Posted by Kevin on August 27, 2001 at 11:28:18:
Hello everyone. Nice to see that Diver.net hasn't changed much while I was away. After catching up on the topics I realize that the only specialty card that is not currently offered by any of the major agencies if that of " Cyber Diver " ( No actual dive experience required, just a keyboard and an ISP. )
Just spent ten days diving some of the deeper wrecks in Eastern Canada. I dove raging rivers where I had to tie a rope between myself and the bridge or dock. I dove prestine deep lakes at high altitudes. I dove the coldest parts of the Atlantic ocean. All in an effort to find wrecks.
The best wreck I explored was the Empress of Ireland. Imagine if the Queen Mary was fully operational and she sank on her side with 1000 men women and children aboard. She was awesome. I found a lifeboat filled skulls. I swam through hallways that dead-ended at a locked gate, with the remains of eight people still trying to push it open.
As I penetrated into the ship, I penetrated into history, it was simply awesome.
For those of you obsessed with gear, I dove a DUI drysuit with argon, dual 121's with an iso and aluminum deocompression cylinders and a full face mask and cannister lights.
The water was 28 degrees at 150 FSW as I continued towards the bottom, pitch black, with NO ambient light whatsoever. The funnest part was a raging six knot current that was constantly trying to rip your frozen hands off the wreck. The cherry was that if you did get separated from the wreck and swept into the Saint Lawrence, you were dead. It kinda kept you on your toes.
I was the only one of four technical divers that made a second dive. It was a diving that pushed me to my very limits, and was exactly what I needed. I am going back in six months.
The story of the sinking is a sad one.
At 01:30 AM on Friday, May 29, 1914 the Empress of Ireland dropped off her pilot near Rimouski in eastern Canada and continued down the St. Lawrence River, enroute to Liverpool. Her course was North 50 East; speed, 17 knots. There were lookouts posted on the forecastle and in the crow's nest.
Although in the middle of a "river", the St. Lawrence seaway is fourty miles wide at this point, with heavy currents, colder than ice water, and a thick fog that comes and goes.
Only a short time had passed before the Empress sighted the masthead lights of a steamer, off the Empress' starboard bow at a distance of several miles. Though the officers aboard the Empress didn't know it at the time, this was the Norwegian collier Storstad, bound upriver with a cargo of coal, and under the command of Captain Thomas Andersen. Empress altered course to North 76 East; the distant masthead lights were still off her starboard bow.
Fog was slowly creeping off the distant shore towards the two vessels as the watch officers aboard the Empress noted the green starboard running light off their starboard bow. As a fog bank enveloped the Empress, Captain Henry Kendall ordered her engines stopped and put into full reverse. He then ordered three short blasts of the Empress' whistle.
By this time the advancing fog had shut out the lights of the Storstad. A prolonged blast from the Storstad's whistle could be heard off the Empress' starboard bow. Empress replied with three short blasts. Still surrounded by the fog, the Empress' deck officers failed to realize the two vessels were on a collision course.
There was another long blast from the whistle of the unknown vessel, still on Empress' starboard side, but this time closer. Empress, her engines stopped, was now dead in the water. Captain Kendall ordered two long blasts. A moment or two later, there was another long blast from Storstad, still off the starboard bow, but closer. Again, Empress sounded two long blasts.
Seconds later Storstad's masthead light and her two side lights appeared out of the fog; her bow was aimed directly at the Empress, between the two funnels. Captain Kendall, standing on the starboard bridge wing, hailed Storstad by megaphone, directing her to go full astern.
While Storstad gave three short blasts, in the hope avoiding or minimizing a collision, Captain Kendall ordered the Empress to full ahead, and her helm hard aport, hoping for a glancing blow.
Time was against the two luckless vessels. Storstad, coming on fast, struck the Empress between the funnels, and penetrated through her steel decks some fifteen to twenty feet. The engines of the Empress were immediately stopped. Captain Kendall, hoping to use the Storstad to plug the huge hole, directed Storstad by megaphone to go full ahead. Inexorably, the two ships separated. Captain Kendall attempted to beach his vessel, but by this time Empress was listing heavily to starboard, mortally wounded.
Less than fourteen minutes later, the Empress of Ireland disappeared beneath the waves, taking with her 1,012 passengers & crew to the bottom of the St. Lawrence River.
This was Canada's worst-ever maritime disaster.