beyond the reach of divers and hidden from the world. Then, in 2022, a search team announced they believed they had finally located the long-lost wreck off the Washington coast. The depth, the location, the paddlewheel remains, and recovered artifacts all strongly point to the wreck being the Pacific, and salvage work continues.

Perhaps the greatest treasure isn’t the gold at all. If the wreck can answer even a few of the questions that have lingered since that November night in 1875, it may finally tell us why one of the Pacific Coast’s worst maritime disasters happened. I read somewhere that sometimes history keeps its secrets for generations, but every once in a while, the sea gives one back.

Closing note here: the Pacific almost represents the end of an era. She was built in 1850, when sidewheel steamers were at their peak. By the time she sank in 1875, propeller-driven steamships were becoming the future. In a way, her story bridges two generations of ship design.

Please excuse the awful graphics of this short…but there aren’t many short videos on this. The ship looked nothing like what is on here.

RMS Empress of Ireland: Canada’s Titanic

There have been bad shipwrecks, but this is one of the most horrific ones I’ve read about. If you read my Titanic posts, I said that she gave her crew and passengers two hours and forty minutes before she sank. The Empress of Ireland sank in 14 minutes and in the worst, most heartbreaking way. It didn’t have to happen; in a deep fog on the Saint Lawrence River, another ship rammed into her, and she only had 14 minutes of life left, as did most of her passengers. There were 1477 souls on board; only 465 survived. More passengers (crew not included) died on the Empress than on the Titanic. The Empress could hold 1,542 passengers and up to 420 crew, so this was not a small ship. This tragedy was given the name “Canada’s Titanic” by the press, not me. It was/is the worst peacetime disaster in Canada’s history.

The RMS Empress of Ireland was launched in 1906 for the Canadian Pacific Railway. She was built to carry passengers between Quebec and Liverpool. She was a beauty! The ship was not as large as the great liners from White Star or Cunard, but she had a strong reputation. Many people considered her one of the safest ships on the North Atlantic route. She carried immigrants, businessmen, tourists, and mail across the ocean for years without major trouble. Her interiors were elegant for the time. Rich wood paneling, wide staircases, and comfortable cabins gave her a first-class feel. Captain Henry Kendall commanded the ship during her final voyage. By 1914, she had already completed hundreds of crossings and was known as a dependable liner. Personally, it’s one of my favorite ships; it was a stunning and beautiful ship.

On May 28, 1914, she left Quebec City for Liverpool with 1,477 people aboard. The weather turned foggy as she traveled down the Saint Lawrence River near Rimouski. Around 2:10 am on May 29, the Norwegian coal ship SS Storstad appeared through the fog. Both ships tried to maneuver safely, but confusion over signals and visibility caused disaster. The Storstad slammed into the Empress on her starboard side and tore a huge hole in the hull. Water rushed in immediately. The Empress of Ireland listed heavily and sank in only about 14 minutes. Many passengers were asleep and had little chance to escape. It also seems that the watertight doors were not shut. They were not automatic like a few other ships and the crew didn’t have time.

One of the interesting tragic historical parts is that the Empress was full of Salvation Army members who were traveling to England for Congress. There were about 160 members on board, of whom about 130 died. The sinking decimated the Salvation Army in Canada. Nearly the entire Canadian Staff Band was wiped out, as was much of the Salvation Army leadership. It took decades to rebuild. Most people were in bed and woke up to water, listing to the port side, and to a complete darkness nightmare. It was hard, if not impossible, to use the stairs, if you could find them in the dark, because the ship was sideways. People tried to escape through the 14- to 19-inch portholes on the port side; many didn’t make it.

The tragedy shocked Canada and the world, but it was soon overshadowed by World War I and later by the sinking of the Lusitania. The wreck site is now strictly protected by both provincial and federal Canadian law. In 2009, the Canadian government designated the ship as a National Historic Site of Canada. I won’t go into the harrowing details of what happened to many of the passengers, but it’s worth watching a documentary or reading about.

Why did it sink so fast? The Storstad punched a massive hole roughly 14 feet wide and 25 feet deep into the ship. This gaping 350-square-foot breach (for comparison… the Titanic was a 12-square-foot breach) flooded the boiler rooms and then sank her. What made it worse was that the Storstad was built with a reinforced bow for icebreaking. She tore through the Empress easily. I have a picture of the Storstad below after the accident in the pictures. The Storstad was fine afterward and sailed again after this.

Remember, when it was hit, people had to act instantly to survive. The crew did all they could do, and many passengers, crew, and rescuers died while trying to save passengers.

William Clarke: A fireman (a person who shoveled coal in the burners) who also claimed to have survived the sinking of the Titanic, managed to get into a lifeboat and actively pulled around 60 freezing passengers out of the water. The Salvation Army Members: Several witnesses noted that when the chaos ensued, many of them gave their own life jackets to struggling people in the water who did not have them, choosing to drown so others could live. Robert Crellin: A passenger recognized for his bravery in saving a trapped 8-year-old girl named Grace Hanagan (who went on to become the last surviving passenger of the disaster, living until 1995)

BTW…on the videos. I try to find short ones, but many of the short ones just don’t tell the story. I will always try to give you a choice depending on what time you have. Many of these videos are by ship nerds (I mean that in the best way), so to speak. They use graphic tools to recreate the ships, not AI, in most cases.

This post is longer than what I plan on being the norm…but I felt more needed to be said about this tragic event.

Grace Hanagan tells her story and it’s beyond moving.

@abbie.cheeseman

Traveling by ocean liner back then probably felt so insane. Here’s the story of the RMS Empress of Ireland, which sank in 1914 and was less famous than the Titanic despite being similarly catastrophic #forgottenhistory #history #historytok #empressofireland #shipwreck

♬ Curious – Healing And Spirit Health & DJ Hoobidibbie