could knock one another about and suffer small hurt except to their spars. Collisions troubled them little. But the modern steamship, built to carry huge weights and to be powerful under strain, cannot endure heavy blows. She crumples. And so it has come about that collision, from being a lesser peril of little moment, has become the gravest of all dangers in the navigation of our crowded seas.

The Empress of Ireland left Quebec on her last voyage in the afternoon of May 28th with a crew of four hundred persons and more than a thousand passengers. At half-past one in the early morning of the 29th she dropped her pilot off Father Point, that curiously named headland which four years earlier had witnessed the first and most exciting of wireless romances-the arrest of Dr Crippen. Fog had already been met with in the run down the river, and Captain Kendall was on the look-out for more as the St Lawrence widened towards the sea. He set his course to the north-east, and ran for some three and a half miles in fine clear weather, at a speed of seventeen knots. During the run a steamer's lightsthose of the Storstad-could be seen bearing between three and four points off the starboard bow, and at an estimated distance, when first observed, of about six miles. The Storstad, with a cargo of coal from Sydney, Cape Breton, was coming up the river at a speed of

Up to this

about 10 knots. stage-the exact times are difficult to determine-there was no risk of a collision. The two steamers were showing green to green, and their courses, had they been continued, would have carried them well clear of one another. Captain Kendall then, following his usual track out of the St Lawrence, altered his course 26 degrees (rather more than two points) towards the east and towards the Storstad. This change brought the lights of the Storstad about one point (11 degrees) on his starboard bow. The vessels were still green to green, but the lines of their courses were much nearer together. It was at this moment, a highly critical moment as it turned out, that the fog came down again, drifting from the Empress towards the Storstad. Captain Kendall watched the green light of the other steamer until it became blotted out by fog; he then stopped his ship by going full speed astern, and signalled the manœuvre by three short blasts.

We must now betake ourselves to the bridge of the Storstad, carefully remembering that the Empress has now been stopped, and that she is still lying green to green if those on the Storstad could have seen her lights.

On the bridge of the Storstad were Chief Officer Toftenes, Third Officer Jacob Saxe, and the man at the wheel. The captain was below, and, though fog was coming on, was not

the collision took place. The officers responsible for what happened were Toftenes and Saxe. We may say here that none of the Storstad's people appeared to advantage at the official inquiry which was held in June, some three weeks later. They were badly frightened men, they knew English imperfectly, and they were severely, almost savagely, crossexamined. They were all terrified by the hostile atmosphere which surrounded them, an atmosphere tempered in the Court by judicial procedure yet unrestrained outside. As the sweat dripped off their white scared faces, and they blundered in their replies to keen fierce questions, they must have looked like suspected murderers on trial for their lives. In their terror these Norwegian sailors entangled themselves in explanations, which left the cause of the disaster more tangled than ever, and themselves more suspect than ever. It was not until many days had passed that the mistake which they had made, the honest mistake, began to emerge from the fog of charge and countercharge.

This is what it was. When the Empress changed her course towards the east she could not have been much more than a mile distant from the Storstad, and the fog was just about to come down upon her. Toftenes watched the change take place. He swore, and in this he was supported by Saxe and others,

light, that as the Empress swung the white range lights upon her masts came into line, and that then the red (port) light showed. This was just before the fog blotted out all the lights. Toftenes interpreted the change in the Empress's lights to mean that she was no longer showing green to green but red to red, that she was crossing the Storstad, and that she intended to pass port to port (red to red) instead of starboard to starboard (green to green). That mistaken deduction of Toftenes was the direct cause of the disaster. How did it come about? The explanation offered here seems to us the only one which is plausible or possible. It was hinted at by the Canadian Deputy Minister of Justice, but was not put forward by any of the contending counsel. It seems to us beyond doubt that when the Empress was in the act of changing course her bows swung farther round towards the Storstad than her captain had ordered and than her quastermaster intended. She must have swung, momentarily, so far to starboard that her red port light became visible-it may have been for no more than a few secondsto those on the bridge of the Storstad. Then, as the quartermaster steadied her, the bows must have come back a point or SO upon the course as ordered. Had not that fog come just when it did, that swing too far to starboard, and

the subsequent would have been visible from the Storstad, and Toftenes would have seen that the Empress, though her course had been changed and her red light had gleamed for a moment, still remained green to green. An involuntary swing, such as that described, is not at all uncommon in the steering of long lean merchant steamers, and there was a good deal of evidence to suggest that the Empress had a habit of swinging more than is customary while on a set course. Every vessel sways a little too and fro; she never, not even when steered by gyro-compass and mechanical gyro-pilot, runs on a straight line. Relatively to the length of a steamer the rudder is very small, about one-seventieth part.

