Divers find long-lost artifact from sunken Empress of Ireland in St. Lawrence River
CBC
David Saint-Pierre stared at his phone in August after he was sent pictures of a structure divers had spotted on the muddy floor of the St. Lawrence River.
There was something familiar about it and he immediately made the connection. Turned out, he's been studying it for years but hadn't actually ever seen it — until then.
He was looking at a table-like structure that had once been on the deck of the Empress of Ireland — a ship that sank off the shores of Rimouski, Que. in 1914. More than 1,000 people on board died in the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history.
Since then, historians and divers have tried to piece together whatever they can find in the murky depths of the river.
The team that photographed the 2.4-metre square wooden structure thought it might be a table of some kind, lying upside down.
"I knew right away that this was not a table and I was able to identify the compass platform," said Saint-Pierre. "I happened to have one of the only parts of that platform."
A maritime historian, Saint-Pierre has spent the last 30 years researching the story behind the sinking of the Empress.
On a foggy May night in 1914, the Empress foundered in just 14 minutes after being rammed by a Norwegian collier. The sinking, just two years after the tragedy of the Titanic, has long been a subject of fascination to Canadians — and maritime historians.
The ship was part of the Canadian Pacific Railway network of transport and had been in service for eight years before it went down.
In Saint-Pierre's home, safely tucked away in a wooden display case brimming with items and artifacts to be donated to the historic site, he keeps a brass fixture collected in the 90s that once secured that very platform to the deck.
"They placed the main compass of the ship on a wooden platform that would elevate the compass over the structure of the ship," said Saint-Pierre. "This is what has been found."
In 1964, the structure was discovered underwater and part of the compass, also known as the binnacle, was recovered and is now part of the collection held at the Quebec maritime museum in L'Islet.
The compass platform was officially removed from the wreckage by divers in the 1990s, says Saint-Pierre — prior to the rules put in place which prohibit the removal of artifacts from a protected wreck without special permission from the Ministry of Culture.
While bringing the structure back to shore, divers dropped it, making this summer's finding the first time they have located it in 30 years.