THE TRAGIC STORY OF THE EMPRESS OF IRELAND

A classic nonfiction book about one of the worst maritime tragedies in history, rereleased just in time for the 100th anniversary of the disaster.

A century after it sank to the bottom of the St. Lawrence River, the ruin of the Empress of Ireland has remained one of the most devastating tragedies in maritime history. Logan Marshall’s vivid and detailed reportage was the first account of the disaster and has endured as a classic chronicle of what happened that fateful night.On May 28, 1914, the grand ocean liner, the Empress of Ireland, left Quebec on the St. Lawrence River, bound for an Atlantic crossing to Liverpool, England. At a few minutes before two o’clock on the morning of Friday, May 29, the Empress sighted the Norwegian collier, Storstad, at the same time as a heavy fog bank was descending. Despite warnings and evasive maneuvers, the Empress was struck on the starboard side by the Storstad, which penetrated its hull by twelve feet. The captain and crew had less than fifteen minutes to save their passengers before the ship slipped under the waves. Of the 1,475 aboard, 1,078 perished in a matter of minutes. It remains the worst peacetime catastrophe in Canadian history.In addition to his unforgettable account of the sinking, Logan Marshall also presents a gripping retelling of the Titanic disaster, as well as other maritime tragedies. For decades, Marshall’s account of the Empress of Ireland has remained the definitive version, comparable to Walter Lord’s chronicle of the Titanic sinking, A Night to Remember.

The Tragedy of the Empress of Ireland was originally published just a few months after the tragedy. It was the instant “it” book of its day. It’s currently available in Googlebooks but in this edition an all new afterword is added to fill the readers in on the results of the inquest and the fate of the main players in the story.
Logan Marshall was a pseudonym for Logan Howard-Smith, an editor at the John C. Winston Publishing Company. He wrote a number of books, including Sinking of the Titanic and Other Sea Disasters and Horrors and Atrocities of the Great War. He died in 1936.