He died in the Empress of Ireland shipwreck. A century later, his belongings found his family

For the first time in 111 years, items once belonging to the late Albert Mullins were back in the hands of his family members thanks to the detective work of one Montreal historian.

Wearing white cotton gloves, Caroline Mullins from Bournemouth, England held a dollhouse furniture set, travel mementos and flipped through an album containing scraps of paper from her great uncle — who, for much of her life, had remained a mystery.

She was never told about his successful instrument business, travels abroad with his wife and daughter or even that he was one of the 1,012 people killed on board the Empress of Ireland when it sank off the coast of Rimouski, Que., in 1914.

"I didn't know them," said Caroline, her eyes welling with tears. "But well, it's still very personal, isn't it?"

Unravelling her relative's story started when she stumbled upon a 2023 article by Montreal historian David Saint-Pierre.

He had written about recently obtained items from the wreck connected to a man named Albert Mullins. Six months later, Saint-Pierre received a Facebook message from Caroline.

"She decided right away that she wanted to cross the ocean and come see the artifacts," he said, which were being transferred to Quebec's Société d'histoire du Bas-Canada.

"It's extremely rare that we get the occasion, the opportunity to trace back items directly to their owners. So I don't think it will happen often again."

He says it might be the only example of items recovered from the shipwreck that could be traced back directly to one single passenger. They're being preserved and kept in a bunker, near Montreal.

The items were originally found and recovered in 1986 in a canvas bag by a diver who dove the site 206 times, but rarely entered the ship's baggage room during his dives, says Saint-Pierre.

On one trip, he picked up what would later be identified as Mullins's items — drying and storing the materials for decades before they changed hands to Guy D'Astous, who owns a private collection and is the collection director at the Société d'histoire du Bas-Canada.

In 2023, Saint-Pierre laid eyes on the scraps of paper organized in a photo album and started to connect the dots. It included the name of instrument stores — and Saint-Pierre knew why.

"Doing research on the Empress for so many years, there are a few passengers that we begin to know, and I knew of Albert Mullins," said Saint-Pierre.

"I started having thoughts that it could be related to Albert."