On May 28, 1914, the RMS Empress of Ireland began her 192nd trip across the Atlantic from Quebec City, Canada, en route to Liverpool, England, carrying 1,056 passengers and a crew of 423. In the early hours of May 29, fog descended on the St. Lawrence River, and the ocean liner was rammed by the Storstad, a Norwegian coal ship. In the fourteen minutes it took for the Empress of Ireland to sink, there was time to launch only four of the forty lifeboats, and rather than women and children first, it was everyone for themselves. Over a thousand people died that night, claiming the lives of more passengers than either the Titanic or the Lusitania, and the tragedy stands as the worst maritime disaster during peacetime in Canadian history.
Investigative journalist and author Eve Lazarus draws on a trove of historical documents to tell the story of the wreck and its aftermath. Lazarus recounts the story from both a Canadian and a Norwegian perspective and investigates why many accounts regurgitated in newspapers and books are wrong. The result is an utterly stirring narrative that uncovers tales of heroism and sacrifice, human endurance, and modern-day shipwreck hunters.
Beneath Dark Waters is an epic chronicle that restores the Empress of Ireland as well as its survivors and victims to their rightful place in maritime history.