Now we have set in a calm sea, amid whisps of fog, all the conditions ready and prepared for a first-class maritime disaster. The Empress has been stopped, while the Storstad is still coming on. Toftenes thinks, on the evidence of that red light, that the Empress is now crossing on his port bow; actually she is stationary on his starboard bow. Even now, had he been content to leave well or ill alone, there would have been no collision. The Storstad, moving as she was, had room to pass safely. But Toftenes, out of anxiety to make safety more safe, out of a desire for sea room, and because he thought the currents might lessen the narrow gap between

And to emphasise the error of Toftenes, to underline blackly his terrible mistake, the Third Officer Jacob Saxe must butt in on his own account, take the wheel out of the hands of the quartermaster, and put the helm hard over to port, and the Storstad's bows, in consequence, hard over to starboard. The Storstad was not moving fast, her engines had been slowed down, and at the last, when the undefended side of the Empress loomed up before her bows, she went hard astern. But it was then too late. The Storstad fell upon the Empress almost at right angles, cut her down, and bore her down so that she never righted from the stroke.

In order that the disaster might be the more complete, the spot chosen by remorseless Fate for the entry of the Storstad's cleaving bows was just that one where the injury would most rapidly be fatal. Had the Empress been hit more towards the bows or towards the stern, the closing of bulkheads would in all probability have saved her from sinking. She was designed so

as to float even though three compartments were laid open to the water. But she was struck right on the big bulkhead which divided the two long boiler-rooms, so that both rooms were simultaneously opened to the sea. And thrown on her starboard side as she was by the entering weight of the Storstad, and by the water which followed at the rate of 260 tons a second, she was borne down and down on that side beyond hope of recovery. The inpouring of water prevented the closing of other bulkheads on that stricken starboard side-except the one between boiler and enginerooms, several of the lower cabin ports were open, and the stability of the Empress was quickly gone. At the end she rolled flat upon her side and sank.

Captain Kendall was on the bridge of the Empress, his ship to all reasonable appearance in perfect safety, when the lights of the Storstad emerged from the fog on his beam not more than a hundred yards away. He roared to the Storstad to go full speed astern and himself telegraphed for full speed ahead, but there was no time for either manœuvre to take appreciable effect. We can judge of the terrible suddenness of the shock by this : as the Storstad's engines were violently reversed she gave the signal of three short blasts on her whistle, and cut into the side of the Empress at the instant when the third blast

sounded. An effort to keep the Storstad's bows against the Empress, to make her serve as a plug for the hole which she had cut, failed; the two steamers fell apart and for a while lost one another in the fog. The exact moment of the collision was 1.55 A.M. Montreal time, and the passengers were all abed.

Orders were given by Captain Kendall to get out the boats. There were plenty of them, more than enough to take all on board; the sea was calm, and the Storstad, though for the moment invisible, lay hard by and ready to pick up the Empress's people. But here, as happens so often, the best laid schemes of men went aft agley. The Empress immediately took a heavy list to starboard (the stricken side), and every ton of water flowing aboard made that list worse. It was manifestly impossible to launch any boats on the other side, the port side, which every instant was rising higher and higher out of the water. We have seen that the bows of the Storstad, by splitting the bulkhead between the Empress's boiler-rooms, laid both open to the water. The almost immediate effect-think of water flowing in at 260 tons a second with nothing but the opposing coal-bunkers along the sides to hold it up-was to swamp the boiler-rooms, drive all the men out helter-skelter, and to cut off power from the engines and dynamos. The engines stopped and all lights went out within a

very few minutes, and before the boats could be launched. Though not before, as we shall presently see, the S.O.S. signals were got away. Even in circumstances such as these, circumstances which might excuse failure of courage in the stoutest heart, there was no panic. The shock of the collision had been so lightly felt that most of the passengers would have remained sleeping in their berths had not the stewards, rushing from cabin to cabin, aroused them, assisted them to put on lifebelts, and shepherded them up the tilted companion-ladders. There was confusion, of course, but men and women remained admirably quiet and waited patiently for orders. They knew nothing-it was as well of the imminence of the sinking of the Empress, but the great and visibly growing list must have told the least observant that all lives were in the gravest peril. Of six lifeboats on the starboard side which it was attempted to fill and launch, four took the water safely-one capsized, and one was crushed under the foundering vessel as she rolled over. Then, at the moment of sinking, when the deck of the Empress approached the perpendicular, the port lifeboats tumbled out of their chogs, slid across the deck, and crashed upon the mass of wretched passengers and sailors crowding against the starboard rail. This may have contributed nothing to the death-roll, yet it aggravates the already abundant

horrors in that scene of death which was being played out to its ghastly end in the darkness.

Just before the end the Chief Steward, Gaade, who had swept the cabins clear of passengers and fitted them with lifebelts, went up to the captain on the bridge. "Well," observed he composedly, "this looks to be about the finish.” "Yes," assented the captain, and a terrible finish it is too." Half a minute later both were in the water, but, as it happened, both were plucked from the finish that they had been quietly expecting. never saw any misbehave themselves at all," said Gaade, three weeks later in his evidence. "Every one that I saw was behaving well."

66

Two narratives, one by a male passenger and the other by a stout-hearted plucky woman, should be given in this tale. We may regard them as exemplifying the courage with which men and women of our race, suddenly aroused from peaceful sleep on a calm night in spring, confronted one of the most nerve-shattering disasters in the history of the sea. Mr George Bogue Smart, a first cabin passenger, told how he had been awaked by sirens and whistles blowing, and then felt the shock of the collision. His cabin was on the starboard side, and looking out of a porthole in the passageway he actually saw the bows of the Storstad sticking into the side of the Empress. He then went on deck, found a general con