Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck

by Eve Lazarus

The poignant and very human drama of a 1914 maritime disaster that claimed the lives of more passengers than the Titanic


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Investigative journalist and author Eve Lazarus draws on a trove of historical documents, including small-town newspaper reports, the Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry, and first-hand accounts passed down through personal letters and family lore, to tell the story of the wreck and its aftermath through the eyes of the survivors. Through these records, as well as interviews with experts and descendants of the passengers, Lazarus recounts the story from both a Canadian and a Norwegian perspective and investigates why many of the accounts regurgitated in newspapers and books for over a hundred years are wrong. The result is an absorbing and 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—largely forgotten in the shadow of the Titanic disaster—as well as its survivors and victims to their rightful place in maritime history.


With black-and-white photos.


This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A book with many images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

344 pages, Paperback

Published April 29, 2025

About the author

Eve Lazarus is an author, reporter and the host and producer of the Cold Case Canada podcast. Her bestselling books include Cold Case BC, Vancouver Exposed, and Murder by Milkshake which was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best Non-Fiction Crime Book, the City of Vancouver book award, and Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award (BC Book Prizes). Eve's latest book is Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck.

Reviews

[Jayjay Colley · Rating 3 out of 5]

While an excellent deep dive into the details of this Canadian tragedy, I found that this book lacked a narrative focus. At many points, it simply reads as a list, and a quite disjointed one at that
Still valuable for learning more about the Empress sinking and those who were on her

[Heather]

All in all, pretty interesting, although Erik Larson's Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania is still very much my gold standard for this subgenre of non-fiction writing. I appreciated that Eve Lazarus (amazing name!) also followed the participation of several survivors in WWI and touched on the Halifax explosion.

[Kiya B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting part of history I never knew of before this book!

[Cathy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book feels like a student who did a lot of research on a project, and came across information that wasn’t necessary but included it anyways to prove they did research and if they had to read it, so do you.

Much of this book had little to do with the sinking of the ship. She includes a very prolonged portion of the book to WWI and its effects on the enlisted survivors and, while very tragic, had nothing to do with the subject of the book. This theme is found in multiple portions, across multiple points of the authors narration.

[Nathalie Fannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half was really interesting but I felt like the second half was just padding.
It wrapped up well though.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1914, the Empress of Ireland left Quebec City enroute to Liverpool, England with 1,056 passengers and 423 crew members. It had made the same journey across the Atlantic 191 times with no untoward incidents. It was considered a very safe vessel. With the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, additional safety measures were put into place, more lifeboats than passengers were installed as one of the measures. but within 24 hours after it left Quebec City on May 28th, it had sunk and was now lying at the bottom of the St. Lawrence River.

Growing up in western Canada, I had never heard of this disaster although I have since learned those who grew up or had lived in the eastern provinces were well aware of it. There were more people lost with the Empress of Ireland's sinking than the Titanic. Perhaps because WWI broke out soon after, the news of the sinking quickly faded away.

I first heard about the Empress of Ireland from Steve Robinson's book, The Lost Empress (Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery #4) which I read several years ago.

This is a non-fiction book but the author has very skillfully written it in a manner that I found the book hard to put down. She has done an incredible amount of research while compiling this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

[RBBC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent non fiction book from this author. Narrates this complex, tragic event lucidly. The author has a sharp eye for historical material and narrative structure. Captures the pathos of all this human loss but lets the facts speak for themselves. Avoids sensationalism, speculation or exaggeration. Quite the opposite in fact -- various myths are corrected. A great strength of the book is how it places the sinking in context by (1) tracing the passengers histories before and (for survivors) after the sinking; (2) relationship to a notorious murder connected indirectly to the ship's captain and, by one myth, to its destruction; (3) other maritime losses now better remembered (Titanic, Lusitania); (4) World War One, which followed soon after, and took the lives of many of the male survivors. This is a first rate work of popular history by an observant, talented writer.

[John Cochrane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited for this book given the link to Canadian history and a largely unknown maritime disaster. The author is upfront about the difficulty in tracking down information for the book and the details of the disaster. It is obvious that an enormous amount of time was spent scouring archives to piece the story together. The result was however more of a collection of human interest stories about the passengers on the Empress of Ireland, than the wreck itself. These were in many cases interesting but, at times, gave the impression of filler. Overall I found the book interesting and learned some new information about the people involved in the sinking, so a success. This book is not however a definitive history of the incident and better to supplement someone with knowledge on the disaster, or someone looking for an overview and the human side of the tragedy.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read by author Eve Lazarus who also has a podcast called Cold Case Canada which I regularly listen to.

The book is about the tragic sinking of the Empress of Ireland in the St. Lawrence River in 1914 - 2 years after the Titanic sunk and just before the start of the 1st World War. The ship was heading east and on a foggy night it was struck by a Norweigan coal ship called the Storstad which was travelling west. Both ship captains blames the other, but in the end the Storstad was deemed the cause of the accident. Over 1,000 people died that night as the ship sunk in about 14 minutes because of open portholes, watertight compartments left open and only 4 lifeboats deployed. It happened in the middle of the night when people were asleep in their cabins.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this as an audiobook and while I thought the narrator did a good job, I would have much preferred a Canadian reader. There are so many French Canadian place names that the narrator (though she tried) could not pronounce and it took me out of the narrative every time. I also just feel very strongly at the moment that Canadians should be telling our own stories and that includes audiobook narration.

The book itself was well-paced and engaging. I knew the story of the Empress of Ireland but there were so many heartbreaking human stories I only heard about for this first time in this book. What a terrible tragedy.

[Enid Wray]

Spare yourself. This is little more than an inventory - catalogue - of the names of passengers and where they were from.

If you want to read something beautiful about the Empress of Ireland, try (the English translation) of Not Even the Sound of a River by Helene Dorion, released by Book*hug in November 2024.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doesn't tell a particularly compelling narrative and feels more like an aggregation of sources. There are some very interesting parts, but as a whole it didn't feel like there was any spine that ran through the whole thing. Most NF I've read so far does a better job of tying everything into a coherent narrative, however given the nature of the subject here, maybe that isn't as easily possible.

[Lauren Robilliard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very educational! I knew about the Empress of Ireland as a child due to my fascination with shipwrecks. But I learned a lot from this deep dive on the ship, the final voyage, the passengers and crew, and much more. Worth a read for sure.

[Dale Fallon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thorougly enjoyed this book.
It wasn't just about a big boat sinking -- it provided dozens of smaller stories about life in Canada on the eve of WW1.

[Dr. Evil · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book starts out ok and then Lazarus runs out of material. So we get an excruciating amount of 'filler' detailing the survivors experience in WWI AND WWII! So boring....

[Debbie Crane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read lots about Titanic, Lusitania, Wilhelm Gustloff, but I hadn't even heard of the Empress of Ireland. Well researched with interesting stories of survivors.