Benthic Canada

The Empress of Ireland Expedition of 1971
by Dianne Strong (November 8, 2002)

In Canada's worst maritime disaster, at 1:53 a.m. on 29 May 1914, the Norwegian collier Storstad struck the Canadian Pacific Railway Mail Ship -- hence R.M.S. -- Empress of Ireland. Headed outbound from Quebec City on a six-day voyage to Liverpool, England, the Empress sank in 14 minutes. The frigid waters of the St. Lawrence River off Pointe-au-Pere (East of Rimouski) claimed 1,012 lives.

A 1909 cancelled post card depicts the Canadian Pacific Railway's mail steamer, the R.M.S. Empress of Ireland. The ice breaker bow of the Norwegian collier (coal carrier) Storstad sliced into the starboard side of the Empress, sinking her in just 14 minutes on 29 May 1914.

The Empress was all but forgotten -- overshadowed by WWI and the loss of the headlines grabbing Lusitania -- until 1964 upon the 50th anniversary of her sinking. That summer the wreck was relocated by French Canadian divers. Soon the first wreck diver "trophies" surfaced. Beginning in 1967, and every year over Labor Day weekend, Peter Perrault led members of the Syracuse Scuba Society to dive her, including the first female: Ronni (Mary Veronica) Gilligan, diving in a Parkways neoprene suit, color black, of course.

My husband of one year, Ron, and I left Syracuse, NY on Friday, 3 September 1971, driving as far as Ogdensburg. We stopped at the AmEx warehouse, tax free, to buy some booze for Gilligan. We passed Canadian Customs. We drove until 1 a.m., far north of Quebec City, about three hours south of Rimouski. We spent the night at a roadside rest in our 1970 VW bus, complete with curtains, 4" foam platform bed with our double tanks underneath, our cooler and even a port-o-potty.

Sat. Sept. 4, 1971
We got up at 7 a.m. At 10 a.m. we arrived in Rimouski. There was no diving scheduled until noon due to the 17-foot tide, so we didn't feel rushed. We gathered at Bergerson's chartered boat: Ronni, Gilligan, Pete, Bob Rockdashil, Ron and myself - five of us. We discovered there were some Rimouski divers there. Since this was my first dive on the Empress, we decided to explore and Ron would show me around. The Empress has 34-degree water, it's saltwater here, and it's so pitch dark that if you turned off your underwater light you wouldn't see a single thing.

The Empress lies in 150 feet of water in the St. Lawrence River, off the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec, five miles from Rimouski's shoreline. (Photo: Robert Betz, LostLiners.com)

The Labor Day weekend of September 1971 Empress expedition marked the first time American and French-Canadian divers shared a chartered boat and dived together. It was also marked by sunny days with flat seas, a rarity for the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec. But the water of the St. Lawrence River was still a brisk 36 degrees F! No divers had dry suits back then. Brr!

A buoy was tied with a line that went right into the wheelhouse. Of course we thought that may have been where Ron's compass (recovered in 1970) came from. We weren't sure at the time. We explored around the wheelhouse and had a beautiful dive. But it was a cold day and it was raining a little bit. So it could have been a little nicer, but for Rimouski that was typical weather.

We got back to the dock at about five o'clock and had to unload with the 17-foot tide. It was low tide, so we had to tie all our tanks on a line and pull them up the dock. That night since we were cold and wet we went to Moko Pan (sp?), a local restaurant the divers usually liked to eat at.

It was so cold in Rimouski and Ron and I had planned to camp. But as soon as we saw how cold it was, and wet, and of course we were salty from diving, we decided we really didn't want to be cold and uncomfortable. We inquired at the local hotel. The cheapest one they have in town is the Normandie. I went in and asked them what is the cheapest rate they have for one person. They had a room that was $3.25 and with tax it was $3.51. It was a little room up on the third floor, and they have communal bathrooms. But it had clean sheets and a double bed, so I registered for myself, and then Ron snuck in. For two people, it was something like $8. So I figured this was a pretty good deal. We went to bed every night at 10:30 and we got up every day at 7 a.m. because we were so tired.

Sun. Sept. 5, 1971
On Sunday, you wouldn't believe this. It was the greatest streak of luck. It was the most beautiful day. The river was flat, there wasn't a single wave, and the sun came out and it was a really beautiful day.

Before her days of technical diving, Dianne used a dangling 10-D-cell Darrell Allen light, a Scubapro SeaVue gauge, manifolded 72 cu' doubles with a single Scubapro MarkV reg, and a Rubber Fabricators double CO2 cartridge "pea-shooter" Mae West.

