A night to remember

THE pointed prow of the smaller Norwegian steamship cut into the huge liner like a “chisel into tin”, slicing between its steel ribs as smoothly and as deadly as an assassin’s blade.

The two ships collided at 2am on May 29, 1914. The liner, the Empress of Ireland, listed so rapidly that there was only time to launch three lifeboats.

But many of its passengers were already dead, drowned as they slept in their beds, water pouring in through the port-holes, which were open for ventilation.

At 2.11am, the Empress launched violently onto its starboard side, lying like a dead whale in the swollen St Lawrence. Several hundred passengers and crew crawled onto the horizontal side of the liner and waited in hope...

At 2.14am, the stern rose briefly into the air and the hull sank, throwing the survivors into the cold spring meltwater of the seaway.

They clung desperately to whatever floating wreckage they could find, but the Empress had one last cruel blow for them: as it disappeared beneath the water, it created a powerful downcurrent that sucked them to their deaths.

More than 1,000 died – it is one of the ten worst maritime disasters in world history.

There were 475 survivors, either in the lifeboats, or picked up by the assassin ship, SS Storstad, or saved by the vessels that came steaming from Quebec.

One of the few women to make it was Mrs CE Kirtley, who, a few days later, told The Northern Echo of her fight to survive. She had been on deck at the moment of collision, and as soon as she felt the sickening lurch, had thrown off her raincoat and dived in to the water which was already full of corpses.

One exhausted – but living – man “clung to her like grim death”.

Mrs Kirtley, a strong swimmer, pulled the two of them across the water to a boat, then tried to haul herself out.

How The Northern Echo told of the sinking of the Empress of Ireland in May 1914

“Try as I could,” she said, “I could not get him to release his grip. To save myself, for it was my only chance, I shook him off. With a cry he sank, and that was the last I saw of him.”

The Spoor family of Bishop Auckland were not so lucky. When the Echo called at their home to see if there was any news of Mr and Mrs Robert Spoor, a relative, Councillor Benjamin Spoor, said it was “substantially correct” that they had been on board, although the family was clinging to the hope that there had been some last-minute mishap that had prevented them from taking their passage as booked.

There was, though, no such reprieve.

Four years later, the councillor became Bishop Auckland’s first Labour MP, a position he held for ten years until his death from alcoholism.

Passengers from Newcastle, South Shields, Sunderland and Wallsend also drowned when the Empress went down. Ernest Neave, from Middlesbrough, who had emigrated two years earlier, was among the couple of dozen members of a Salvation Army band who all perished, and there was no news of Miss Isabel Stage, 20, also from Middlesbrough, who was returning home after working with her uncle Bert in the Bank of Commerce, Toronto.

The Empress of Ireland which sunk on May 29, 1914, in the St Lawrence seaway in Canada, killing 1,012 people

Within hours of the disaster becoming known, Miss Alice Bailes, of South Bank, telegrammed her worried parents to say that she had been one of the first survivors to make it to land.

The British Government despatched Lord Mersey, who two years earlier had conducted the inquiry into the 1,514 victims of the Titanic, to enquire into the deaths of 1,012 on the Empress. His two key witnesses were the captains of the ships, who had come face-to-face on the fateful night. Captain Henry Kendall had been thrown from the Empress’ bridge by the force of the collision and had been hauled out of the sea by the SS Storstad.

Rather than thank his rescuers, he shouted at Captain Andersen: “You have sunk my ship.”

The two vessels – the Empress on its way out of Quebec to Liverpool; the Newcastle-built Storstad carrying coal into Quebec – had spotted one another shortly after midnight on May 29 when they were six miles apart. But then, as is typical in late spring, a dense fog had rolled in and visual contact had been lost.

In fog, the ships should have remained on their course, but navigation of the seaway demands that ships perform a dog-leg. Capt Kendall, making his first journey as master down the St Lawrence, contended that he was stationary when the Storstad changed course and ploughed into his starboard side. Capt Andersen, who had been below deck, maintained that the Empress had changed course and cut in front of him. The British-led inquiry held the Norwegians responsible; a subsequent Norwegian inquiry found the British culpable. A court case ordered the Norwegian owners to pay $2m compensation and they were forced to sell the Storstad to pay their debts.

One of the adverts in the supplement

The inquiry also noted that the Empress’ portholes should have been shut as it was at sea even though it was sailing on a large river, and it made recommendations about the Storstad’s design. It was a seaborne assassin’s knife, its sharp prow and its longitudinal bracing designed to break through ice – and to slice through the side of any liner it might come into contact with.

ANOTHER of the local victims of the Empress of Ireland disaster was May Crawford (nee Baines), of Darlington, whose relative, D Middleton, of Chilton, County Durham, has kindly alerted us to the tragedy.

May was born in Darlington on May 28, 1893 – she therefore died the day after her 21st birthday. She was baptised in St Hilda’s Church, and grew up with her grandparents, William and Elizabeth Baines, in 6 Rockingham Street. Rockingham Street is off Bedford Street, in the Bank Top area, and No 6 looks a typical two-up, two-down terrace – it must have been crowded because the Baines’ nine children also grew up there.

In July 1913, May sailed to Canada to visit her mother and stepfather, Mary and Jackson Iceton. On January 1, 1914, in a Methodist church in Toronto, she married Harold Crawford, a Leeds lad who had been out in Canada for 16 months.

The Northern Echo reported that May was travelling third class on the Empress. “She was coming home for a holiday after a tenmonth stay in Toronto,” it said.

Captain Henry Kendall of the Empress of Ireland

Presumably, she was on her way to visit Rockingham Street, where her grandfather William, a 65-yearold bricklayer from Hurworth, and grandmother Elizabeth lived with two of their daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, and their youngest son, Harry, a plasterer. If you have any of the Baines of Rockingham Street in your family tree, we’d love to hear from you.

May appears to have been sailing alone on the Empress because her Harold did not return to England until May 1915. He joined the York and Lancashire Regiment and died on the Somme on April 15, 1916. He lies in a cemetery in Meaulte, a village to the south of Albert.

EVEN though the Empress of Ireland sank on May 29, 1914, The Northern Echo sailed on with its publishing plans and produced a 24-page advertising supplement on June 3, 1914, titled Canada’s Great Growth. It outlined the “immense possibilities” for those thinking of emigrating from the North-East for a new life of freedom.

The back page advert said: Canada offers you a chance in life. Become a farmer and your own master. 160 acres free. Work guaranteed on the land and to domestic servants.

The advertising appears aimed at young women, like May Baines of Rockingham Street. “A welcome awaits women workers in Canada”, said one article; “Ready-made farms give better opportunities for your children,” said another accompanied by a drawing of a happy-looking young woman standing by a contented cow. May might have compared the open farmland promised in Saskatchewan with the cramped conditions of her grandmother’s existence in Rockingham Street – and given it a go.

A picture from the Echo showing passengers’ relatives at the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company searching for news

Thousands from the North-East did before the First World War, which is why the Empress of Ireland had so many local passengers on board when it sank.