It takes five minutes to launch boats during a drill in harbor, when everything is calm and collected and the crews are all at their proper stations. The tarpaulin covering has to be removed, the falls cleared away and carefully tendered, and the boat fended off as it goes down the side.
But no more unfavorable conditions could be imagined than those prevailing when the order “Stand by to abandon ship” rang out from the bridge. The ship was listing over at a terrifying rate. The seas were flooding her aft, and in addition to the list she was sinking stern first.
Men hurled from sleep by the shock of the collision had to hurry to their stations in the confusion that must have been inseparable from such an accident. Precious moments inevitably were lost in getting the boat crews to their post, and all the time the ship was going down. Once the crew were at their stations, the launching of the boats must have gone on with the precision of clock-work. It was all done in twelve minutes. That was remarkable discipline. That these nine boats were lowered successfully in the few minutes remaining before the ship made her final plunge is something that will be remembered forever.
THE EMPRESS GOES DOWN
While these frantic attempts at rescue were going on, the doomed ship was rapidly settling. Her decks were awash, and then, with a spasmodic heave, as if giant hands from below were pulling her down, the massive sea castle tilted to the bottom. Wreckage, spars and bobbing heads, and the few small boats trying to escape the vortex—with the slow heaving bulk of the collier in the background—alone marked the scene of the catastrophe.
SIR THOMAS SHAUGHNESSY, PRESIDENT OF CANADIAN PACIFIC, DEPLORES LOSS OF LIFE
SIR THOMAS SHAUGHNESSY, president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, issued the following statement on the morning of the Empress accident:
“The catastrophe because of the great loss of life is the most serious in the history of the St. Lawrence route. Owing to the distance to the nearest telegraph or telephone station from the scene of the wreck there is unavoidable delay in obtaining official details, but we expect a report from Captain Kendall in the course of the afternoon.
“From the facts as we have them, it is apparent that about two o’clock this morning the Empress of Ireland when off Rimouski and stopped in a dense fog was rammed by the Norwegian collier Storstad in such a manner as to tear the ship from the middle to the screw, thus making the water-tight bulkheads with which she was provided useless. The vessel settled down in fourteen minutes.
“The accident occurred at a time when the passengers were in bed and the interval before the steamship went down was not sufficient to enable the officers to rouse the passengers and get them into the boats, of which there were sufficient to accommodate a very much larger number of people than those on board, including passengers and crew. That such an accident should be possible in the river St. Lawrence to a vessel of the class of the Empress of Ireland and with every possible precaution taken by the owners to insure the safety of the passengers and the vessel is deplorable.
“The saddest feature of the disaster is, of course, the great loss of life, and the heartfelt sympathy of everybody connected with the company goes out to the relatives and friends of all those who met death on the ill-fated steamship.”