We went into the wheelhouse and explored around there a little bit. Since we were on the bow, Ron took me to "Bergeron's Door," the entrance to the Third Class pantry, where they used to get those Minton china plates. I got a nice little tour of the ship, and Ron went in and got out three more plates. We had two dives on Sunday that were absolutely beautiful.

That night we cooked our steaks on a hibachi with Pete, Ronni and Rocky. After that I always made breakfast since we had to be at the boat by 8 a.m. and only one of the restaurants was open before then. We had to be packed and at the boat ready to leave at 8. And every night we had to get the tanks filled, and lug stuff off the boat, and rinse it, because we were diving in saltwater.

Mon. Sept. 6, 1971
Monday was the 2nd most beautiful day. We couldn't believe our luck. We dove again on the bow and this one diver, Philippe Beaudry, was there from Montreal. He was the only diver there from Quebec who could really speak a lot of English. He was pretty fluent.

He came up and he almost drowned. He had found this little artifact that's called a Navy phone that was in the wheelhouse. He brought it up and he was belching, and burping, and saying, "Help! Help!" And everybody had to jump in and help him. He had tried to bring up two of these at once, and they were really heavy, maybe thirty or forty pounds. He had almost drowned trying to bring up the second one. So he dropped the second one.

Ron made a little deal with him. Philippe had seen that there were a few more of them in the wheelhouse, so he told Ron about it. Ron said, "I'll make you a little deal. I'll give you one of these plates if you show me where to go to get one of the Navy phones." So Ron loaned him my doubles, which were half used. (Rule of Thirds? Never heard of it!) Ron and Phil went together and brought up two more of these.

Phil Beaudry, a French-Canadian diver, who later founded the Empress Historical Society, shared the location of Marconi Navy phones in the wheelhouse of the Empress. Notice the inflated Mae Wests. Ron used well-maintained CO2 cartridges to inflate his. The small artifacts are much heavier than they look as Phil discovered on his first recovery dive.

On Ron's third dive, my second dive for the day on Monday, we dove the stern. We'd moved our anchor line into the stern where there was another mooring down.

Meanwhile, Pete and Ronni were working on this rear steering wheel. It's a wheel on a beautiful brass pedestal. They had taken the bolts off the floor and were cutting with a hacksaw through a one-and one half inch steel shaft. Pete was working on that.

A CPR archives photo depicts an identical telemotor and wheel in use in the wheelhouse of the Empress. Notice the compass and binnacle identical to the one recovered in 1970 by Ron Strong, now on display in the Empress Pavillion at the Musee de La Mer.

Being an engineer, Peter Perrault certainly knew what a ship's telemotor was. David Zeni's Forgotten Empress: The Empress of Ireland Story (UK: Halsgrove, 1998) hadn't been published in 1971. But it contains an excellent description. Percy A. Hillhouse, one of the naval architects at Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co, Glasgow, Scotland, described the ship's steering equipment during the inquiry into the sinking of the Empress held in Quebec City.

Hillhouse testified (Zeni page 152):
"The word telemotor means a mover at a distance, the same as telegraph means writing at a distance... The instrument is a means of communicating the motion of the hand (helm) wheel upon the bridge to the steam steering engine at the after end of the ship.. The motion of the hand wheel works a plunger inside of a cylinder and forces a mixture of glycerine and water into one or other of the two pipes which travel the whole length of the ship... As the pressure comes on one end, so the steam valve of the steering engine moves (the rudder) to port or starboard. When [the helmsman] releases the wheel, springs at the after end push back the telemotor cylinder, and rotate the wheel back to the original position."

We wanted to tour the stern, so Philippe followed us. Somehow we missed the wheel. We couldn't find where that was. But we had a really nice view of the stern. We even saw an old bathroom and found a little place that was called "storekeepers." It had a little brass plaque up over the door. We took our dive knife out and took that off, so it was a little trophy that we came up with.

The storekeeper's brass plaque was a small trophy and easily recovered using just a dive knife.

Tues. Sept. 7, 1971
This would be our fourth and last day of diving on the Empress. We figured this was the day that Pete and Ronni would bring up the stern steering wheel. By now we were running low on money. It was $50 a day for the boat, so we couldn't afford to spend more than four days on the Empress. It was such a small expedition, just five of us.

