Shipwrecked Lives

May 1914 - St. Lawrence River, Canada

"The Empress was listing to starboard at a dangerous angle. Alice and her son Jamie, a little boy in a sailor suit, sat perched on the railing, looking down at the lifeboat in the water. Several dozen people had jumped into the water in desperation. Tom crawled over to Alice and Jamie with two lifebelts under his arm.

"Alice put this on," said Tom.

"But I can swim, Tom. You put it on," replied Alice.

"Do it now, dear. I'll hold Jamie."

Alice slipped into the lifebelt while Tom held Jamie and locked his hand over the railing. The ship suddenly gave a sharp jerk to starboard and Alice lost her balance slipping off into the water below, leaving her husband and child to fend for themselves."

From the bestselling author of Playing Rudolf Hess, An Absolute Secret, Remembrance Man and White Slaves comes this extraordinary story about the sinking of the Empress of Ireland passenger liner in the St. Lawrence River on a foggy night in May 1914, claiming the lives of 1,012 people. This is the story of the survivors and the failed government inquiry into Canada's worst maritime disaster that led to a whitewash. It is based on the actual testimony of witnesses at the Commission of Inquiry, which was presided over by Lord Mersey, the gruff and opinionated British jurist and politician. Lord Mersey had led the investigation into the Titanic and the Lusitania disasters but was sorely tested by the Empress Inquiry.

It tells the story of the ruined captain of the passenger liner, the woman who survived the disaster and tried unsuccessfully to claim the body of her disfigured son, the Rimouski fisherman whose job was to search the debris field for the bodies of the victims, the Norwegians who were quickly condemned by the press, the shysters and wagon-chasers who fraudulently claimed insurance policies on next of kin, and the government inquiry which pitted a multinational transport industry giant against a tiny Norwegian coal-hauling firm.