The Empress of Ireland's last voyage ended on May 29, 1914, when she was rammed by a Norwegian coal-carrier in a fog patch on the St. Lawrence River near Rimouski. For David Creighton, her voyage still continues.
In Losing the Empress, Creighton delves into the lives of his grandparents - Salvation Army officers who were lost on the Empress - and the lives of their five orphaned children who would soon be plunged into World War I. His discoveries reveal amazing details about the Empress, which sank in fourteen minutes with a greater loss of life than the Titanic disaster.
Shipwreck nostalgia, last voyage dinners, Salvationists, the British Empire and the world wars fought to preserve it; everything comes into focus when the author joins Titanic discoverer Robert Ballard on a film shoot at the sunken liner's site. Losing the Empress lyrically traces a personal journey into the past and into the future.
David Creighton, a former high school English department head, took early retirement to concentrate on writing. His published books include Deeds of Gods and Heroes (Macmillan) and Myths Within (Gage). He has also written travel and op-ed pieces for The Globe and Mail, Books in Canada, and Family Practice. David and his wife, Judy, live in Burlington, Ontario.
Among Creighton's greatest strengths is the way he recounts the emotions of the passengers of the Empress at the 'surreal' second that the Storstad angled into her.
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