We got up and expected bad weather. Instead it was the third most beautiful day. It's ever like that up there! It was so warm we could actually take our wet suit jackets off and feel the sun on our backs. And usually, even if the sun is out, it doesn' feel warm like summer. Note: I have a photo of Philippe with the zipper of his farmer john wet suit totally open the length of his torso. He's leaning against the railing of the boat.

The first dive was on the stern, and this time we followed Pete down to make sure we wouldn't lose him. We wanted to see where the wheel was. There we saw it and we saw him working away on it with the hacksaw, taking turns with Ronni.

Ron and I left them and toured around a little bit. We came to this hatch. Ron and I have an agreement. We know exactly what we'e going to do when we dive. This way, if we're very organized, we don't get into any problems. Whenever we come into a hatch, if there's something we want to look at inside, or we just want to look around, Ron goes in, and I stay outside and just shine my light inside. If he needs some help or something, he motions to me.

He was a little farther away from me and I located this hatch. I came up against it slowly, put my light inside, and spotted something. I saw a big circular thing sitting on the bottom, on a deck in the hatch. It had one circle and another circle attached to it. It looked like two big metal rims. I thought it was part of a seat, like a chair. I thought one rim was the part you sit on and the other rim was the back of the chair. I didn't know what it was. I flashed my light at it. By now Ron had joined me at the hatch. I pointed down with my light at this metal rim.

Ron waved, he gave me the OK sign, and he entered the hatch. It was only about three feet to get into the hatch. It was a pretty wide door. He went down, and before I knew it, he was lifting this thing up and reaching it up towards me, because I was up above him. So I reached down and grabbed it and pulled it up. It was really heavy, so I rested it. I balanced it on the edge of the hatch there.

The ship lies at a 45 degree angle, so you can't just lay something on the floor. It will slide down, because it's at an angle. So we balanced it on the hatch and right away, then, I could see that it was a brass porthole. It was an intact porthole with the glass cover. The glass was perfect. It wasn't cracked, crazed by seawater or broken. This is one of the nicest trophies that any wreck diver can recover from a wreck.

We were both really excited and happy. We just sort of balanced the porthole there. We signaled each other that we were going to surface and bring down a lift bag or a line so that we could recover it. It was just too heavy to carry up to the surface. I nodded agreement and I surfaced with him.

Meanwhile, Ron's lift bag had been loaned to Pete - to bring up the steering wheel and helm he had been working on. Pete had a lift bag of his own, but he wanted to have two to make sure he could bring his goodie up OK.

We got to the surface and we were really excited. I didn't even take my double tanks off. I expected Pete would be back up from his dive pretty soon. Then we could have Ron's lift bag and we'd bring up our porthole.

I was real excited. Finally Pete and Ronni surfaced. Pete got up onto the boat and he's grumbling, something about how he had to grab Gilligan away from some porthole that she was struggling with.

Cap tallies from the maiden voyage given a passenger by crew of the Empress. (Photo: Vancouver Maritime Museum)

I said, "What? Porthole? What do you mean, porthole?" And he said, "Well, she was struggling with this porthole that she found somewhere, and I couldn't get her away from it. I had to wrestle her away from it."

When I heard that, my heart fell. I knew it had to be Ron's and my porthole. There just weren't that many portholes there. Nobody else had gotten a porthole off the ship yet. Ron and I were really a bit worried.

We asked Ronni, "Where did you find it?" She said, "Well, I found it sort of balanced on the side of a hatch." We were really pretty mad when we heard that. We asked, "What did you DO with it?"

"Well, I tried to pick it up, but it was so heavy that it sorta fell down on the side. But I'm sure I'd know where it might be," she replied.

Meanwhile, she had been holding for Peter this little pocketbook. It's like a plastic goodie bag that had it in a net goodie bag, and a Safe-Line Reel that's worth about $40, and Ron's lift bag. And that was all in his pocket book.

Pete asked her, "What about the pocket book?" And she said, "Oh, I handed you that when I got the porthole." And Pete said, "Nah, I don't have it."

That must have been right by the porthole. Now I was really upset. I was sure that we wouldn't be able to find the porthole and Pete was worried that he had lost all his goodies that Ronni had been holding for him.

We figured what we'd do on our next dive was try and find it. This time we'd tie a line on to the porthole in case we had to pull it up. This way at least we wouldn't lose it, because the line would go up to the boat. We didn't know that we could find a lift bag, because one was already tied onto Pete's wheel and Ron's lift bag was temporarily lost inside this pocket book.

