Eve Lazarus' Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck

Reviewed by Nicole Yurcaba

(Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025)

The sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland is frequently overshadowed by the sinkings of the Titanic and even the Lusitania. However, few people know that this ill-fated ocean liner—after the Norwegian coal ship, the Storstad, rammed it—sank in only fourteen minutes during the fog-laden early hours of May 29, 1914. The sinking resulted in the deaths of over 1000 people—an astronomical loss given that the Empress carried 1,056 passengers and 423 crew. The tragedy stands as Canadian history’s worst peacetime maritime disaster, and in Beneath Dark Waters investigative journalist and author Eve Lazarus shares the life stories of people from all social classes and cultural backgrounds, creating an engaging narrative that resonates with maritime and aviation disasters permeating global headlines today.

Lazarus’s in-depth historical research is evident from the book’s very first page. Numerous historical documents and photographs provide a visual guide to not only the ship and the crew, but also many of the people who sailed on the Empress. Many shipwreck narratives and history books—and particularly those centered on ocean liners like the Titanic—tend to focus primarily on first-class passengers’ experiences. However, Beneath Dark Waters is inclusive, making it a unique contribution to the canon of literature focused on shipwrecks and maritime disasters. For example, Lazarus highlights the stories of immigrants like Christian Samuelson of Chicago, who shared a third-class cabin with two others from his Norwegian hometown of Stavanger. Lazarus also focuses on female survivors and does not let male narratives overshadow the bravery of women like 17-year-old New Zealander Tiria Townshend, a strong swimmer who “kept her cool” after one man wearing a lifejacket “shoved her off,” causing Townshend to “sink again” because of the weight of her heavy coat.

Beneath Dark Waters also carries the story of the Empress’s crew. One of the most memorable chapters is “The Captains War,” which focuses on the Empress’s captain, Henry Kendall, who was “absolved of all responsibility for the actions that had caused the sinking of the Empress.” Nonetheless, Lazarus discloses that the sinking “left a black stain” on Kendall’s “near-perfect record.” This stain resulted in a career disaster for Kendall: he would “no longer command the CPR’s beautiful liners. Instead, he was promoted to a desk job: the CPR’s temporary marine superintendent at Antwerp, Belgium.” However, World War I’s beginnings changed Kendall’s career course. Only one week after assuming his new position, Germany invaded Belgium, and Kendall hurriedly refitted the Montrose, a CPR ship undergoing an overhaul. After the refitting, Kendall assumed command of the Montrose and “more than four hundred refugees and headed across the English Channel as fast as he could safely manage.” The action provided a quick turnaround for Kendall’s blemished career. For his bravery, he was made lieutenant commander of the HMS Calgarian.

However, the chapter does not simply focus on Kendall’s post-Empress career and achievements. Lazarus effectively balances the chapter by also incorporating the story of the Storstad’s captain, Thomas Andersen. Unlike Kendall, Andersen did not write a memoir. According to Lazarus, he “was absolved by the Norwegian Inquiry of any responsibility for the accident with the Empress of Ireland,” and Andersen “continued as the captain of the Storstad.” Tucked into Andersen’s brief section are a few interesting, yet overlooked, World War I facts: even though Norway remained neutral during World War I, “German subs sank more than four hundred Norwegian merchant marine ships between 1914 and 1917, killing more than fifteen hundred Norwegian sailors.” The Storstad, sadly, was part of these gristly statistics: “Although she was flying the Norwegian flag and was clearly marked with ‘Belgian Relief’ in large letters on either side, the Storstad was attacked by a German U-boat in broad daylight.” The overlaps between the Empress’s story, the Storstad’s, and World War I’s overall consequences neatly tie Beneath Dark Waters together, and “Shell Shock” is a chapter that displays the war’s aftermath and its effects not only on the Canadian nation, but also the survivors of the Empress’s sinking.

With psychiatry still in its infancy, most World War I veterans “suffered in silence,” and Gordon Davidson, who was “booked in second-class” on the Empress, was one such veteran. Davidson’s story is a sad one. He had served 979 days in the military and had “gunshot wounds to his right leg and left thigh” and scars “etched into his face where shrapnel had entered his lip, smashed through his teeth, and exited underneath his right ear." Rather than blame the war, doctors blamed Davidson’s university work for his severe anxiety and erratic behavior, though family members recalled Davidson feeling as though life were not real and that he was lost. Davidson eventually committed suicide, but the inclusion of his particular story highlights various attitudes during the time towards “shell shock,” since “the psychological effects of the Great War were not well understood” and attitudes ranged from “understanding that it [PTSD] was a mental illness caused by the impact of war” to “viewing soldiers with PTSD as cowards who just needed to snap out of it.” Of course, one cannot help but wonder what contribution Davidson’s witnessing and surviving a tragic event like the sinking of the Empress made on his condition. However, like those who survived the sinking of the Titanic, no precise statistics exist regarding PTSD in survivors.

Beneath Dark Waters is a fascinating read that begins with the Empress of Ireland’s moments before sailing and concludes with the recovery of the ship’s artifacts, as well as Canada’s efforts to honor the Empress’s dead. The book examines why, unlike the Titanic disaster, the sinking of the Empress of Ireland failed to “embed itself into our collective national consciousness.” One assertion is that “while the Titanic was filled with big names from the New York social register, the Empress of Ireland was a comfortable workhorse filled with ordinary Canadians.” Thus, and most importantly, Beneath Dark Waters is both a book of preservation and aide-memoire, reminding readers that some of the world’s most significant events still lie relatively unexplored deep beneath history’s surfaces.

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​Nicole Yurcaba (Нікола Юрцаба) is a Ukrainian American of Hutsul/Lemko origin. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Atlanta Review, Seneca Review, New Eastern Europe, and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press, Lit Gazeta, Chytomo, Bukvoid, and The New Voice of Ukraine. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University, and is the Humanities Coordinator at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College. She also serves as a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Southern Review of Books. Her poetry collection, The Pale Goth, is available from Alien Buddha Press.