Vancouver writer uncovers truths of survivors of Empress of Ireland shipwreck

When fog blanketed the St. Lawrence River on May 29, 1914, a ship carrying hundreds of passengers and crew was rammed by a passing coal ship. The passenger vessel, known as the Empress of Ireland, sank in just 14 minutes, killing most of the people onboard. 

The story of the shipwreck and those who survived it are featured in a new book by Vancouver author, journalist and historian Eve Lazarus, one she spent years researching to find out the truth about what happened. 

It all started when she was hired by a lawyer who owns a summer home near Rimouski, Que., where the Empress went down. Having swum in the St. Lawrence most summers, he came across the story of a survivor of the wreck, a UBC history professor by the name of Gordon Davidson and one of 75 B.C. passengers, who had allegedly survived by swimming 6.5 kilometres to shore. 

"He talked to diving instructors and ice polar swimmers and biologists, anyone he could find that could verify that that was possible," Lazarus told CBC's North by Northwest host Margaret Gallagher.  "Everyone said no, no, it just wasn't possible, not in that cold temperature at that time of year. So he hired me to see if I could find the origin story."

The ship, which was travelling from Quebec City to Liverpool, England, had 40 lifeboats on board, but only four were deployed when the ship sank so quickly. About one in five passengers survived, but a higher proportion of the 400-some crew made it out. 

Lazarus said the crew was criticized for not prioritizing the safety of passengers, but her research tells her there was nothing selfish about how things worked out. 

"Fifty per cent of the crew would have been on duty that night in the middle of the night, and a lot of them worked in the engine rooms where it was really dangerous and really hot. They had escape routes to the top deck … so a lot of them were able to get to the top deck very quickly and help with lifeboats and get that going."

Because this happened in the middle of the night, a lot of passengers stopped to dress before fleeing the ship, which would be their fatal flaw.  

Lazarus went out on the river in a Zodiac in 2019 and sat atop the site of the wreck. 

"You could see it on radar, and knowing there are still 800-and-something remains of people, it really is an underwater graveyard still down there," she said. "It was very difficult for me to come to terms with that. It was very powerful." 

Lazarus said a lot of the reporting that came out of the sinking of the Empress of Ireland occurred just a few hours after it happened. Reporters descended on Rimouski, she said, and started interviewing people who were dealing with traumatic injuries, were recovering from the cold or who had lost their entire families. They were in shock. 

Reporters, in those days, would have been using shorthand to write stories and phoning them into their respective newsrooms, Lazarus pointed out, creating another opportunity for error.

"It's not surprising that a lot of it was wrong."

Davidson did not swim ashore following the Empress of Ireland's demise, Lazarus learned. Instead, he was rescued in a boat. 

She believes the lore around his harrowing swim started with a story in Vancouver's The Province newspaper, where a reporter speculated that, because Davidson was a good swimmer, he must have swum. 

"It was still an incredible survival story, but I couldn't understand how that story could get so wrong," Lazarus said. "[The story] became real, and that was the story that went to all these newspapers and books."