We waited a little while and we went back down. This is our second dive of the day. Ron and I went down and by some stroke of good luck we fell right on top of the porthole. We landed right on top of it! I signaled to Ron, but I guess he didn't notice. He was busy tying a line onto the porthole. I dropped down, directly down from the porthole, and found the little pocket book with all the good stuff in it. I picked that up, very happy and all. I came back and joined Ron and he tied the line on, and everything was OK.

Meanwhile this little line that we had tied on was too little to pull it from the surface. So we only tied it onto the porthole and brought it up to where the mooring line was. Again we surfaced and got a bigger line that Pete had had on the boat, in case we couldn't work the lift bag. We tied the line onto it and now on our third dive, we tied the lift bag on, stared inflating it, it started rising and we brought our first porthole up. It was really beautiful.

Flat seas uncharacteristic for the river prevailed on Tuesday, 7 September 1971, when Dianne and Ron Strong prevailed in liberating an intact brass porthole with glass cover from the Empress of Ireland. We are both wearing Evie Bartram Dudas custom wet suits.

Meanwhile Pete had freed his helm and steering wheel and was bringing it to the surface where it would be in daylight for the first time in 57 years. We were all tugging and heaving and ho-ing to bring the telemotor up. Recovering a heavy artifact is no easy task, and it was a team effort to boat this prize. Plus having a lift bag really helps!

Ron Strong reaches for the Perrault-Gilligan recovered telemotor's wheel. Notice the lift bag to Ron's left. Both Ron and Peter are wearing Evie Bartram Dudas custom wet suits. Ron's farmer john was a 5/8" neoprene with a 1/4" hooded jacket -- in the days before we used the term "mil." (Photo: Dianne Strong)

Pete secures a line to the telemotor's shaft to assist in bringing the heavy telemotor onto the dive boat. (Photo: Dianne Strong)

Ronni Gilligan grabs the line as boat spectators view the pedestal and steel shaft of the telemotor for the first time. It took this buddy team many dives to liberate this prized trophy. (Photo: Dianne Strong)

That was our third dive and that was truly a terrific day. Everything came out right. We had really nice goodies.

Ronni, however, was still very unhappy because for two or three years she had been working on this running light that's up on the bow of the ship. She's been working on it a long time and hasn't been able to recover it. Somehow it's wedged into a little place where it had been put.

Pete had dove with her about five times to try to free it, and they hadn't been able to get it. She begged Ron, "Can't you try, will you try it?" Ron was anxious to try to do it, and of course I was anxious, too.

We made one very quick dive to the bow. We went down to the running light. It's right where the ship is way on her side, right on the bottom of the river, at about 150' and that's really pretty deep. So we only spent about five minutes there. We were wrestling with it, and looking at it, and decided we couldn't do it either. We needed a different strategy for recovering it.

We surfaced from that, and that was a total of four dives on that beautiful Tuesday. And we knew that was the end of our diving on the Empress for this year.

Capt. Perrault is at the wheel as Ron and Dianne show off their first porthole. A crowd of Rimouski residents waited at the dock to see what artifacts had been recovered from the forgotten Empress, a name made famous by David Zeni's 1998 book of the same title.

We got back to the Rimouski dock and of course we were really proud of all our goodies. There were loads of people at the dock to meet us, because not that many people dive on the Empress. Everybody was oohing and ahhing over our goodies.

Finally we got everything packed up into the cars. We got back to the hotel and our three fellow Syracuse divers - Pete, Ronni and Rocky - had decided they were going to leave town that night. Ron and I were going to stay one night, because we didn't want to leave at that hour. They were all packed up and ready to leave.

Ron and I had a nice bath and rinsed out our gear. We went out to a restaurant and were eating dinner. All of a sudden Ronni Gilligan walked up and sat down with us. She says, "Hi!" We thought she was halfway home by then. So we said, "What are you doing here?"

She said, "I just thought I'd come and warn you that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are after you." We said, "Oh, that's nice!"

Ronni said, "I got as far as a gas station and the RCMP was there and walked over to me, and said, 'Excuse me. Have you been diving on the Empress?' Well, yes, I have, I replied, because he recognized my car. They had been looking for all of us. Then he flashed out a badge and asked, 'Do you mind if I inspect your car?' No, I don't mind, if you pack it all back up again."

Meanwhile, Pete had packed up her car with everything except the goodies, all the wet suits and all the junk that she'd been taking home for us. We'd planned to have a little vacation along the Gaspe or Quebec City, before going home. And we didn't want to have those smelly wet suits in our VW bus. So we'd asked Ronni to take them home for us. She was going to rinse them out and take care of them for us.

The RCMP had unloaded every single thing out of her car - all the sets of doubles, and found about 8 bottles of booze, three wigs, and things that SHE never knew existed. She never knew some of these things were in her car!

Teetotaller Pete Perrault downs some of Ronni's precious Chivas. She had a few more bottles stashed in her big Bonneville convertible.

He kept pulling out these bottles, and she said, "Oh, My God! I never knew I had that much booze!" He was laughing and very polite about it all. Then he asked her, What about the two other cars? She answered, "Oh, they left HOURS ago."

He said, "What about the VW bus?" They knew our cars. "Well, they will be touring the Gaspe," Ronni said, "And the other car left hours ago, for the States." Then he asked her, "Where are they going to be crossing the border?
At which border crossing?"

"The Thousand Islands Bridge in Alexandria Bay," Ronnie replied -- which is a lie. And the RCMP said, "Are you sure? You mean Ogdensburg, don't you?" Ronni said, "No, no, we NEVER go that way. We ALWAYS go Thousand Islands Bridge, I am sure."

Finally I guess he believed her, because he drove away, because he didn't find anything. The reason they were searching is, I guess it's a national or federal law up in Canada that if you're diving on a wreck and you find anything, of any value at all, you have to declare it, whether you're Canadian or American, or anything, with their Ministry of Wrecks. Then you have to pay duty or tax on it for recovering it, so that you can keep it.

Of course we were illegally smuggling everything home and we weren't declaring anything. So if the Royal Canadian Mounted Police don't catch you, they don't inspect you at the border and they have no control over it. And unfortunately, the RCMP are headquartered right there in Rimouski. We were lucky. They never did catch us.

We spent Tuesday night there. As it turned out, it was so late Ronni decided to spend the night there. She stayed with her French family that she had met several years before.

The fog rolled in and the air temperature required wearing a down parka the day we visited the monument that bore names of some of the victims of the Empress sinking.

Wednesday morning we did some sightseeing. We drove to the monument that the Canadian Pacific Railway had erected in observance of the sinking of the Empress. We took pictures and then we drove to La Lay (phonetic spelling - it may have been I'isletville. You Canadian divers can help me here!) We arrived there about three o'clock and went to the maritime museum. They have a very big Empress exhibit there, with one of the compasses, one of the telegraphs, some plates, and a lot of things there. We took a strobe and a camera and took some nice indoor pictures of their little display.

On Wednesday morning it had turned into really bad weather. It was very foggy and we decided we wouldn't be able to see much of the Gaspe. We drove through Montmagny and into Quebec City. What luck that the previous three days had been perfect weather for a perfect Empress dive expedition!

The Perrault-Gilligan helm was first displayed in March 1972 at the New York State Divers Association annual convention in Brewerton, NY. The brass ring on the wheel reads: Rosebank Ironworks Edinburgh - Brown Bros. & Co. Ltd. Pete had done a great sand blasting job. Regretfully, the artifact is now in storage in Syracuse, NY.

Ron Strong's spirit compass and binnacle recovered in 1970 are on display in the Empress Pavillion at the Musee de La Mer, Pointe au Pere.

Postscript
I don't want to be accused by my Canadian diver friends of being inaccurate. I wrote that none of the divers had dry suits back then. To be accurate, I must state that Andre Menard, one of the first French-Canadian divers, attempted to dive in 1970 in one of those Latex dry suits. I say attempted because he ruptured both ear drums on his first dive. Furthermore, in 1972, John Socha from Rochester dived in a Poseidon Unisuit. Here's Andre before his mishap:

Left to right: Ronni Gilligan, all geared up and waiting for her buddy, Peter Perralut, being assisted by Robert "Rocky" Rockdashil and Gary Barlow, and dry suit diver Andre Menard, waiting on the ladder. (Photo: Ron Strong)

Suggested Bibliography

Croall, James: Fourteen Minutes - The Last Voyage of the Empress of Ireland (Scarborough House, 1978)

Marshall: The Tragic Story of the Empress of Ireland (7 C's Press, 1972, originally published in 1914)

McMurray, Kevin: Dark Descent (McGraw Hill, 2003)

Zeni, David: Forgotten Empress - The Empress of Ireland Story (Halsgrove, 1998)

Fiction:
Cussler, Clive: Night Probe, 1981